The Disgruntled Racing Critic

Mark Webber Injured in Bike crash

2008-11-22T12:20:00.002-05:00

The news of the day is that Red Bull racing driver Mark Webber was badly injured in a bicycle crash in Tasmania, Australia yesterday. The Australian collided head on with an SUV while running a charity bike tour of the island and suffered multiple fractures to his right leg and some minor scrapes. The event in question is the 250 km Mark Webber pure Tasmaia challenge, a multi-discipline sporting event. Webber underwent surgury to reset the leg and is expected to make a full recovery. It is unclear as to whether or not this will affect his upcoming season, but both Webber and the team are expecting him to be in the cockpit for the start of the new season, although he will miss a considerable amount of testing time.

Mark Webber is a spirited driver and I can't imagine him not being ready for the start of the season, unless there are complications. These things are freak accidents that can happen to anyone, and he was doing something for charity, which is admirable. He has been one of the most unfortunate drivers in F1 recently, having always managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, including a move to Williams as the team was in decline and missing out on a Renault seat just as they were in their prime. At 32 his odds of winning a world title appear to be slimming, and with young Hotshot Seb Vettel joining him at Red Bull he may just end up being number two driver should a championship challenge materialize.

The final nail in the coffin of the Canadian Grand prix

2008-11-17T07:17:00.002-05:00

WARNING: The following blog entry contains mature subject matter and language that may not be appropriate for all readers, reader discretion advised.

Let's start right off with one sentence: Fuck you Bernie Ecclestone!

Now ha we know where this is going I need to get into the specifics. This week a group of representatives of the Montreal Grand Prix were in Europe to meet with the Fuhrer of Formula One Bernie Ecclestone to hammer out a deal. The figures were for an improved dollar amount for the next few years, ever increasing. Apparantly Mr. Wankerstone turned it down flatly, refusing to budge without a $175M bond to guarantee payment over the next five years and fees starting at $31M canadian increasing. The people representing Montreal had thought that there was going to be negotiation not just callous stonewalling by that cum sucking little 78 year old twatface but apparantly Bernard Echlestone didn't want anything to do with reason, instead he just wanted a way to either suck the Montreal organizers dry or take races to far away countries who don't give a fuck about formula one, all while denying some of the most fervent F1 fans in the world a chance to see their heroes in action. From what I understand the Montreal organizers put forward a fair package that was in line with most of the European races but Douchebag McAssmunch wanted no part of it.

What pisses me off the most about this is not that Dickhead Ecclestone wanted such a high dollar amount, it is that he refused to negotiate knowing that the Canadian GP organizers could not afford his demands, as if he intentionally wanted to cancel the Canadian GP. If he wants to shit on his best fans well then he can just go take his money and his greedy little ass and never come back. Notice to Canadian customs, flag this little twerp and never let him in the country for gross economic damages to the country. If he wants to be an asshole then he can be an asshole with other countries because it won't happen in our backyard.

Fuck You Bernie Ecclestone

Franck Montagny

2008-11-16T13:19:00.002-05:00

Former Renault F1 test driver and Super Aguri racer has been testing recently with Andretti-Green Racing's IRL team. While this may not mean anything in regards to their 2009 driver line-up, it could mean something about their testing and setup work. Montagny has alot of experience in many forms of motor racing, and most recently was racing sports cars in the ALMS and has lots of experience as a test driver. AGR is most likely using his testing expertise to work on setups and other data for the upcoming season as one of their main shortcomings this year was setup. TOny Kanaan cannot do all the setup work alone and although Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti are slowly learning, they still have a long way to go. Montagny appears to be a very good fit for them and he may be auditioning for a job at another IRL team with AGR backing, seeing as the silly season is far from over.

Montagny would be a very good fit for a smaller team, and with Ryan Hunter-Reay appearing to be the number one candidate to replace Helio Castroneves at Penske next year should Helio not be able to race due to his spot of legal bother, one could legitimately see Montagny move over to Rahal-Letterman Racing to replace Hunter-Reay. Montagny's setup abilities would be invaluable to a small team like Rahal-Letterman and he could score some very strong results, most likely on the road courses but you never know.

Is it time to rethink F1's eastern shift?

2008-11-14T16:46:00.003-05:00

As many of you know (and repeatedly gripe about), F1 has been adding more and more races in Asia. First came Malaysia in 1999, followed China and Bahrain in 2004, and this year Singapore. In the next few years we are expecting to see India and South Korea join the party, paying exorbitant fees that no European or North American promoter can afford to pay, all this for the privelege of dealing with Bernie Ecclestone's repeated demands for night races and later starting times for European television while taking away races held in that very market. Normally it would sound like daft business sense to keep doing this, but the Ecclemeister is pocketing the 50 million bucks per year and is generally happy. Unfortunately these promoters, usually governments, are nowhere near able to make any semblance of a profit, but they have thus far shut up and paid, leaving the bitching and moaning to the Europeans.

However things appear to be changing as the Chinese Authorities are starting to balk at having to pay Bernie so much money for a race that the locals don't care about. The empty grandstands this year are a testament to this indifference on the part of the Chinese people, even after the organizers gave away tons of free tickets and bussed them in for free just to save a little bit of face. Now they are grumbling about having to pay so much and are considering the possibility of letting their contract lapse at the end of 2010. The empty grandstands are a similar sight in Malaysia and Bahrain, and the novelty of the race in Singapore is sure to wear off in a couple of years. The Chinese GP has been a financial disaster for the city of Shanghai and I don't suspect that the city of Kuala Lumpur is reaping any great financial rewards for their race, unlike the Canadian GP which is huge for the city, these Grands Prix go largely ignored by the local populous.

If F1 is going to remain relevant in the places where the most ardent supporters live it will have to start bringing the races back to these fans, not taking them away and giving them to people who for the most part don't give two shits about it. Hopefully this will serve as a wake-up call to the FOM people that their asian expirement is not working and should be stopped before more cities waste hundreds of millions of dollars on race tracks that will not have any chance of making a profit.

Toro Rosso dreams and realities.

2008-11-13T17:51:00.002-05:00

Scuderia Toro Rosso are in the process of deciding who their drivers are for 2009 and will be testing a bunch of them in the coming weeks. The most obvious two contenders are Sebastien Bourdais, who raced for the team this year to mixed results and up and coming Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi, but apparantly Gerhard Berger has contacted other drivers as well. Takuma Sato is the most notable of these drivers contacted to actually accept the offer after his old job at Super Aguri collapsed under a pile of non-paid sponsor obligations and could be a good fit, while the names of Bruno Senna and Rubens Barichello have been thrown into the mix, depending on which one Honda choses. One name that was apparantly contacted may surprise many is the name of Juan-Pablo Montoya.

JPM had a pretty good F1 career with Williams and McLaren before falling out with Ron Dennis and taking his toys and going to NASCAR, where he has wasted little time in criticizing F1 whenever possible. He has called F1 boring and he is much happier in NASCAR, depsite being a race winner in F1 and a midfielder in NASCAR. This it seems quite unrealistic that he would ever accept to return to Formula One with a midfield team and it seems surprising that anyone in F1 would actually want him, given that he had seemingly nuked the hell out of all bridges back to this class of motorsports. While one might praise Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost for their optimism of landing a big name like Montoya, one can't help but feel that it is just a lame attempt at scoring some cheap publicity in Latin America for Red Bull with the idea of seeing JPM in a Red Bull sponsored car as they must have known that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell Montoya would agree to enter a shootout for a seat with an average team. Juan Pablo rather unpolitely said no thanks to the offer of a test and will continue to do waht he does in NASCAR and complain and moan the way he did in F1. I for one am not disappointed to hear that he won't be back as he is nothing more than a big (figuratively and more recently, literally) whiner.

What really happened to Roth Racing?

2008-11-12T20:32:00.003-05:00

Roth Racing has been in the IRL in some capacity since 2004 as a rich toy for owner/"driver" Marty Roth to play race car driver with. At first it was an Indy only thing with Roth qualifying for both the 2004 and 2005 500's in 32nd and 29th respectively as essentially a field filler. He did not finish either year but it did not deter him and the determined, if not slightly delusional, Roth pressed on and ran a few selected ovals in both 2006 and 2007 with a best finish being 18th (in a 19 car field). Re-unification came at the same time that Roth decided to go full time with a two car effot and the influx of talent from Champ Car exposed Roth's shortcomings in a drastic way as the 50 year old Toronto native was well off the pace, especially on the road courses, and quickly became the ridicule of the paddock for his on-track antics. His on-track antics were quickly matched by off-track shuffles in his second car as he unmercilessly fired rookie Jay Howard before the Indy 500 and replaced him with veteran John Andretti. The move appeared to have worked as Andretti put in some very good performances in the next few races, all ovals, before he had a particularly lousy weekend at Richmond and he himself was canned by Roth. The firing of Andretti was also the end of the line for the second Car as ROth decided to focus on his own efforts, which were dismal at best. Apart from a brief return of Howard at Watkin's Glen, it was Roth all the way in a very painful way. Little sponsorship and shitty driving did not appear to deter Roth as he planned for his 2009 assault, but then something went wrong......

What actually happened is a bit of a mystery, but what we do know is that Roth decided to close his doors because he though that the IRL wanted to revoke his license and he said, in no uncertain terms, that he was unhappy at this decision in an interview with Norris McDonald of the Toronto Star. It appeared black and white, the IRL was fed up with Roth's driving and revoked his license, sounds logical right? Well as it turns out not exactly. Roth apparantly was not actually contacted by anyone at the IRL confirming his lost license, and there was no offer of him doing "a bunch of ovals" as Roth claimed they said they offered him. The story goes that he heard he had lost his racing license through a third party. This was confirm a few days ago when someone from the IRL contacted McDonald saying that they had never told Roth that they were taking his license and they wanted to work with him to get sponsors. This does not exactly sound like the IRL was trying to prevent Roth from racing now does it. Whatever did happen, Brian Barnhart or another top IRL official should come out and actually tell us what is going on. I don't necessarily want to see Marty back in a car, but it seems rather silly that he would have shut down his team over hearsay, Roth is not an idiot. Believe what you want about this, but it seems all rather bizarre and might be a convenient excuse for Roth to pull out of the IRL and keep his dignity by trying to play the victim card. I will be watching this story closely and will post anything else.

I know that it seems a little trivial compared to the bigger news of the week like the loss of surfers paradise and the speculation surrounding the future of Helio Castroneves, but someone has to talk about it right?

Oh, and by the way, I plan on posting more often, probably daily or every second day from now on unless I announce otherwise.

News and Rumour roundup and analysis

2008-11-06T16:45:00.002-05:00

Hi there folks, here is a quick roundup of the driver and team news and rumours from F1 and the IRL of the past couple of days.

We will start with F1 and the big piece of driver news was at Renault where after months of speculation as to potential trigger happy driver changes that Flavio Briatore likes, what happened.... Nothing!!! They have re-signed Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet for another year. The Alonso signing is not surprising but there were some eyebrows raised about Piquet. For all intents and purposes Nelsinho was blown out of the weeds by Alonso and his only result of note was a lucky second place at Hockenheim. The rest of the time he was off the pace of Alonso and very accident prone. He did show improvement as the season wore on, but not nearly to the level that Fernando did. I guess the Renault philosophy this time around was the better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Honda has still yet to confirm their drivers but Nick Fry has hinted that Jenson Button at least will be back. Keep in mind that these days Fry has no authority in this matter, but he still is a bigwig at the team and knows alot. The team are also planning to test Bruno Senna as a possible replacement for one of the drivers, likely the aging Barichello. Barichello has been the better driver for much of the year, but he is 36 and not getting any younger. That team needs some youthful energy soon at unfortunately neither Rubens or Jenson have it.

Moving stateside for the IRL and there are plenty of rumours going around, some credible, some not so, here are the big three that I have heard thus far.

The first has to do with three time champ Sam Hornish Jr, who has had a dreadful season on the track in NASCAR this year. SI.com is reporting that he may return to the IRL for next year as he is unhappy in stock cars. This is unlikely to happen because for one he is making assloads of Money in NASCAR for finishing 20th while he could theoretically be a winner in the IRL again, the money would be significantly lower. Secondly is that there are no top drives available for 2009 unless someone runs a third car or Helio Castroneves can't drive, which does not appear to be the case. He will not return to the IRL for peanuts with a midfield team, and Roger Penske is not going to let him join Ganassi or AGR without a fight, especially as the captain has invested significant amounts of money in his stock car adventure. Chances of seeing Hornish in an Indycar fulltime next year are slim to none, but we were not expecting to see Dario Franchitti back either........

The second has to do with KV racing and their ever bleak future. An article on goldcoast.com.au reports that Aussie Vinyards owner Craig Gore has decided to back out of motor racing for family reasons. This coincidentally comes at the same time the negotiations over the future of Surfers Paradise are happening. If this is true then it will be a big blow to KV racing, but not necessarily a fatal one. Kevin Kalkhoven and Jimmy Vasser are smart men and have a pretty good racing team with very good drivers, potentially an attractive proposition for any potential sponsors. Both men are also well connected and very wealthy and will probably have the funds to start the season sponsorless while courting sponsors. While this may not be a fatal blow to KV racing, it may be a fatal blow to the surfers paradise race. Here is the Link: http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/11/07/21135_gold-coast-news.html

There are rumours floating around that Sarah Fisher is trying to get sponsorship for a full season next year and drive on the ovals herself and hire Darren Manning for the road and street courses plus a second car for Indy. If this happens it would be great, but I imagine that the odds of that are happening are quite slim, although not out of the question. Sarah is a charismatic woman and a pretty good race car driver and could very well convince Dollar General to fork out the cash for a full season. I will believe it when I see it, but I hope it happens.

That's all for now folks. If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments section and I will answer them as soon as possible. I may look into getting a tagboard for Q & A, but I don't know if they are free and I don't know much about HTML, so if you can help me with that as well please do so in the comments!!!!

Race Report: It ain't over till it's over

2008-11-02T20:28:00.003-05:00

Wow

The 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix can be summed up by that one single word really as Lewis Hamilton pinched the world championship from Felipe Massa at literally the final corner of the final lap of the final race. It was heartbreaking for Massa who drove an absolutely brilliant race up front to comfortably win his home race in the wet, something Felipe is not supposed to be good at. It was sensational in the minor points as the changing weather threw everything for a loop all race and in the end, the world championship was effectively won by Toyota, not exactly the way the team from Cologne aspire to be in the championship headlines.

Interlagos is an interesting place. It is bumpy, it is twisty, it is a place where you can overtake, the facilities are considered to be the worst in F1, yet is has soul, it has character, and the fans just go nuts. The Brazilian fans have had a long dry spell of homegrown title contenders until now, as the last Brazilian champion was Ayrton Senna in 1991, but they are an optimistic lot and with Felipe Massa able to be competitive at home (something Rubens Barichello never managed in his six years at Ferrari) they really have something to celebrate. Even though the Brazilian GP usually features crappy weather they go out to the track and celebrate, it is an all-day party in Sao Paulo and that's why Mr. Ecclestone has extended the race's contract until 2014, although it may have to do with a tidy cheque being signed by the local governments..........

The race started in the wet as a downpour came literally two minutes before the scheduled start. This threw everyone for a loop and the start was delayed by ten minutes as the teams scrambled to get full wet tyres. When the lights finally did go out all the men at the front got through cleanly, there were no unsporting shenanigans going on but at the back there was trouble as Nico Rosberg rammed the back of the retiring David Coulthard, pitching the scot into a spin. Unfortunately for DC this spin put him right in the path of Kaz Nakajima who had no choice but to run into him. DC was out on the spot and Kaz had to pit for repairs and the safety car came out, not only for this little mess but for Nelson Piquet, who crashed of his own accord at the next corner.

The safety car came on lap four and we went racing again as the track dried out. Pitstops for dry tyres came around lap 10 with Massa maintaining his lead, despite a heart-stopping wobble on lap 13. Hamilton found himself stuck behind Jarno Trulli, who had a spin on his own and then rather cruelly punted Seb Bourdais into a spin, but due to pitstop sequence Lewis was still in the 5th-6th place range, with Massa motoring off into the distance at the front. It looked really touch and go and the naysayers were sharpening their knives at the prospect of seeing Hamilton lose a world title in the last race again.

The only man that looked really capable to catch Massa at the front was Fernando Alonso, whose second half to the season has been truly remarkable when you consider where they were at the start of the season. He could not hang on to Massa in the end and finished a credible second in the race. The order shuffled itself here and there throughout the race, with everything coming to a head with 10 laps to go, that's when the rain came back. This has been a season with numerous exciting wet races, making a wet finale a fitting end and on lap 62 the raindrops returned. At that point the order was Massa, Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton and Vettel. Everyone pitted between laps 65 and 67 with the exception of the Toyota team, who kept their drivers on dry tyres. The immediate effect of that decision was that Timo Glock was promoted to fourth with Hamilton and Vettel nose to tail in fifth and sixth. If the result held Hamilton would be champ, but there was more to come.

The drama really came with just two laps to go. That's when traffic held Hamilton up just enough to allow Vettel to get on his tail and then at the end of the lap Lewis ran wide, allowing Vettel to sneak through into fifth. It looked as though it was game over for Hamilton and McLaren. Hamilton was sixth, tied with Massa but set to lose again. The fanboys were weeping, the naysayers were rejoicing and the Brazilians were dancing, but it did not end there. Massa was cruising but Hamilton was desperately trying to pass Vettel. Unbeknown to Massa, the Toyotas were in trouble. They were 18 seconds off the pace on the final lap and the Vettel-Hamilton duel closed dramatically on Timo Glock. At the final corner they were right there with them and at the final corner Glock went wide allowing Vettel and Hamilton to sneak through. Massa was already celebrating, Ferrari assumed they had won the title and the Brazilians were in ecstasy. Not even Hamilton was sure he won and most of the commentators had announced Massa as champion until the timing boards flashed Hamilton in fifth. They had to look back on the video to realize that Glock had not been lapped he had been passed for position and Hamilton was world champion. The Ferrari team went from delerium to devastation in a few short seconds as reality sunk in, Felipe was second in the world championship.

You couldn't write a better script with the best writers Hollywood has and it was a fitting end to a controversial, an exciting and a topsy turvy world championship. In this race we did not have any political bullshit, we had two honourable competitors battling on the track, the way it is supposed to be. Felipe Massa was honourable in defeat, he took it like a man while Hamilton was respectful to the team and to Massa. This is what Formula One should be. It should not be about backroom dealing, about harsh penalties, about conspiracies, it is a sport and one that should be enjoyed as such, a concept that so many in formula one can't seem to grasp. Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton, a worthy world champion if ever there was one. Had Massa won the title I would have said the exact same thing as he truly impressed me today and his class in the news conference and on the podium has been wonderful for the sport. If F1 can put aside the bickering and the political garbage for just one second we will realize just what an exciting time this can be for the sport. We have three world champions in the sport and a fourth driver who is championship Material right now, plus we have some exciting young drivers coming through. The days of the big Red Machine are over and we are back to the good old days of true competition and close title chases.

Three stars of the race
1. Felipe Massa
2. Fernando Alonso
3. Sebastien Vettel

Three Jean-Denis Deletraz's of the race (hard to pick because everyone was well behaved
1. Nico Rosberg
2. Nelson Piquet
3. Jarno Trulli

Race Report: Briscoe sends Aussies home happy

2008-10-26T00:29:00.002-04:00

It just had to happen, an Aussie winning the Australian Indy Car race, and it was Penske's Ryan Briscoe who did it, this with a little help from fellow Aussie Will Power who screwed things up spectacularly. In a bit of a surprise the race did not feature rain, something which is normally seen at Surfers and also in a little bit of a surprise most of the drivers were fairly well behaved on the track, with one notable exception, more on that later......

At the green flag there was some jostling and down at the back there was a spot of bother at the back when Mario Moraes and Vitor Meira tangled, pitching Meira into a spin and doing some cosmetic damage to Moraes's car. A few laps later this slight damage would turn into bigger damage as the suspension broke, pitching Mario into a wall and bringing out the caution flag. Will Power led from the start, looking very comfortable with a stable 3 second lead over countryman Briscoe before the yellow and after the caution he pulled out a lead again. This lead came to a horribly embarassing end for the polesitter when on lap 17 he screwed it up royally at turn five, clipping the wall. He limped down to turn 6 and pulled off course, handing the lead to Briscoe. A sheepish Power was apologetic when he talked to the cameras, taking full responsibility for his error which is refreshing, as excuses and finger pointing seem to be the norm in most forms of racing as opposed to manning up and taking the blame. From then on it was pretty much all Briscoe, relinquishing the lead briefly during the pitstop shuffles but led until the end. Meanwhile down in the field there was trouble here and there. At one point Danica Patrick got on television for all the wrong reasons by running into the back of Helio Castroneves. Her broken front wing and Helio's punctured rear tyre said it all about who was to blame for the incident as she went for repairs. The biggest and most notable incident came on lap 22 when there was trouble in the midfield as Road-Course slowpoke Ed Carpenter and the excitable young Graham Rahal came together, pitching Ed into a spin. This blocked the track and both AJ Foyt IV and Danica Patrick came around, got flustered, and stalled their engines. A frantic Danica was seen on TV waving her arms to get restarted, but it was lesson two from the Danica Patrick school of how not to run an automobile race. This whole mess brought out the safety car (a legitimite Safety Car for a change) and the resulting pitstops screwed a few people's races, most notably Dario Franchitti. What happened was that most drivers pitted just before the caution came out, shuffling Dario to the lead. Unfortunately for Dario the pits are closed after the Safety Car comes out and so he had to let everyone bunch up behind him before making his stop, dropping himself down the pack. He tried to charge hard to return to the front but dropped the ball on lap 29 and spun, bringing out the third and final caution period. When the race restarted the order was Briscoe, Scott Dixon, Alex Tagliani, and Ryan Hunter Reay, the last two having very good races. There wasn't a whole lot of action at the front, but there was one incident between Tagliani and Hunter-Reay in the pits where Tags slowed more than Hunter-Reay was expecting and Hunter-Reay made light contact with the rear of Tagliani's car. Nothing serious but the pitstops did allow RHR to leapfrog Tags. The real action was over fifth, sixth and seventh between Oriol Servia, the accident-prone EJ Viso, and Helio Castroneves, who recovered nicely from the assault by Danica. There was plenty of passing, EJ Viso got himself in hot water first for blocking (being forced to cede a place to Servia) and then for cutting the chicane, which earned EJ only a warning. In the end he held of Castroneves, but there were some hairy moments (as there often is when people get close to Viso) but rather surprisingly there was no contact at all. In the closing laps Briscoe had a two second lead over Dixon but had it erased via a third display of terrible driving from Ms Danica Patrick, who was being lapped and did not seem to realize that she had mirrors and spent the better part of a lap holding up Briscoe. Whether she takes driving tips from Andrea De Cesaris or she was exacting revenge on Briscoe for their contact during the Indy 500 we will never know, but suffice to say the Penske people were none to amused with her and walked down to the AGR pit to ask some questions. This was definitely a day to forget for Danica Patrick and only adds fuel to the fire of the detractors. This allowed Scott Dixon to close up on Briscoe and the two raced hard until the end of the race, with Briscoe holding out. The final notable incident was on the last lap when Ed Carpenter, another driver not having the best of days, stuffed his Vision car into a tyre barrier. Ryan Hunter-Reay finished third, another good road course result for him. After his little love-tap on Tagliani in the pits (not the first time this kind of incident happened between those two) he managed to pull away to grab the podium place while Tagliani held on to fourth, coming under pressure from Servia in the closing laps. This was a very good race for Tagliani, scoring a much needed result for Conquest, Enrique Bernoldi who? Fifth went to Servia, who saved face for KV racing after Power's horrendous boob, followed home by the always exciting Viso, Castroneves, Hideki Mutoh, Graham Rahal, and Dan Wheldon. 13 drivers were on the lead lap and there were only five retirements. Moraes after his crash, Townsend Bell for "contact" although due to TV issues I don't know who or what he hit, Tony Kanaan with a Mechanical failure, Will Power with a brain failure, and Ed Carpenter with a case of crashitis.

The three stars of the race are
1st Star: Ryan Briscoe,
2nd Star: Alex Tagliani
3rd Star: Ryan Hunter-Reay

Three Boobs of the race
1st Boob: Will Power
2nd Boob: Danica Patrick
3rd Boob: Ed Carpenter

Now a word about television coverage. I am very unhappy with how race coverage was made available. Firstly the race was only on ESPN classic in the United States, not exactly a common channel, and secondly it was not on television at all here in Canada. OK, this kind of thing happens with a non-championship race but I can let it slide. The big problem was that race coverage was not available on the IndyCar website as it usually is. It was on ESPN360, a service only available in the United States and only available through certain Internet Providers. Those not blessed with these conditions were stuck listening to the radio and the live timing service, with the exception of the more resourceful of us who managed to find some semi-legit video streaming elsewhere. This is a downright stupid way to try to market a sport and encourage potential sponsors as one of the basic ideas of marketing is to get your message out to as many people as you can for the least amount of money. I do not know how much the IRL pays ESPN to put their coverage on the IndyCar website, but I can't imagine it not to be worth it. The IRL only served to alienate and piss off it's most loyal fans, which is something the league can't afford to do in such delicate economic times. Way to go IRL.

Talking IndyCar

2008-10-25T13:57:00.002-04:00

After some time off without blogging (sorry for no Chinese GP report, did not have time to see the race). I am back and talking about the IRL with a preview of tonight's non-championship race in Australia as well as some news and rumours.

Will Power will be on pole for the Surfer's race, on a track that rewards experience and Road Course skill. The Surfer's track is very fast for a Street course with some high speed chicanes that leave no margin for error. This is also an event that usually features rain and surprise winner, in fact the only driver to win at Surfer's more than once is Sebastien Bourdais, who won there twice, more on Mr. Bourdais later. The starting grid highlights the experience and road course skill required with drivers like Alex Tagliani qualifying very well in 7th while the oval specialists like Danica Patrick, AJ Foyt IV, and Ed Carpenter were in all sorts of trouble and start near the back. This is a street course where passing is possible, rewarding the bravest and most talented drivers, thus I think that we will probably see a Ganassi victory tonight, with Dario Franchitti as my favourite, although he starts fourth as opposed to Dixon's second. Dario has won here in the past (1999) and has made a total of six starts at surfers. He appears not to have missed a single beat in Open wheelers after his unfortunate foray into NASCAR and has looked very strong. The Aussie pair of Will Power (1st) and Ryan Briscoe (3rd) will be the crowd favourites and also have a real good chance of winning this, as does dark horse Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2003 winner here, who lines up 5th. This could be a very interesting race, unfortunately here in Canada we won't be able to watch it live as TSN2 has decided to re-air a CFL game that they just finished showing on TSN instead of showing something live, thanks TSN.

The Rumour mill
The Rumour Mill starts turning in the French directon of Sebastien Bourdais. His future at Scuderia Toro Rosso in Formula One is up in the air, despite some really good performances recently and the four time Champ Car champion is pressuring team boss Gerhard Berger to clarify his future sooner rather than later. He is also looking for alternatives and has said he would want to come back to North American if he loses his job. Whether this means a return to Indycar remains to be seen, but in this hack's opinion it is not bloody likely he will be in a Dallara full time next year. For starters there are very few good seats available unless a top team decides to expand and I can't imagine Bourdais wanting to drive for Dale Coyne or Dreyer and Reinbold. Newman/Haas/Lanigan have yet to formally confirm Justin Wilson in the 02 car for next year and some people are suggesting that they are waiting on Bourdais for a decision, but I still don't see Bourdais replacing Wilson. I think the most likely scenario for Bourdais is the ALMS. He is a Le Mans boy through and through and desperately wants to win the famous 24 heures. He also has close ties to the Ambitious Peugeot Sports Car team who are rumoured to be interested in running some ALMS races next year. Bourdais will probably race for Peugeot in these select ALMS races and in the European LMES for them with maybe an appearance in the Indy 500. It would be great for the IRL to have Bourdais in a third NHL car, but not necessarily at the expense of Justin Wilson.

There are rumours of yet another small Indy Only team moving up to full time for next year. The team is Jason Priestlay's Rubicon race team who, according to Curt Cavin, have lined up somewhere around $6.5 Million dollars from 19 companies and are looking to run full time next year. $6.5 Million is a decent chunk of change, but still would be tight for a one car team and close to impossible for two cars. No word on who might be the drivers, but their 2008 Indy 500 drover Max Papis is planning to run some NASCAR races next year and with the money they have they will be hard pressed to pay an establised veteran like a Paul Tracy the money he will want. If this materializes I hope that they bring in someone from Indy Lights or Atlantics like a Richard Antinucci, an Ana Beatriz or Atlantic driver Jonathan Summerton. Many fans are clamouring for more American drivers in the series and small team are ideal to bring these young talents into the top flight. Although hiring drivers out of Europe may help the international exposure of the series, a lack of North American stars and drivers coming out of the feeder series sort of defeats the purpose of having a feeder series at all. The team may be able to snag an unemployed veteran like Tomas Scheckter or Darren Manning, but the series would be better off with new young talents.

Surfer's Paradise appears closer to a full time stay on the IndyCar schedule, although nothing is confirmed. Race Organizers have been quoted as saying the race will happen, but others are saying that a decision will be finalized within a few weeks or so. The stumbling block is the date. The Australian organizers want the race to be run in late October, but the IRL wants it in late September. The problem with September is a conflict with the Aussie Rules Football playoffs, which the organizers fear will sap fans from the race. The IRL wants to twin the event with the Motegi race, which is scheduled for September 19, making the 26th the most logical date for the Australia race. The Aussies want the race as the season finale, but the IRL wants the title showdown on an Oval in the United States and have promised that honour to Homestead-Miami speedway on October 11th. Theoretically they could push Homestead back by two weeks and run Motegi on October 4th and Surfer's on the 11th, but it may be too late for that as it could come into conflict with other events at those tracks, particularly Homestead which has a NASCAR race in early November. Hopefully an agreement is reached as Surfer's is a great event, but bickering and complication is what the IRL is all about so I will only believe any news that is officially confirmed as there is alot of negotiation still to come.

Race Report: Fernando 2.0

2008-10-12T12:45:00.003-04:00

The 2008 Japanese Grand Prix was certainly an entertaining one. Even in the dry weather the Fuji Speedway circuit has proven to be a track where overtaking is possible and with the title contenders getting it spectacularly wrong in the opening laps the door opened for a winner from another team, and the man who took the bull by the horns was two time champion Fernando Alonso, who drove an incredible race to easily win the race from Robert Kubica and Kimi Raikkonen (remember him?). The race had numerous incidents, assloads of controversy and plenty of overtaking, making for a good spectacle. The fun and games began at the first corner when pole sitter Lewis Hamilton made a poor start and attempted a daft maneuver to regain the lead from Kimi Raikkonen. This resulted in Hamilton making contact with the defending world champion and forcing a bunch of cars wide, allowing Robert Kubica to lead Alonso and with the McLaren's and Ferrari's 5th-8th. Further back there was more drama as the scattering cars resulted in veteran David Coulthard getting tagged by someone. A couple of corners later his suspension broke, pitching the scot into the barriers. Lewis would end up getting a drive through penalty for his efforts which was justified. The next talking point was the following lap at the chicane complex at the back where Felipe Massa rather cruelly punted Hamilton into a spin, dropping the championship leader to the back of the pack and leaving him with a wounded McLaren. Felipe would get a drive through of his own for that boneheaded move. So as things calmed down it was Kubica from Alonso, but with Alonso running with a lot more fuel. At their first pitstops Fernando managed to leapfrog Robert, which essentially won him the race while ahead Jarno Trulli, Sebastien Bourdais, and Nelson Piquet took their turn at leading the race before they pitted. From then on the race at the front was between Kubica and Alonso, with the double world champion winning the battle. At the end of the race Kubica came under pressure from Kimi Raikkonen, resulting in a ding-dong battle which Kubica won. The second place, coupled with Felipe and Lewis's woes vaults Kubica back into championship contention. The Pole is 12 points back with two races to go, but with the two contenders working so hard to lose the championship there may still be an opening for him to surprise, or at least remain in contention going into Brazil. This race also featured some potentially job saving drives from Nelson Piquet and Sebastien Bourdais. Piquet finished fourth, right on the tail of Kimi Raikkonen, while Bourdais finished sixth on the road, ahead of Sebastien Vettel. Bourdais would cruelly have his points taken away after a ridiculous penalty for an incident with Felipe Massa. Bourdais came out of the pits and had the inside line while Massa tried to go around the outside. Bourdais had nowhere to go and Felipe chopped in front of him and clipped the front of the Toro Rosso, pitching his Ferrari into a spin. Somehow, maybe after too muck Sake, the stewards managed to rule that Bourdais was at fault when in reality he was a passenger in the whole mess and gave him a 25 second penalty, dropping him to tenth. This decision crucially boosted Felipe Massa to 7th, and an extra point, cutting the gap to Hamilton to five points. The Bourdais farce lifted teammate Seb Vettel to sixth, Massa to seventh, and Mark Webber to 8th, the "A" Red Bull team getting soundly beaten by the "B" team again. Of the other teams, Williams had yet another shitty day with Nico Rosberg being nowhere and Kaz Nakajima busting his front wing in the first corner shenanigans and finishing last. Honda as usual were crap again, this time Barichello beat Button while neither Force India finished the race, Sutil having a puncture break his suspension and Fisichella a broken gearbox.

This race has proven two things, one that Fernando Alonso is still probably the best driver in F1 and that Formula One needs to have permanent stewards. The Bourdais penalty went against Race director Charlie Whiting's orders and could have an important impact on the championship. I hope that the issue of stewarding gets addressed because the FIA does not need dubious stewarding decisions to be the main headline as opposed to the fact that the race was pretty entertaining when all is said and done.

The Future of Roth Racing

2008-10-10T12:14:00.002-04:00

Roth Racing, in their first full(ish) season were perpetual backmarkers who were saddled by an owner-driver who was out of his league and terrible management decisions regarding driver choices and it appears that the shit is about to hit the fan for this team once and for all. The word on the street, according to Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star, is that the IRL told Marty Roth that they would not renew his racing license. The 49 year old Roth (the oldest driver in the IRL this year) was apparantly outraged and has now decided to put his team up for sale. The team is reportedly asking $2 Million dollars for their factory, four cars, and two transporters and have already laid off a number of staff. Regular readers will know my opinion of Roth's driving abilities, but the team had some good people in the backroom who were able to put together some decent cars, especially on the ovals, and they had some good runs in the season, so long as it was the car that Roth himself was not driving and his staff could make a pretty good crew for a potential buyer. There are rumours that one of these Indy-only teams, like Rubicon Racing (owned by actor Jason Priestlay) could be interested and can afford the initial price tag, but can't afford to keep paying the remaining staff until they get some sponsorship ready, and Mad Dog Marty is naturally unwilling to foot a wage bill for a team he no longer owns. This will probably end up with the rest of the assets and staff being acquired individually by the existing teams and Roth Racing ceasing to exist. Although I will be happy to see Marty Roth out of the cockpit, it will be sad not to see what the team can do when not managed by an egotistical buffoon. If someone like Derrick Walker could put something together to buy the team and make it competitive. The issue, as always, is money and while Walker has management skills, he does not have enough money to buy Roth out and pay the staff until he gets the sponsorship to put the team on the ground. Walker would be more likely to buy the cars and transporters only and wait until he gets the necessary cash to build a team, leaving Roth's existing staff to join existing teams, but this scenario would be highly unlikely. Obviously a good solution would also be for Marty to step out of the cockpit and concentrate on management, putting someone like Jay Howard (who Marty is still paying not to drive) in the car, or cars, but with Mr. Roth's ego that could never happen. One less car in the grid will leave Stanton Barrett as probably the league's chief backmarker, unless Milka Duno keeps racing, and will deny a worthy driver (like erm, JAY HOWARD) an opportunity in the IndyCar series. Sad that despite the progress the league has made we still have clowns like Roth making the league look amateurish.

The dropping of the Canadian Grand Prix

2008-10-07T10:36:00.003-04:00

In recent weeks there has not been a heck of a lot to talk about in the open wheel racing world, but today we all got a real shock, and that shock was the dropping of the Canadian Grand Prix from the 2009 Formula One schedule. Montreal has been a fixture on the F1 calendar for the last 30 years, with one exception being 1987 where a sponsorship row got the race canceled. There was no indication from any news source that this was going to happen and when the world motorsport council released their preliminary schedule in June there were no asterixes next to Montreal, no conditions, it was a done deal, the Canadian Grand Prix was scheduled for June 7, 2009, the 47th Canadian Grand Prix in total (if you count the pre-F1 years on the 1960's).

This will come as a major shock to the car manufacturers who are pressing the FIA to have more North American presence for Formula One and it will come as a major economic shock to the city of Montreal. The Grand Prix is the biggest event of the year with hundreds of thousands of tourists descending on Montreal for the weekend spending millions of dollars in the hotels, shops, and (especially) bars and restaurants. The Canadian Grand Prix is a major party, and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that NASCAR or the IRL could create anything close to the same buzz that the Canadian Grand Prix creates year after year. Montreal and Quebec are the closest things you will find to Europe on the North American continent and the province of Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve are Formula One crazy and show their support for the race year after year by doing something that most other Grands Prix struggle to do, pay money to go and watch the race. Every year for the last few years the race has been a sellout and setting records in the process. This year alone over 300,000 people descended on the Ile Notre-Dame over the three days of the race, most likely (I would have to check some figures) the biggest attendance of the year for the three days of an F1 race. Not only is the Canadian Grand Prix well attended, it is also massively popular among the drivers and teams, with the buzz and atmosphere of the city-wide party being passed on to the drivers and teams.

One wonders what the reasoning for axing Montreal could be, as there was no indication this was coming and the FIA have yet to say why Montreal was dropped. There had been some issues with the circuit breaking up this year, but that was temporarily solved by a patching mechanism this year and is very easily fixable, and the other reason could be transportation costs, although I can't imagine it being much more expensive to fly from Europe to Montreal than it is to fly to Singapore or Shanghai..... There have also been suggestions that the FIA has decided to leave North America to NASCAR, but to me that seems silly. If the FIA were to do that it would indicate to me that they have no clue about Quebec, and they are incredibly stupid to abandon one of the largest and richest markets for cars in the world. The likes of Honda, Toyota, and BMW sell massive amounts of cars over here every year and know full well that an F1 presence over here will only help, not hinder their sales figures, so I can't imagine that the new Formula One Teams Association had much to do with decision. This also does not appear to be one of Mr. E's money grabs where he puts pressure on the organizers for higher fees because in June they had come to an agreement for 2009. To me this all points to the greed of FOM and the FIA. They saw that the teams wanted a summer break and were not about to drop a European race so they looked at the calendar and decided to drop the race that payed less in race fees than the likes of Bahrain, Singapore, Abu Dhabi et al, and tag Montreal is it!!! This is a ludicrous decision that lacks foresight and only smacks of a quick money grab at the long term detriment of the sport. Watch out Melbourne, you are next....................

Race Report: Fantastic Fernando!!!

2008-09-28T23:09:00.003-04:00

What can you say really, Fernando Alonso won the Singapore Grand Prix, an unlikely victory given Renault's year and the two time world champion has been decidedly non-commital about his future. Make no mistake it was a brilliant drive from Alonso and a not so subtle reminder that he is still one of the top drivers in F1. Not only did Alonso remind us of how good he is, Renault also reminded us that they still have the tactical know-how to win races, despite average cars and gutless engines. Alonso's joy was Ferrari's misery as once again they had a race winning car and once again they managed to screw it up so bad so as they end up with no points. Felipe Massa had a comfortable lead but when he pitted behind the safety car it all went to shit as his crew released him while the fuel hose was still attached. This led to some red mechanics being strewn across the pitlane and a drive through penalty for driving out into the path of Adrian Sutil (again). The dramas and resulting penalty left Felipe at the back of the field, to let him get frustrated and cause problems, ironically for Sutil again. Kimi Raikkonen was also delayed by the shenanigans in the Ferrari pits and he was back in the pack. The world champion recovered to run fifth in the closing stages only to screw up and crash on his own. At the front Fernando Alonso pitted early to be rewarded in spectacular fasion on the following lap when his teammate made yet another mistake and stuffed his Renault violently into the wall, bringing out the safety car. Fernando thus stayed out while everyone else pitted, some having to do so while they were closed. At the restart Alonso rocketed away in the lead, aided by some slower cars between him and the main contenders. Fernando looked set for the victory, with a 35 second lead, when the safety car came out once again, this time when Felipe Massa messed up and spun causing some confusion, Felipe himself rejoined, but in doing so got in the way of Sutil, who had to take avoiding action which ended up meaning stuffing it into the tyre wall. With the arse-end of a Force India car in the middle of the track the Safety car was the only option and the field was bunched up again, with ALonso leading the surprising Nico Rosberg and Championship leader Lewis Hamilton. If Lewis could get by Rosberg at the restart then we could have been on for a grandstand finish, but thus was the nature of the track he couldn't and the top three cruised home. Fouth place went to Timo Glock, who was much better than Toyota teammate Jarno Trulli all afternoon and the points were rounded out by Sebastien Vettel, who was the class of the four Red Bull cars and destroyed under-fire teammate Sebastien Bourdais, Nick Heidfeld, who was solid and uspectacular, David COulthard, who reckoned he could have had much more had he not had a fuel rig problem in the pits, and Kaz Nakajima, who was promoted to 8th after Kimi Raikkonen's late race boob.

This result leaves Lewis Hamilton now seven points up on Felipe Massa with just three races to go. If he wins the title this year it will be helped largely bu Ferrari's errors. The Ferrari pit crew were the best in the business for so many years and now they are mistake prone and slow. Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen have not helped matters by making more mistakes than Hamilton, but as a team, Ferrari are struggling to perform consistently. Maybe they need a leader that can rally the troops, maybe they need Fernando Alonso..........

IRL Musical chairs continues.

2008-09-25T20:32:00.002-04:00

The music plays on as Vitor Meira secured himself a seat with AJ Foyt enterprises starting in 2009. This leaves Darren Manning the next man looking for a seat as it is he who is losing his job. Manning and Meira finished within one point of each other in 2008 with both men being consistent challengers for the top 10 and both men having a season best finish of second. I like Vitor Meira and am happy that he has landed on his feet, but at the expense of another quality driver is unfortunate. I think that Manning deserves a ride somewhere and this move is more of a step sideways than a step forward for AJ Foyt enterprises. AJ is still dreaming of running a second car full time, possibly for Franck Perera, but that does not seem likely. This move also rubbishes any rumours that Meira will replace Tomas Scheckter at Luczo Dragon racing, although we still may see Darren Manning jump to Jay Penske's squad, if they run next year.

The other piece of news comes way out of left field and it has to do with a brand new team and a brand new Indycar driver. The team is called 3G motorsports (or three guys motorsports) and is run by Greg Beck, who has previously fielded a cars in the IRL as early as 1996 and ran two races last year with Roger Yasukawa, at Motegi and the Indy 500, where Roger failed to Qualify. There had been rumblings that Beck was trying to get something together but nobody took them really seriously until this announcement. The big surprise is the choice of driver, NASCAR veteran Stanton Barrett. Barrett will be 36 when the season starts and has no open wheel experience. He also has very little in the way of road racing experience and was a journeyman in NASCAR at best. He will probably struggle mightily in the first few road races and may end up in the wall at some of the street courses, but he will probably improve as the season progresses. He is a veteran who knows full well that you are only as good as your last race. He may start the season in Milka-Marty land, but will certainly improve as the season progresses, especially on the ovals. It is nice to see new teams having a go at it and hopefully this becomes a permanent thing. This announcement brings the confirmed car count up to 20 with teams like Dale Coyne, KV, Dreyer and Reinbold, and Roth yet to confirm their 2009 plans.

News and notes from the world of single seater racing

2008-09-23T11:54:00.002-04:00

There has been very little in the way of news on the driver and team front recently, but I will do my best this time out.

Toro Rosso have said that they want to bring in Sebastien Buemi for next year as one of their drivers. This has yet to be confirmed, but it is obvious that Red Bull wants Buemi in one of the smaller teams cars. If this does come true, then it would be a worrying sign for Sebastien Bourdais as Gerhard Berger has said that next year he wants an experienced driver with a young hotshot, and one year of experience may bot be enough for Herr Berger. Hopefully Bourdais keeps his job, he has been very good of late after a slow start to the year and he is a really talented driver.

Fernando Alonso is going......Nowhere. After all sorts of speculation regarding a move to BMW or Honda for next year it appears that Alonso has decided to stay where he is. Renault plan to increase their budget, especially for engines, in a desperate plea to get back to the highs of 2005 and 2006. Winning championships may be unlikely for the team given how good McLaren, Ferrari, and BMW have come along recently and how much money they have to spend compared to Renault. Even if they don't have the budget, the right ingredients are there to build a race winner again, providing that Fernando's heart is into the project.

The A1 Ring in Austria appears to be getting a rebuild with money from, surprise surprise, Red Bull. Grandprix.com is reporting that Red Bull are planning to invest 100 million dollars into rebuilding the A1 ring as a test venue. The chances of getting a race back are slim due to the underwhelming enthusiasm from the locals to the idea. This will provide a good test venue in a very scenic, if not out of the way, location. The Osterreichring if the 70's was a grand old circuit with ast sweeping and ultimately rather dangerous corners. It was eventually scrapped and replaced by a decidedly ordinary track that at least had overtaking opportunities. An Austrian Grand Prix there would be really good for the television spectators, but the locals and the teams may not be as enthusiastic.

In the IRL, most of the new signings will be with their new teams in the non-championship race in Australia, meaning that Dan Wheldon will be driving for Panther and Dario Franchitti will be in the car for Ganassi. This is not too surprising and should make for an interesting race.

In other IRL news and notes Alex Taglani has been confirmed by Conquest racing as one of their drivers for 2009. Tags will provide some experience to the team and their second driver, who has yet to be confirmed but the team website is saying that they will be hiring a driver "with equal grit and gift". This is really vague but it suggests that it will be neither Enrique Bernoldi nor Jaime Camara. Camara had flashes of brilliance throughout the year but was largely average while Bernoldi proved to be a spoiled, whining, backmarker. Tagliani will be a great addition that should provide some leadership that the likes of Bernoldi could not provide to the team as it moves forward. Elsewhere Robin Miller is reporting that Vitor Meira will be replacing Tomas Scheckter at Luczo Dragon racing, should that team continue. I don't know if this is a step forward for the team or not as Meira, although stable, will probably end up just in the middle of the pack, but will keep the car in one piece, while Sheckter will go balls out and crash. At least with an accident the sponsors get some airtime. Maybe that's why Marco Andretti is so marketable........

IRL Team By Team Reviews amd Grades.

2008-09-18T17:33:00.006-04:00

Hi there folks. Now that the IndyCar series is done and F1 has been quiet on the rumour front of late, I have decided to do a team by team and driver by driver Report Card for all the entrants.

Target Chip Ganassi Racing.
The Overview: The best team in the IRL this year they won 8 of the 17 races they entered, including the Indy 500. Scott Dixon was the class of the field and a deserved Champion.
The Good: Scott Dixon was easily the best man for most of the year and was good on pretty much all the tracks. But for some bad results late on he would have locked up the championship early.
The Bad: The way that the team made some crucial errors in critical races, such as strategic blunders at Sears' Point. They very nearly grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory as a result.
The Ugly: The way that Chip handled the Dan Wheldon contract situation. Without telling Dan he went after Tony Kanaan through the media, prompting Dan to become disillusioned.
The Grades: Team: A Dixon: A+ Wheldon: B+

Team Penske
The Overview: The second best team all year who garnered four wins out of 17 races. They were consistently able to come close to Ganassi for pace and were unlucky not to get more wins. Helio Castroneves made a spirited championship charge and always kept his spirits high despite continually coming in second throughout the year.
The Good: Helio Castroneves's consistency and determination. The two time Indy 500 champion really deserves an IRL title as he has been one of the biggest stars of the series for many years. Ryan Briscoe also had some brilliant performances but was not consistent enough. They also showed that they are still the masters of strategy by getting results that they really did not deserve.
The Bad: The team was also not able to match Ganassi at some of the ovals in terms of speed and had to rely on Roger Penske's genius to get some results. If they want to win the title next year they will have to shore up this part of their game.
The Ugly: Ryan Briscoe's incident filled start to the season did not do wonders for team morale. He recovered nicely but he will have to be more consistent if he ever wants to be considered a championship contender.
The Grades: Team A- Castroneves: A Briscoe: B+

Andretti-Green Racing
The former powerhouse, AGR were nowhere near their former self and although they got some good results, including two wins, they were a team rife with internal conflict.
The Good: The team has lost some of it's major players and found themselves with a relatively inexperienced crop of drivers. They kept themselves in the headlines with Danica Patrick's memorable win, but it does not hide that last years champs only had two wins this year. Tony Kanaan still managed to seven podiums and was instrumental in keeping the team in the big three.
The Bad: The woeful driving of two of the so-called stars of the team, Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick. Both showed flashes of brilliance but neither could stay out of trouble or put together full races. Marco spent far too much time in the wall and Patrick spent too much time complaining about everything. These two need to be better if the team ever wants to compete for a championship again.
The Ugly: Team Chemistry. AGR spent much of their year dealing with internal strife and had more than one incident where drivers forced each other into the wall. Michael Andretti held a closed door meeting where he apparantly berated his drivers in Edmonton, but a team boss should not have to yell and scream at his drivers not to run into each other, it should be established.
The Grade: Team: B Kanaan: A- Patrick: C+ Andretti: C Mutoh: B

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing
The Overview: The former Champ car superteam showed that they have the means to break into the elite in the merged IRL in the coming years. Both Justin Wilson and Graham Rahal managed wins on Road Courses and they managed to be fairly fast in turning both ways. They are still not up to scratch on the ovals, but that will take some time considering how quickly they had to adapt to the new cars.
The Good: Two wins from two very good drives by the drivers. The team was also very quick on the road courses in qualifying and they managed to use their strategic experience to get some better results than they deserved.
The Bad: Were still unable to be competitve on the ovals and did not seem to improve in this aspect as the year went on.
The Ugly: Graham Rahal was mature in front of the cameras, but tended not to be on the race tracks as he was involved in too many accidents. He is only 19 and can be forgiven, but it was the main sore point of his season.
The Grades: Team B+ Wilson: B+ Rahal: C+

KV Racing Technology
The Overview: The surprise of the field, KV managed to consistently be up front on the road courses and had some decent results on Road courses. In my mind they out-performed the more expereinced Newman/Haas/Lanigan boys despite not getting a win.
The Good: Both Oriol Servia and Will Power proved to be very consistent throughout the season and they got some surprisingly good results on the ovals. They managed to adapt much better to the ovals than the other "transition teams".
The Bad: Despite getting some great qualifying runs on the road courses they could not seem to seal the deal. Consistently making it into final qualifying is great, but they should have converted it to more top 5 finishes than they got.
The Ugly: Their future. It seems as though KV's 2009 may be tied to the Australian race, which does not seem likely at the moment. It would be a sad loss for the series as both Servia and Power were great all year.
The Grades: Team: A- Servia: A Power: B+

Rahal-Letterman Racing
The Overview: The team were quiet but effective throughout the year and Hunter-Reay rewarded the hard work with 1 win and an eight place finish. Hopefully this can springboard the once great team into having two cars and being back with the elite.
The Good: Ryan Hunter Reay Quietly went around his business of getting result after result. Apart from his win at Watkin's Glen he did not have a top 5 finish but had 9 top 10's. He also had a great finishing record with only 3 DNF's, although all of them due to accidents.
The Bad: Although a spirited bunch they never seemed to be able to move forward. Hunter-Reay just seemed content to bring the car home in 8th or 9th without making a spirited charge, it may be just as well as when he did make a charge he was taken out by Marco Andretti.
The Ugly: Nothing really, although the turquoise paint job leaves a lot to be desired.
The Grades: B Hunter-Reay: B+

Vision Racing
The Overview: Tony George's band of Merry Men continued to be decidedly average, with some great runs on ovals and abysmal ones on road courses. If they are going to be seen as more than just a grid filler they will have to be better all around.
The Good: On the ovals they were right up there and Ed Carpenter especially showed himself to be adept at oval racing, consistently running in the top 10 on the ovals and getting a couple of top five finishes. Anthony Foyt IV was also decent on the ovals, but not quite as good as Carpenter.
The Bad: The woeful performance on the road courses. Both Carpenter and Foyt were dreadful when they had to turn both directions and despite hiring Bryan Herta as a road course coach, there was no improvement shown. With more road courses coming next year Ed and AJ will have to improve in this aspect.
The Ugly: Ed Carpenters car, get ride of the vomit-yellow colour PLEASE!!!!
The Grades: Team: C+ Carpenter: C+: Foyt IV: C-

Panther Racing
The Overview: Another former IRL standout team, Panther did not seem to be going anywhere this year and despite Vitor Meira's valiant efforts they were still only midfielders.
The Good: Meira's flashes of brilliance. When they can get it together Panther have shown that they have still got it in terms of technical ability, they just don't have money. Vitor's run at Indy where he finished second was the best non-winning performance we saw thus year.
The Bad: For a once great team they have sort of become afterthoughts in the IndyCar world. Vitor is a great driver but he must have been banging his head seeing all his effort lead to average finishes and a few too many accidents.
The Ugly: The way they jerked Meira around. Yes Dan Wheldon is a former champion, but giving Meira the sack via email was just classless. Hopefully he can find himself in an IndyCar next year.
The Grades: Team: B- Meira: B-

AJ Foyt Enterprises
The Overview: One of the original IRL teams, AJ Foyt's team continue to plod along in the midfield not making any headlines.
The Good: Darren Manning was solid if unspectacular. Managed to take advantage of good strategy and some luck to get second at Watkin's Glen and had a few other top 10's, but nothing spectacular otherwise. Their car is pretty sharp looking as well.
The Bad: Aside from his second place, the only time the team really made headlines was when Manning retired due to fatigue at Iowa, drawing the ire of the usually colourful AJ Foyt. The seem to be stuck in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity.
The Ugly: Nothing really, hard to have anything Ugly when we rarely see them on televison.
The Grades: Team: C Manning C+

Dreyer and Reinbold Racing
The Overview: The underfunded men managed to punch above their weight a few times, but were mostly solid backmarkers
The Good: Buddy Rice's driving. The former Indy 500 winner managed to capitalize on circumstances to get some good points finishes. Occasional teammate Townsend Bell also managed to score a couple of decent results.
The Bad: Despite having one of the best drivers on the grid, money will always be a problem for the team and they have to revert to hiring woeful pay drivers.
The Ugly: Milka Duno's driving. Ms Duno is way out of her league in the IRL and here habit of getting in the way of other drivers caused some hair-raising moments. Her altercation with Danica Patrick at Mid Ohio, although humerous, highlights just how other drivers feel about her driving "skills".
The Grades: Team: C- Rice: B Bell: C Duno: F

HVM
The Overview: Keith Wiggins' men were a small but fiesty bunch who improved throughout the season.
The Good: EJ Viso's enthusiasm and aggresive driving were a breath of fresh air to the series. Viso had some great runs and was unlucky not to score more points than he did.
The Bad: Viso's enthusiasm and aggresive driving was a little uncontrolled at times and he ended up drawing the ire of other drivers on more than one occasion.
The Ugly: Viso's severe brain fade at Edmonton where he was a long way back and kamikazeed Graham Rahal. If the team are to improve, Viso will have to be a little less wild.
The Grades: Team: C+ Viso: C+

Dale Coyne Racing
The Overview: After flying high in Champ Car last year, Coyne are back to their roots as perpetual backmarkers.
The Good: The team spirit. Despite the adversity of a new car, and very little money, they managed to score some top 10 finishes with some fine driving by both Junquiera and Moraes.
The Bad: The team were relatively nowhere all season in terms of results, and although they never quit, they tended to be quite slow all year and had to rely on a bit of luck to get the points.
The Ugly: We would have expected former race winner Bruno Junquiera to wipe the floor with rookie Moraes but he didn't. Junky seems to have lost some of his edge and is going through the motions.
The Grades: Team: C- Junquiera: C- Moraes: C-

Conquest Racing
The Overview: After some early season fireworks the team were nowhere.
The Good: Two top five finished to start the season had some promise and Jaime Camara managed to lead at Richmond showing flashes of Brilliance.
The Bad: They seemed to regress throughout the season and just seemed to be going through the motions at the end. Enrique Bernoldi was nowhere for most of the season and Camara was fast but fragile. Far too many DNF's were counterproductive to momentum.
The Ugly: The way that team had a revolving door driver policy and were just waiting to throw Bernoldi under the bus. Alex Tagliani came in and was unspectacular, but he seemed more appreciative than Bernoldi and his ego were. Oh yeah, Franck Perera drove for them as well at the start of the season.
The Grade: Team: D+ Camara: D+ Bernoldi: D-

Roth Racing
The Overview: The smallest team to attempt a whole season and it showed.
The Good: Roth seemed to be able to put together some decent cars on the ovals.
The Bad: The team started as a two car effort but somewhere along the line the 24 car mysteriously disappeared, and the worst driver remained in on the grid. Marty Roth was woeful in all the races, despite some decent qualifying performances on the ovals.
The Ugly: Marty Roth's driving, especially on road courses. How the league can continue to allow a guy to race who is five seconds per lap of the pace is beyond me, but he only served to get in the way of everyone else. The way that Marty treated Jay Howard and John Andretti is lamentable and they are effectively paying Howard not to drive at the moment.
The Grade: Team D- Roth: F- Howard: C+ Andretti: C+

Of the others I won't do a full summary, but a little paragraph about each of them.
Pacific Coast Motorsports
Mario Dominguez and his spirited bunch but ultimetely could not keep going all year. Too many accidents stretched budgets thin and the death knell came when it was discovered that their sponsor, the Mexico City tourism board, were not paying what they said they were. Team claims they are trying to continue next year, but I doubt we will see them except for Indy.

Luczo Dragon Racing
The team added races to their schedule throughout the year and ran well at the oval races, but mechanical troubles meant the team only finished on of the six races they entered. Jay Penske is saying he will be back, and it seems far more likely than Pacific Coast Motorsports.

Sarah Fisher Racing
The feel-good story of the paddock were small but fiesty and deserved better results. Bad luck ended her day at Indy and the other two races were blighted by mechanical problems. Hopefully they will be back, but we may only see her at Indy next year.

GP Report: Fairy tales do come true

2008-09-14T10:13:00.006-04:00

Sebastien Vettel is now officially the youngest Grand Prix winner, winning his first Grand Prix and after 23 years the first Grand Prix win for Minardi. I know that the team has changed owners and the cars are designed for the most part in Milton Keyes, but the factory is still in Faenza, they are still the smallest team in terms of staff in Formula One, and they have a bit more money, but much of the staff are the same that were there when the team was Minardi and were the lovable backmarkers. The Same men and women who celebrated enthusiastically when Zsolt Baumgartner scored a point for 8th place at Indianapolis in 2004 are celebrating a win, yes a Minardi/Toro Rosso win. You couldn't ask for a better story as they not only won a race, they won their home race, becoming the first Non-Ferrari Italian team to win a Grand Prix since 1957. The main championship protagonists did not end up figuring in the result, although for a while Lewis Hamilton was looking as though he could challenge for the win only to be beaten by the weather.

In a wet and rainy afternoon it was a race which rewarded good driving, good strategy, and a bit of luck. Vettel was on pole and blasted away from the field when the race started (behind the Safety Car). Unfortunately for STR his teammate, Seb Bourdais, suffered a gearbox malaise on the dummy grid and had to be towed back to the pits. He ended up getting going a lap down and lapped very well all day, but could not recover. Vettel then proceeded to pull away from the field and the cynics started to wonder how much fuel he had. He ended up pitting on lap 17, four laps before second placed Heikki Kovalainen and third placed Mark Webber. After the pit stop shuffle he was back in the lead and running well as the track started to dry. Meanwhile behind him Lewis Hamilton was putting on a show charging through the field after a poor 15th placed qualifying performance, showing why he is the best wet-weather driver in F1 at the moment. He was on a one-stopper and Vettel was on a two stopper so it was looking like the race would be a Vettel-Hamilton duel. Hamilton put more extreme wet tyres on at his stop as the forecast was calling for more rain. Unfortunately for Lewis, and fortunately for Vettel this did not happen and the track continued to dry and up and down the pit lane everyone waited for someone to have the courage to put intermediate tyres on to be a guinea pig. That Guinea Pig ended up being David Coulthard who, after going off on his outlap, started to lap as quick as the leaders. The next man to go for it was Fernando Alonso, who was faster than the men on wets and it became obvious that Inters were the way to go. This played beautifully into Vettel's hands and it was right in his pit window and so he stopped and put inters on and went on his way, while Hamilton had to stop again. Lewis stopped and emerged back in seventh, where he stayed until the end. Vettel duly cruised home to his and his team's first victory, a very popular win in Formula One circles. Second place went to Heikki Kovalainen, who was solid but unspectacular. On the extreme wets he was decidedly average while his teammate was blowing past anyone and everyone who was in his way and was 2 seconds per lap quicker than anyone else. Kovalainen was also on a two stopper and his second stop was also perfectly timed for him to finish where he started. Third went to Robert Kubica, who was also one of the hard charges and who also profited from the weather. He did not have the greatest first stint, but in the middle he was very good and his pitstop was timed to perfection to get a well deserved podium. The rest of the points finishers were Fernando Alonso, Nick Heidfeld, Felipe Massa, and Mark Webber, who all drove solid races and for the most part lucked out with the tyre choices. The only notable exceptionw as Hamilton who for most of the race was incredibly quick, much faster than the field, but a second pitstop put him seven seconds behind Massa on his Inters. Lewis quickly closed the gap but in the process burned his tyres and so once he got to Massa he couldn't do anything about him and had to settle for seventh. He still leads Massa by one point in the championship with four races to go. And what of Kimi Raikkonen you ask? Well Kimi had one of his very inconsistent afternoons where he farted around in the midfield not doing anything special and then put on the afterburners late in the race and set fastest lap after fastest lap and overtook multiple cars, but he still could only finish 9th and out of the points. Kimi is now 21 points behind Hamilton in the drivers championship wih four races to go, certainly he can't catch Lewis unless the McLaren driver suffers a monumental meltdown, which does not look bloody likely. Of the rest both Williams and Toyota flattered to decieve having been caught out by the changing weather. Nico Rosberg ran very well at the beginning of the race but his strategy meant having to make an unscheduled stop for inters and he ended up 14th while teammate Kaz Nakajima started from the pitlane and ended up being able to profit from tyre strategy only to end up stupidly trying to go around the outside of David Coulthard at the entry to the Parabolica. It was never going to work and there was a collision, taking DC's front wing and damaging Kaz's car sufficiently to slow him down, given the circumstances 12th is not bad. Speaking of COulthard he was in the wars today as well, he started somewhere in the midfield and was battling Giancarlo Fisichella's Force India when, while overtaking, there was contact that resulted in a broken wing for Fisico that ended up causing the Italian to go off into the barriers. DC then putzed around in the midfield until he was caught out by the daft actions of Nakajima and ended 16th, a lap down. Honda were there woeful self again with Button 15th and Barichello 17h. There only notable action was when Rubens pitted for full wet tyres while everyone else was on dries. The gamble was never going to work, but when you are in craptacular land you try anything you can to get some points. Force India were looking decent in Fisichella's hands only for him to end his day in the barriers while Adrien Sutil did absolutely nothing and was last, even behind who started more than a lap behind the rest of the field.

All in all it is the feel-good story of the F1 year thus far and the result has kept the championship finely balanced. Bring on the night race at Singapore!!!

The F1 title chase

2008-09-11T17:42:00.002-04:00

Formula One enters it's critical stage with Lewis Hamilton temporarily (pending result of Belgian GP appeal) leading Felipe Massa by 2 points with defending champ Kimi Raikkonen 17 points back after having failed to score in the last two races. This appears to be setting up to be another Ferrari vs McLaren duel with both Felipe and Lewis very evenly matched this season. Kimi Raikkonen may end up as the wild card in this chase as the Kimster is insisting that he is not out of it yet while at McLaren there is no question that Lewis Hamilton is numero uno and Heikki Kovalainen is his reargunner. That Kovalainen tends not to be too close to Hamilton is besides the point but for the most part at the Scuderia Kimi has only occasionally been on the pace of Massa. Ferrari really should just tell Raikkonen that from here on in Massa is their man and he should play wingman to ensure that Felipe triumphs over Hamilton much in the way that Massa helped Raikkonen last year. Unfortunately this is easier said than done because Kimi is a major star and the defending world champion and thus has an ego the size of Maranello. Kimi has never had to play second fiddle to any teammate in his F1 career and I am sure that he is not willing to start now. Kimi Raikkonen is a never-say-die racer who has said many times that second place means nothing, victory is the only object, which may explain some of his accidents and mistakes when not in the lead. Ferrari are also mindful that Kimi is still sort of waffling on his future, will he retire after next year or won't he? Rumours suggest that Ferrari are already lining up a back up should he decide to call it quits, but if he continues not to drive as well as his teammate the replacement might be for him without his wishes. Either way, as long as Kimi Raikkonen continues to race his own teammate he is only helping one driver, Lewis Hamilton, and that is certainly not what Ferrari need. Lewis Hamilton has driven like a man possesed in the second half of the season and has recieved the full support of his teammate while Massa has been much better than his teammate in the second half, he has yet to really stamp his authority on his team and has yet to prove that he is a better driver than Hamilton due to his lack of adaptability. My conclusion is that if Kimi Raikkonen does not decide to help his teammate then Lewis Hamilton will win the world champion, if Kimi does decide to step in line and play support man then Massa has every chance of winning, but Ferrari have to sort their reliability out because, as scandalous as this seems given the recent history of this rivalry, Mclaren have had much better reliability than their red foes.

News and Rumour Roundup: Wednesday September 10

2008-09-09T17:52:00.003-04:00

Hi there loyal Reader(s) it's time for an epic-level news and rumour roundup. Lots to talk about with th F1 silly season getting exciting and the IRL game of musical chairs is getting to be fun. I will sort my news in two sections, first the F1 and then the Indy Car news.

Formula One
The juiciest rumour to come out of F1 recently is one reported on Italian TV on Sunday that suggests that Fernando Alonso has signed a three year deal to drive for BMW starting in 2009. As shocking as this seems it is not entirely implausable, but unlikely. The first stumbling block to a potential Alonso to Beemer story is that there have been swirling rumours that Alonso has signed an agreement in principle to join Ferrari in 2010. It is obvious that Fernando wants to win races NOW, not in a few years when Renault can get their act together and if this Beemer story is true then it raises some interesting questions. If Fernando does go to Munich/Hinwil then it is obvious that Nick Heidfeld will be the odd man out. If that happens then Nick could end up taking Fernando's place at BMW, or he could end up with another mediocre midfielder like Williams or Toro Rosso. An Alonso move to BMW would also get Robert Kubica hot and bothered because he at the moment is BMW's designated number one and as we saw last year Fernando doesn't play second fiddle to anyone. If Alonso does go to BMW then it could mean that Kubica could head to Ferrari for 2010. Either way this years silly season hinges on Fernando Alonso once again.

The next piece of note is the rumour that the USGP may be back on sooner rather than later. The story goes that the manufactures are putting pressure on Bernie Ecclestone to get the US Grand Prix back on the schedule. At the moment the only logical venue is Indianapolis and the Speedway and Mr. E. are very far apart on the manner of money, Bernie wants a truckload more per year than Tony George is willing to pay. The manufactures ideally would want a race closer to their bigger markets on the east and west coasts, but nobody in those places has stepped up to the plate thus far with money to build a track and pay Mr. E the money he wants.

IndyCar Series
The big piece of interest in IndyCar racing is the future of KV racing. The former Champ Car team was mighty impressive this year but could face financial problems if there is no race in Australia next year. The number 8 car of Will Power is sponsored by Aussie Vinyards wine and they are saying they will pull the plug on sponsorship if the Surfers Paradise race does not re-appear. This could leave the team with no money and two talented drivers, Will Power and Oriol Servia would be unemployed. CDW sponsored Servia in Chicago and may pony up the money to run Servia all year, but Power, one of the real talents in the sport, could be out of luck.

The next story surrounds Justin Wilson. Wilson has revealed that he does not have a contract with Newman/Haas/Lanigan for next year despite winning a race and out-scoring teammate Graham Rahal. The speculation is that NHL are waiting on the future of Sebastien Bourdais to decide what to do with Wilson. Bourdais would be a great addition to the sport, but at the expense of Justin Wilson it may not be that big of a gain. Bourdais would be great for the team and he could probably compete for the title immediately but Wilson is an amazing talent who should be a regular in the IRL.

The future of Vitor Meira is very much up in the air but there are rumours that he may end up in a second Rahal-Letterman car if they can come up with the money. A Meira-Hunter-Reay lineup for Rahal-Letterman would be a very good lineup and could go a long way to returning the team to contender status. I hope Vitor gets a ride for next year as he is one of the sports true good guys.

Vision Racing have confirmed both Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV will be back for 2009. Both drivers drove very well at Chicago but have struggled on road courses. I still don't think that Vision are done and we may see Bryan Herta at some Road Courses or a third car all year. If Vision want to be taken seriously they will have to be better at turning both ways.

A new team may enter IndyCars next year called 3G Motorsports led by former team owner Greg Beck and Steve Sudler. Beck ran a team for a few years in the IRL and I have never heard of Sudler. They are saying that they will run in the Indycar series and in Indy Lights but I am skeptical. They are claiming they have the money and sponsorship but they will not reveal any details. That either means they are lying about having sponsorship or they only have sponsorship to run part time. Either way it is not exactly confidence inspiring ans do I file this team rumour in the "I'll believe it when I see it" file.

Crash.net is reporting that the IRL may be asking Marty Roth to retire and focus on team management. The IRL are trying to get some of their Indy Lights drivers in the top flight but the influx of drivers from Europe and the talentless hacks like Marty make seats few and far between. If this is true then there should be dancing in the streets as Marty is the worst race car driver the open wheel world has seen since Jean-Denis Deletraz. Marty is a very smart businessman and could be very succesful as a team owner, but nobody will sponsor his team as long as they have him in the car, because Marty as a driver makes the whole team look amateurish.

Alex Lloyd has re-signed with CHip Ganassi as Chip tries to get him in the IRL. There are rumours of a third Ganassi car, or of Lloyd getting farmed out to a smaller team, but as with all rumours of this nature, I'll believe it when I see it.

HVM appear to be on the verge of running a second car for RObert Doornbos for next year. Bobby D has already said he has a deal in a "good team" for next year and Keith Wiggins has said he wants to expand to two cars. Doornbos can bring sponsorship from Trust, Muermans, and ING and could be a very attractive choice for any team. The Personable Dutchman would be a great addition to the IRL as the series tries to gain international credibility.

F1 race report: F1 throws up a thriller and then screws up the result.

2008-09-08T18:33:00.004-04:00

Lewis Hamilton has every right to feel aggrieved by the the result. He won the race fair and square only to be screwed by some over zealous rule nazi's in the stewards room. In all fairness to Kimi Raikkonen, had the rain not come he would have coasted to victory, but the rain did come and Lewis Hamilton did what Lewis Hamilton does best in the rain and forced the issue, Kimi trued to defend but Hamilton would not be defeated. At the new bus stop chicane He tried around the outside, Kimi pushed wide and forced Lewis to cut the corner. Hamilton smartly let Kimi back before then fooling him at the next corner. Charlie Whiting told McLaren that Lewis had done nothing wrong and so Hamilton went on his merry way while a frustrated Kimi Raikkonen made a spectacular mess of things by first spinning later on the lap and then crashing just before the bus stop, throwing away a certain 8 points and all but eliminating himself from the championship. The backroom shenanigans finally gifted the win to Felipe Massa, who did not deserve it at all, but had proven his critics sort of wrong by not making a complete ass of himself in the rain, as he is prone to do and kept out of trouble. Second, but really third, went to Nick Heidfeld who did a lot to boost his stock in BMW land. Quick Nick gambled on intermediate tyres in the late race wet weather and was lapping 20 seconds per lap faster than anyone and if he had a few more laps he would have won the race, alas he did not have those laps and had to settle for third, only to inherit second after the insanity. That Lewis Hamilton was classified third is scat consolation considering how well he drove, but he does lead the championship by two points, but it should be more. Fernando Alonso finished fourth from Sebastien Vettel, Robert Kubica, Sebastien Bourdais, and Mark Webber. It was an impressive result for the Toro Rosso drivers, who were very good all weekend, taking advantage of the Grunt of the Ferrari engines. For the most part Seb Bourdais was on the pace of Seb Vettel and a few more performances like this could be enough to save his job, although with the likes of Takuma Sato, Sebastien Buemi, and Bruno Senna breathing down his neck nothing is certain. Timo Glock had finished seventh on the road but was also dinged with a 25 second penalty, this one for overtaking under yellow flags, a penalty which was justified. It was a pretty dismal day for both Williams and Honda, both teams failing to get anywhere near the points and Honda in particular being particularly woeful. With Force India improving, suddenly Honda are getting closer and closer to being the worst of the worst. It was a good race, they usually are at Spa where the men are separated from the boys, but FOM always goes with their money, not what the fans want when it comes to circuit selection.

IRL race report: Helio wins a thriller, but Dixon is champ

2008-09-07T18:34:00.002-04:00

Ooh baby, the two championship protagonists going wheel to wheel on the final lap with a photo finish, and in the end the closest finish in IRL history. Helio Castroneves finally, after several minutes of debate, won the race by 0.001 seconds from Scott Dixon after having started from the back of the field. There were the usual number of accidents, not surprising for a 28 car field, plenty of passing and close racing, some good runs by surprising sources, and an amazing finish. Ryan Briscoe started on the pole from Dixon and Kanaan with Helio Castroneves being demoted to last place after a dubious decision by the stewards after qualifying to send him to the back for repeated crossing of the white line below the track. Either way it did not matter as it made for an exciting first few laps as Helio scythed through the field like a hot knife through butter. By lap 10 he was up battling for the top 10 and by the time the first caution came out on lap 36 he was eighth. The first caution was for the fourth placed man Ed Carpenter who had a suspension failure and was pitched rather dramatically into the wall at the exit of turn 2. His fiery car came to a rest in the infield and an unfortunate Ed jumped out of his car uninjured. At the stops the Penske boys went to work and helped get Helio a couple of positions. At the restart the Brazilian continued to climb and managed to get the lead before Vitor Meira brought out the safety car again for an accident caused by a mechanical failure. At the restart Helio led and we had some great battles including three wide for the lead between Castroneves, Briscoe, and Dan Wheldon and other great battles that saw the likes of EJ Viso and AJ Foyt IV running in the top 5. The third caution was for debris and under said caution Graham Rahal blotted his copybook for the first time by stupidly running into Buddy Rice in the pitlane. Buddy was understandably infuriated and one starts to question whether or not Rahal is as mature as the pundits say he is. Later on he would bring out a caution for nudging the wall while running several laps down. After this restart we had more great racing as Dixon temporarily fell down the order, at one point Castroneves was mathematically leading the championship. Two cautions came out in the meantime, one for Sarah Fisher who had a mechanical failure and another for EJ Viso who just screwed up and crashed. The dust settled and we had just over fifty laps to go with Milka Duno, yes Milka Duno, leading at the restart. She was quickly overwhelmed by the drivers with talent and drifted back to 14th. The ding-dong battle at the front pursued with most of the top driver involved, including both Penske's, both Ganassi's, Tony Kannan and Danica Patrick, plus the surprising Mario Moraes, who unfortunately rubbed the wall late on and dropped back. This set up what would become one of the most dramatic finishes we have seen. For lap after lap Helio and Dixon diced it up, runnign side by side with Helio desperately trying to get around Dixon. COming around the final turn they were neck and neck and crossed the line side by side. At first the commentators thought that it was Dixon who won the race but the computers reveal the tiniest of secrets and a couple minutes later it emerged that it was in fact Helio Castroneves who had won the race, by the closest margin in IRL history. A great race brought to a close (well sort of) to the first merged season of open wheel racing since Tony George made his bone-headed split in 1996. Scott Dixon is a deserved champion for 2008 having won the most races, although Helio was consistend as hell, he did not get the wins he needed to take the title. There is always next year for him, but how many next years can a guy have? The top 10 was completed by Ryan Briscoe, Tony Kanaan, Will Power, Dan Wheldon, Darren Manning, Marco ANdretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Danica Patrick.

Weekend Racing Preview

2008-09-04T20:15:00.002-04:00

There are two major races in open wheel racing this weekend, the Belgian Grand Prix at the awesomely awesome Spa-Francorchamps, and the Indycar series title showdown at the decidedly average Chicagoland speedway. The Belgian Grand Prix could be the race that makes or breaks the championship because a win here could be the momentum that a Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa need to win the title. Lewis Hamilton is talking up his chances this weekend, as he usually does, but Ferrari have been the best car out there the last few races and with the modern day Spa-master, Kimi Raikkonen, in a red car, we could be looking at a Ferrari win. I could really see the Kimster run away with this race and make it a three mat title chase, but I could also see Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa win to all but eliminate the defending world champion Raikkonen from contention. Spa is a track that separates the men from the boys, so I expect the cream of the crop to rise up and make an impression. The Car is important, but Spa is a track that rewards the driver more than most tracks do and it could be an interesting Ferrari-Hamilton duel this weekend. Of the rest it is hard to say, I can see Fernando Alonso outperforming his car, but Spa is a track that rewards engine power and the Renault engine has very little of that compared to the rest, something which could hinder the Red Bull team as well. This dependence on Engine Power could give an advantage to BMW and the Toyota engined cars, who look more likely to take the minor points than the Renault engined cars, although Renault do have Alonso. We will see what happens, but it could be an exciting race, especially if Spa throws up it's usual cocktail of interesting weather.

The IndyCar boys will be deciding their championship in Chicago with Scott DIxon holding a 30 point lead over Helio Castroneves. In reality this means that all Dixon has to do is finish eighth to clinch the title, regardless of what Castroneves does. There are 28 cars in the field for Sunday with Sarah Fisher returning and with AJ Foyt running a second car for Franck Perera, which could be an audition for a potential second car all year next year. Elsewhere in backmarkerland Alex Tagliani will be back in the 36 Conquest car to replace the wounded Enrique Bernoldi, and that Tags will race in the non-championship race in Australia. The team insists that Bernoldi hasn't been fired, but I am skeptical of the truthiness of that statement. Back to the race, I would be surprised if Dixon does not win the title, but anything could happen, and with some of the idiots at the back in this race he very easily could be collected in an accident among backmarkers. Helio has been dynamite the last couple of races and has every chance of stealing the title. He has to go balls out and pray that a calamity befalls Dixon. This race could be exciting due to the number of talented drivers with nothing to lose, this includes the more accident prone of them like Marco Andretti. This should be an exciting race, hopefully it will be on Television up here in Canada.

News Analysis: Ganassi thows us a curveball

2008-09-02T18:32:00.002-04:00

Just yesterday I was convinced that Dan Wheldon was on the verge of re-signing with Chip Ganassi racing for 2009, I mean why wouldn't i? He is in the best team in the business and is improving on the road courses, staying at Ganassi is the logical choice to keep winning, right? Well apparantly things aren't that simple in the Indycar world as today Chip Ganassi stood up and said he would have a second top driver in his team and that driver is............. Dario Franchitti!!! Wait, rewind, Franchitti? You mean the guy who left Indycar for NASCAR after winning the title saying that the open wheel chapeter of his life is closed, that Dario Franchitti? Yes boys and girls it is true, Dario Franchitti is back in the IRL after a rather dismal go at NASCAR this year. The domino effect of this is that within a couple of hours Wheldon was confirmed as joining Panther racing for next year to replace the eternally unlucky Vitor Meira in the number four car. The immediate reaction is that this is good for the sport, which it is as it does raise the talent level in the field, but it does cruelly deny one of the sports true good guys of a decent job. The panther people are touting the same old story that if Vitor comes up with sponsorship they will run a second car, but it does not seem bloody likely at this point. There will be the usual scrap jobs out there if Vitor can come up with the cash, but it does not look all that promising for the man with the most starts without a career win. One must wonder what the stumbling block was to Wheldon's re-signing. Certainly he could not have been expecting the same amount of money that he had been receiving up to now, but there has to be more to it than that. Dan is no moron and he knows that Ganassi is the best team in the business. He must realize that he will need to take a pay cut to stay in the game and there is no way that Panther racing has anywhere near the money that Wheldon wants, heck they pretty much don't have any money. This must have to do with status within the team. Chip probably told Wheldon that he would be number two within the team to Scott Dixon and Dan wants equal billing. He can go to panther racing and be the man on an average team as opposed to being second fiddle on a great team. I wish Dan all the best as he is one of the big talents in the sport, and it is good to see more big names back in Indycar, hopefully it comes at the expense of the lousy backmarkers and not at the expense of the genuine good drivers like Meira.

Race Report and Rumour roundup: Labour day Weekend

2008-09-01T16:01:00.002-04:00

Justin Wilson won the Indycar race at Belle Isle Park in Detroit. The former Minardi and Jaguar F1 man qualified second and trailed the championship protagonists closly most of the day before mounting a serious challenge on Helio Castroneves late in the race. Helio furiously blocked Wilson, something which is a big no-no in the IRL and was forced to let Wilson pass him, giving the Englisman his first series victory and Newman/Haas/Lanigan's second win of the season. The race was one which was, unsurprisingly, devoid of overtaking and ended as a rather processional event. Wilson showed that he is truly among the elite on road courses and that Newman/Haas are clearly the class of the field of former Champ car teams. KV racing have been very fast but have not been able to put together good races, although Oriol Servia and Will Power scored solid fourth and eighth place finishes respectively. The usual gang of idiots in the back of the field were up to their usual tricks with Marty Roth not starting due to an accident and Milka Duno getting tangled with Bruno Junquiera. EJ Viso had the biggest accident of the race when he smashed his HVM car on lap 32, while other drivers to be involved in dramas included Bruno Junquiera (who collided with Duno) Dan Wheldon (who collided with Jaime Camara and spun on his own later on), and the pair of Vitor Meira and Danica Patrick, who had a coming together. One of the usual idiots, Enrique Bernoldi, was not there this weekend. He injured his wrist and while he raced at Sonoma he could not compete in Detroit and his seat was taken by Canadian Veteran Alex Tagliani. Considering that Tags jumped into the car on Saturday morning, a 21st place grid position was pretty good and he backed that up with some good running only to be sidelined by mechanical gremlins. Hopefully this will lead to more appearances for Tagliani. I apologize for the brief race report, the race was not on Television where I am as it was on TSN2 in Canada, a channel not available to most people at the moment. The final result saw Helio Castroneves second, Tony Kanaan third, Oriol Servia fourth, and championship leader Scott Dixon fifth. This result extends the championship chase to the final race of the season, next week at Chicagoland speedway, with Dixon's lead over Castroneves down to 30 points. The last race is on an oval, where anything could happen, but I doubt that we will get that dramatic a turn in events and we will probably see Dixon crowned next week, but stranger things could happen and Helio Won't stop believin'!!!

News and Rumour Roundup
The big, and potentially saddest news, is the death of 1961 F1 champion Phill Hill last week at the age of 81. One of the least known champions and the only American born world championship, Hill made his name with Ferrari, winning three F1 races and the 24 hours of Le Mans Three times. His memory will live on as one of the legends of American motorsports.

In other sad news it has been revealed that there are plans to neuter the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Apparantly the organizers are looking at having the cars go right at the exit of Pouhon and cut across to meet up with the old track just before Blanchimont. This would cut out some brilliant driver corners like Les Fagnes and Stavelot. This has yet to be confirmed and the reasons are a little vague but if they are true then it would be a tragic defacing of one of the worlds best racetracks. There is a rumour that the changes are brought about by Mr B Ecclestone being unhappy with the low lap count at Spa and if this is true then it is yet another dickeaded action by one of the world's great assholes. I hope it is not true, and although Bernie has flipped F1 history the bird in the past, this would be an unforgivabel act in my mind. Eau Rouge may be a challenging corner, but with the drivers able to take it flat out now, this section is the best place where the circuit separates the men from the boys. If this happens then shame on you bernie, shame on you Belgian GP organizers, and shame on you F1 world which has become so politicized and money sucking.

In the Indycar world a few drivers appear to be on the verge of running full time and the 2009 Car count could go up. The first rumour is that HVM are on the verge of being able to run a second car for next year, coinciding with former F1 and Champ Car man Robert Doornbos saying that he is driving for a "good" f1 team. Doornbos has connections with Keith Wiggins and although HVM's status as a "good" team is questionable, it would be great to see Doornbos back. Elsewhere Alex Lloyd and Chip Ganassi racing are apparantly close to securing the funding necessary to run Lloyd in a third Ganassi car. If this is true then it is fantastic news for Lloyd as he will be stepping into the best team in the business. Hopefully this works out as Lloyd is talented and more cars are always better.

In F1 news Luca Di Montezemelo has won the Grand Prix of stating the obvious by confirming that both Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen will be back at Ferrari next year. Both men are among the best in the business and have forged a pretty good working relationship.

Silly Season Roundup: Formula One

2008-08-27T09:07:00.005-04:00

While there is less to talk about in terms of contracts on the Formula One front, there are still some interesting things going on. Following my Indycar roundup on Monday I will now do a team by team breakdown for F1

Ferrari
Both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa are under contract for next year, but some question marks may be raised for 2010. Massa has outperformed Raikkonen most of the year and Raikkonen makes a heck of a lot more money. With Fernando Alonso clearly on the horizon for the Scuderia, one of these two may have to give, and it may just be Kimi if he doesn't pull up his socks. Thus:
Kimi Raikkonen
Felipe Massa

McLaren Mercedes
Both Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen are under contract for 2009 but Big Ron may look to someone different to be Hamilton's teammate for 2010 if Heikki does not start to be closer to Hamilton's speed. The Mercedes people are targeting a constructors championship and they will want someone who is more consistently fast than Kovalainen if current trends continue, Thus
Lewis Hamilton
Heikki Kovalainen

BMW Sauber
BMW has not confirmed either driver for next year but the word is that Robert Kubica is on the verge of extending his deal through next year. I see no reason why they would not keep him as he is obviously their driver of the future. Nick Heidfeld is a much more difficult case because for the most part he has been nowhere near his teammate. There are no rumours to suggest that he won't return, but with Fernando Alonso still unconfirmed there will always be that fruit of temptation for the Hinwil/Munich gang. I doubt we will see Alonso in a beemer next year, especially due to his previous record with young hotshot teammates, but Nick Heidfeld's job is far from secure. Thus
Robert Kubica
Nick Heidfeld

Toyota
Toyota have placed themselves solidly as leaders in the best of the rest category thanks to solid drives by jarno Trulli and Timo Glock. Both men have been re-signed for next year and appear to have formed Toyota's most consistent partnership yet. This is not saying a whole lot as previous Toyota drivers include Ralf, "best driver on the grid one race and worst the next", Schumacher. Glock had a slow start to the year but since Montreal has really started to match trulli. The next Michael Schumacher he is not, but he could be on for a long and succesful F1 career. Thus:
Jarno Trulli
Timo Glock

Red Bull racing
RBR have confirmed both Mark webber and Toro Rosso Hotshot Sebastien Vettel for next year, a partnership which looks to be much stronger than this years. Frankly David Coulthard has been pretty poor all year, reminiscint of Damon Hill's final season and the rumour is that He may be out after Monza to be replaced by Vettel for the rest of the year. Given DC's poor performaces recently I think that this is all to likely, a sad way to end a Formula One career for one of it's best drivers of the last 15 years. Thus:
Mark Webber
Sebastien Vettel

Renault
The renault question is either simple or complicated depending on one man, Fernando Alonso. It is no secret that he will be gone for 2010, but the question remains about where he will be next year. Conventional wisdom suggests he ride out another year at mediocre Renault before jumping to Ferrari, but with Alonso things are rarely that simple. There are rumours that he will go to Honda, but that seems unlikely as why would he want to jumo from one average team to another. If Fernando stays then Nelson Piquet will probably stay as well. The Brazilian had a slow start to the year but has picked things up and seems to be in good shape for a drive. Flavio Briatore however is known to quickly change his opinion of drivers and so he will never be truly safe until he has a contract in hand. If Alonso leaves then there will be a gaping hole in their lineup. The team will want some experience, but there are no experienced free agents whose Renault Bridge has not already been torched. If Nick Heidfeld gets canned at BMW they maybe they will hire him, but that seems unlikely and I don't know if they will want to hire either a rookie or a has been like Takuma Sato. Bottom Line is that Renault"s lineup really hinges on Alonso, if he leaves then all bets are off. Renault also ahve a healty crop of talented young test drivers, but a revolving door of rookies is not the way to build a championship contender, something that renault management are aware of Thus:
Fernando Alonso
Nelson Piquet
Takuma Sato
Robert Doornbos
Lucas Di grassi
Romain Grosjean
Nick Heidfeld

Williams
Williams have confirmed Nico Rosberg and the man who was once considered the next Schumi will be desperate to have a better season next year. Kaz nakajima will probably be back alongside him, but his penchant for hitting things recently will not endear him to Sir Frank and Patrick. With a talented crop of youngsters available in GP2 they may just be tempted to borrow a driver, or even promote test driver Nico Hulkenberg, a move which would not impress engine suppliers Toyota.
Nico Rosberg
Kaz Nakajima
Nico Hulkenberg

Honda
Honda are in a peculiar position at the moment. The pump assloads of money into the team and they do nothing. Their current driver lineup is not exactly inspiring and their on-track performances this year have been pisspoor to say the least. Nick fry and Ross Brawn have flip-flopped on the job security of Button and Barichello, but Ross has openly admitted to be courting Fernando Alonso. Although Alonso is a longhot for them their is still a possibility, but with Honda's crop of yougsters looking a little dry at th emoment they may be stuck with their current drivers. The only other possibility would be to replace one of them with Anthony Davidson but that seems unlikely Thus:
Jenson Button
Rubens Barichello
Anthony Davidson
Fernando Alonso

Scuderia Toro Rosso
One thing is for certain, STR will have at least one new driver for next year and quite possibly two. Seb Vettel is definetly off to Red Bull and the leading candidate for his job appears to be Bruno Senna, who is second in the standings. There is also the possibility that Sebastien Buemi, the Red Bull backed swiss driver, will take the seat. The other rumour is that veteran japanese driver takuma Sato will take the seat. Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost want an experienced drivet and Taku may just be that man. They may also keep Sebastien Bourdais in the second seat, but unless the Frenchman shows significant improvement in the last six races his chances are slim. I think that Takuma sato will probably get one seat, and the second will be between Senna, Buemi, and Bourdais Thus:
Takuma Sato
Sebaastien Bourdais
Sebastein Buemi
Bruno Senna

Force India
Vijay Mjyalla has said that he will keep his current driver pairing, but recent performances by Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil have left a lot to be desired. Sutil in particular has been more and more accident prone recently leading to apparant second thoughts among the Force India team. They may keep these two for one more year just for the continuity's sake, as the team has gone through so much turmoil in the last few years, Thus:
Giancarlo Fisichella
Adrian Sutil

Silly Season Roundup: IndyCar Series

2008-08-25T10:49:00.004-04:00

As the silly season gets sillier I will post a team by team breakdown of who will be driving for 2009 for both the IRL and Formula One. I will start with the IRL today and post Formula One later in the week.

Here goes
Target Chip Ganassi Racing
Scott Dixon, the probable champion for 2008 is a lock for Ganassi but the second seat is up in the air. Dan Wheldon is likely to stay, and has said he wants to stay but has not received an offer while Ganassi are saying that they want to keep WHeldon but have an alternative plan if he does not stay. With the news that Ganassi were courting Tony Kanaan it is understandable that Wheldon may feel unwanted, but realistically if he wants to keep winning races the only available seat is Ganassi at the moment. I expect him to re-sigh soon Thus:
9. Scott Dixon
10. Dan Wheldon

Penske Racing
Not much of interest at Penske as Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe are both confirmed to be back with the Captain's Crew for 2009 Thus:
3. Helio Castroneves
6. Ryan Briscoe

Andretti-Green Racing
This year AGR have been team turmoil, and Michael Andretti and Kim Green have spent too much time dealing with driver infighting and less time preparing race winning cars. Only two wins is not a good year for AGR and they will want to return to some degree of normalcy for 2009. Tony Kanaan has signed on to stay and Marco Andretti is the son of the team boss, so he will be back. Danica Patrick ain't going anywhere as long as Motorola keeps sponsoring her to the tune of $7 Million dollars per year. As the season has worn on Danica has been much better and yesterday's fifth place finish on a road course will boost morale for her. Hideki Mutoh is still unconfirmed but the leader in the rookie standing has heavy Honda backing so I see no reason why he would leave unless Honda decide that AGR are no longer their factory team Thus:
7. Danica Patrick
11. Tony Kanaan
26. Marco Andretti
27. Hideki Mutoh

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing
We don't hear much about NHL's lineup for 2009 but there is no reason to believe that there will be any change. Graham Rahal has been fast but fragile this year while Justin Wilson has quietly gone about his business in the McDonald's car. The only reason I could see any change is if Sebastien Bourdais loses his job in F1 and NHL manage to court him back to the IRL, but that seems unlikely and if it happens they may just expand to a third car for him Thus
02 Justin Wilson
06 Graham Rahal
04 Sebastien Bourdais

KV Racing Technologies
KV are in an interesting position at the moment. They have proven to be one of the best, if not the best of the former Champ Car teams but they still may have sponsorship woes. Will Power's main sponsor is Aussie Vinyards wine and with Surfers Paradise probably not on the calendar for 2009 that sponsorship may disappear. Craig Gore insists that they will be able to keep two cars for next year and will have sponsorship for them, but that may mean losing number one driver Will Power to another team. It is a longshot that both current drivers won't be back so Thus:
5 Oriol Servia
8 Will Power

Vision Racing
Tony George's men have really been an all-oval team this year. They have been consistently in the top 10 on ovals but have been nowhere on road courses. This may have to do with the fact that their drivers have little Road course experience and so Tony may want to hire a road course veteran to compliment an oval specialist. Ed Carpenter will probably stay as he has been much better than Anthony Foyt IV most of the year but Anthony does bring sponsorship, although Tony doesn't really have money problems. AJ will probably stay on in a third Vision car, but if TG does decide to stay with two cars it may be Foyt that gets the boot. Vision have Bryan Herta as a "Road Course coach" and may just slide into the second Vision car or maybe Tony will hire Paul Tracy, who raced in a Vision owned car at Edmonton and had great success. I think Herta is more likely and so I reckon that Foyt will be out, Thus:
2 Bryan Herta
20 Ed Carpenter
22 AJ Foyt IV

Rahal-Letterman Racing
RHL will definetly be keeping Ryan-Hunter Reay as he comes with heavy sponsorship from the Ethanol alliance people. Meanwhile Bobby Rahal is talking up ambitions of running a second car should sponsorship materialize. Should this happen we may see a veteran driver joining Hunter-Reay and there had been rumours that man would be Dan Wheldon, although it is unlikely. They may end up bringing in a European-based rookie like Mike Conway, who is a Penske tester or even Anthony Davidson, although the latter will still be trying to resurrect his F1 career. There are plenty of young drivers in Indy Lights, Atlantics, and GP2 that could fit the bill but I give the nod to Conway if they do expand Thus
17 Ryan Hunter Reay
16 Mike Conway

HVM
Keith Wiggin's band of merry men are claiming that they will be running two cars next year and that EJ Viso will stay on in the number 33 car. I hope this is true but I would not know who to suggest as the second car, although someone from Indy Lights who has sponsorship or is marketable is likely. Thus I tip Ana Beatriz to take the second seat, she has bee a consistent top five driver in Indy Lights and has recorded a win thus year. She is third in Indy Lights points and oh yeah, is a woman, which will help Marketability Thus
33 EJ Viso
35 Ana Beatriz

Panther Racing
I have not heard any rumour to suggest that Panther will expand to two cars next year so I don't expect much. Vitor Meira has been very good for them and I expect him to stay Thus
4 Vitor Meira

Dale Coyne Racing
Dale Coyne will be difficult to read as they are a small cash strapped team. Bruno Junquiera has established himself as the teams number one guy and I expect him to stay but the second car is anyones guess. Mario Moraes has done a decent job but his presence will hinge on sponsorship and if another young driver like one of the Indy Lights title contenders Rafael Matos and Richard Antinucci come up with more sponsorship money then they could bump Moraes. If Moraes loses his job he could end up surfacing as an Indy only entry or even at another small backmarking team Thus
18 Bruno Junquiera
19 Mario Moraes, Rafael Matos, Richard Antinucci

Conquest Racing
Eric Bachelart's boys have established themselves as solid backmarkers and both Jaime Camara and Enrique Bernoldi are obviously there for their sponsorship money. Camara has been the better of the two (which is not saying much) and so I reckon that if one of the two is to stay then it will be Camara. I would be surprised to see Bernoldi back as Bachelart has not been impressed by the ex F1 pay driver. There are rumours of who will be his replacement with Franck Montagny being the leading candidate. Montagny was very good at Long Beach and has sponsorship connections. He is driving for Andretti-Green in the ALMS but could easily be courted back to the IRL Thus
34 Jaime Camara
36 Franck Montagny

Dreyer and Reinbold Racing
Another cash strapped team who are hard to read. Buddy Rice has been impressive all year and they will be keen to hold on to him, but there are also rumours that Rice will go to the ALMS for next year. The second seat will go to the highest bidder and unfortunately for the talent level of the field, that highest bidder will probably be Milka Duno. Townsend Ball may still be able to come up with the cash to share the seat again so due to lack of concrete news I say that the status quo will reign Thus
15 Buddy Rice
23 Milka Duno/Townsend Bell

AJ Foyt Enterprises
AJ Foyt's team will continue to press on with Darren Manning and potentially a second driver. AJ Foyt is an old-school oval racer and I suspect that any second driver he hires would be someone with plenty of oval experience. His relationship with Manning this year has been a love/hate relationship as it appears that AJ was about to fire Darren after the Englishman parked his car due to fatigue at Iowa but alas, good results heal all wounds and a second place at Watkin's Glen has appeared to have secured Mannings position within the team. A potential second car could be taken by AJ's grandson AJ Foyt IV if the younger Foyt gets loses his job at Vision, which at this point is not all that likely, or maybe someone like John Andretti, who was impressive in his few starts for Roth Racing earlier in the year. Paul Tracy or Scott Sharp could still be in the mix as well, but they are longshots, Thus
14 Darren Manning
41 Aj Foyt IV/John Andretti/Scott Sharp

Roth Racing
Marty Roth is insisting that he will be back next year to run full time, but it is undetermined whether it will be him driving the car. He may just realize that he is not talented enough, or maybe the IRL will make that decision for him. Roth's presence will likely hinge on whether or not Marty can be the driver, as they don't need money, although they have come up with a sponsor for the rest of the year Thus
25 (cringes) Marty Roth

Luczo Dragon Racing
The Coolest named team in the paddock are hoping to run a full season for Tomas Schekter but as usual it hinges on money. Jay Penske has shown that he knows how to run a team and if they get money to run the full season Scheckter could deliver some solid results. I Think that they will be able to get the money to run the whole year Thus:
12 Tomas Scheckter

Pacific Coast Motorsports
A Good run at Infineon still does not hide the fact that this team is struggling for money. Mario Dominguez has his visit Mexico City sponsorship but that may not be enough to keep them full time next year. They will probably run Indy and trim back to part time for next year Thus
96 Mario Dominguez-Part Time

Sarah Fisher Racing
If anyone deserves to run full time it's Sarah Fisher. She has Dollar General on board for two races this year and if she can convince them to give her more money she may be able to run a full year, although a limited schedule including Indy is more likely Thus
67 Sarah Fisher-Part Time

Forsythe Championship Racing
After coming out and saying they will run in the IRL next year all has suddenly gone quiet on the Forsythe front. Their presence is a longshot at best at this moment unless they come up with some mega sponsors. Paul Tracy take notice

Walker Racing
Another one of these "we will be there if we have money" teams, but I think their chances are slimmer than Forsythe's at the moment unless a driver comes up with 5 million dollars or so for next year, and there are very few of those.

Indycar Race Report: Penske Perfection

2008-08-24T19:53:00.002-04:00

You knew it had to happen, Penske scored a 1-2 finish at Sonoma with Helio Castroneves winning from Ryan Briscoe and with Scott Dixon having an uncharacteristically poor day. Penske if you recall have not had a great week with their transporter being destroyed by fire resulting in millions of dollars in damage (two race cars were in said transporter). The Penske boys however set about their business by locking out the front row with Championship leader Scott Dixon lurking in fifth on the grid. Sonoma is a track that is not known to be conducive to overtaking so the front was the place to be. KV racing were also up to their usual party tricks in Quali by grabbing third and sixth on the grid while the only other driver making it into the fast six was Tony Kanaan, who ended up fourth. After that it was the usual chaotic gaggle of drivers on the grid with some notables like Dan Wheldon struggling, Wheldon was 16th on the grid while Marco Andretti was 10th. At the back Marty Roth was painfully slow as usual but due to Enrique Bernoldi crashing and not taking part in quali and the bizarre rules, he started 25th, more on Mad Dog Marty later on.

The Race was unusually clean for an Indy Car race with very few incidents considering the reputation of some of these drivers. It appears that the Usual Gang of Idiots (but MR) went to school to learn how to play nice together. From the beginning the Penske boys led, although they were unable to pull away. The just contented themselves to control the pace from the front and let the others sqaubble amongst themselves, obviously hoping that one of the accident prone drivers would take out Dixon. There were some slower drivers that made some great starts who started to get in the way, the most notable being Enrique Bernoldi who ran in and around 20th in the first stint. This mix of cars led to some unusual pit strategy being employed by the bigger team drivers caught in the midfield. The first of these was Hideki Mutoh who pitted for fuel on lap 9. He was followed by Dan Wheldon and EJ Viso who went off pit sequence hoping for some Safety car interventions to propel them up the order. This strategy ended up biting them a little as when they emerged they were quickly stuck behind the rolling chicanes named Roth and Bernoldi. Marty Roth was the first they encountered (as he was painfully slow) and there were some hairy moments as people tried to get past. It ended with Marty getting scared or stressed or something and spinning, which according to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio announcers resulted in cheering from the fans. Marty duly stalled his car and thus the Safety Car came out. Most of the leaders pitted aside from Briscoe, Danica Patrick, Mario Dominguez, and Ed Carpenter who became the new leaders, this allowed Briscoe and Dan Wheldon (who had managed to avoid the Roth train) to lead and duly rocket away from the third placed Patrick. From there it became a fairly uneventful race as through the pit stop shuffle Castroneves re-emerged ahead of the pack and stayed there until the end as there were no further safety car interventions. Tony Kanaan drove a steady race to finish third ahead of WHeldon, who was very aggressive and exciting all day, and Patrick, who had a quiet but solid day to pick up some big points. After an up and down season Danica is starting to find some consistency, unfortunately she has not been consistently on the podium. EJ Viso came home sixth after a very good run. He led some laps, drive aggressivly, and the big thing, did not run into anyone as he has been prone to do this year. After an incident filled year he is showing some promise and speed. With team boss Keith Wiggins planning to upgrade to a two car team next year he could be a man to watch in the future. The top ten was completed by Vitor Meira, Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson and Mario Moraes. And what of the KV you ask? Well they had far too many adventures for their own good and were let down by strategy, again. Oriol Servia and Will Power both ran strong early on but strategy relegated Servia to 15th and Power ended up dropping back slowly, then was busted for cutting the chicane and had to serve a drive through penalty and then on the penultimate lap he had chicane-issues again and crashed into the tyre barrier, not exactly the way to capitalize on a top three grid placing. Scott Dixon ended up finishing 12th, and with Castroneves winning and getting bonus points for leading the most laps the title race is definetly still on as the two protagonists are now separated by only 43 points, breathing new life into the final two races. The only retirement of the race was Tomas Scheckter for jay Penske's Luczo Dragon Racing team, who plan on racing at Detroit and Chicagoland as well after having missed much of the season. They are hoping to get the money to run the whole season next year, but mechanical failures like this won't help. The other part time entry in the field, Mario Dominguez, also had a good day, although he faded near the end. This is another team hoping to put together a full schedule for next year but it seems less promising than the Luczo Dragon entry. Both Schekter and Dominguez are quality drivers who deserve to be in the IRL, let's hope it happens.

This was by no means a classic but there was some hard clean racing throughout the field and there was a very popular winner. Hopefully the last two points races of the season are good races.

F1 race report: Massa wins at Valencia

2008-08-24T15:30:00.002-04:00

OK so Felipe Massa won the European Grand Prix from pole. That is not surprsing in itself because Felipe has been pretty damn good recently, easily much better than teammate Kimi Raikkonen, the bad news for Felipe is that his main championship rival Lewis Hamilton finished second, reducing the impact Massa's win has on the drivers championship.

Everyone seemed really excited that this new and beautiful street circuit would produce an incident filled and thrilling race, with lots of passing, but unfortunately that was not the case and we were stuck watching a boring processional race. Had it not been for Ferrari's rather poor job at pitstops there would not have been much really to talk about. The fans on television were let down by the show, and the fans in the stands who came to see Fernando Alonso were let down by Kaz Nakajima on lap 1 really turning what had promised so much into yet another boring F1 race. Felipe Massa dominated from pole and never looked like being caught while Lewis Hamilton settled down in second and stayed there all afternoon while Robert Kubica did the same thing in third place, scoring a much needed confidence booster for the Hinwil-Munich men. One thing this race did do was confirm that this year, barring a miraculous turnaround, the world championship will be contested between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, not Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn was off Massa's pace all weekend, and had a far too ordinary race until his second pit stop. He was jumped at the start by Heikki Kovalainen and just sort of trundled around in fifth and ended up battling with Jarno Trulli's Toyota when his calamities happened. Kimi's troubles revolved around the Ferrari Mechanics, who had an uncharacteristically mistake-full race. Their first big problem came on Felipe Massa's second stop when someone in the Ferrari crew were not paying attention and released Felipe right into the path of Adrian Sutil. Felipe nearly collided with the Force India car and had to cede the place, only to pass him again on the track immediately. The Ferrari crew had no reason to force the issue with Sutil and Massa should have been paying attention himself. This was very nearly a spectacularly embarrassing way to throw away a victory and in cases where you are leading comfortably you don't need to do things like this. The stewards agreed and slapped Felipe with a $10,000 fine for his brain-fade. If this little incident was the end of it for Ferrari's pit crew then I would have no need to continue talking about it but no, the events continued, this time with a more serious incident. When Raikkonen came in for his second stop everything started well, but he was a little to over excited and tried to go when his fuel hose was still in the car and a mechanic was still holding on to the hose. The result was that the poor mechanic (Pietro Timpini) was run over by Kimi's rear wheel. This led to much scrambling and Kimi was sent on his way only for his engine to blow up a few laps later. The incident looked bad as Timpini was wheeled away on a stretcher but we hear now that he is not seriously hurt. Being off the pace and running over mechanics is not something we normally see from Raikkonen and if he wants to have any shot at the world title he will need to be much better in the final six races. He had a spectacular end to last year so it is still possible, but he will need to start performing immediately.

If Ferrari had an inconsistent day, it was BMW and McLaren who had a normal type race, McLaren saw Lewis Hamilton finish second, unable to compete with Massa and Kovalainen finish fourth, a very normal result for Heikki. The Finn has found some consistency, unfortunately he has been consistently slower than Hamilton and although he is staying at McLaren, one suspects that Ron Dennis is grooming him to be the next incarnation of Rubens Barichello. Robert Kubica finished a fine third and in what has become far too common, teammate Nick Heidfeld finished ninth and out of the points. After a great start to the season, the beemers have tailed off badly and it looks as though Kubica is overdriving the car while Heidfeld in underdriving it, something that may not be great for Quick Nick's job security. Toyota put together another solid performance to consolidate their fourth place in the drivers championship with a fifth place for Jarno Trulli and a seventh place for Timo Glock. Six valuable points for the men from Cologne will go a long way because both Renault and Red Bull had absolutely woeful days, suffering from the ills of Renault's weak engine. Sixth place went to the impressive Sebastien Vettel who was great all weekend in the Toro Rosso, obviously benefiting from the Horsepower advantage that the Ferrari has. Teammate Seb Bourdais was equally good with a solid tenth place finish and considering that Red Bull racing finished a terrible 12th and 17th, this will boost morale at Faenza. Nico Rosberg earned a much needed point for Williams who have both Honda and Toro Rosso breathing down their necks. Nico drove quickly and managed to avoid trouble (quite the accomplishment for Nico this year) and got his point while teammate Kaz Nakajima will be public enemy number one in Spain tonight as it was he who rammed the back of hometown hero Fernando Alonso's Renault and taking him out. Kaz limped back to the pits with the telltale sign of guilt on his front wing (or what was left of it) and had to get repairs. He reemerged and trundled around the back until he finished in 15th place, not a red letter day in his career that's for sure. Renault's day was pretty dismal with Alonso being the victim of Nakajima's Takuma Sato impression and Nelson Piquet being unspectacular to finish 11th. The Renault engine has a rather pronounced lack of horsepower and with Spa and Monza next on the calendar it could be a long couple of races for them. Red Bull and Honda were really awful in the race. Red Bull were nowhere near the pace and Mark Webber did decently to finish 12th while David Coulthard had another bad race, colliding with Adrian Sutil early while attempting a daft overtaking manouvre and needing repairs. DC finished 17th and last with the rumour mill churning that he may be canned before the end of the season. Honda were as bad as it gets really being nowhere near the pace and staying off the radar. There was no real reason to explain their lousiness, they were just slow and a 13th and 16th place finish is what they deserved. Force India were slightly less crappy than usual with Giancarlo Fisichella scoring a solid 14th place (he beat another team for a change) while Adrian Sutil was on television for all the wrong reasons (again), first for his close call with Massa and secondly with a lazy accident after locking the wheels, not exactly great driving.

Overall this race promised much and delivered little. At least our next race is Spa which has a habit of producing great races. Ferrari and Massa appear to have some momentum, but if Lewis continues to drive smartly he will be tough to overtake in the standings. The close title chase is exciting, too bad the on-track racing isn't.

Weekend racing preview

2008-08-22T10:21:00.002-04:00

Ok race fans we are back up and running.

After three weeks off the formula one funny farm is back at the brand new street circuit at Valencia for the European Grand Prix. It is a street circuit, a circuit type that, aside from Monaco, F1 does not frequent very often. The track is a little unlike most street circuits in that is is fast and relatively wide with opportunities to overtake. This track could very well see some accidents and the appearance of the safety car, so reaction to this will probably be what determines the winner of the race. McLaren have proven recently that they have been very good at this and Lewis Hamilton has proven to be good at tight and twisty circuits so I tip him to be the favourite for the win, although Ferrari will be very strong as well, the red machines are just too good this year. Of the others so far Fernando Alonso and Renault will probably be best placed to be best of the rest as BMW are struggling on tyres and Renautl have figured it out recently. Fernando will really want to impress his home crowd so don`t be surprised to see Renault do a little grandstanding in final qualifying to get Fernando on the front row. If there are some surprise points finishers on Sunday look to Torro Rosso to be there, Sebastein Vettel has been impressive all season and was fastest in first practice while struggling teammate Sebastien Bourdais was fourth. Of course in reality first practice means very little, but it could be a sign that Torro Rosso are still improving as the season progresses. We will see in qualifying what happens, but this points to being a very entertaining race, and we won't even need rain!!

The IRL is in California this week at Infineon raceway (sears point) a twisty and hilly track that is tough on the drivers. Scott Dixon has to be the early favourite as he has run well in pretty much every race and with the Penske team scrambling to get cars ready after a fire destroyed their primary cars and with Andretti-Green racing just starting to sort their affairs out there appears to be little competition for the big red (target) machine. Some of the former champ car teams like Newman/Haas/Lanigan and KV could compete for the win, but in the end it always just seems that despite leading and being fastest they struggle with strategy and end up giving the race to A Ganassi or Penske driver. Dixon has a commanding lead and could concievably clinch the title on sunday if he wins and Helio Castroneves has a particularly poor day. All of the top teams tested at Sonoma this week so it may end up being a case of the have's beating up on the have nots and so a Ganassi, Penske, or AGR win seems the most likely. There are 27 cars in the field for the race and so there could be quite a few cautions, especially with a trigger happy race director and the number of accident prone muppets in the field so strategy may be the deciding factor, something again that the big teams do best at. Infineon has not been a track prone to surprises and so don't expect one here, hopefully we at least get a good race.

Disgruntled critic is back on track

2008-08-20T20:49:00.002-04:00

Hi all

After a hectic couple of weeks when I have been run ragged by life I now have some quiet(ish) time coming up so I can concentrate on blogging again. Both the IRL and F1 are racing this weekend at Sonoma and Valencia respectively and I will be previewing those events. The F1 race at Valencia will be held on a cracking street circuit that promises to provide some excitement, whoever designed the track really knows how to design street circuits, someone should hire him over here to redesign some of the street circuits used in the IRL, as most bar Long Beach and Surfers paradise are absolute shite (see Belle Isle Park). My good friend and co-operator in the blogging business Pete DaSilva has a great first post about the street circuit on his new blog here: http://formulaoneamerica.blogspot.com/.

In news and notes, it appears that things aren't going so hot (or perhaps too hot) for Penske racing in the IRL as their transporter carrying their race cars and pit equipment for the Sonoma race caught fire last night en route to the race. Team manager Tim Cindric estimates that the losses will be a few million dollars, which will hurt the team. Penske has no shortage of money do to their Marlboro connections (they are essentially still Marlboro Team Penske they way that in F1 Ferrari are still essentially Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro), but with the championship push still technically on, this is a really unfortunate disaster for them. They do have backup cars that they can fly in from their base in North Carolina but apparantly they are Oval configured cars for the twisty sonoma track. If Penske get a significant result this weekend it will be a great performance from their drivers.

In other IRL notes, the entry list for the Sonoma race has been released with sadly no Paul Tracy, but with the return of the fast but accident prone (not another one!) Tomas Scheckter for Luczo Dragon Racing and with Mario Dominguez racing because it is a road course. Unfortunately Marty Roth is still entered as the driver for his own team, so there is one extra hazard on the track this weekend. If the IRL wants to be taken seriously, this dingus and his ego have to go, they can't keep letting Mad Dog Marty putz around getting in the way and expect people, especially Europeans, to take the league seriously. Marty's presence just makes the league look amateur and unsophisticated at the same time that Tony George is trying to make people believe that the IRL is a major motorsports series. If revoking Roth's racing license means having one less car each weekend then it is a risk that Tony should be willing to take because he no longer needs these lousy backmarkers to make up the field. Right now there is a solid 20-something serious entries per race with talented drivers in the cars, but Roth and sometimes Milka Duno are still there miles off the pace bringing the whole series down. In 1992 F1 banned the Andrea Moda team for bringing the sport into disrepute and maybe it is time that the IRL do the same to Marty Roth.

rumour roundup: friday Aug 15

2008-08-15T09:57:00.006-04:00

Fisrtly I would like to apologize for the lack of posting. I have been super busy this last week and I did not even manage to see the Kentucky Indy race. I will try to fuind a replay to watch it and publish a report, but I don't know when. But I do have some interesting rumours to talk about and potentially create.

I will start in F1 where all does not appear to be well in Sebastien Bourdais-land. The four time Champ Car champion has been trounced regularly by his teammate Sebastien Vettel (who according to some is the next coming of Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost, or Jesus) and is now suddenly finding himself in a spot of bother when it comes to his future. Seabass as he is sometimes annoyingly called over here could find himself on the outside looking in next year as team co-boss Gerhard Bergercould be looking at replacing him with Super Aguri refugee Takuma Sato. berger has said he wants an experienced driver with a talented rookie and Taku appears to be considered as the best experienced free agent out there. I am a bit skeptical about this as Taku never really had that great a career. He had some spectacular runs but he also was extremely accident prone and it doesn't seem logical to have a leader by example who runs into others habitually. Bourdais has said he is not fully comfortable with the car but I hope he gets to keep his job as he is a talented driver who was in the North American motorsports environment for too long, which is much different than F1. We will see but I hope it ain't true.

Continuing with my Toro Rosso theme, the race for Sebastien Vettel's job is heating up with various rookie drivers trying to stake their claim. The two frontrunners are Bruno Senna and Sebastien Buemi, but scottish DTM driver Paul di Resta is now insisting that he deserves a chance at the seat. Di Resta has been racing in German tin-tops for a couple of years now and has been impressive, but is the DTm really a good feeder series for F1? The only driver to have come from the DTM to f1 recently was Christijan Albers who had two and a half unsuccesful seasons with Minardi, Midland, and Spyker. If Di resta does get an f1 seat it would be a cruel kick in the groin to Gary Paffett who has been on the cusp of getting into F1 for years now but has never gotten the call. I highly doubt that Di resta has a shot and I think it is jut a young ego with delusions of grandeur talking as opposed to something really serious.

Coming back to the IRL there have been some interesting faces appearing at a test session at Sonoma this week. One of the most interesting is Mike Conway testing for The panther team. Conway has Honda backing and has tested for the Honda f1 squad but his time in GP2 has been less than succesful. If Panther were to expand to two cars they hay be able to get some Honda running for Conway, who is no slouch behind the wheel and could impress, although he would need to learn how to race ovals. A larger car count is always good, especially when they are filled with talented drivers like conway as opposed to hacks like Duno and Roth.

Other notable test drivers driving at Sonoma were Laex Lloyd for Ganassi and Romain Dumas for penske. dumas drives for Penske in the ALMS and knows the track very well, he is a sports car specialist so we are unlikely to see him in an IndyCar but Lloyd is a different case. Lloyd drove the Indy 500 and did a decent job and has been linked with various full time rides. Testing for Ganassi probably won't open up a seat for him for 2009 but it could definetly lead to a seat somwhere elseo, potentially with Rahal-Letterman racing. Both Lloyd and Conway would be great additions to the IRL.

Speaking of Ganassi, Dan Wheldon is still without a cotnract. The 2005 Champion is one of the highest paid drivers in the field but he has not been great last year and this year, being soundly trounced by teammate Scott Dixon both years. Wheldon is not stupid and he knows that he won't get anywhere near the reported $3 million per year he is making now but he may be chafing to get out of Dixons shadow. Wheldon is one of the ebst on the ovals but has been decidedly average on the road and street courses, which will hamper his value. Unfortunately for the Englishman the only place to be if he wants a top ride is at Ganassi and his ego may take him on a Jacques Villeneuve-esque move for big money to a smaller team with disastrous consequences for his career. He is still one of the top oval drivers in the IRl (witnessed by his two oval wins this year) but with the ever increasing number of road and street courses his value is dropping. A move to rebuild his career at a newer or smaller team is a good idea on paper, there is noone out there but Ganassi who has the money to pay him what he will probably ask for. I expect him to sign a one year contract with Ganassi while he actively seeks something else.

Meijer Indy 300 at Kentucky Preview and Rumour update.

2008-08-08T11:55:00.004-04:00

The Indycar funny farm is off to Kentucky this weekend for another race on a 1.5 mile speedway. This is a race where the big three of the old IRL will probably dominate so surprise winners are unlikely. There are 26 cars entered in the race this weekend, the oncl changes to the line-up from Edmonton are the addition of Sarah Fisher driving her own car to be sponsored by Dollar General and the lack of mario DOminguez and Pacific Coast motorsports. PCM are going to run the two remaining road course races this year as Accidents there tend to be less expensive than accidents on Ovals (Mario is good at doing both) and the team is just barely staying afloat as it is. The other change is the return of the much maligned Milka Duno at Dreyer and Reinbold racing to replace Townsend Bell who raced at Edmonton. The old Oval specialist teams like Vision and Panther will be ebtter while Newman/Haas/Lanigan and KV racing will be poorer, although the ex champcar teams are getting closer, leaving only Marty Roth to be an uber-backmarker. Speaking of Mad Dog Marty, the Torontonian will still be driving his onw sponsorless car this weekend, let's just hope he stays out of the way and doesn't cause too many accidents. In looking at the front of the grid this will probably be another Ganassi-Penske duel with the Dixon-Castroneves-Wheldon axis probably going to be at the front of the field. Ryan Briscoe has not been as strong on ovals as he has been on road courses so he may end up battling with Andrett-Greens band of not-so-merry men (and women) for the top five. Tony Kanaan will probably run well here and potentially could steal a victory, but witht the current turmoil surrounding his team it seems a tad unlikely. Marco Andretti will probably run failry strong before he crashes, which at his current rate is more of a when than if situation. Marco got quite the tongue lashing from his father/boss after his foul-ups at Edmonton and will be looking to stay out of trouble this weekend so we may see a more cautious Marco this weekend, but then again we may not and the accident will ensue. Danica Patrick will probably loudly slip into the top ten as usual. Normally one would say she was going quietly into seventh or eighth, but with Patrick nothing ever happens quietly. The only other notable entry that may have a shot at a good finish is Ryan-Hunter reay for Rahal-Letterman. Ryan has been effective all year and had a real shot a t a podium in texas before being in the wrong place (close to Marco Andretti) at the wrong time (anytime during the race really) and ended up in the wall. He and Vitor Meira may be the frontrunners for best of the rest. After these there are the usual gang of idiots in the midfield who will be squabbling over 15th place or so, thse include the Dale Coyne and Conquest cars, both Vision cars, both Dreyer and Reinbold cars (although Milka will probably be battling for 25th), The HVM and AJ Foyt cars and Sarah Fisher, who although she will try with all her heart she is driving an underfunded car with very little practice time and a skeleton crew. I sincerely hope she can avoid some of the menaces posing as race car drivers in the midfield to finish the race solidly so she can at least race again at Chicago in September. Sarah is a smart driver who is good at staying out of trouble and she was so unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time at the Indy 500 and with larger fields this year there are a lot more wrong places and wrong times this year. Fisher is a class act and deserves a good break or two.

The Rumour update surrounds Tony kannan. Yesterday Robin Miller reported that TK was set to sign for Chip Ganassi and I posted that here, but then late last night it was announced that he was NOT going to Ganassi but will stay at Andretti-Green for another five years. This is great news for AGR because TK is the only real veteran they have and his input is invaluable for their continued success. It appears that TK may have wily used ganssi's interest and Robin Miller to increase his bargaining position and get himself more money, if this is the case then kudos to TK fotr that. He is one of the best drivers in the field and deserves to be paid accordingly.

Indy Car rumour mill running over time

2008-08-07T18:33:00.002-04:00

The Indy Car rumour mill is in full swing and the big story revolves around Tony Kanaan. The 2004 Series champion has made no bones about being unhappy at current team Andretti-Green Racing and wants out. The big rumour now has him going to Ganassi Racing, possibly to replace Dan Wheldon, possibly in a third car. This year Ganassi and Penske have proven that a two car team is the way to go and have largely dominated the season and both teams have great drivers currently. A move to replace Wheldon seems more likely but it would be an unfortunate slap in the face for poor Dan as he has been pretty good this year but has been outclassed by Scott Dixon, his teammate. Wheldon has still managed to win two races this year and is third in the standings. The problem Wheldon may be facing is where to go next year? Wheldon will not want to go back to AGR, he didn't exactly leave on good terms after his 2005 championship and there are no other teams with vacancies in position to fight for victories and championships. One rumour suggests that he could be in a second car for Rahal-Letterman racing, but he would probably have to bring some sponsorship and would not get anywhere near what he is making in salary this year. He could go to Vision racing, Tony George would love to have a major star in one of his cars (apart from Paul Tracy) or maybe even a small team like Dale Coyne or Panther racing, but both options would probably require Dan to bring some sort of sponsorship money. If this is true, and it probably is (it was first reported by Robin Miller) then it could have some serious ramifications for Andretti-Green. Kanaan was the workhorse and undisputed number one and has really kept that team in contention to be considered a top team, without him AGR will probably struggle to maintain such a record with four cars. The rumoured replacements include Ex-F1 and current AGR Sportscar driver Franck Montagny and current Atlantic series star Rafael Matos. Both driver are good, but it would be a long way down for the team to have someone with very little IndyCar experience filling TK's shoes and being thrown into the circus that is AGR. Maybe Marco Andretti will suddenly mature and become a legitimate number one, not likely, but one never knows. The only other potential option may be Sebastien Bourdais if he is not re-signed by Toro Rosso in F1, but he may not want to come back to North America as one senses his ego tells him he is too good for the series. He would be a great pickup for the new IRL and he could probably start winning races immediately, although he may look at the AGR shit show and cringe.

The other big IRL news is that they have a new TV deal with........ Versus!!!! Yes the former outdoor life network will be adding the IRL to it's lineup of hunting, fishing, and Hockey. This move leaves one really underwhelmed as Versus has become the abyss that has consumed the NHL and left it a niche sport with very little coverage. One fears that this will be a disaster for the IRL and waste all the good effort of unification. So far unification has not really brought about the rating increases that were hoped, although more arses are in the seats at races (this weekend's race at Kentucky is close to sold out) so there is promise, but the chronic lack of exposure on Versus could undo that. I hope I am wrong but I have a bad feeling about this whole thing.

Race Report: Massa all but wins in Hungary

2008-08-04T15:12:00.003-04:00

Dear readers.

I apologize for the lack of posting in the previous few days but I have been constantly on the go. I will also be the first to admit that I did not get a chance to see the whole race so this will be a shortened report so here goes

Poor old Felipe Massa. Here is a man who is supposed to be second best at Ferrari behind last years world champion, he is supposed to struggle to win from back on the grid, who is supposed to be inconsistent, and is not supposed to be a legitimate contender for the world championship. Massa qualified a so-so third (three places higher than Raikkonen) and with a McLaren dominated front row this was supposed to be another Lewis Hamilton victory. The Hungaroring is a track where passing is difficult but it still throws up the odd surprise and this time it was no different. At the start Massa had a dynamite getaway and was alongside Hamilton on teh outside going into turn one, It was man to man and Felipe held his outside line, braked late, and swooped around Hamilton on the outside to take the lead. From tehre it appeared to be all over. Hamilton could not keep up with Felipe and it looked to be Massa-Hamilton finishing 1-2 until Lewis had a puncture and pitted for a new tyre, he would finish fifth. Meanwhile Timo Glock was driving a storming race in his Toyota and inherited third behind Heikki Kovalainen who stayed out of trouble. Massa was cruising and was on for ten points to Hamilton's three and Raikkonen's five. This result would put Massa into first in the world championship with seven races remaining, everything was looking great for Felipe and Ferrari when with three laps to go everything went horribly, horribly wrong. On that lap there was some smoke coming from the back of the Ferrari and on the start finish race there was a mighty bang behind Felipe and he coasted to a stop and one could hear the cruel laughter of the racing gods. This cruel twist of fate gifted the race to Heikki Kovalainen, who duly won his first ever grand prix. It was a great result for Heikki who seemed to be in danger of losing his ride in recent weeks before it was announced that he would be retained for next year. Heikki responded in the best possible way and deserves a first win, although Massa will feel as though he really deserved this win, but hey, Heikki crossed the line first. Second was Timo Glock with his first career podium and his best career grand prix weekend. He qualified a brilliant fifth and drove a consistent race to inherit second after Massa expired. There were some eyebrows raised when Glock was hired by Toyota and he had a slow start to the season but has been getting better and better and deserves this good result. Toyota are now up to fourth in the championship with Glock's second place and Jarno Trulli getting points for seventh and with Red Bull failing to score yet again the men from cologne are cruising to fourth in the championship. If they do get fourth then their main competition appears to be Renault. The 2005 and 2006 constructors champions had a woeful start to the year but have rebounded impressively to collect some mega points yesterday with Fernando Alonso fourth and Nelson Piquet sixth. They have scored 19 points in the last three races compared to Red Bull's 0 and are now seven points ahead of RBR and looking good. If Toyota and Renault had great days then BMW Sauber had a dismal one. Robert Kubica started fourth but faded badly to eighth while Nick Heidfeld started fifteenth and finished tenth. BMW were contenders for the constructors championship four races ago but now find themselves in third and struggling while the likes of Toyita and Renault are getting much better. Their position of third is under no threat, but they are not in contention for the top two spots anymore, after a promising first half of the season they have faded badly indeed.

The next race is in three weeks in Valencia with Lewis Hamilton five points up on Kimi Raikkonen and eight ahead of Felipe Massa in the championship standings. This has been one of the most competitive F1 seasons in a long time and it is anyones guess who will do well in Valencia. It is a street circuit and it could create a surprise or two. Congrats to Heikki Kovalainen and McLaren for the win, but Ferrari will be rebounding in Valencia you can be sure.

News and notes: Thursday July 31

2008-07-31T10:44:00.002-04:00

The biggest piece of news of the week is the release of the 2009 IndyCar season schedule. After a sort of disjointed and last minute created 2008 schedule, the 2009 season will be the first truly unified season schedule. The current version has 18 races to be run between April 5 and October 11, 2008. The most notable omission is Surfers Paradise, a staple of CART/Champ Car and a race that always draws huge crowds, it's only drawback being that it is in Australia. The IRL organizers had hoped to twin it with the race at the Twin Ring Motegi in Japan to reduce costs but some sort of complications with a major Rugby tournament in September has resulted in no deal being reached. The IRL are insisting that there is still a space available for a race in Australia if the two sides can come to an agreement, but seeing as the willingness to budge of the IRL side is limited there is very little chance that a race will happen in Australia next year, 2010 maybe but dear Aussie friends, don't get your hopes up. Toronto returns to the schedule which is good news as the Toronto race was always one of the best attended races in CART/Champ Car but one suspects that a high attendance will depend on the presence of Paul Tracy in an IndyCar next year. The one surprise that has had a lot of fans fuming is the choice of season finale venues, Homestead-Miami speedway. The Homestead race has been poorly attended the last few years and people were expecting that track to get the axe and be replaced by Las Vegas, which would be a more glamorous location for a finale, but alas it was not to be and so the IRL is going back to the empty grandstands at Homestead. There are also a lot of fans mystified at the lack of former CART/Champ Car venues that traditionally drew great crowds like Cleveland airport or Road America. There were also rumours that New Hampshire motor speedway and Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama were being considered for races next year but that did not materialize. In all the schedule has 10 ovals and 8 road/street circuits and here is the final(ish) schedule
April 5: Streets of St. Petersburg
April 19: Streets of Long Beach
April 26: Kansas Motor Speedway
May 24: Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indy 500)
May 31: Milwaukee Mile
June 6: Texas Motor Speedway
June 21: Iowa Speedway
June 27: Richmond International Raceway
July 5: Watkins Glen International
July 12: Streets of Toronto
July 26: Edmonton city centre Airport
August 1: Kentucky Speedway
August 9: Mid Ohio Sports Car course
August 23: Infineon raceway
August 29: Chicagoland Speedway
September 6: The raceway at Belle Isle Park
September 19: Twin Ring Motegi
October 11: Homestead-Miami Speedway

Next up is a bit of Formula One news and it has to do with McLaren's 2009 Driver Lineup and the fact that it will not change. Heikki Kovalainen has been confirmed foe next year despite him having a ratehr poor season compared to teammate Lewis Hamilton. Heikki has only been marginally slower than Lewis but has had absolutely rotten luck and finds himself well down in the standings compared to Lewis. This is good news for Kovalainen as there were many rumours surrounding his future at McLaren and hopefully the personable Finn can win some races soon as he deserves it.

There are rumours abound that Paul Tracy will race in the three final races of the IRL season at Infineon raceway, Belle Isle Park, and Chicagoland speedway. Hopefully this is true but one has to take such rumours with a grain of salt as his presence seems to rely solely on money at the moment, sad for such a great champion.

This week the F1 circus are at the dull Hungaroring in beautiful Budapest and the NASCAR nationwide series is racing at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, I will preview these two races tomorrow.

Monday Morning news and rumour roundup: July 28

2008-07-28T11:22:00.005-04:00

There has been a conspicuous absence of F1 rumours lately so this weeks edition will be more North American based, although I will mention Max Mosely and his lawsuits.

I will start with the dysfunctionality of Andretti-Green racing here in the IRL. This is a team that had absolutely dominated the IRL in 2005 with Dan Wheldon winning the championship and his teammates TOny Kanaan, Dario Franchitti, and Bryan Herta finishing 2nd, 4th, and 8th in the standings respectively. 2006 was not as good but in 2007 they rebouded with Franchitti winning the championship and Kanaan third. It wasn't quite the sueprteam it was in 2005, but they were good. Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti were the other two drivers who struggled but brought the headlines, but it was Dario and Tony, two long time soldiers of the team, two great friends, two of the best in the business who carried the team forward. But things came unglued somewhere between then and now. Partly because of the loss of Dario Franchitti to NASCAR the team unity has fallen apart, badly. Tony Kanaan is still the number one in the team, but he is extremely unhappy. He no longer has his good friend in the team to keep him motivated and has found himself in the thankless position of providing setup to Princess Danica and arrogant twat Marco while poor old Hideki Mutoh just bumbles around. Tony wants out, no question about it and it has to do with the fact that his teammates have taken to ignoring team orders to help Tony in his championship hopes because they don't feel like it, and the two of them (Danica and Marco) are becoming increasingly unpopular within the Andretti Green team. Marco has gone from the happy go lucky son of the team owner to trying to throw his weight around, trouble is that he doesn't have much weight to throw. He is accident prone and he has one race win to Kanaan's fourteen and oh yeah, TK won a championship for AGR in 2004 while Danica is trying to play the big star card and pushing people around but trouble is that she herself has only one win to show for it. Tony is tired of doing most of the setup for his teammates only to be flipped the proverbial bird by these two when he was desperate to get some precious points in his fading championship challenge. Michael Andretti called a closed door meeting with Marco and Danica after the Edmonton race where Marco blatantly ignored team orders over the radio and then collided with teammate Danica, and Danica was a little more subtle about ignoring the team orders by not responding. Nobody is divulging the content of this meeting but apparantly Michael was heard yelling and banging the side of the transporter. Maybe this will be seen as a sign that the team wants to keep Kanaan and push him forward and they will no longer cater to Marco and his young but growing ego, but who knows at this point. We will see but this may be the beginning of the end of AGR as one of the big three teams.

Now that we got the Andretti-Green problem out of the way it is time to address NASCAR, yes NASCAR. I am talking about their problems with tyres at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in yesterday's Brickyard 400. It is well known that the IMS diamond grinds its surfaces and so usually NASCAR tests there in order to prepare itself for his problem. Unfortunately this year with the much maligned car of tomorrow, NASCAR daftly decided against testing at Indy, and the result was that they got to Indy to discover that their tyres could not last more than 10-15 laps at top speed before they got ripped to shreds. This was a major situation for NASCAR and they set about coming up with a solution, albeit one that made the race even more boring than usual. Their solution was to throw a "competition caution" every 10 laps or so to allow people to change tyres. This was not a perfect solution but at least the fans got to see some racing. NASCAR and Goodyear screwed up in their preparation but at least they made an effort to come up with a solution, unlike F1 back in 2005.

Paul Tracy's brilliant run in Edmonton may see him race the rest of the year. Robin Miller of SpeedTV is claiming that Tony George is now actively trying to get something done for at least the last two races if not all four remaining races of the season. There is also a fan campaign to come up with the cash to get Paul on the grid for at least the next race at Kentucky in two weeks. Hopefully we will see Paul race soon because it would be a great shame for the IRL to let such a talent and personality go to waste.

That's it for the moment, the IRL schedule is set to come out this week so I will discuss that, also there will be a Hungarian GP preview and reaction to any major news that happens in the coming days.

Edmonton Race Report: Dixon wins, Tracy impresses.

2008-07-27T20:09:00.002-04:00

A great afternoon was had by most yesterday as the IndyCar boys and girls (just one this time) took to the bumps of Edmonton's city centre airport. Scott Dixon won the race, which is not too surprising and he was followed home by Helio Castroneves. The two title contenders ran nose to tail in the later stages and were fortunate that they decided to call the race due to time four laps early, had that not happened they probably would have neeeded a splash and dash, which would have spiced things up a little, but alas they did not and so Dixon coasted to victory to extend his championship lead. The real story however was the man who finished fourth, one Paul Tracy. PT started fifteenth but quickly worked his way through the field to run solidly in the top ten, a result which would have been encouraging to the team, but due to a good pitstop under caution he came up and was running a solid sixth when there was contact between fourth and fifth placed Oriol Servia and Dan Wheldon. Both drivers had wounded cars and tried to limp home, this allowed PT to overtake them, including getting by Servia right at the line on the last lap. This result will be huge and Robin Miller is now reporting that Vision racing are working to get Paul in a car for two more races, Sonoma and the finale at Chicagoland speedway. Paul provided a lot of road course experience and knowledge to the team and was apparently very well received within the Vision team. If Penske, Ganassi, and Vision go home happy, Andretti green racing will leave Canada furious with the way things went. Team number one Tony Kannan had to change his engine and so started at the back while the other three drivers, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick, and Hideki Mutoh could only manage to qualify in the midfield. In the race Kanaan worked his way up to a solid 9th but the other three drove like clowns. Hideki Mutoh was the first of the three to have difficulties when he crashed heavily on lap 27. The other two drove unspectacularly until late on when Marco Andretti commited a cardinal sin of racing by ramming Patrick damaging both cars. Both continued but their race was ruined. Marco was probably happy that he could keep going for more laps because it would protect him from the bullets that his team bosses were probably ready to throw at him. There were also some question marks about team work as Marco refused to let the faster Kannan by when ordered to and Danica's radio was mysteriously not working when she was asked to move over as well. There was a closed door meeting after the race and apparantly Kanaan was very grumpy afterwards not revealing the nature of the meeting, although it doesn't take a PhD to figure it out....... Down in the field the usual gang of idiots were up to their old tricks of causing trouble with poor Graham Rahal being in the wrong place at the wrong time, twice. At the start Graham was hit by Mario Moraes and had to make a lengthy stop for repairs. Graham rejoined and was minding his own business when EJ Viso tried to pass someone, locked his brakes, and punted into the side of poor Graham's car. Rahal was sent spinning into the tyre barrier, his day over. Back in the pits he was not happy with Viso (understandably) and did not mince words with his comments. Both he and fellow son of former champion Marco Andretti have been fast but have gotten into numerous incidents, mostly their fault, and maybe it was some poetic justice for Grahamm but this time it was truly not his fault. Many drivers have complained about Viso this year and EJ got a fifteen second stop/go penalty for his antics this time but I think that we will see more EJ caused accidents before the year is out. Other drivers had spins here and there, the most notable being Tony Kanaan going for a loop while leading the race and Helio Cstroneves having a big lock up late on while pushing Dixon, depriving us of a potential grandstand finish. Justin Wilson came home third for a very solid podium, proving that he is a very good road racer but needs to work on his oval skills. Marty Roth was painfully slow and got in the way as usual but he did not hit anything, although he ended the day backwards on the grass after spinning with two laps to go. The IRL should force him to attach a warning triangle to the back of his car as he is clearly not talented enough for this level of motorsport. The IRL's next race is in two weeks at Kentucky speedway where we will see the return of everyones favourite owner driver and hard worker Sarah Fisher.

Edmonton Indy, Qualifying report

2008-07-26T11:34:00.002-04:00

So the dust settled on qualifying to find us with a Penske 1-2 with Ryan Briscoe on the pole this time. All the pracitce times and promising runs by some came to nought as the big boys in the Penske cars came to the front. This is not to say that the Big former Champ Car teams were disappointing, which they weren't as the KV drivers are third and fifth on the grid, veteran Oriol Servia being higher on the grid than Will Power this time. The Penske drivers have been great on the last three road courses as they scored a 1-2 last week at Mid-Ohio and Briscoe was the fastest man all day at Watkin's Glen only to lose the race as a result of the cruel hand of fate. Helio Castroneves has been the most consistent driver for most of the season but hasn't been able to get a win while championship leader Scott Dixon, who has not been as quick of late, has continually managed to pop up in the top five to limit the damage done by Helio. Dixon starts fourth while teammate Dan Wheldon will have another tough day, he starts 9th. The other top ten drivers are former Champ Car teams and a big shout out to the Dale Coyne drivers who were nowhere in practice but suddenly popped up in qualifying, both men made in to Q2 and Bruno Junquiera just missed out making final qualifying while rookie Mario Moraes will start a decent 10th. The Newman/Haas/Lanigan boys also did a good job with Justin Wilson making it into the fast six only to have a shunt on his first flying lap in the final session having to settle for sixth. One suspects we will see a lot of him at the front in today's race while teammate Graham Rahal was a solid 8th. If all these former champ car teams and Ganassi an Penske were in the top ten then it leads to the question of what happened to the Andretti-Green driver? The answer is that they had a woeful afternoon. Both Marco Andretti and Tony Kanaan were fast enough to make the first cut but at the end of Q1 Kannan spun off and damaged his engine, unfortunately IRL rules dictate that an engine change means you have to go to the back of the pack and starting near Marty Roth can only be trouble. Marco ended up having a poor Q2 and was slowest in that session, so he will start 12th alongside the surprisingly quick Enrique Bernoldi, who is apparently fighting for his job, he surprised many by making it into Q2 and will start a very impressive 11th. Media favourites and resident hotheads Danica Patrick and Paul Tracy flattered only to decieve and will line up 14th and 15th respectively. Danica was nowhere in practice and so 14th cannot be considered to bad for her while PT was really quick in practice and will be disappinted with 15th although he is ultra agressive and will try to make it through the field, if he can make it through the first corner in one piece. The other Andretti Green dude, Hideki Mutoh was a rather poor 21st and will probably lose a lot of points to Will Power in the rookie of the year points. The rest of the grid is unsurprising with Ryan Hunter Reay 13th, Vitor Meira 16th followed by AJ Foyt IV, Darren Manning, Mario DOminguez, EJ Viso, Mutoh, Buddy Rice, Ed Carpenter, Townsend Bell, Marty Roth, Jaime Camara and the unfortunate TOny Kannan. A word about Marty Roth and his dreadful pace in qualifying. His time of 1:09.049 was more than 8 second off pole and five second slower than the next slowest Jaime Camara. His time is actually slower than the slowest qualifier in the Atlantic series race by 0.6 seconds and has been brutally slow all weekend. The IRL really needs to introduce time controls to weed out the field filling wankers like Roth to be taken seriously. The IRL needs to introduce some sort of time margin for qualifying so that Marty and company will be sent home. On suspects that the IRL may review his racing license at seasons end, not soon enough in this critic's opinion.

Edmonton Indy, Thursday Practice report

2008-07-24T19:57:00.002-04:00

So day 1 in Edmonton is complete with things being dominated by two teams, Team Penske and, to the surprise of some, KV racing. The two teams shared the top four in both sessions today, the first one being dominated by Penske, with Castroneves ahead of Briscoe followed by Will Power and Oriol Servia, and the second session seeing that reversed with Power and Servia 1-2 followed by Castroneves and Briscoe. It was an eventful day with pretty much every driver having moments at some time due to the bumpy nature of the airport circuit. The plentiful amount of run off area meant that most drivers avoided hitting things with the exception of EJ Viso, who crashed in the first session and did not take part in the second one. Townsend Bell had the most excitment having an armful of spins and off track excursions, he was 25th in both sessions. Paul Tracy caused the most excitement by running well in both sessions of his first IRL race since the controversial 2002 Indy 500 when he finished second officially but many think that he had passed winner Helio Castroneves just before the yellow flags came out, but we digress. The other Canadian, Marty Roth was in his usual position at the tail end of the field, in the morning session he was 4.4 seconds slower than the next slowest driver, Jaime Camara, and in the second session he was "only" 2.3 seconds behind next slowest Townsend Bell. If the old 107% rule from Formula One was in force, these times would not be fast enough for Mad Dog Marty to qualify. Will Power's fastest time of the first day of practice is three seconds slower than his fastest time in last years first day of practice and highlights the need to boost the power of these cars on road courses. Qualifying should be itneresting tomorrow with so many cars being so close in time it could be anyone but Marty Roth's day. WIth the exception of the aforemention Roth, everyone was within 2.6 seconds in the second practice session. This could be an incident filled race, but with plenty of runoff there should not be too much need for the Safety Car, unfortunately the IRL will probably not figure that one out.

Race Preview, Rexall Edmonton Indy

2008-07-24T11:54:00.002-04:00

The IndyCar sereis makes it's only visit to Canada this year with a race in Edmonton. The race track, a temporary one at the Edmonton City centre Airport is a great track and has been hugely popular since the race's inception as a Champ Car race in 2005. As the only points-paying race converted from Champ Car where all the field competes it could be a golden opportunity for some of the transition teams to score a win on a track they are familiar with, in fact Justin Wilson has won this race back in 2006. Eight drivers have raced here before and four have gotten podiums here including Wilson, who won in 2006 and was second last year, Paul Tracy, who was third back in 2005, Graham Rahal, who was third last year, and Oriol Servia, who was second in 2005. The other four who have raced here include Mario Dominguez, whose best finish was fifth in 2005, Bruno Junquiera. whose best finish was seventh last year, Will Power's best finish was sixth in 2006 and Ryan Hunter Reay was sixteenth in his only start here back in 2005. If I were to pick a driver among these few drivers to come through with a surprise victory it would be Oriol Servia. He has been consistently quick all year and has usually manged to bring the car home in solid points positions., he deserves a win as he has been one of the hardest working drivers over the past few years. This race will also see the much anticipated return of Paul Tracy to the cockpit. The aggressive and animated Canadian has a one race deal and will want to show well to convince his sponsors to pay for more races this year with a view to getting him a full schedule next year. In total 27 cars have entered the race with the only driver change of the 26 cars who raced last week is the re-emergence of Townsend Bell for Dreyer and Reinbold replacing Milka Duno, who was horribly off the pace last weekend (according to my calculations, had F1's old 107% rule existed she would not have qualified for the race). Bell is a decent driver who will be looking for a good result here in order to prove to teams that he would be a legitimate choice for a full time ride next year. At the front Newman/Haas/Lanigan will probably join the big three of Penske/Ganassi/and Andretti-Green at the top of the timesheets, although KV racing could also be up there. Both Penske and both Ganassi drivers are great road racers, as are two of the four AGR drivers (Marco Andretti and Tony Kanaan) and so it should be a lively race up front, and with Edmonton being a track conducive to overtaking we should have some drama. Unfortunately the fans will not be treated to cars as quick as they were last year as it is estimated that the IndyCar Dallara is aproximately 5 seconds per lap slower than the Panoz DP-01 cars who raced here last year and there are calls to boost the horsepower of the Honda engines for the road courses. As some of the oval specialist drivers continue to get better on Road courses there will not be any real drivers but Marty Roth who will be off the pace. Hopefully this leads to a lot of good racing among the 27 drivers and qualifyuing could be very close, leading to some surprises among those knocked out in the earlier rounds. Qualifying is Friday and Saturday the race starts at 3pm local time, 5 pm eastern time.

Monday Morning rumour roundup, July 21

2008-07-21T11:40:00.002-04:00

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, here is a quick round-up of the rumours circulating in the F1 and IndyCar worlds

We will start in F1 where Ross Brawn has insisted that he will keep the same driver lineup at Honda for 2009. While it is admirable that he wants some continuity in his team, Jenson Button and Rubens Barichello drove like idiots at Hockenheim and there could potentially be some talented drivers on the market. Ross wants to concentrate on next year and building a good car, but I can't see Honda winning a championship with their current drivers.

Last week I said that Forsythe was planning to enter Indy Lights next year and it appears that he may have bigger ambitions than that with reports that he is planning an IRL team and an American Le Mans series team. Plus he plans on running Indy Lights and Formula Atlantic. This seems very ambitious and although we know that Gerry has deep pockets, It does not make sense to be shelling out all that money for teams in four different racing series' He must have some sort of sponsor in mind at least for the IRL.

Tony Kanaan appears to be playing hardball with his Andretti Green Racing team. According to Robin Miller of Speed TV he has given his team until August 1 to sign him to a new contract or he will start talking to other teams. This does not make a whole lot of sense on Kanaan's part as he the other top two teams in the sport, Penske and Ganassi, appear unlikely to dump one of their drivers at the current time and a move to any other team would be taking a step backwards. He has the opportunity to win races and championships at AGR and if he wants to remain a contender he has to suck up any bones of contention he has with his team and, I guess, more specifically Marco Andretti and concentrate on driving.

The rumour mill will be churning about a potential return of Peugeot to the Formula One world. Peugeot chief Jean-Claude Lefebvre was seen in the F1 paddock at Hockenheim claiming to be on Holiday. Peugeot's last venture into F1 was not terribly succesful having never won a race having supplied the McLaren, Jordan, and Prost teams between 1994 and 2000. The Engines were known to be powerful but horrendously unreliable and they ended up deciding that they were wasting their money putting engines in the back of terrible Prost cars and left F1. I return does not make much sense from a business point of view in the current F1 economic structure as Peugeot are heavily concentrated on their 24 Hours of Le Mans effort which came up painfully short this year. I doubt we will see Peugeot Engines in the back of F1 cars for the next few years at least, especially with the future of the French Grand Prix in doubt.

Stay tuned for opinions and reviews of this weekends Edmonton Indy. I will be having in depth coverage without being there, but I will have reports on all days of the competition.

Race Report: All Penske performance at Mid Ohio

2008-07-20T16:09:00.002-04:00

Ryan Briscoe managed to avoid Marco Andretti and Scott Dixon this week and won the Honda Indy 200. The Team Penske number two has been very good since the Indy 500 but has had some appaling luck in recent races. Briscoe was fast all weekend and was aided by some great strategy decisions from his strategist Roger Penske to romp away from the field after the last of too many safety car periods. He was followed home by teammate Helio Castroneves who was second for the fifth time this year (he has no wins) and Championship leader Scott Dixon, who stayed out of trouble to minimize the hit to his championship hopes. The KV crew of Will Power and Oriol Servia rounded out the top five to score some valuable points for the transition team, while behind them it was an overly eventful race with the usual gang of idiots getting into all sorts of trouble, sometimes taking frontrunners with them. The race started on a drying track and everyone started on wet tyres but switched to dries early, with the first to react being the benificiaries and those early leaders were Vitor Meira, Darren Manning, and Will Power running well, but as usual with some of the muppets at the back there will always be safety car periods to nix any sort of advantage. The most notable of the frontrunners who was bitten by the snake of bad driving backmarkers were the trio of Justin Wilson, Dan Wheldon, and Marco Andretti who ended up in a sticky mess at a restart when Wilson tried to go around the lapped Mario Dominguez only to be tagged by the Mexican (involved in his third incident of the day) and causing a traffic jam involving Wheldon, Andretti, and AJ Foyt IV who were all minding their own business (so was Wilson actually). Wilson, Wheldon, and Foyt ended up down a lap while Andretti retired, this incident happening shortly after the commentators pointed out that Andretti has a higher crash rate than Paul Tracy, not exactly high praise. In another race dictated by cautions and incidents I will do a quick rundown of the major red-face causing events. The first main incident happened when the usually talented Ryan Hunter-Reay tried a daft move down the inside of the usually crappy Enrique Bernoldi. Enrique was not exactly setting the world on fire at this point of the race, but he was unlucky to have been Kamikazeed in this way. To add insult to injury he retired while Hunter-Reay continued and ended up tenth. Then next incident involved Mario Dominguez, who went off and damaged his rear wing, this did not bring out the caution but he had to pit for repairs and the unfinished job resulted in the second caution when Mario's rear wing fell off at high speed and he was nerfed into a sandtrap. The caution came out and Mario was towed back to the pits where he was fixed up and sent on his way a few laps down where he was given the golden opportunity to screw things up for other people. He was fired by Gerry Forsythe for the same kind of antics a couple of years ago and these kind of shenanigans will not make his small, underfunded team very happy, although his sponsorship is the main reason this team is afloat. Things resumed as usual with the cautions resulting in a bevy of different drivers leading the race at some point as people ran different fuel strategy. Somewhere during the proceedings Marco Andretti dropped the ball and spun but could resume. The next yellow was a result of the incredibly incompetent Milka Duno spinning and not having the good sense not to park her car in the middle of the frickin' racing line!! She has been slow and bothersome all week and there will be many drivers relieved that she will not be in the 23 car next week in Edmonton. Duno was able to continue but the caution bunched up the field leading to the Dominguez and Wilson induced mess at the restart, which resulted in a fourth caution. That came and went and the race restarted on lap 48 at which point a light went on in the head of some of the IRL officials that maybe they don't need to bring out the safety car when someone is stranded a mile off course and both Graham Rahal and the other incompetent tool (after Duno) Marty Roth tested this policy. The fifth and final caution came when something happened to Mario Moraes and he was stuck near the Keyhole (which ABC announcer Marty Reid kept calling the carousel) and so the field was bunched up again with Briscoe leading Bruno Junquiera who was playing the fuel strategy and hope for enough caution laps game, which ended up not working as he had to pit for fuel with seven to go, dropping him to 13th. It was not exactly a classic, but it wasn't a terrible race. Mid-Ohio is tough on the drivers but not exactly conducive to overtaking so it was quite processional at times and the five yellows were excessive given the nature of some of the incidents that caused them. A good result for one transiton team, KV while another, Newman/Haas/Lanigan will be kicking themselves after their drivers cocked up chances at mega points with incidents, ending up 11th and 16th, Wilson ahead of Rahal. Dale Coyne also had a chance to do some grandstanding with Mario Moraes leading at one point and Junquiera running second for a while. Caution filled races often end up being decided by the strategists and unfortunately this one was one of them. Next up is Edmonton at the tricky and fast Edmonton Airport circuit.

Race Report: Lewis Dialed in to Deutschland

2008-07-20T09:48:00.003-04:00

Lewis Hamilton absolutely dominated the German Grand Prix. He was on pole, he was the fastest man on track, but due to some questionable strategy when the Safety Car came out he had to work harder, but he did the job and recorded his fourth win of the season to take a four point lead in the world championship. Second was Nelson Piquet, and third was Felipe Massa. The race was really one of two halves. At the start Lewis led from Massa and Kovalainen and Lewis proceeded to pull away comfortably from Massa. The race settled into a rhythm with very little overtaking, although there were some close battles, when the safety car came out on lap 35 for Timo Glock submitting his entry for biggest crash of the year which really spiced things up. While the safety car seemingly ruined Lewis's race, it fell right into the hands of the one stopping Nelson Piquet. Piquet pittted the lap before the Safety Car and so did not have to pit again while most of the frontrunners did. The only notable frontrunners not to stop were Hamilton and Nick Heidfeld. The decision not to pit Hamilton puzzled many, including this blogger because it seemed as though McLaren were throwing the race away needlessly. Martin Brundle and James Allen theorized that it had to do with tires, seeing as Lewis had to use soft ones for his final stint and the McLaren is harder on those tyres than the Ferrari is. Either way Lewis had a lot of work to do as his main rival in the race, Massa, was fourth in the queue behind Hamilton, Heidfeld, and Piquet. When the race restarted Lewis had to put the hammer down Schumacher style to attempt to pull out a 22 second lead in approximately 10 laps. Lewis was helped by the fact that Massa was stuck behind Piquet, but the Ferrari man was never really in position to challenge Piquet and so Lewis rocketed away in the distance. Nobody outside of McLaren knew how far Lewis could go and the answer cam with 17 to go and Lewis pitted with a 15.4 second gap over Massa. The Englishman emerged behind his teammate Heikki Kovalainen in fifth place and everyone wondered, has McLaren screwed this up or are we on for a grandstand finish. The answer, fortunately for the spectators, was the latter as Lewis was quickly released by Kovalainen, moved up to third when Heidfeld pitted from the lead, and then closed on Massa. The move on Massa came with 11 laps to go as Lewis got into Felipe's slipstream on on the run towards the Hairpin. Felipe looked as though he was going to stay to the inside but then suddenly went left, opening the door for Lewis who proceeded to bravely out0brake his rival. Massa tried to defend but Hamilton had the optimal line at the exit and Massa went wide, Massa tried to retake Hamilton around the outside two corners later but Lewis was having none of it and Massa was forced wide and dropped back. From then he had no hope of winning as Hamilton rocketed off after Piquet, who was driving brilliantly out front. Hamilton closed rapidly and two laps later he was right on Nelson's tail at the same spot and out-braked the Renault driver. Piquet sensibly did not put up too much of a fight and slotted into second. From then Hamilton cruised to victory and Piquet came home a comfortable second ahead of Massa, who was too busy holding off a spirited charge from Heidfeld to try to challenge Piquet up front. It was a fortuitous podium for Piquet, but when he senses it was a possibility he drove brillitantly, like the Nelson Piquet we were hoping to see from the start of the year and this just may have been a job saving performance. Massa on the other hand will leave Germany with even more question marks over his head after a ratehr limp performance, especially after the restart. If Lewis's drive was one that wins world championships, Felipe's was one which loses them. Massa is now four points behind Hamilton and the momentum seems to have shifted towards Mclaren after a slowish start to the season for the silver cars. Hamilton is driving with all the confidence in the world while the Ferraris seem to be looking a little frustrated and bewildered, Luca di Montezemelo will not be a happy man. Fourth place was a good result for Nick Heidfeld. The German has been out-performed rather badly in qualifying by his teammate, but in the last two races he has shown that he still is a very cagey racer. He started 12th with a heavy fuel load and pitted for plenty of fuel. He did not stop behind the safety car and then drove away from Piquet at the restart. When Hamilton made his final stop Heidfeld was less than five seconds back and managed to emerge ahead of Kovalainen after his stop. He finished the day right on Felipe Massa's rear wing but in the closing laps he decided not to press the issue too much, preferring to bring the car home for some quality points. Teammate Robert Kubica was not as good but stayed out of trouble to come home seventh and collect two points. One senses that his world championship aspirations are slipping away. Kovalainen was fifth in the second McLaren and will probably be disappointed by the result. He was third for most of the pre-safety car period but he was undone by the caution as both Heidfeld and Piquet emerged ahead of him. He had to yield for Hamilton but was decidedly ordinary after the restart in general and Heidfeld managed to stay ahead of him. Kovalainen ended up fighting with sixth placed Kimi Raikkonen at the end, but Heikki is now 30 points behind his teammate and the rumour mill is churning about him possibly being out of a job at Mclaren for 2009. Sixth was not exactly where world champion Kimi Raikkonen would have wanted to be, but the Finn was really in no-mans land for most of the weekend. He only qualified sixth and lost a place at the start and was stuck in seventh until he made up a place at the pitstops but on a track where overtaking is possible we should have seen him really challenging the slower cars ahead of him. The safety car came out, putting Kimi down to ninth and it was like a light switch was turned on somewhere as Kimi suddenly decided he wanted to race again and set off passing people. First he got by Fernando Alonso (more on his adventures later), and then by Sebastien Vettel, and finally swooped by Kubica to take sixth. He could not get by Kovalainen in the end but he was mighty exciting to watch in the final laps. Kimi is still only seven points behind Hamilton and as we saw last year he can really turn it on late in the season and he is definetly still in the running for the World Championship and judging by his fighting spirit in part of this race he looks to be a better candidate for the title than Massa is. Torro Rosso had a pretty good day with Sebastein Vettel getting a point for eighth and with Bourdais bringing it home in twelfth. Vettel had an exciting afternoon, spending much of it battling with Fernando Alonso, drawing the ire of the two time champion by pushig him wide at the exit of the pits during the safety car period. Vettel also was in the way as Raikonen passed Alonso and was then passed by Kimi on the following lap and was also passed by Jarno Trulli along the way. He got his eighth back when Trulli ran wide with a few laps to go and so scored his sixth point of the year. Bourdais had an unexciting afternoon and that seems to be his problem at the moment as the pressure mounts on the Frenchman. Trulli ended up ninth to finish a rather disappointing afternoon for Toyota. Trulli had started fourth but lost a place on lap 1. He was only average considering that he did not have the low fuel load in qualifying that we all had assumed he had. He ended up eighth but threw away a point with a silly error while teammate Timo Glock had the most dramatic accident we have seen in a while when his rear suspension failed on the exit of the final corner pitching the German into the pitwall at high speed. The Toyota was smashed and Timo speared across the race track leaving debris everywhere and coming to a rest on the outside of the track. Timo was winded and stunned but otherwise unhurt but it was obvious that the safety car was needed to clean up the mess. It was an unfortunate end to what had been a pretty good race up to that point with Timo running third at one point due to running very heavy and pitting late, he probably could have gotten a couple of points. Williams were equally disappointing althogh Nico Rosberg brought it home tenth while Kaz Nakajima having a much more eventful afternoon than necessary with a spin and running wide once, he ended up fifteenth of the seventeen runners. Red Bull also did not have a particularly notable afternoon. Mark Webber seemed to be up to his usual trick of quietly getting a point or two until his engine expired behind the Safety Car while David Coulthard was racing all afternoon with the Hondas. He was involved in the second most dramatic incident in the race when he collided with the overly excited Rubens Barichello, which broke both their front wings. DC continued and finsihed thirteenth while Barichello's damage was too much and he had to retire. The Incident was probably Rubens's fault, but it was hard to say really at that point. If Red Bull were bad, Honda were awful with both Barichello and Jenson Button well down the order. They did make it onto the screen a few times for their battles with each other and with Coulthard but while Rubens ended with an accident, Jenson ended up last of the runners having not taken the opportunity to get his lap back for some reason and was the only man a lap down while the Force India cars were slow as usual but stayed out of trouble (and off the TV screens) to come home fourteenth and sixteenth, Fisichella ahead of Sutil. Finally a word about Fernando Alonso who had an overly eventful day and ended up finishing eleventh from fifth on the grid. He spent the first part of the race squabbling with Trulli over fifth place. He lost out to Raikkonen and Heidfeld at the first round of stops and found himself fighting with Vettel. The nearly collided at the exit of the pits under the safety car, making Fernando a very angry boy. after that the Irate Spaniard seemed to have lost concentration and slipped down the order. He was so concerned with Vettel that he did not pay attention to Raikkonen who swooped past, unfortunately Fernado was so frustrated that he went wide at the exit of the hairpin and let Rosberg slip through. From then the demoralized spaniard cruised home under pressure from the other Toro Rosso of Seb Bourdais. This race ended up being really exciting, but it took a safety car to make it so and due to the nature of the track, being one where you can pass, there was some passing. Lewis Hamilton seemed determined all day that he would not lose this race, despite the adversity of having to pass people on the track. He has all sorts of momentum in the second half of the season and Ferrari will need to find something or Lewis will rocket away with the world championship.

F1 and IRL qualifying round up.

2008-07-19T15:08:00.004-04:00

So qualifying is done and everyone will get a clearer picture of who is fast and who is not at Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix and at Mid Ohio for the Honda Indy 200. In Germany it is Lewis Hamilton on pole from Massa and Kovalainen. We don't know how much fuel Lewis has, but judging by the first and third place grid spots for the McLarens they are making progress in relation to Ferrari. World Champion Kimi Raikkonen was a rather disappointing sixth on the grid, but at least Hockenheim is a track where one can pass. Fourth on the grid is an impressive Jarno Trulli, but we all know that Jarno is a great qualifier and an average racer, while he may be grandstanding a bit with a low fuel load. Teammate Timo Glock is a more realistic eleventh. Fifth was Fernando Alonso in his Renault, many believe him to be the best driver in F1 and so fifth place is probably out-performing is R28, while Nelson Piquet was disapointing 17th, one suspects that Flavio Briatore's patience may be running out with the Brazilian...... BMW were not great with Robert kubica seventh, after having an accident while Nick Heidfeld was 12th, despite claiming that his qualifying woes were over. Mark Webber, Sebastien Vettel, and David COulthard are 8th through tenth, highlighting a pretty good day for the Red Bull teams, Sebastien Bourdais is 15th. Williams and Honda were pretty dismal all things considering. Nico Rosberg was the best of the lot in thirteenth, while Kaz Nakajima is sixteenth. The Hondas are fourteenth and eighteenth with Button better than Barichello on this occasion. With Ross Brawn claiming that both men's jobs are probably safe for 2009, they don't seem to be overly motivated. The Force Indias occupy the back row as usual, with Sutil faster than Fisichella. With this being a home race for most people in some capacity (ze germans are everywhere!!!) this race should be very close.

In the IRL it was a Penske kind of day at Mid Ohio with Helio Castroneves taking pole from teammate Ryan Briscoe. Both men have been dialed in all weekend and I would not be surprised to see one of the Marlboro but not Marlboro cars in victory lane tomorrow. Penske's brilliance highlighted Ganassi's futility with Scott Dixon only managing to be sixth and Dan Wheldon missing out on the Q1 cut to start thirteenth. Both men will have their work cut out for them and it could be an opportunity for Castroneves to make up some points in the standings. Third is Marco Andretti who will start alongside Justin Wilson in a great performance for Newman/Haas/Lanigan. Justin Wilson will be very pleased with this result but the bad news is that he has to start next to Marco, who in recent races has shown us that wherever he goes there is a risk of an accident. The third row will be occupied by Tony Kanaan and the aforementioned Dixon. Missing the Q3 cut were an impressive Buddy Rice, who blew teammate Milka Duno out of the weeds (again), Oriol Servia, Bruno Junquiera in a great performance for Dale Coyne, Hideki Mutoh, Vitor Meira, and Will Power. Of the fourteen cars who missed the first cut, the most surprising are thirteenth placed Wheldon and twentieth placed Danica Patrick. Danica has not had a good weekend having gotten very angry with Milka Duno in this mornings practice and having gotten into it with the her in the pits. Reports vary of the exact nature of the altercation with some claiming that Danica spat in the face of Milka, and others claiming that it was more verbal with Milka throwing a towel at Danica. Either way it appears that Danica is into it again with the other drivers and there are some who are growing tired of her antics. Love her or hate her, her flare ups are good for publicity, but if in fact the did spit on Duno then she really has crossed the line. Getting into it verbally and even shoving people is one thing, but spitting on someone is one of the most degrading things someone can do and if this is true she should be punished by the IRL in some way. She will never be suspended as it would be terrible for publicity, but a fine or a grid penalty are possible. The cynics will say that Danica is immune to punishment from the IRL, but it would be worse for publicity if she got away with such an incident. Speaking of Duno she has been woefully slow all weekend and has really gotten in the way of people, including blocking and nearly colliding with Danica, the reason why Patrick was so irate. She is 1.3 second slower than the next slowest car, Marty Roth (which is saying something) and she has been farther off than that in most of the practise sessions. She is nothing more than a rolling chicane at this moment and if she didn't bring a truckload of money to the team she would have been fired long ago and replaced with the infinitely more competent Townsend Bell, but money talks and so Milka gets to drive and get in people's way. Milka came up through the road racing ranks, so being this slow is inexcusable in my mind. If the IRL was more financially secure both she and Marty Roth would have their racing licenses revoked. Hopefully she does not cause an accident while being lapped. The Mid Ohio people are expecting record crowds for this years race and hopefully it will be a good one.

Edit 6:20 PM EST It turns out that Danica did not spit on Milka, the story goes that she went down there to confront Duno about her driving and Milka told her to go away, things got a little heated and Milka through a towel at Danica. This did not go down too well and Danica proceded on a profanity laced tirade before being escorted away. If this was any other driver there would be fines handed out but because it is Danica nothing will happen. 8 drivers apparantly complained about Milka's driving, so maybe the IRL will talk to her.

Weekend Racing Preview

2008-07-18T10:31:00.003-04:00

There is lots of action in the racing world this weekend with Formula One at the one legendary not average Hockenheimring in Germany, the IndyCars at the brilliant Mid-Ohio sports car course, and with MotoGP at the Awesome Laguna Seca circuit.

I will start with F1 and the German Grand Prix. This was one the race track where power was everything with the long straights through the forest, but in 2002 someone decided that it was a good idea to shorten the course and the champion of making mediocre race tracks, Hermann Tilke, was called in to neuter the track. The current circuit is OK, one can overtake better, but the charm and character that made Hockenheim so unique is gone. The German fans have shared a similar opinion and with the track struggling to draw good crowds the circuit's financial fortunes have dimmed. Hockenheim used to be a place where the wealthier would sit in the nice stadium section while the average Fritz would be out camping in the woods, drinking copious amounts of beer and cheering on their Hero, Michael Schumacher. Now with the shortened circuit there is no opportunity for camping and the drinking time has been cut because you can see more of the track, and with that crowd you should never mess with the drinking time. The formula one people, who are rather detached from the reality of regular people, like the track and so the show must go on leaving the average German fan with an empty wallet (not conducive to heavy drinking) and with a second circuit they don't really like. This year at Hockenheim it appears that the McLaren's have a slight advantage over the Ferrari's, this judging by the first two practice sessions, and if we get another wet race it could be Lewis Hamilton's race to lose. The Englishman was awesome in the wet at Silverstone and with Ferrari falling over each other to screw things up there, he coasted to an easy victory. If conditions are similar this weekend one hopes that Ferrari won't pull the same ridiculous antics they did at Silverstone and may allow Kimi Raikkonen to compete with Lewis, as Felipe Massa's lack of wet weather skills are well documented. If the cock things up here as they did at Silverstone I imagine that heads will roll, as the Italians have never had much patience for this sort of thing. With the championship so finely balanced as it is, any little mistake can cost a driver big time at the end of the year, and one wonders why Kimi and Felipe are not on their team management to get her done they way that Michael Schumacher used to. In dry conditions I expect it to be much closer. The Ferrari is still the better car over all and in my mind Raikkonen is still the fastest driver in F1, so in dry conditions we may see a close battle at the front. It will be hard so tell because of the changing weather, but this should be an interesting battle. After the top two there comes BMW. Robert Kubica will want to rebound after having thrown away an armful of points at Silverstone while Nick Heidfeld swears his qualifying woes are over, honest! Unless something happens to the top two teams, I would be surprised to see a beemer on the podium here. Toyota and Red Bull appear to be pulling away slightly in the battle for best of the rest, although the Williams in the hands of Nico Rosberg has been high up on the charts recently. The tight nature of the midfield with Renault joining those four should make for some exciting racing and with Honda starting to show a little speed, there will be a tight battle for the minor points. Even Toro Rosso can challenge, but they tend to need chaotic races to do so and Force India, well are drifting even farther away from being ninth fastest. Could be a good race in Germany, but one gets the sinking feeling that it will be another average race.

On this side of the Atlantic the Indy Cars are racing at the Historic Mid-Ohio sports car course. 26 cars will take the green flag (hopefully, although Marty Roth may not get that far) and this will be another opportunity for the Chap Car transition teams to pick up points at the expense of the more oval oriented teams. Despite this I don't expect a whole lot of change at the front, as the top guns all have plenty of road course experience. I might suggest that this will be Helio Castroneves' opportunity to get his first win of the year, although those Ganassi boys will be tough to beat. They can't seem to do anything wrong and even at races like Nashville when things appeared to be going wrong for them, they come up smelling like roses. You have to be lucky to be good and you have to be good to be lucky, and everything appears to be going Target Chip Ganassi's way this year. AGR will also be a force to be reckoned with, as Tony Kannan and Marco Andretti have shown their abilities on road courses in the past, although Marco will have to get over his penchant for hitting things in order to get a good result. But when you consider that both Road Course races where the full field were competing have thrown up first time winners, we may see a surprise come through the field. If that happens my pick would be either Justin Wilson or Will Power. Both men were stars in Champ Car and both men have shown themselves to be very quick on road courses this year. Justin was running very well at both Long Beach and Watkins Glen when he suffered mechanical issues and one senses that this may be his time, while Will dominated at Long Beach and has shown to be very quick on road courses. This could be interesting as the men at the front will have to deal with much more competition than they are used to.

MotoGP will make it's first of two stops in the United States with the Red Bull USGP at Laguna Seca. One of the best motorcycle tracks in the world will be the venue and with things being very close at the front this race could be very exciting. Valentino Rossi is leading the standings, but third placed Casey Stoner has won the last three races and will be looking to continue his streak, while second placed Dani Pedrosa will be looking to rebound from his disappointing DNF in Germany last week. Couple that with Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden looking to impress on home soil, this could be a close race.

Lots of Good racing on offer this week, stay tuned for analysis here at Disgruntled racing critic.

News and Notes, July 17

2008-07-17T09:43:00.002-04:00

It has been a busy week in rumourmongerland with some interesting rumours, silly rumours and actual signings taking place as the silly season heats up.

We will start with an actual signing in F1, as one of the dominoes falls into place, and this one will come as no surprise to anyone who follows F1, and that is of course the announcement that Sebastien Vettel has signed to race for Red Bull racing starting next year, replacing the retiring David Coulthard. This has been one of the worst kept secrets on Formula One recently as it was obvious to anyone that Vettel would be a Red Bull driver next year, even before Coulthard announced his retirement. This should come as no surprise to anyone, seeing as Vettel is obviously extremely talented, and has been a Red Bull protege for a long time. The Vettel signing leads to the next obvious question, who will replace him at Toro Rosso next year? Gerhard Berger has already said that it is likely to be a rookie driver. The Obvious candidate has to be Bruno Senna who is doing very well in GP@ this year, is only 24, and oh yeah, he has that name. I am sure that Mr. E is salivating at the prospect of having a formula one series with names like Rosberg, Piquet, and Senna racing, although there is very little prospect of the Mansell name re-appearing it seems as the Mansell boys are not doing very well in Formula Atlantics, and at this point if you are struggling in that series your chances of making it big anywhere in open wheelers is pretty much shot. The other rumour, which in my mind seems rather silly, is a rumour that Giorgio Pantano will replace Sebastien Bourdais and partner Senna at Toro Rosso. Bourdais has not been bad in F1 this year, but he has been beaten rather badly by Vettel, who is tipped as the next German superstar by none other than Michael Schumacher. Pantano is leading the GP2 championship, but his first go at Formula One with Jordan in 2004 was a bust and he is 28, which is old in Formula One years. I have yet to be convinced as to why this is a realistic possibility, but I could be proven wrong.

Farther up the grid some interesting rumours are starting to come out as to who will partner Lewis Hamilton next year at McLaren. Current McLaren man Heikki Kovalainen has been blown out of the weeds by Hamilton most of the year and ROn Dennis has made it no secret that he wants Nico Rosberg in the seat and the Mercedes-Benz folk want someone a little more German than Kovalainen, although many people forget that Rosberg is actually German. Rosberg has a contract with Williams through 2009 and Sir Frank Williams has publicly stated that Rosberg ain't going anywhere. On the other side Rosberg has publicly said that contracts don't mean a whole lot and that he wants to go to Macca as it would obviously be his best chance at winning races. This promises to end messily with either a fistfight between Ron Dennis and Patrick Head (which I would pay big money to see), or a protracted legal battle that will end at the mysterious contract recongition board. If McLaren do manage to poach Rosberg from Williams then it would probably cost them a ton of money in compensation and would make them look very bad indeed. Stay tuned for this one as it promises to get really interesting.

Finally another tidbit of information, the on and off again NASCAR racer and ex world champion Jacques Villeneuve will be back in the cockpit of one of those beasts at the Nationwide series event in Montreal. This will obviously help marketing the event, but knowing Jacques' F1 record at his home track, I don't expect much to be honest.

Mondayish news and rumour roundup, July 15

2008-07-15T16:12:00.004-04:00

Sorry for posting a day late readers, I am sure that both of you are disappointed. Here is my roundup of news and rumours from the past eight days.

I will start with the most important piece of news, that is that of the return of a legend to the cockpit of a race car. I am talking of course of the one and only Sakon Yamamoto, who will replace Luca Filippi at the ART GP2 team. Yamamoto will bring a small fortune of experience to the team to replace the rather lackluster Filippi, who is a Honda F1 test driver as well. We will see how this pans out for Super Sakon, but one hopes it will be a springboard for a return to F1.

In other news Paul Tracy's comeback to IndyCars is confirmed with the announcement that he will run a Subway sponsored car for the Grand Prix of Edmonton in two weeks time. His car will be owned by Tony George's Vision racing program but Run by Derrick Walker with a view to run more races. What is more significant is that the car is sponsored by Subway, a huge corporation who may be convinced to up their sponsorship to allow Paul to run the rest of the season. Paul is a great character and someone that the IRL needs for PR purposes, even if he is washed up and accident prone.

Elsewhere fellow canuck Alex Tagliani appears to be on the verge of joining Conquest racing to replace Enrique Bernoldi. Conquest team owner Eric Bachelart is said to be unhappy with Bernoldi's performance and attitude and maybe the Ex-Arrows man has let the fact that he was once an F1 driver get to his head.

Gerry Forsythe is returning to open wheel racing as a team owner with the announcement that he will be running an Indy Lights team (the IRL equivalent of GP2) starting in 2009. This could be good news for the series as it may be seen as the start of an Indy Car team sometime down the road.

In F1 the future of the Honda driver lineup remains ever in doubt as Ross Brawn has been blatantly trying to avoid the issue recently, allowing the regular rumour mongers to have a field day trying to tell us who may not have their contract renewed. Rubens Barichello has been surprisingly quick all season while Jenson Button has been decidedly crap. At the start of the season it was assumed that RUbens would be out and Jenson the main man at Honda, but this season has clouded that.

ADDED JULY 16

Sarah Fisher racing has found a sponsor for two races this year, and that sponsor is Dollar General Stores, an American chain of Cheap-stuff stores with over 8,000 outlets across the US. This is great news as everyone's favourite hard working owner-driver (I do not consider Marty Roth hard working or a driver) will definetly be able to race in two races this year, Kentucky and Chicagoland, and she may be able to line them up as a sponsor to run the whole season next year. This is great news for her and for the IRL as the series continues to bring in big name sponsors like Subway and Dollar General. Sarah Fisher is a great ambassador for the sport and an inspirational story of hard work paying off.

Stay tuned for more news and rumours here as preparations get underway for the German Grand Prix and for the Indycar race at Mid-Ohio.

Indycar snorefest at Nashville

2008-07-13T10:41:00.002-04:00

I am going to start by saying that I am not the world's biggest fan of Oval racing, especially not the four hour snoozers of NASCAR, but I do occasionally watch an IndyCar series oval race and find it genuinely exciting, Texas this year was an example, but last nights processional at Nashville was definitely not one of those races. The track is notorious for being tough to pass on because it has a concrete surface, making it extremely slippery. This race was also coupled with the fact that there was a threat of rain the whole night, something which ultimately stopped the race 30 laps early and so the winners were the ones who gambled late on and this time it was the Chip Ganassi drivers Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon, who elected not to pit for fuel and tyres 60 laps from the scheduled end under caution when everyone else did. This gave them vital track position and on a track where you can't pass they ran 1-2 when the race restarted and prayed for rain. They got it just in time as they would have had to pit within five laps of the red flag coming out, which would have handed the race to third placed Helio Castroneves. The rest of the race was one which was relatively incident free with only two crashes taking place, the first when the over eager Marco Andretti lost it on lap four and collided with the unfortunate Ryan Briscoe and the other when Ryan Hunter-Reay got bottled up in traffic, went into the marbles, and smacked the wall hard. The rest of the time was a procession of cars following each other with the only passing coming as a result of drivers losing momentum in traffic. On lap 135 or so the Safety Car came out because of slight moisture on the track and when the race restarted the only real pass took place all night when Helio Castroneves in fifth place got a great jump on the restart-challenged Danica Patrick to swoop by into fourth and then carried that momentum down the back straight where he got a tow from a backmarker and swooped into third in front of Tony Kanaan. Brazilian taxi drivers would be proud the way he cut TK off like that. Unfortunately despite a faster car all he could do from there was hope that the rain held off long enough to force the Ganassi cars to pit, which did not happen. So Scott Dixon won his third straight race at Nashville to extend his lead in the championship over Castroneves to 63 points but it was all due to sheer luck of the weather. Dixon and Wheldon played the Gambler at Nashville and came up aces, Kenny Rodgers would be proud.

Weekend racing Preview

2008-07-11T11:21:00.003-04:00

There is no Formula One this weekend, but there is IRL racing in Nashville and MotoGP in Germany to speak of. I will start with the Indy Cars and they will be back on another oval track, this one with a concrete surface, making it more difficult to drive. There will only be 24 cars taking the green flag this weekend as Mario Dominguez's Pacific Coast team has not shown up, EJ Viso has contracted the mumps, yes the mumps, and in such short notice HVM will not field a replacement driver while Marty Roth's antics continue as he has decided not to field a second car for Jay Howard or John Andretti and he will be the only driver for his team. Assuming he crashes sometime in practice, the odds he will start the race are low and we may only see 23 cars at the start of the race as opposed to the 26 we have seen in the last few races. Roth's antics have really made an ass out of himself and his team. He has been black flagged for dangerous driving, he has been painfully slow, and he has crashed numerous times. Three DNS's from 9 races he entered due to accidents is simply unacceptable if the IRL wants to be taken seriously and although the best efforts of Brian Barnhart, the chief steward of the IRL, to sit him down, he is still allowed to race due to the fact that he has an IRL license. The problem facing the IRL is that they want to have as many entries as possible and if they revoke Mad Dog Marty's license he will probably take his toys and go home (aka close down his team) and the IRL does not want to lose an extra entries. Marty's midlife crisis of racing in the IRL appears only to be stoppable by a serious injury to Marty or the death of a fellow competitor due to an accident caused by his bad driving, which is a black mark against the lead (fancy how his car is all black). Roth has the business sense and racing experience to run a succesful race team without him driving, but his arrogance and desire to "live the dream" will hold ROth racing back. I would be surprised if we see much more of this team in the future and would be surprised to see them on the grid full time in 2009, although we may see him at Indy again next year. Let's just hope he doesn't qualify. On the track in Nashville I don't expect to see many surprises up front with Ganassi, Penske, and Andretti-Green taking the top few positions. One of the small teams like Rahal-Letterman, Panther, or Newman/Haas/Lanigan may get a top five, but with the big three so strong on the ovals I would be surprised. After a disastrous race at Watkin's Glen I tip the Ganassi boys, Dixon and Wheldon, to win this week, although the perenially strong, but unlucky Helio Castroneves could contend, not to mention Kanaan and Marco Adretti at Andretti-Green who could be right there.

On two wheels the MotoGP riders will be challenging the hills of the Sachensring in Germany. The humerously named Casey Stoner arrives with the momentum of having won the last two races but still trails championship leader Dani Pedrosa by 29 points, who has been on the podium in 8 of the 9 races this year, and in the other race he was fourth. Gazillion-times world Champion Valentino Rossi is second in the standings only four points behind Pedrosa and the "old man" of motorcycle racing (old being relative as he is 29) has plenty of experience and can never be counted out. He hasn't won a title since 2005, an epic drought in Rossi terms, and he will be Jonesing to get the number 1 back on his bike and after having finished a season worst 11th at Assen two weeks ago he will be hard charging to get his championship lead back. The race should come down to those three men, although rookie Jorge Lorenzo could pull a surprise, should be interesting.

In Indycar news and notes it appears that Paul Tracy is all but confirmed to race for Vision racing in a car run by Derrick Walker. The car is ready, sponsorship is there, PT just has to put pen to paper on the deal. The stumbling block appears to be money and Paul's ego (surprise, surprise), but the deal is expected to be done very soon. Another Canadian, Alex Tagliani, also appears to be close to making a return to open wheel racing. The Champ Car veteran has been in the motor racing purgatory of the NASCAR Canadian tire series and has been linked with a move to Conquest racing to replace the perenially useless Enrique Bernoldi. Team Owner Eric Bachelart is apparantly unimpressed with the ex Arrows-F1 man's performances and his attitude. Tag also claimed he had recieved offers from two teams. although it is unknown if one of those two was the Vision deal or if it was from someone else. We will see how this plays out, but the Edmonton organizers will want a big name Canadian driver, with all offence intended to Marty Roth.

Oh, and there is a NASCAR race somewhere in the US, I think Chicago.

Monday Morning news and rumour roundup: July 7

2008-07-07T11:59:00.005-04:00

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.

IndyCar excitement at Watkin's Glen.

2008-07-06T18:02:00.002-04:00

After watching an epic F1 race this morning, it was the Indy Car boys and girls' turn to put on a show at Watkin's Glen this afternoon. This race did not need rain, all it had were a few incidents, close racing, good passing, a great circuit and a first time winner, a recipe for an entertaining afternoon. There was plenty to talk about with some controversial incidents, and not just involving the usual gang of idiots at the back as usual, this time some big names made big mistakes, as well as the cock ups by the incompetent backmarkers. The former champ car drivers and teams were hoping to get some valuable points and it looked promising in qualifying with Justin Wilson lining up second and Oriol Servia fifth on the grid. Penske's Ryan Briscoe was fast all weekend and duly took pole from Wilson, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Championship leader Scott Dixon, and Servia. The start was particularly exciting with Justin Wilson making a poor getaway and Dixon getting a good one, passing bot Hunter-Reay and Wilson to be second and right on Briscoes rear wing, a place he would stay most of the afternoon. Further back poor old Dan Wheldon had all sorts of trouble, being hit by Darren Manning and breaking his suspension, Wheldon would pit for lengthy repairs and emerge for a sunday drive 18 laps down to collect some points before getting bored and retiring. Second place man in the championship Helio Castroneves had the weekend from hell and it continued in the race. He started 26th and last after breaking down in qualifying and was working his way through the riff-raff when he had an electronic glitch and had to try to limp back to the pits, he almost made it when his car stopped at the pitlane entrance and he had to be pushed back to his pit to get a new steering wheel and to be restarted. This process became a comedy of errors of sorts and a furious Castroneves had to wait for first an attempt to borrow pit crew guys from Roth racing, who had nothing to do as Marty Roth had a stroke of genius and decided not to start. So poor Helio was in the Roth pit with the dollar store pit mechanics from Roth racing trying frantically to do something, which they could not do and Helio was frantically waving his arms for someone competent to come and help him. By the time this happened the hapless Helio was two laps down and had to spend his afternoon racing drivers he was not used to racing, hoping one of them would not screw up and take him out, a legitimate concern. Helio's dramatics unnecessarily brought out the Safety Car and it appeared to make little difference, but for the fact that the AJ Foyt team and their driver Darren Manning pitted and put themselves out of sequence. When the race restarted Briscoe and Dixon rocketed away once again and ran nose to tail for a while. After some green flag stops the order remained Briscoe, Dixon, Hunter-Reay, and Tony Kanaan with Manning doing a good job to stay out of trouble, more on him soon. On lap 39 the Dunce caps started to come out. The first incident causing a Safety Car occured when EJ Viso and the horrendously unlucky Vitor Meira collided, an accident that was decidedly Viso's fault. While Meira ended up in the wall furious Viso continued and was the recipient of some harsh words back in the pits by the livid Meira. This caused the Safety Car to come out (the only legitimate caution in the race) and everyone pitted, except for Darren Manning who had gambled on fuel. He had pitted on lap 30 and the Safety car came out just in time for him to try to save fuel and go to the end while the Ganassi pit got Dixon out ahead of Hunter-Reay and Briscoe, who found himself down in fourth. Meanwhile in the pits Danica Patrick looked decidedly amateurish by spinning in the pits and nearly taking out some of Dixon's mechanics. She lost her front wing and had to pit again, and to add insult to injury she was dinged with a drive-through penalty for hitting pit equipment, a forgettable day for Danica. At the restart there was trouble at the back when Enrique Bernoldi, being up to the same old tricks he got up to in F1, crashed on his own at the first turn. He was well out of the way and there was no need for a safety car but lo and behold it came out again and kept the field slow, with Manning leading from Dixon, Briscoe, Hunter-Reay and Kanaan. This safety car period was when the real action began. It first started down in the boot on the lap that we were supposed to go back to green when at the back the horrendously incompetend Milka Duno decided to ignore her mirrors and swerved and slowed right in front of the only slightly more talented AJ Foyt IV, taking both drivers out. Foyt was furious, Duno ran and hid, and we were stuck with a few more laps behind the Safety car to clean up this mess. We were still under caution two laps later when there was more drama, this time at the front where Dixon had a major brain fart and spun while heating up his tyres and collecting the luckless Briscoe who broke his front wing. Both men were able to continue but had to go to the back of the pack. A sheepish Dixon was man enough to take the blame and apologize to Briscoe after the race while a disappointed Briscoe nobly took the "shit happens" approach to the incident and went about his business, noble sportsmanship. All these shenanigans resulted in more sleep inducing caution laps as the order was now Manning, Hunter-Reay, Kanaan, Buddy Rice, and Marco Andretti who for a change managed to stay out of trouble. The race restarted with 10 laps to go and speaking of sleep, Manning must have dozed off during the protracted safety car period and was jumped by Hunter-Reay who just blew by him and built up a 1.8 second lead after just one lap while Manning had to fend off Kanaan. The green flag running lasted all of one lap before rookie Jaime Camara fucked up and crashed in the boot. He probably could have been moved without a safety car, but this being the trigger happy IRL the caution flew once more. It was only for two laps before the safety car peeled off and Hunter-Reay peeled off in the lead leaving Manning in his dust. Hunter-Reay duly cruised to victory from Manning, who had to deal with a mirror full of Tony Kanaan, an impressive Buddy Rice, and Marco Andretti, who tried desperately to get by Rice in the final laps. Ryan Hunter-Reay duly won his first race in the IRL (although he had two wins in Champ Car in 2003 and 2004) and Rahal-Letterman's first win since Buddy Rice won at Michigan back in 2004. Darren Manning recorded his best ever IRl finish with a second place and the only driver from the big three to get to the podium was Tony Kannan with a third place. It was an exciting race with some great battles and a great turnout ensured that Indycar racing is slowly making a comeback. Hunter-Reay has had a great season and the marketable American driver is just what the series needs to help publicity, it's just too bad that he isn't a woman in that regard.

British Grand Prix Review: Hamilton Creams the field

2008-07-06T09:47:00.003-04:00

It's amazing what a little rain can do to spice up a Grand Prix these days. The weather separated the men from the boys in terms of the drivers and most importantly for the changing conditions, the strategists and in that respect Ferrari got it spectacularly wrong while Honda, McLaren, and BMW got it impressively right. It seems to me that the strategy woes we saw from Ferrari today would not have happened a few years ago when Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher ran the show and despite the fastest car in F1 this year they are throwing points away needlessly with silly strategy mistakes and in Felipe Massa's case, absolutely awful driving in the wet. But at the front, one can't go anywhere without heaping praise on Lewis Hamilton and McLaren. Lewis was simply brilliant right from the getgo making a great start going from fourth to second and then sweeping past teammate Kovalainen, the polesitter on lap four and setting off on his way. World Champion Kimi Raikkonen drove very well and closed right on Lewis coming up to the first pitstops, where McLaren got it right and Ferrari got it horribly wrong. The conventional wisdom was that more rain was coming and that new Inters was the way to go. ITV had talked to Ross Brawn who predicted rain and numerous radio contacts were predicting rain, which logically should have meant that new Tyres were the way to go. McLaren went for it, but Ferrari reckoned that it would dry out and kept Kimi on the same tyres. The result was that two laps later it started to rain (as predicted) and Kimi was suddenly left horribly screwed on worn out tyres lapping 6-7 seconds slower than those on new rubber. This led to the next strategy error on Ferrari's part where if they pitted again for new tyres then Kimi could start to recover, but instead they kept him out as he continued to lose truckloads of time before his stop. Martin Brundle reckoned that he lost forty seconds in the course of this. Kimi later pitted and drove brilliantly to recover to fourth, but without those crucial strategy mistakes a podium was probably on offer for the world champion. While Ferrari were tripping over themselves to lose the race, the door was opened for other drivers to step up to the plate, something that both Nick Heidfeld and Rubens Barichello did. Nick did not have a good first few laps and has not been great in the last few races but here he was awesome, scything through the field with some brilliant passes to get up to second by the end, just the confidence boost Nick needs. Rubens was, after Hamilton, undoubtedly the driver of the day who started from 16th and cut through the field with the help of some strategy genius from Ross Brawn pushed him up to the podium, and he could have been second had he not had a problem with his second stop and had to make a third. Rubens' first podium since 2005 was just what the doctor ordered for Honda. With Rubens dialed in this year at Honda and with Jenson Button spinning off again, the pressure may be getting to the Englishman and he may find himself on the outside looking in at the end of the year....... After Raikkonen came polesitter Kovalainen, who had a much more eventful race than he and McLaren would have liked. He had a couple of spins, he had to battle his way back, including a ding-dong battle with Fernando Alonso at the end, ultimately winning out over the two time champion. Jarno Trulli ended up seventh, after another solid performance. Jarno kept out of trouble and passed Kaz Nakajima at the end to take the two points. After years of inconsistent driving and of drivers stuck behind the "Trulli train" Jarno has really settled in this year and has kept picking up the points. Kaz Nakajima kept the car in one piece and ended up eighth to score a point. The Japanese driver had a few hairy moments with a few spins but didn't hit anything and ended up in the points at the end, beating his teammate Rosberg again (who made mistakes and DID hit something). Nico is supposed to be the undisputed star of Williams, but he has continually blotted his copybook with mistakes and shunts while the supposedly wilder Nakajima has kept the car on the road and keeps picking up minor points. Maybe everyone just assumed that Nakajima would be a wild driver due to the reputation of other Japanese drivers over the years, but Kaz has really shown himself to be a good choice this year. With Rosberg and Nakajima tied on 8 points, Nico's star is waning badly at the moment. 10th place went to Mark Webber, but that could have been much better had the Aussie not made a series of errors. The first and most dramatic was on the first lap when he spun in front of the field and was lucky not to have been run over. He was then last and proceeded to drive spectacularly through the field, overtaking drivers left and right, but another spin and some strategy issuses left Mark back in the pack, battling still with Seb Bourdais. Speaking of Bourdais, the Frenchman had another unremarkable afternoon to finish 11th. He only had one spin, which in such circumstances should have helped him get to the points but the fact is that he was just plain slow. Maybe his time in Champ Car and limited wet weather running was a real detriment in the race or maybe Vettel has just been that good and overdriving the car. He did finish ahead of Timo Glock, who had numerous spins and Felipe Massa, the championship leader. Where does one begin with the horror show that was Massa's race. OK, so we all know that Felipe is not great in the wet, but he was spinning more times than I can remember from him since he was driving a Sauber in 2002. Felipe, in my mind, drove absolutely terribly and it was not just a case of bad tyre strategy that hampered him, he was simply slow and error prone all day. This type of off day is one reason why most pundits, myself included, don't rate his chances of the World Championship very highly. Felipe is brilliant when everything goes his way, but facing adversity he still often collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane and with Kimi working hard to recover and with Lewis driving the balls off his McLaren in adverse conditions, the Brazilian seems to find himself on the back foot again, despite being still tied for the championship lead. He will need to be better in wet weather and adverse conditions if he ever wants to be World Champion. The fact that only seven drivers retired despite all the spinning race cars is a credit to the safety of silverstone. The first out were David Coulthard in his final British Grand Prix, and Sebastien Vettel, who qualified an excellent ninth. These two collided on the first lap in an incident that looked to be DC's fault. Not the way the Scot wanted his final British Grand Prix to end. The only contender to retire was Robert Kubica, who spun off on lap 39, but he was being beaten by teammate Heidfeld. This was a chance for RObert to pick up some quality points but he threw it away. He has been virtually mistake free all season while the other top guns were busy screwing thing up so he can be forgiven this time, but this is the kind of race that Robert needs to capitalize on if he wants to compete for the championship. Nelson Piquet and Jenson Button also went off, with no-one really expecting the rookie Piquet to do well in such conditions, but spinning off will do nothing to ease the pressure on him while Button threw away a potential points paying position in a silly manner, with Rubens now on 11 point so his 3, Jenson may be starting to feel the heat. The less said about Force India the better. Sutil, who thrives on these conditions, was up to 12th, before having a dramatic spin that could have led to a massive accident with Bourdais had Seb not reacted well, while Fisichella had a lazy spin while being lapped by Lewis. A chance at potential valuable points wasted.

All in all it was an exciting and dramatic race and everyone seemed to have a good time, everyone except Ferrari that is. The modern Ferrari team is not the dream team that we were used to seeing under Michael Schumacher. This team is one that lets it's Italian emotions get ahead of cool heads and sound decisions. Since Brawn and Schumi left the team we have seen a marked increase in strategic errors from the Prancing Horse while Ross has taking his strategic genius to Honda, who despite a lousy car are picking up valuable points when the come on offer and now Rubens has a solid 11 points and the team has 14, one behind Renault. I still reckon that Kimi Raikkonen is the championship favourite, but Lewis and McLaren can still pinch it if the team continues to throw away points like this, exactly in the way that Kimi pinched the title from McLaren last year. With three driver tied at the top on 48 point we could be in for another grandstand finish to the world championship. F1 has not been this exciting since the days of Senna, Prost, Piquet, and Mansell.

Weekend Racing Preview.

2008-07-03T13:34:00.006-04:00

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.

Monday Morning Rumour Roundup-June 30th

2008-06-30T13:03:00.003-04:00

In the past week we have seen a lot of news and rumours surrounding Indy Cars and Formula One, here are my two cents on some of these.

F1 released it's 2009 Schedule with no USGP at Indy despite Tony George's repeated claims that he will have a race if he can get a sponsor. The only problem is that due to the 2005 debacle and the fact that Tony George is an arrogant twat, major sponsors are unwiliing to pay the necessary amount of money for a race in a series that is not really on the radar of the average American. This is also coupled with the fact that the Indy circuit is derided as being dull by many people and that Big Bad Bernie does not think that F1 needs a race in the US, so American F1 fans do not get your hopes up about a race being held at Indy, which would be a great shame as there are a lot more American F1 fans than the Europeans in charge of F1 are willing to admit exist.

Bruno Senna looks to be close to signing a deal to become BMW Sauber's test and reserve driver next year. F1 really wants That name in F1 they way that they wanted the Villeneuve name back in 1996 and BMW are looking to the future, and that could be a future without Nick Heidfeld. No offence to Quick Nick, but you have been er, not so quick this year getting blown out of the weeds by Robert Kubica in most races and having qualified well down the order in the last few days Herr Theissen may be looking for a new driver. Nick has usually out-performed his car wherever he has been in F1 and I am sure he will land on his feet somewhere in F1 if he gets sacked by BMW, but it will probably not be with a frontrunning team. Honda or Toyota would be a possibility but every succesive race he drives like a useless muppet, his stock drops and if it continues he could become a member of the "what have you done for me lately" club.

There has been more news regarding Max Mosely's shenanigans, but I don't really need to comment on that further as this whole affair has denigrated into the "too much information" zone.

In the IRL the rumours of a Paul Tracy return seem imminent as last night Robin Miller reported that the thrill from West Hill was close to signing a deal to run four road-course races in a Derrick Walker/Tony George funded and operated team. If this happens then it would be great news for the series as Paul is one of the all-time great characters of North American open wheel racing and he was right royally screwed over by Gerry Forsythe at the start of this season when the former Champ Car owner waffled on whether or not to enter the IRL as Paul watched all the good drives get taken by less competent drivers. Paul was later offered a drive if he brought money, but his almighty ego prevented him from becoming a pay driver and he rejected it, but it seems as though he has had a change of heart.

David Coulthard's future is up in the air as the 37 year old will probably be replaced by Sebastein Vettel at Red Bull for next year. The rumours of potential jobs for DC have varied from the realistic to the stupid. He has been linked as a potential BBC comentator for next year, which makes a lot of sense as he is very intelligent and opinionated while the rumour of him buying a 50% stake in Scuderia Torro ROsso next year seems rather silly as he probably does not have THAT much money and he said himself that he could not afford to spend $200 million per year on a team. DC may be a little bad at math($200 Million is an exaggerated figure), but he is not stupid enough to think that he can afford to support a team on the long term. He has also been linked as a potential replacement for Vettel as a driver at STR but I doubt that Red Bull will want the aging veteran down there when they could fill the seat with a talented youngster, although Sebastien Bourdais' seat may be up for grabs........

Not a heck of alot else happened of note, Franck Montagny, a former F1 Jack of all trades has become a north american based Jack of All trades by signing a one-race deal with Andretti-Green to run in the ALMS at Lime Rock Park while rumours abound about Dario Franchitti's future as he is being destroyed race in, race out in NASCAR and he may come back to the IRL or he may go to the ALMS for next year. In the IRL Jay Howard will be back behind the wheel at ROth racing for the six remaining road races, although he will be replacing John Andretti not Marty Roth, which should happen. And finally Murray Walker has been given a star on Birmingham's walk of fame. The Brummie walk is less famous than the one in hollywood, it is still a great honour for the greatest english-language F1 commentator in history, congratulations Murray!!!!!!

Rock-'Em Sock-'Em Racing at Richmond

2008-06-29T11:46:00.008-04:00

The IRL ran it's shortest track of the season and it showed last night as many drivers made the utmost effort to look like complete idiots and to cost their team owners a lot of money in the process. This race also highlighted the jarring fact that the IRL spends far too much time behind the safety car in their races and with all the crashes and incidents last night, the viewer was left bored by seeing cars trundle around at slow speeds, no wonder people are changing the channel instead. Case in point of this was right at the start when in the run toward the Green flag Ryan Hunter-Reay spun and did not hit anything. Ok so they brought out the safety car and he got up to speed and by the time the cars had come around once he at the back of the pack and they could have gone green after two laps, but no the IRL decided to keep the Safety Car out for SIX frickin' laps, with no debris on the track, no cars in the wall, nothing. So we waited and got bored until the cars rolled out again and the rookies starting hitting things and taking each other out and the veterans looked like muppets, Marty Roth got in the way but managed to avoid hitting anything and Tony Kanaan won the race from Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon. Not a whole lot notable happened but here is the list of people who stuffed their cars into the wall: Will Power, AJ Foyt IV, Ed Carpenter (after having been hit by John Andretti) Bruno Junqueira, Buddy Rice, Ryan Briscoe, John Andretti (who this time took Oriol Servia with him), Graham Rahal (again), Mario Moraes, Ryan Hunter-Reay (whose second boob actually took him out), and Jaime Camara. This crash-fest saw 9 Safety Car periods for 102 laps (a Third of the Frickin' race and they probably could run 25-30 fewer laps behind the SC). The IRL was a dud, at least there was a good crowd, but if you like crashes-filled races then it was a good one and with the IRL going to Watkin's Glen (a real race track) next week there should be some more thrills and spills.

Oh and on a side note, congratulations to Patrick Carpentier for getting his first pole in NASCAR sprint cup, this will not result in me watching the race, but I will check the results afterwards to see how you did, and in my case that is impressive enough.

Hey, a new way for me to complain about the motorsports world.

2008-06-26T20:03:00.003-04:00

So here we go. This new column/blog/waste of webspace of mine is here for me to speak my mind on various topics in the motorsport world without risking getting my ass banned from internet forums. Many of you will know me as Senor Soup, Senorsoupe, or some other unimaginative variation of two words I put together while drinking to create an internet name and may (or may not) be surprised by the content of this blog as I generally am nice and polite on the forums, but I have decided I feel like giving more opinionated race previews, reviews, news analysis, dog poo on a stick, and other such fun things to read about motorsports and the likes. So sit back, enjoy, get offended if you so desire, although I do not strive to offend anyone, although I may say some less than nice things about your favourite driver/team/personality or any other such subject in motorsport.

As there is no Formula One this week and I would rather take a power drill to my own testicles than watch NASCAR I will start by previewing the upcoming IndyCar race at Richmond. Some of my European friends will wonder why I like IndyCars and not NASCAR and I will say that even on ovals, the IRL has a habit of producing some pretty good races. Partly due to the speed, partly due to the fact that the races are shorter, partly due to the smaller size of the cars being more conducive to overtaking and partly because the commentators and drivers tend to be capable of mastering the English language. So on we go.

The Indycars will be racing at the 0.75 mile oval at Richmond this year and due to the fact that there are now 26 cars on the grid (assuming Marty Roth makes it through practice without destroying his car this time, which is far from a safe assumption) this race will probably be pretty exciting. The IRL races at the shorter ovals this year have been pretty exciting with lots of overtaking and close racing and Richmond tended to produce good racing before the influx of new cars. The drama will be further increased by the presence of a whole pile of new mobile chicanes, people who would probably fail a road test, and other such "racing drivers" that the IRL has decided to give racing licenses to. Maybe they need to hire new racing license evaluators because the current ones do not seem to be doing a good job. But when your Tony George and have totally run North American open wheel racing into the sewer and essentially have to beg drivers to race with any kind of favours possible, you can't be too picky, even if it means risking the lives of real race-car drivers. I guess that is the cost of doing business in the eyes of Mr. George and his dumb-assed cronies in Indianapolis. I kind of wish that IRL racing was not as exciting as it is, then maybe I could turn my television off and feel good about flipping Tony George the virtual bird, but shucks darn those guys are good racers. So now that my first Anti-Tony George rant is out of the way (there will be more) it is time to actually talk about the upcoming race. Richmond is a track that can throw up some wild-cards and the boys and girls of Penske, Ganassi, and AGR will have to look over their shoulders at some of the smaller teams that have been impressive of late. The most impressive of them has to be John Andretti driving for Roth Racing. He finished 11th in the last race in Iowa, but could have finished higher had he not been driving for a team that is run by a useless hack of a driver on a shoestring budget who are stuck with the no-name brand of mechanics and pit crew members (for the unaware, no-name brand is a brand of cheap food available here in Canada that is only purchased by students and the unemployed and is probably hazardous to the health). John Andretti also has a great record at this track in NASCAR and has a truckload of experience racing everything and anything, he will surprise. Other drivers with the potential to do well include Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had a chance to win in Texas only to be taken out by one of Marco Andretti's many rookie mistakes, Ed Carpenter, who could do really well if only he was a better driver, and Vitor Meira who has been criminally unlucky. This race will also feature a large number of accidents due to the small nature of the track and the lack of talent in many of the cars, so someone could strike it lucky.

Thanks for reading (if anyone does) and I hope to read some of your comments. For the Indy Car fans out there I am going to start a new contest, called the "what lap will Marty Roth crash on" contest. Place your bets via comments and I will post a table of sorts, once I come up with a points type system. An answer of "won't crash" is acceptable, although not bloody likely, an answer of "DNS due to accident" is also acceptable and much more likely!!!

Cheers
Senor Soup