Weekend Racing Preview.

Hi there Race fans, time to preview this weekends racing action. We'll start with the British Grand Prix at the venerable Silverstone circuit in England. Ferrari will come into this race as the favourites (surprise, surprise) with Kimi Raikkonen determined to get a win after having a rather poor run of things lately, scoring just 8 points from the last three races, and he could have won the last race in France had there not been a problem with his car. McLaren will also be desperate to claw back into the title hunt with the formerly flawless now just slightly distracted Lewis Hamilton eager to win his home race and reap the rewards (that being a marriage proposal from James Allen) of a win on home soil. I am not looking forward to watching the ITV coverage because I reckon we will not see the race at all, it risks being all-Hamilton all the time which is unpleasant for everyone bar the Lewis Hamilton fans. Heikki Kovalainen will also be hoping for a good showing as he has only one podium and has generally been stuck racing cars a McLaren should not have to race. With the rumours coming out that he was McLaren's second choice one gets the feeling that he may not be driving the silver cars for much longer, unless he starts to comprehensively beat Lewis on a regular basis, and I can't see that happening at the moment. Speaking of drivers being trounced by their teammate and that could be fired, Nick Heidfeld will want to record a good result, or at least get into Q3. The German has seemed dazed and confused by teammate Kubica's pace and although he has been a BMW man for a long time now, his job is far from secure. He needs to step up to the plate here and get a good result because the BMW car should not be racing against Toro Rosso's as was the case for "Quick Nick" in France, and it was not due to any sort of penalty or mechanical problem, Heidfeld was just too slow in qualifying. The battle for best of the rest will be interesting with Red Bull, Williams, Toyota, and Renault all very close in pace, with the Adrian Newey designed RB4 being a regular points scorer in the hands of Mark Webber. David Coulthard, who announced his retirement, will want to get a good result in his final British Grand Prix. The Scot claimed he wanted to retire before he was to uncompetitive, but judging by this years results he may have already missed that boat. While Webber has scored points in six of the 8 races so far, DC only has one top 8 finish, and although it was a brilliant podium in Montreal, he has generally been much slower than Webber all year. Williams will hope to reverse their trend of qualifying well only for their drivers to screw things up in the race. The FW30 is a quick car, but Rosberg has not shown the consistency he showed last year and silly mistakes like his boob in Montreal do nothing for the team's confidence while Kaz Nakajima has increasingly looked to be a closer match to Nico's pace for the German's comfort. Toyota appear to have found some life that has been missing since pretty much 2005. Trulli's brilliant podium in France will do wonders for morale and they will be hoping to continue their good run of form here. Timo Glock was great in Montreal, but then slipped back to his usual ways in France, being beaten rather badly by Jarno. He looks increasingly to be a stand-in driver for 2008 while Toyota look for someone more permanent. If he wants to keep his job he, like Heidfeld, will have to pick up their pace in a hurry. Renault will probably be farther behind this group than they usually are. It is well documented that the Renault engine is down on horsepower, something that is needed at Silverstone. No matter how good Alonso is, he probably will struggle to get points, unless it rains while Nelson Piquet is still under the gun to start performing. His 2 points in France will help his case, but he needs to start doing that regularly in order to prevent himself going the way of the Michael Andretti. Honda will probably have another lousy weekend and if this trend continues heads may start to roll in Brackley. Jenson Button has been positively shit in the last two races and no matter how well liked he is within the team he will need to start performing like we know he can. Racing Toro Rossos and Force Indias for position is not something that the folks in Japan are keen to see and seeing Jenson make stupid mistakes like he did in France will have some executives wondering why it is they pay him so much money. He is another driver whose job is far from safe, as he is supposed to be the faster of the two Honda drivers. Toro Rosso will be looking to continue their improvement record with Sebastien Vettel doing very well lately, leaving his teammate Seb Bourdais somewhat in the dust. We all know that Vettel is supposed to be the next big thing, and he will probably get Coulthard's seat next year, but Bourdais has seemed to be a little out of touch at the moment. He had a great debut but since then he has been beaten consistently by his teammate. I don't think his job is under threat as he seems to be keeping out of trouble, but as Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi found out last year, Franz Tost has a very short fuse and Bourdais may find himself on the outside looking in if he doesn't start being more competitive. Last and pretty much least there is Force India, not a whole lot to say here as they are clearly the slowest cars on the grid and although Adrian Sutil tends to stay out of trouble, he has also been slow and Giancarlo Fisichella seems increasingly bored as a backmarker. One suspects that Fisi may be the next person to retire. With rain forecast for the weekend (rain in England, never!) we could see a lot of action, but the rain gods will probably be dicks like they were in France and not rain during the race, which is sad because rain is the only thing that can make a modern F1 race really exciting to watch.

Now that my really long winded F1 preview is over it is time to preview the upcoming IndyCar race at Watkin's Glen. 27 cars will take the green flag (assuming some don't smash up their cars in practice) with Mario Dominguez and the Pacific Coast team making a return. The only other lineup changes from Richmond will be the return of Jay Howard at Roth Racing to unfortunatly replace John Andretti and NOT Marty Roth while the second worst IRL driver after Roth, Milka Duno, will return at Dreyer and Reinbold racing after Townsend Bell raced at Richmond. Watkin's Glen is a good race track and one that the former Champ Car teams will really want to use to get some decent points in the championship. Grahal Rahal won the only Road Course so far that featured all the teams and drivers and will try to repeat that here. Graham has been very fast all year, qualifying very well, but has ended far too many races in the wall. Newman/Haas/Lanigan will probably be able to join the big three at the top by next year even and Graham will have to calm down a little to be a serious contender. Justin Wilson will need to step up his game, he has been generally slower than Graham all year, but has more points due to a much better finishing record. NHL appear to be the only team capable of challenging Andretti Green, Ganassi, and Penske out front so this race will probably be another one dominated by those three. With Six drivers fairly evenly matched in terms of speed in the top three teams the racing should be pretty good. Marco Andretti has started to test the patience of some fans with his accidents and his moaning to the media, one senses that he figures that he is untouchable because he is driving for daddy. Had he been driving for Penske one suspects his ass might have been out the door long ago.

Oh and by the way, there is a NASCAR race somewhere, I think Daytona.