The big new to come out of this weekend was that Donington Park appears to have nicked the British Grand Prix from Silverstone for 2010. This seems all very nice and dramatic but one has to sound a note of caution as the "mystery backer" who was going to give 100 million pounds appears not to exist and so the folks at Donington have a plan to finance the venture by pre-sale of seats and by bonds. The DOnington people also say they do not have the planning permission to do the work, and with these British planning committees seemingly ultra slow in deciding things, a British GP and Donington park seems at this moment still unlikely. I do hope that they get things done in time because F1 really needs to keep the British GP safe as it is one of the classic races along with Monaco, Italy, Belgium, France, and Germany and if the Axe does fall on the British GP then I reckon F1 will be in serious trouble, as most of the teams are based in England.
There are rumours that Honda's Ross Brawn may try to court Fernando Alonso away from Renault. It is no secret that the Spaniard wants to go to Ferrari and that he is not exactly happy with his return to Renault, but a move to Honda seems a little far fetched. There are some upsides to a move to Honda for Fernando, most notably the deep pockets of Honda and a potential mega salary, and secondly Ross Brawn appears to be getting the team back on track after a horrendous 2007, but they are still a long way off from being championship contenders and Alonso has made no secrets about his unwillingness to rebuild a team, he wants to win NOW!!!!
According to reports, Ferrari are willing to shell out the cash to pry Sebastien Vettel from Red Bull, and a sum of 60 million euros has been bandied about by some members of the German media. There is no question that he is a star of the future and will probably be a Red Bull driver next year alongside Mark Webber, who re-signed for 2009, but Ferrari are looking ahead and the prospect of a Kimi Raikkonen retirement. This report may be pure speculation about the value of Vettel by the German media, who are desperate for a new Schumi, but realistically Ferrari will want Vettel to get another season or two under his belt before moving on, and with the rumours of Alonso already signing at Maranello there could be no space for a young hotshot wanting to win a championship as we all know how well Fernando deals with teammates who are close in talent to him and his precious ego.
On this side of the pond the big story is that Dario Franchitti's go at NASCAR has ended prematurely after team owner Chip Ganassi pulled the plug on his number 40 NASCAR team. Dario has been underwhelming all year in Sprint Cup and the team has no sponsors of note. The rumour mill is now churning as to where he will go, with most IRL fans wanting him back in IndyCars while the smart money is on him going to the American Le Mans series. Ganassi racing has not had a great time of it of late in NASCAR with Juan-Pablo Montoya up to his old tricks of crashing and blaming everyone else but him and with Dario and the other dude (whose name eludes me) being well down in the standings (thank you wikipedia for helping me with that one). Hopefully Dario will end up back in the IRL to improve the talent level and squeeze out some of the crappy pay drivers, but realistically he will probably go a different route.
In other tidbits of news from the IRL, Helio Castroneves has re-signed with Penske on a long term deal, although details were not disclosed. This is good news for Helio who had a weekend right out of a Monty Python sketch at Watkins' Glen and is second in the championship. Tony Kanaan injured his wrist in a practice crash at the Glen, he raced through the pain and finished third while Mario Dominguez and Pacific Coast motorsports returned to the grid and finished a solid 13th, a good morale boost for the under-funded team.
Not a lot of racing this week with no F1 on the schedule, but the IRL is back in action at Nashville Speedway and MotoGP is racing at the Sachenring in Germany and the ALMS are racing at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut and NASCAR somewhere in the USA, I don't know or care.
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