The Lap Times

X-ed Up: Going For A Spin Around Silverstone

2011-03-13T15:08:00.001Z

If you ever get the chance to be whisked around Silverstone in a KTM X-Bow do it. Don’t hestitate, climb in (avoiding the fire extinguisher which will nestle betwixt your legs once your seated) and strap in (or get strapped in, that’s closer to the truth).

It was exactly this privilege I got at the annual media launch for the British Formula Three and GT Championships, thanks to the SRO Motorsports Group who run the series, the nice people organising the day and Marcus Clutton – the all-important man in the driving seat.

Now, in the spirit of total disclosure I have been a round Silverstone at pace before – in a Lotus Evora. However, that was a road going sportscar. The KTM, while you might still be able to drive it on the road would stretch the definition of “road car” to new lengths.

The sensations are totally different to the Lotus. In the KTM Marcus is less willing to take to the teeth chattering kerbs, particularly on corner exit. There is none of the feeling that you need to brace your feet against the footwell under braking I remember for the Lotus, though that is replaced with simply incredible wind noise and force as your head forces its own unaerodynamic way through the air. My be-helmeted bonce is chucked every which way down the Hanger Straight, including the disconcerting amount of lift as the air tries to take the helmet off.

One think you notice around Silverstone is that the corners all appear very tight compared to when you see them on TV. The Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel sweeps look like little more than mild inconveniences to straight line speed for an F1 car. Approach them in a KTM and they all look like hairpins – it gives you a whole new appreciation for the downforce allowing F1 cars to change direction the way they do.

Having been around Silverstone last year, there is one piece of track I’m particularly interested in as it’s new – the new Arena section.

Blitzing past the new pits – now only a few months from their official opening – the right-hander at Abbey is preceded by a lift, maybe a dab of brake for an apex speed of about 100mph in the KTM (I haven’t a clue how quick that is compared to a proper race lap), it’s about the same pace through left kink at Farm – it’s all too apparent why the high-speed corner loving Red Bulls of last year were so suited to these corners.

At the twin hairpins at Village and The Loop the road suddenly seems to narrow – if drivers are brave enough to run side-by-side from the first corner to here, then expect accidents a-plenty. There is also the chance of a bit of controversy – find yourself in an untenable position on the outside, and a straight hop across the run-off misses three corners and takes you out onto the Wellington (nee National) straight.

Out of the The Loop the left-hander at Aintree is simply an acceleration zone. It’s down into Brooklands that I notice the fastest speed – just shy of 120mph. It might not be that quick, but it’s more than enough to get the juices flowing.

The run into Stowe is almost certainly faster, but I’m too busy trying to keep my head still to glance at the digital speedo’ on the centre of the dashboard.

Running into Copse at the start of the third lap, the speed again, is just over 100mph….

Then it all goes a bit wrong.

Spinning from the passenger is a strange sensation – there’s obviously none of the steering feedback to gauge the car on, so as the back comes round a little, then snaps round the rest of the way, your balance has to race to catch up. I distinctly remember pointing sideways, maybe backwards, across the track, then rolling backwards across the tarmac run-off, me glancing over my shoulder to see where the strip of gravel on the outside is. I will never say ill of the FIA’s massive run-offs again.

As Marcus spins the tyres to get going again he lifts his hand off the gear lever in the centre of the car in apology. I couldn’t give a damn!

The spin, leads to a more cautious approach to the rest of the lap. Speed into Stowe the final time is dampened by the need to remove the run-off crud from the tyres (and even then there’s the merest hint that another spin is not very far away) and turn in speed at Abbey is down on the lap before.

Braking for Brooklands Marcus swings the car out wide and the black Predator Ferrari 430 swings up the inside. The car dwarfs the KTM – like being passed by a lorry in a normal road car – but was whoever is in the driving seat brakes for Luffield a fiery glow and lick of flame point back at me from the 430’s twin exhausts.

Nerdilly magical.

Online Streaming Should Go Pirate Radio

2011-03-13T01:59:00.002Z

So Indycar have moved to stop the online streaming of races on their official website….

Now, the role of the internet in broadcasting and journalism in general is a pet topic of mine – wind me up and watch me go, sort of like one of those monkeys with a pair of cymbals, but I digress massively.

OK, let’s gloss over the fact that whenever I happened across the online stream for Indycar races it ran less than smoothly and made the race near impossible to follow. What Indycar had - officially sanctioned streaming is exactly what every sport should be doing to combat worries about the copyright infringement rife when anyone can hook TV to internet and stream coverage for all to see.

There are some people for whom online streaming is the only way to follow a race – or indeed any sport. These are not the people who simply don’t want to shell out for a subscription, these are the people who live in countries where there is simply no broadcast available.

If they wish to continue to follow moving images (when the stream’s actually running half way to decent) of Indycar they will be forced onto sites that offer less than legitimate streams for free.

In doing so Indycar, and its broadcasters, are missing out.

Bring people onto your site for an official, smooth, no-risk-of-the-man-shutting-it-down, stream and you can add them to you viewing figures. They should not be seen as counting instead of TV viewing figures, but counting towards TV viewing figures. If you’ve got an online audience, you could pick and choose which ads they see as the stream loads, or even during standard commercial breaks. The sort of people who watch an online stream are likely to come from a fairly small area of humanity. They’re not likely to be casual fans and they’re going to be tech and computer savvy. That sort of viewership offers a clear audience to go and pitch to advertisers. Money is the important thing here.

Sports broadcasters need to stop seeing internet streaming as the enemy. It has the potential to bring your product to whole new audiences who have no way of otherwise seeing it. Yes, the suits in Network Towers see an overnight TV rating as the be all and end all of everything, but they should be thinking of the potential online audience that they’re not reaching.

There is clearly an audience for online streaming. Watching the aforementioned illegitimate streams of the Budweiser Shootout and Gatorade Duels ahead of the Daytona 500, there was talk from South America, Europe, even Australia.

If they’ll watch a grainy, laggy feed for three hours, during the middle of the night what would they do if they were offered a proper, official stream during the middle of the night? And once into the official site they can stand up and be counted as those visiting the website and watching the coverage.

The UK Pirate Radio of the 1960s proved popular, so the BBC created Radio One.

Why shouldn’t online streaming follow the same pattern?

The Rolex 24 - America's 24

2011-02-02T18:16:00.002Z

I began my Rolex 24 preview on www.thecheckeredflag.co.uk by trying to find a place for the race in the pantheon of endurance racing - alongside the races at Le Mans, Spa or the Nurburgring. You can read the preview here, or just take my word for it.

At the time it made sense. Le Mans is the 24 hour race, Daytona is just a 24 hour race.

However, somewhere during SPEED’s TV coverage of the event I realised that trying to put the Rolex 24 into the same bracket as Le Mans is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

It was the first time I’d followed the race as much as I did. Spurred on the presence of ex-F1 drivers Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell, the fact the race is full of stories and British talent – Ross Kaiser, on both counts - and the fact that I have to sound like I know what I’m talking about occasionally.

The difference is this, and it sounds so simple. The Rolex 24 is America’s 24.

Strip away the international list of drivers and you get (eventually) American cars from American teams on an American track.

Everything at Daytona is so different from the European races I was trying to shoehorn it in with. And I’m not just referring to the fact that Reba McIntyre had her own press conference at the track.

Firstly, in the Daytona Prototype class you have cars that are not raced outside of North America. OK, so they’re not exactly automotive oil paintings, but I can give you worse, and it doesn’t matter that their not – in the overall scheme of things – that fast because they’re only racing against similar cars. There are the teams – what are the chances of Ganassi, to pick the obvious example, ever showing up at Le Mans.

Slim to none.

Secondly there is Daytona itself. The ‘roval’ track running on oval and road course could only really happen in America (yes, pedants I know about Rockingham, Lausitz and Calder Park). The stupefyingly high banking, and the images it produces, are almost the trademark of the race as the oval – so disparaged by Europe – is the trademark of American racing.

Of course bundled in with the fact the race it is so inherently American is that it is owned by NASCAR. And yes, the near endless parade of debris cautions got a little tiring, though it must be noted that the final one-lap shootout was exactly the right decision. Once the Spirit of Daytona Coyote had expelled it’s bodywork all over turn 6 with eight minutes to go there was little alternative than to throw a final caution flag.

The number of full course cautions is something that grates on some fans of European endurance, but Daytona doesn’t exactly lend itself to local yellow flags – who fancies running over the infield to pick up that piece of debris from the bottom of the banking? Secondly, the close racing it generates is something entirely different from what can be found in Europe.

When was the last time Le Mans finished with the top four cars on the lead lap?

When Joey Hand copped a 30 second stop-go penalty late on in the race it put the eventual winners 50 seconds behind, having been in the lead. In all but the closest battles at Le Mans or Spa such a penalty would only be a minor inconvenience before the car returned to pounding round the track in isolation.

I can appreciate the metronomic precision of car and driver needed to simply keep going for 24 hours, but throw in wheel to wheel racing for the lead right into the final minutes and you have me hooked.

The Rolex 24 is American endurance racing the way Sebring or Petit Le Mans never will be (at least under the ALMS banner). I’ll watching whatever I can of both races, but they will be different – more European – even the ALMS name concedes something to continent that gave the world croissant, bratwurst and Kraftwerk.

The Daytona 24, on the other hand is America’s endurance race.

Motorsports in 2010 Review (or We Didn't Start The Car) (II)

2010-12-15T20:16:00.004Z

Seb Vettel and Dario, Red Bull and Fernando
Double J, Lorenzo Land, Sebastien Loeb

Red Bull’s hold of pole position, LMS of television
India joins South Korea – hosting a grand prix

McLaren’s F-Duct (onto wing air sucked)
Gillett, the King and Ray struggling with debts to pay

Richard Branson in heels, Lotus best of new teams
New champ has a little cry, Bridgestone Rubber goodbye

We didn’t start the car
Fuel started burning
Wheels have started turning
We didn’t start the car
No we didn’t start it
But we’ll try to park it

Spoiler back for C.O.T. V8 Super Courtney
Final laps, Will attacks, Helio’s ‘block’

Ratel’s new spell’s Bertolini Bartels
Beamer on the Nordschleife – Twice around the clock

HRT Christian Klien, Anderlecht’s the winning team
No new team will get the call, ee-jaf-jalla-juke-ll *

Strakka win in Budapest, Alabama snorefest
Turkish race, saving face – trouble is the team mate

Renault was backed by Lada
Russian cheques they’re cashing
Pay for Petrov’s crashing
Renault was backed by Lada
Their speed didn’t match it
Alonso couldn’t catch it

Tomizawa snatched away, Walkinshaw the other day
Gearbox palaver, Dindo balaclava

Hulkenburg claims the pole, Daytona pot hole
Edwards attempts homicide, NASCAR ratings still on slide

Carlos gets his Dakar win, Kimi keeps rolling
Ecclestone’s Hublot, U.S. team a no go

Peugoet blow on full attack, Audi win Le Mans back
GT1 is mighty fun, ACO don’t think so.

At last they parked Milka
She might be improving
Still she’s barely moving
At last they parked Milka
She’ll watch from the team pit
Now the fans will like it

Felipe Baby in review, Fernando’s faster than you
Newman Hamlin, pay drivers invasion

The firesuits on Delana, NASCAR Dani-mania
Ambrose ill hill, KV smash bill

Karthikeyan, Piquet, racing in the USA
Korea nearly washed away, wasn’t finished anyway

Rossi leaves Yamaha
Broken leg – no riding
Left Lorenzo gliding
Rossi leaves Yamaha
The success will judge it
Support will demand it

Lotus running everything, Schumel Shumi back again
Bahrain boring, Brand new scoring
Muller for the second time, Webber’s flipping airtime
Simona HVM, Japan Leeroy Jenkins

Surprised with the Delta Wing, sticking with Dallara thing
Belgian rains, Lewis wins, Button out, Vettel spins
Diffusers lose their second tier, KERS back after missing year
What is next then moving floors? I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the car
Fuel started burning
Wheels have started turning
We didn’t start the car
No we didn’t start it
But we’ll try to park it

---------------------

Wondered what on eart you've just read? Have a listen to "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel - cue it up and sing along - it really does work.

*This represents the name of the Icelandic Volcano - Eyjafjallajokull - that caused chaos in late April after its ash cloud cancelled the flights that would have returned much of the F1 circus back to Europe from the Chinese Grand Prix. It's not actually pronounced like this.

2010 F1 Review - The Austrian Version

2010-12-08T02:06:00.003Z

In honour of the F1 season of 2010 and Red Bull - the best thing to come out of Austria since the von Trapp Family Singers - here is a review of the season as you're unlikely to ever have thought of it.

And yes, this does fit into tune - I have been singing it for days.

---------------------------------------------

F1 2010 - The Sound Of Music

There's a mad sort of singing from the pits of Red Bull
And the Milton Keynes people too
And round in the paddock and absurd little Bernerd
Is popping out to say "cuckoo"
Cuckoo, cuckoo

Regretfully he tells us
But firmly he compels us
To say goodbye.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight
Vettel, he took the title in the night

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu
Massa, Massa, Fernando's faster than yieu

So long, farewell, au revior, auf wiedersehen
Sutil is still to taste his first champagne

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye
The Hulk must leave his team and say goodbye
Fernie could win (if Petrov let him by)
Mark flit, Mark float, Mark fleetly flee, Mark fly!
F1 has gone to bed and so must I

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

Fighting For GT1 After Le Mans Snub

2010-06-25T22:18:00.002+01:00

I am fighting the corner for GT1 cars.

During the festivities of the Le Mans 24 Hours the race’s organisers the ACO (Auto Club de l’ouest) announced that the 2010 race would be the final time that GT1 cars would be accepted into the starting field for the historic race.

Quite why they made this decision is up for debate.

The low turnout for the class? Only eight cars made the start of the race – though only the ACO will know how many tendered entries for the selection process back in February.

The fact that they are based on the rules of a championship the ACO doesn’t run?

Or the fact that that series is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an endurance series?

Personally I fear it was one of the latter two, and the GT1 teams’ own knowledge of them lead to the low turnout.

The field was thin and the outcome embarrassing, as a decade old car full beat the shiny, new GT1 World Championship machinery and their attendant big name drivers. But I still don’t think they have made the right decision by killing off the class.

If they want a better showing of GT cars then show the teams that SRO GT1 really does equal ACO GT1 – don’t burn the bridge at the first sign of trouble. Yes, most GT1 teams have chosen the SRO’s World Championship, but that may have a lot to do with the prestige of the title and the better coverage the series gets – not only because it has a TV deal that’s worth anything, but also because (for better or worse) their not fighting with three other classes, with their own storylines, winners and losers, for screen time.

In my opinion part of the reason GT2 is so strong is that in past years different series have been all but interchangeable. A team could run an LMS race, then go to the GT2 class of the old FIA GT series, then go and race GT Cup.

Offer the GT1 teams a decent deal to come Le Mans Series racing and they will – to bastardise Field of Dreams ‘let them come and they will build it’. If they’re regularly going endurance racing then they will build cars that can survive 24 hours, and have teams that can pull off the sort of repairs you expect from Le Mans.

Sure most of the class retired from the race – but that’s only five cars. Eight GT2 cars retired, but no-one is calling for that class to be hauled away from La Sarthe is disrespect.

Even more non-sensical in my opinion is the belief that the GT1 World Championship will shrivel and die because its teams can no longer go to Le Mans.

Utter bilge.

A series, even a sportscar series, doesn’t need that glistening jewel in June to survive. In the same week as the ACO said no more to GT1, BMW revealed plans to homologate a car for the series. If it’s run properly (and the SRO know how to run a series) the GT1 World Championship will survive. For all that Mr. Ratel might not like manufacturers probably like his series because the race cars look like road cars – even massively aspirational marques have something of a ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ ethos. That’s the one of the reasons BMW pulled out F1 after last season.

If you’ve not taken the time to watch a race this year, do so, it’s probably produced consistently the best races of any international series. Anywere .

Though admittedly not Le Mans.

'Kid In The Candy Shop' GT1 At Silverstone

2010-05-11T15:58:00.006+01:00

Firstly, I must apologise for the astonishing lateness of this post. And the length.

On May 1-2 I was lucky enough to have a media pass for the round of the FIA GT1 World Championship held at Silverstone, UK. I must stress that they didn’t just fall into my lap – I write articles on http://www.thecheckeredflag.co.uk/ that somehow seem to be important enough to get behind the scenes.

There that’s the shameless plug over.

Now, despite the fact that the weekend was the third event in a little over a month I’ve had credentials for I am still a little ‘kid in a candy shop’ when I get there.

I spent many of my pre-teen years going to races around the south-east of England, sitting on grassbanks and in grandstands, straining to listen to the at track commentary while watching cars flash by, and the fact that I’m now getting into places that the 10-year-old me would have gladly sold his sister for is not lost on me.

I am also aware I’m a very, very tiny minnow in a very big pond, and occasionally I am made fully aware that my feet are some distance from touching the bottom.

The Saturday this feeling comes sharply into focus.

Arriving frightening early I put my laptop on a table in the media centre (the racing media are incredibly trusting when it comes to leaving hardware in full view, not that anyone would want my laptop, as it doesn’t even have a battery) I head out to find the Matech Competition pits – a team with whom I have managed to get an interview with for the weekend.

When I return to the media centre I find my laptop surrounded by the (relative) glitterati of racing media. There are the teams’ official press officers, LAT Photographic to my left, a cluster of Speedhunters to my right. The man from Autosport is in the next room (I always wonder whether if I steal his logo emblazoned jacket means I automatically get his job).

Despite this there is none of the “who are you anyway?” attitude I have expected, though I do feel a vague wave of distain from the man from Matech when I explain I don’t have “a card” and scrawl my phone number on a piece of paper ripped off the bottom of the Formula Three entry list leaning on the side of one of the team’s trucks.

As a whole the people from the team are very accommodating, considering it’s a race weekend and they spend nearly the whole event struggling with the car. I get a distinct feeling of power as I am let into the back entrance to their pit garage, emerging beside their blue and white Ford GT just as the public autograph session is finishing at the front of the garage. This feeling is only increased when I am let into their hospitality suite for the interview itself.

However, the highlight of the weekend is getting down to the pitlane.

For as long as I’ve watched racing on TV the work of a pitlane reporter has seemed like the best job there is. As soon as I saw the words “pitlane pass” in the paperwork for the weekend my eyes probably lit up, with little pitboards coming up in them the way dollar signs do in those of cartoon bad guys.

Let me tell you now; there is nothing like a racing pitlane, even during a practice session.

I get to stand feet away from a Corvette as it burbles by in the pitlane (I have spent many years listening to commentators claim there is ‘nothing like a Corvette’ and now I am finally in agreement with them).

There is noise everywhere. I stand feet behind a Lamborghini as it roars into life and feel an uncomfortable warm feeling in my right ear, the only thing that convinces me that I’m not deaf is that I can still appreciate the Nissan GT-R than rumbles along behind it.

Two of the Maseratis sweep into their pits infront of me, one coming worrying close to reliving me of my lower legs as I stand in the open entrance to a GT3 team’s garage while the Vitaphone team change the tyres on their two MC12s. Much of the GT3 team – Phoenix Racing – come to the front of the pit to watch the stop, then either retreat back into the garage, or put their fingers in their ears.

When men who spend their working days around cars are putting their fingers in their ears you know it’s going to be loud.

And it is loud, even with my fingers in my ears it’s loud, a feeling confirmed by the fact the whole pit seems to vibrate, as well as my internal organs.

The pitlane during the GT3 race is even more chaotic, with every car having to make a stop within a tem minute window it can get pretty crowded, a only made worse by the fact their trolleys of tyres and equipment are lined up on the pitlane as the GT1 teams are occupying the main garages. I haven’t a clue who wins, but it’s a way to watch a race that is simply unforgettable.

It’s dirty, loud, smelly and more than a little bit dangerous, and that’s how to watch racing.

Watching the GT1 races from the media centre, taking notes, is great, but a little too sanitized, like watching the race from your living room on TV, occasionally looking out the window. It’s improved in the second race as I am one of several people in the room commenting on the race, but it’s still not the same.

I am a racing fan, and there is something fantastic about eschewing the media pass for an hour and standing on a bank on the outside of the new Arena section straining your ears for the at track commentary over the assorted whines and rumbles of racing engines watching the race with the public.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'll be turning down credentials anytime soon.

NASCAR & Carl Edwards: Sometimes I Despair

2010-03-09T23:52:00.002Z

Sometimes I think that the people that make important decisions are not the same as you or I.

Sometimes I am completely sure of it.

Today was one of those times.

Since Sunday afternoon the media and fans alone have been campaigning for punishment, or otherwise, for Carl Edwards’ rush of blood in the waning laps of the NASCAR race at Atlanta.

Some called for him to be parked for a race or two, others a fine or a points deduction, others that he should be stopped from practicing at Bristol in two weeks.

What I saw no calls for was what actually happened.

A three race probation.

Three races when Carl has to not deliberately wreck someone. Well, at least not when anyone is looking, and even then you’ll probably be able to explain your way out of any further penalty. It is a punishment that will not have a single impact on Carl Edwards, his team and their season.

There is not a single thing about that decision that makes any sense.

Carl used his car as a weapon to deliberately put a fellow racer in danger. OK, so he didn’t mean to put him in as much danger as he ultimately ended up in, but if you caused the situation you should pay the penalty for the consequences, no matter how dire and unexpected.

Carl was 150 laps down on Keselowski at the time, two laps from the end of the race. Carl had just taken the last position he could before the race would end, having surpassed the number of laps completed by David Reutimann. There is no way Carl did not realise that there was nothing to gain from the final laps, other than revenge. That makes the fact Mike Helton believes that Carl being parked two laps early was a worthwhile penalty all the more unbelievable.

NASCAR has made a huge deal out of their safety advances in recent years. Their championing of the HANS device following a number of on-track tragedies, the SAFER barrier, the safety minded COT, with the driver seated more centrally in a taller ‘greenhouse’ (the barrier and car, in my mind combining to mean that we’re not talking about another of those tragedies this week).

For such an apparently safety minded series to almost green light reckless driving boggled the mind.

After the 2006 Daytona 500, when Jimmie Johnson’s car failed post-qualifying technical inspection Chad Knaus was suspended for over a month and placed on probation until the end of that December – a full 36 races.

How on earth can gaining a tiny aerodynamic advantage be considered 12 (or even more) times worse than potentially endangering the life of other drivers, and fans?

Of course, it’s not a surprise if you have followed NASCAR and their discipline record over recent years.

In an article I wrote earlier today, even I predicted nothing would happen, and why (you can read that article here).

It is also very interesting to note that a very similar sentiment showed up, during the press conference announcing Edwards’ non-penalty, on Robby Gordon’s Twitter account – “Just heard the news. I wonder what would of happened to me in that situation? Hmmm someone playing favourites?”

In that original article I said the NASCAR needed to park Edwards to draw the metaphorical line in the sand about what drivers could, or couldn’t, get away with and show that no-one was above punishment. Actual punishing punishment.

Instead NASCAR have not drawn a line in the sand, meaning drivers are still fumbling in the dark about what is deemed acceptable.

SRO Do Right By GT2 In Postponement

2010-03-05T22:35:00.001Z

Say what you like about the SRO Motorsports Group and the eponymous Stephane Ratel but their postponement of the GT2 European Championship shows they have GT racing, or at least something more that exposure and bottom line in mind.

The news was confirmed yesterday that the GT2 series, cleaved from its normal GT1 counterpart as the latter is elevated to World Championship status, will have its inaugural stand-alone season postponed. The SRO say nothing of when the series will be revived, but suggested it would be, the official press release suggesting the series would be “relaunched once the future orientation of the GT2 class has been agreed with a minimum of four manufacturers, possibly around the introduction of Hybrid technologies in GT racing.”

That is the root of the right and proper thinking behind the choice. The SRO want GT2 to be worthwhile, whether through the size of the field or by the new technology it introduces (in fact a chance for new technology would probably find itself attracting manufacturers).

It would be very easy for Ratel to cheerfully collect the entry money from a handful of GT2 teams and put them on an embarrassingly small grid that would do nothing but damage the profile of the teams and the series.

The press release adds ““The thundering development of the GT3 category, with 13 models from 12 brands homologated to date and the likely arrival of three additional ones in 2012, offering cars more affordable with performances equal to those of the GT2 category, has forced SRO to redefine its plans for the GT2 category.”

What they have recognised is that the different series are in serious danger of becoming cannibalistic.

With the introduction of the new GT1 World Championship the French Hexis squad-run Aston Martins and the Matech Ford GTs have moved up from GT3 to GT1. Though Hexis have confirmed they will also run a GT3 campaign once more in these days of limited sponsorship, not to mention time (especially given the GT1 calender takes teams all around the world) if this happens too often then at least one series is bound to shrivel and die.

And that’s before you include the pressures from the GT Open series and the GT2 classes of the Le Mans Series – the new home for 2009 GT2 champions AF Corse, while runners-up Prospeed Competition have an entry for Le Mans.

Ratel and company realise that nothing good can come out of trying to shoehorn another series into a market where there are only so many teams, manufacturers, fans and sponsors available.

And that’s a good thing.

While the SRO benefit from being the single entity behind GT1, 2 and 3 series, compare their approach to the web-like mess that is single-seater racing. In Europe we have GP2, Formula 2, and World Series by Renault all vying for the position on the last wrung of the ladder before F1, below that we have the mess of national Formula 3 series, along with the Euroseries, as well as the new GP3 series.

Oh, and the various stages of Formula Renault. And Formula BMW, and Auto GP and Superleague Formula.

The list goes on.

UK NASCAR Coverage Proves We Matter

2010-02-26T12:40:00.001Z

It has been a worrying winter to be a NASCAR fan living in the UK.

The Murdoch family owned Sky TV had carried live coverage of a vast majority of races for the previous two years. They had a trio of a presenter and two experts in a dedicated studio which they would cut to during many of the American breaks.

It was, as those of you who have read anything on NASCAR by me over the last two years, far from perfect broadcasting.

However, it was better than nothing.

It was better than doing damage to my eyes by squinting at slightly fuzzy streamed images on computer.

But this year we were faced with nothing. The presenter Sky used – Kieth Huewen – broke the news on his own website that Sky had not picked up live coverage for 2010.

Unfortunately I am only able to speculate as to why. It may have something to do with the fact that when they picked up the coverage ahead of the 2008 season Scot Dario Franchitti was looking to move to the series, as were other names more familiar to a UK audience – most notably Jacques Villeneuve.

However, given that 2010 sees Juan Montoya further forward than ever, Danica Patrick on NASCAR’s doorstep and ex-F1 driver Nelson Piquet Jr. making steps in the series I doubt that was ever the real reason.

The problem is I don’t know how much Sky were paying for the rights, and I don’t know how many people were watching the coverage – though there are claims that the number never bettered 50,000.

The fact the coverage was sponsored by Current TV – another channel carried by Sky – smacked of subsidy and an inability to find an actual product to sponsor the coverage – compare that to Sky’s live NFL shows which are sponsored by Dominoes Pizza.

We were faced with no live coverage of the Daytona 500 with only the NASCAR edited highlights package on Monday night.

An edit which is legendarily appalling.

If Sky’s 2008-09 coverage wasn’t perfect the highlight package makes you want to hurl your TV out the window in frustration of deep-fry your own eye-balls as the coverage jumps to a restart without any mention of ever being under caution.

But then on the Friday before Daytona (Feb. 12) stories emerged that there would, after all, be coverage of the Daytona 500.

Live.

On Sky.

Why, had this happened?

Had Sky bowed to a slew of angry emails from NASCAR lovers about the dropped coverage? Probably not, given the rumoured viewing figures they probably got about the same number of emails about NASCAR as they do complaining about the lack of coverage of the Estonian National Lesbian Mud Wrestling Championships. In fact with that description, NASCAR probably generated less emails.

What had happened, I will bet my left hand, is that NASCAR were so desperate to get their big showpiece event to the biggest possible audience that they lowered the price to a level where Sky simply couldn’t refuse.

We were back with the normal trio in the normal studio, not that they cost much as only one of the three – one time Craftsman Truck driver John Mickel – only appears on their NASCAR coverage.

We got the 500. We got all of it – it having overrun by some two hours by the time the brief post race interviews had been completed.

Then nothing. We were back to the ham-fisted highlights for Fontana.

However, the latest twist came yesterday when a channel called ‘Open Access 3’ declared it would be showing live NASCAR, starting this weekend.

This backs up the idea that NASCAR are desperate to get their coverage in the UK. There is no way OA3 would be able to do battle with the bids of Sky, ESPN UK or anyone else. Put simply this deal must have been dirt cheap or come with a massive sweetener from somewhere.

Just so you get an idea OA3 is channel no.190 on Sky Digital, only a few ‘+ channel’ buttons from the delights of programs trying to covert you to one cause or another, including the delightfully named ‘Contraversial TV’ and ‘Unexplained’.

Now, I am a little sceptical about the coverage we’ll see on Sunday. From the times the channel boasts it looks like we have a full hour of pre-race material and the full race, the total program running from 7pm UK time to 1am.

This is doubtless going to be a direct taking of the American coverage, who knows we might even get your ads.

There will be no studio team in the UK.

The will be no studio in the UK.

But it proves that someone is listening to NASCAR fans in the UK.

How to Launch an F1 car.

2010-02-01T19:22:00.001Z

It’s February, the beginning of a motorsports season (unless of course you’re A1GP, which you’re not, because you actually exist) and it’s F1 car launch and test season, and this year more than ever the strategies for launching a car are many and varied.

If you’re an F1 fan, or a general racing fan, you’ll be familiar with launches.

They generally consist of drivers, and more occasionally team principal, pulling back a cover, normally of a colour corresponding to the car beneath or the sponsors there on, and revealing a car that looks like it’s been polished to the point just before the paint gets rubbed off.

We get treated to a tidal wave of stories and press releases about how the whole team has been locked in the factory over the winter, designers forced to spend Christmas poring over the front wing design, engine technicians fighting surviving on Pro Plus as they squeeze that extra horsepower out of an old block, simply to get the car finished on time.

Drivers will all tell us that they are looking forward to a successful season, no matter how badly they or their team did the previous season.

Then there’s the second part of the two pronged attack – pictures. We will get to see the car from every angle, every photographer will take pictures of what they deem important and doesn’t have a security guard, or the omnipotent blanket of secrecy, obscuring it from view.

Normally these take place in some swanky setting infront of a crowd of those deemed worthy to witness the birth of a new F1 car.

But this year is a little different.

Yes, McLaren and Ferrari’s efforts stayed within the normal template, as did Mercedes’ unveiling of last year’s Brawn GP car with some new paint on it, but soon the fact that F1 2010 is a little different reared is ugly, tightly budgeted head.

Sauber’s launch, if I’m going to labour (every single pun intended) the analogy of birthing, was the equivalent of a child being delivered in the car park of Lidl. The car abandoned in the middle of the Valencia track, drivers in plain white sponsorless fire suits, the car looking like a de-logoed BMW Sauber and initially grainy pictures.

The new Renault was simply wheeled out into the pitlane infront of some cameras while the Williams, Toro Rosso and Mercedes (the actual car, not just a paint job) were launched on the first day of testing with only the briefest of photo calls.

Then there are the new kind.

The online launch.

These are tending to be used by the new teams, like teenagers rebelling against the accepted ways of doing things. The first will come on Wednesday when we will log onto the internet to see a new Virgin under the covers (again, every single pun intended).

Online launches look to bring normal people into the same league as the invited great and good. Now what you think of this is all part of the constant debate as to how the internet, facebook, twitter, youtube and the ilk as part of modern businesses, but at face value it only seems to be a good idea.

The cost is surely less that the pomp and circumstance of the traditional launch (undoubtedly why it’s the new teams that are favouring them), while you still get the same end result.

You can direct what is broadcast to show your new car from the best angle (something that was sorely lacking from Sauber’s Lidl carpark launch) and hide the bits you don’t want anyone to see, either because their really good, or really bad.

And you connect with fans, rather than journalists, (probably another reason why it’s the new teams that re doing them).

But in the end, what is the point of launches?

Do they actually matter?

Can you honestly tell me the launch date of last year’s Brawn (not when it was masquerading as a Mercedes) last year, or the first picture you saw of the 2009 Force India, or what Felipe Massa said in the launch press conference at Ferrari?

Do you even think that sponsors choose who to put their money behind on the strength of who can pull a sheet off a car in the most photogenic manner?

Nope, what really matters is how fast the car goes compared to everyone else.

And don’t even get me started on testing......

Bernie Ecclestone: Of Sound Mind And Body?

2010-01-14T23:40:00.003Z

I think the writing has been on the wall for a long time.

We've all been denying it, hoping we were the only people who could see it, but personally I think it's time we all admitted it.

Bernie Ecclestone has gone completely insane.

The warning signs have been there for a long time, if we're honest. Who else would purposely ignore the opinions of experts (or at least those more knowledgeable than themselves) resulting in a washout at Sepang.

Who would think that a medal system that simply rewarded winner was a good way to decide the the World Champion in (arguably) the world's most expensive sport?

Who would try to force this dictat upon the people it affects without doing something so basic as consulting the rule book to make sure it was actually legal?

Who would rip the sport they controlled away from its traditional heartland, where a vast majority of the teams are based, where a vast majority of the fanbase lives, where many of the sport's most famous names come from and where many of the most famous races were held?

Who would take away races from France (the nation that basically invented Grand Prix races, the clue to that is in the name Bernie) and threaten to take a race away from the country that was the birthplace of the last two world champions?

Hell, who would remove a race from the market where there is the most ground for F1 to gain, and where F1's manufacturers see their biggest markets. At least there were manufacturers in F1 before Bernie's increasingly maniacal ways intervened.

If I haven't made a compelling enough case already, consider two of the most recent episodes.

Firstly, what exactly are the merits of taking away an F1 race away from Monza, and taking it to a road course around Rome? Erm, nope, I can't think of any either.

Secondly, Bernie has come up with a way to increase overtaking. No, unfortunately this isn't anything to do with aerodynamics (and Bernie is a pretty aerodynamic guy (yes, that's a short joke)).

No. Bernie wants to put a "shortcut" in F1 tracks to allow faster cars to 'overtake'.

Now, give Bernie some credit, the idea is not completely without merit, they use a similar idea in European Rallycross, where a driver has to take a "joker lap" once every race, where he takes a slightly different (though not necessarily shorter) route.

Except it's not really overtaking, more like bypassing. Bypassing is fine for small towns where people have the money to afford the printer cartridges to produce endless "Bypass [insert you insular community of choice here] NOW!" posters.

It's not good for racing.

Though that said is these shortcuts could be worked into the track by a second turning on a roundabout I'd love to see the addition of indicators to F1 cars, and have the FIA punish drivers for poor lane selection, a late indication or not checking their mirrors.

So, that is my case. No man of sound mind and body would think any of these are actually good ideas.

Bernie is old, his time has come.

I suggest a campaign to have him declared unfit for purpose, and open a new, sane chapter in F1.

The 12 Days of Striking

2009-12-16T18:27:00.003Z

OK, so I realise this is a blog that professes to be about racing, but occasionally I get an idea in my head that has to be chased up, and when British Airways cabin crew announced they have voted in favour of 12 days of strike action over the Christmas period there was only one thing that was ever going to come out of it. I think you know the tune.....

-------------------------

On the first day of striking BA gave to me;
A load of TV news items.

On the second day of striking BA gave to me;
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the the third day of striking BA gave to me;
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the fourth day of striking BA gave to me;
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the fifth day of striking BA gave to me;
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the sixth day of striking BA gave to me;
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the seventh day of striking BA gave to me;
Whooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the eighth day of striking BA gave to me;
Massive queues at Heathrow
Whooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the ninth day of striking BA gave to me;
"Call that a contract?"
Massive queues at Heathrow
Whooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the tenth day of striking BA gave to me;
Winter sun is cancelled
"Call that a contract?"
Massive queues at HeathrowWhooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the eleventh day of striking BA gave to me;
Crying honeymooners
Winter sun is cancelled
"Call that a contract?"
Massive queues at Heathrow
Whooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

On the twelfth day of striking BA gave to me;
Bonuses for Virgin
Crying Honeymooners
Winter sun is cancelled
"Call that a contract?"
Massive queues at Heathrow
Whooping Youtube footage
Millions of refunds
"I'm on hold!"
More falling shares
"Me, me, me"
Two weeks of cuts and
A load of TV news items.

------------------------

Just a bit of fun I cobbled together. However, I, of course, understand the severity of the situation, and feel very much for those who have had their plans over Christmas and the New Year ruined by this strike action.

You can follow the news story here

A 2009 Motorsports Review (Or "We didn't start the car")

2009-12-14T13:27:00.003Z

Jenson Button, Rubinho, Red Bull and Dario
Jimmie Johnson, Valentino, Sebastien Loeb

Diffusers double tier, Nelson Piquet last year.
Abu Dhabi, South Korea hosting a Grand Prix

Helio’s tax trial, missed The Chase (Hey Kyle)
Gillett, The King and Ray, running E-Sad and A.J.

Indycar – barely seen, F1’s got some new teams
Monte Carlo IRC, Beamer-Sauber Goodbye

We didn’t start the car
The fuel started burning
Wheels have started turning
We didn’t start the car
No we didn’t start it
But we’ll try to park it

Adolf Hitler, Ecclestone, J.C. France and George is gone
Rockenfeller, Marco Werner, Lucas Luhr’s crash

McLaren’s Flo-vis, tell me what your time is
R15 - Sebring once around the clock

Field Filler Dexter Bean, Merc have brought the winning team
Aston Martin, Lola Cars argue about animals

Renault wheels at Budapest, Barber set for Indy test
Martin’s pace second place, trouble is the teammate

Dave Blaney parked the car
He’d rather be racing
But the accountant’s pacing
Dave Blaney parked the car
NASCAR will excuse it
But they’d rather lose it

Henry Surtees Tragic death, Mayfield caught on Crystal Meth
British race off and on, someone please save Donington

Barrichello’s spring has sprung, F2 splits the lower rung
NASCAR restarts double file – don’t make me call the shootout style

Prism, buy some tyres, Midtjylland – the little guys
Rossi nips to the loo, JP gets a drive through

Tony K’s pit fire, Bridgestone not an F1 tyre
Fisichella slower, beat Luca Badoer

Franz look out! Safety Car!
It pulled out with warning
Just as you were turning
Franz look out! Safety Car
It’s got the cop chief in it
They’re a total nit wit.

Sepang rain, short race, Kimi gets a choc ice
Peugeot protests, Litespeed and Lotus

Busch’s backwards victory lap, Kimi’s rally crash cap
Spa gird mixed up, Logano Sprint Cup

Kris Meeke IRC, Peugeot Le Mans and Petit
A1GP gone away, it was failing anyway!

I’m sick of Danica
I am tired of hearing
In what car she driving
I’m sick of Danica
I don’t want to hear it
I have grown to fear it

Brawn team, stacks of Yen, flying NASCAR yet again
Jean Todt, Ballot, Lie-gate, Lime Rock
Lots of sponsors pulling out, Indy gets IZOD to tout
Karthikeyen off the wall, Shanghai crowds are very small

Teddy Mayer passed away, Pascal Terry sad to say
Scott Sharp, Brand new Tub, Footage gets sped up
Put closed cockpits on the cars, Keeping track of Massa’s scars
FIA v FOTA wars – I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the car
The fuel started burning
Wheels have started turning
We didn’t start the car
No we didn’t start it
But we’ll try to park it

-------------------------------

Read that and not clue what I'm on about? Try searching for listening to "We didn't start the fire".

My NASCAR Driver Of The Year: Marcos Ambrose

2009-11-30T17:10:00.001Z

As December nears it is natural to look back at the last twelve months and contemplate what has happened, and when you are a racing fan, that means thinking of the racing of the previous season.

Part of this is looking at the best, most surprising, and indeed worst drivers of a series, and for NASCAR’s premier the choice (or at least my choice) for at least one of the first two categories may be a little different from the norm.

‘Who is it?’ I hear you ask, presuming you haven’t read the big, bold title atop this post.

Could it be Jimmie Johnson – man of four titles – Mark Martin – who made a triumphant return to full time competition – or even Joey Logano or David Reutimann who both took maiden wins this year.

Nope.

It’s Marcos Ambrose.

Of course, the fact I’m an Ambrose fan makes be biased, having followed him since V8 Supercars coverage landed in the UK (or at least my consciousness) just as the Tasmanian was on the upswing that would see him clinch back-to-back titles in the series. The fact that Ambrose’s debut in the Cup Series coincided with Dave Blaney’s fall from racer to embarrasing running joke (actually the fact he wasn’t running was the joke) made the switch all the easier.

2009 was Marcos’ rookie season in the Cup Series, though after making a handful of starts in 2008 he was ineligible for the rookie of the year award, though he still had the yellow ‘rookie stripe’ on his car, a sign that only seems to warn those around you of your presence, or that NASCAR will turn a blind eye if they help you into a wall (unless of course you’re Juan Montoya, in which case you will probably be told to pick on someone your own size).

But compared to those who were rookies according to the rules, and Marcos spent much of the season beating them, even with Logano’s fluke rain-win at Loudon in the summer. His tally of 3830 points put him 18th overall at season’s end, with four top-fives and seven top-tens, dwarfing many of the more established drivers running for the more established teams than the Michael Waltrip Racing outfit that was behind Ambrose’s no.47 Camry.

Not only is Ambrose excelling himself on the tours pair of road courses, venues you would expect him to perform well at given his racing pedigree. He finished second at Watkins Glen and third at Sonoma, a race he could easily have won had he not had a blown engine move him from a third place start to the back of the field.

But has started to show promise on ovals. His races in Bristol, Dover and the late season showings at Texas and Homestead illustrating that he has more than found his comfort level in oval races. It is starting to reach that crucial point in the minds of fans and commentators when it is no longer a surprise when he makes an appearance in the top ten.

As the only other non-American full time in the series, it is easy to make a comparison to make a comparison.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Both men landed in NASCAR in 2006, both running limited schedules (though Montoya’s was far more limited), Ambrose in the Truck Series, Montoya moving more-or-less straight into the Cup Series.

That perhaps is the big difference between the paths of the two, Montoya has often seemed to struggle to adapt in the Cup series, a handicap he is only now starting to overcome, while Ambrose has patiently made his way up the NASCAR series, from Trucks in 2006, the Nationwide series in 2007 and 2008.

That gradual acclimatisation may be what sees Ambrose pushing Montoya for the honour of being the first of the recent incomers to win on an oval, something you would have expected to be solely Montoya’s to chase before this season began.

And given Montoya’s position in the Chase, a rookie rivalling him for anything shows just how far Marcos Ambrose has come.

Ryan Newman Was Right, NASCAR Was Wrong

2009-11-02T12:46:00.001Z

After NASCAR driver Ryan Newman was released from the medical centre at Talladega Superspeedway he was set upon by the normal flock of microphone clutching journalists and race reporters.

However, the interview he gave was far from the normal NASCAR diatribe, but was still sadly familiar to any fan who has watched racing at either of NASCAR’s Restrictor Plate tracks.

“[The crash] is a product of this racing and what NASCAR’s put us into with this box with these Restrictor Plates, with these types of cars, with the yellow line, with the no bump drafting, no passing. Drivers used to be able to respect each other and race around each other,” he said. “I guess [NASCAR] don’t think much of us anymore.”

Most of Newman’s anger during the interview was aimed at the sanctioning body itself for implanting rule that banned the normal bump-drafting in the corners, or as Dale Earnhardt Jr. put it, “it’s like the NFL changing from tackle to two hand touch football”.

And even before you think of how that rule change affected the racing it is plain to see the way NASCAR put it into action was, and still is, moronic.

The announcement, made at the Sunday drivers’ meeting by NASCAR president Mike Helton, came on the morning of the race.

After all the practice sessions had been run, after the car had qualified with their race set-up (Talladega being an impound race).

NASCAR is known for its knee-jerk rulings and having a rule book that often appears to be written in the sand at low tide, but Talladega took their goal post moving to new levels.

They actually moved the goal posts while everyone was playing.

Denny Hamlin openly admitted that his car was set-up to run what he called the “two car hook up”, the tactic which dominated the race at track earlier in the year.

Then you have to question the motivation.

What made NASCAR ban bump-drafting in the corners? There was no big crash in practice, the only big crash in the Truck Series race was caused by bumping on the back straight. The headline grabbing crash in the Spring race was caused by Brad Keselowski obeying the yellow line rule, and both big crashes yesterday were started on the straights.

In fact, Newman’s accident may have been caused by NASCAR’s bump-drafting rule.

The TV pictures (and crucially audio) before the crash were on board with Mark Martin, who was drafting in the top lane some half dozen car ahead of Newman. And, as he enters the corner, you hear Martin lift to keep off the rear of Brad Keselowski’s car. On the face of it Martin lifted because of NASCAR’s bump-drafting, a lift that rippled back down the pack until Tony Stewart backed off, just enough to get tapped by Newman, who had lifted enough to get tagged by Marcos Ambrose.

Even before the crash, fans were critical of the single file racing that the race fell into several times. Personally I feel that was inevitable. With the new bump-drafting rules, and the smaller Restrictor Plate, the drivers were bound to spend some time finding out exactly what they could do. They did the exact same thing the first time the COT chassis was used at Talladega, plus you cannot expect drivers to spend 500 miles walking the tightrope of three and four wide racing, especially when 12 of them are racing for the title.

Now, let’s address Newman’s assertion that NASCAR don’t trust the drivers. Firstly, I believe Restrictor Plates (or anyway of slowing the cars down) are the best way of racing at the giant Superspeedways.

Otherwise the speeds the cars would be travelling would be incredibly dangerous. The lap record speed at Talladega is 212mph, with the advances in technology and the expertise of the teams the speeds possible now would make any crash, even a single car one a potential tragedy, remember it was Bobby Allison’s single car crash in 1987 that is credited with bringing the advent of Restrictor Plates. As trustworthy as teams and drivers may be the one area where they cannot be trusted is to limit their own speed, they need to have it limited for them.

NASCAR felt that even with the plates speeds were still too high, and further decreased the horsepower of the engines for Sunday’s race.

What they didn’t need to do was ban bump-drafting.

If, as we are always being told (no matter how wrongly), the 43 best drivers in the world race in NASCAR, then they should, like Newman says, be trusted to race safely.

The COT chassis gave drivers front and rear bumpers that are the same height – perfect for bump drafting. The car is also very safe, that element was once more give a fine advert on Sunday as two drivers survived rolls.

However, perhaps the worst indictment of NASCAR’s rule was that now, nearly 15 hours after the end of the race, exactly no penalties have been levied.

I may not have perfect 20/20 vision, but I’m sure I saw some bump-drafting in the corners, and even if I didn’t I certainly didn’t see daylight between cars, and all the public heard (or were told) was near endless and general warnings from NASCAR.

That makes it a hollow threat, and as any parenting book will tell you, a hollow threat is an easy way to lose respect.

Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus: Credit Where Credit is Due

2009-10-27T13:34:00.003Z

I’m not big Jimmie Johnson fan, I’m even less of a Hendrick Motorsports fan, so you know it hurts me when I say ‘Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus are just very good, that’s a fact’.

Jimmie, with his crew chief Knaus, now hold a 118 point lead in NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup over their nearest rival – another Hendrick driver, Mark Martin.

Among those who are paid to know, and those who just like think they know, Jimmie’s name is already etched on the trophy for the fourth consecutive year.

‘But wait!’ I hear you cry. ‘Aren’t there still four races left this season?’

And yes there are, and 118 points over four races may not seem like a big lead where the points change per race can be as high as 150 points, but the fact is that Johnson’s results dropping to that extent is less likely than tobogganing in hell.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to Johnson’s aspirations of the fourth title on the bounce, a feat he would be the first to achieve in NASCAR, is the next race at Talladega.

Followers of NASCAR, or indeed even those who know of NASCAR, will be familiar with what can happen at the giant superspeedway in Alabama. Restrictor plates, huge pack racing with inches to spare, and ‘the big one’ accidents that can claim as many as a dozen cars in a split second.

If Johnson gets caught in one of those accidents, and his rivals finish well, his lead will be gone, and those already crowning the California native as champion again will go quiet, at least for a time. Though at this point it should be mentioned, there is just as much chance of Mark Martin, or any one of the other title chasing drivers getting caught in the carnage.

Every driver knows of that chance. Johnson himself described how he was tired of answering questions about Talladega in press conferences after last weekend’s race.

And how has Johnson got himself into this position?

Well, by just being very, very good.

You do not win three titles, and look to be heading for a fourth, by simple luck. And while Jimmie automatically takes the main plaudits as the man behind the wheel, I feel the rest of his team must get some of the credit.

Firstly, the people who put the car together. The car is fast, but also reliable. A trawl through past records will show that the no.48 team have suffered only one mechanical DNF in the past three years.

Then you come to the real brains of the operation. Chad Knaus.

While not privy to the goings-on to at Hendrick, I give a lot of personal credit to Knaus for what I see as his plan.

NASCAR’s ten race Chase system presents drivers and teams with the opportunity to just run well in the 26 race, pre-Chase ‘regular season’, before running very well at the end of the season when it counts. The artificial closing up of the top-12 drivers means that as long as you make the cut it doesn’t really matter what you’ve done since February, only what you do from October onwards.

NASCAR also does not alter the races in the car very much – yes, this year they swapped Atlanta out for Fontana, but on the scale of changes they could have made it rates as miniscule.
This static 10 race mini-season allows the teams to concentrate on getting their cars to run well on those tracks, maybe being happy to sacrifice their pace at Bristol, Darlington, Watkins Glen, Pocono or any other of the tracks that don’t host a Chase race.

This, I believe is what Johnson and Knaus have done. They both know they are good enough to take a car that is not perfectly set up, and still leave the track with a solid finish. They can then take advantage of the fact that all but two venues – Kansas and Homestead – host a regular season race alongside their Chase dates.

Is it pure coincidence that two of Johnson’s three ‘regular season’ wins come on such tracks – Martinsville and Dover?

Probably not. If he and Knaus concentrate that heavily on perfecting a set-up and approach of the Chase races, then of course they are going to run well at the same tracks, no matter the time of year.

Earlier in the Chase Jeff Gordon was quoted as saying that aside from Talladega the Chase tracks were Johnson’s strongest tracks.

But, what came first, them being Chase tracks, so Johnson got good at them, or Jimmie’s favourite tracks just happening to be the ones that constantly decide the championship.

Unless you subscribe to a colossal conspiracy theory, you’ll probably join me in believing the former.

And if Johnson, Knaus, Rick Hendrick and anyone else involved in the no.48 team are smart enough, good enough and brave enough to do this then they probably deserve four titles.

Bernie is right on the British Grand Prix

2009-10-24T15:58:00.002+01:00

“Do we need a British Grand Prix? No.”

That is what Bernie Ecclestone, who holds the contract rights to F1 is quoted as saying in a BBC article today.

As I write the plans for the 2010 British Grand Prix are in turmoil, Donington Park, the track that secured the deal to host the race for next year have been unable to raise the money needed to improve the track and its facilities in time to meet the last of the many deadlines the track, under the control of Simon Gillett, have been given.

Silverstone, the track which looked like it had lost the race, has offered to step in and take the date at relatively short notice.

However, Ecclestone has revealed that he will not negotiate a “discount” contract with the Northamptonshire track, despite the fact that other historic races, such as the Monaco and Italian Grand Prix do.

Seemingly central to this approach is that Ecclestone does not believe that F1 needs a race on British soil, or at least not one at Silverstone (offer him that fabled London street circuit and it’d be interesting to see his stance).

And you know what, he’s right.

Firstly F1 does not NEED any particular race. There are more than enough countries queuing up to host a race. Yes, most are Far or Middle Eastern countries, some have tracks of debateable quality, but there is enough interest to keep a 16 or 17 race calendar going. Simply because there is no British race does not make the eventual winner less of a World Champion.

Secondly, and more frighteningly, F1 does not NEED a British race.

You can argue that the fact that most of the teams are based in the UK should safeguard a home race? But why should it? They already travel the equivalent of umpteen times around the world in the season, what difference would maybe having one less race in Europe make?

And the team’s wouldn’t just up and leave because there was no race in Britain, they are here because of the huge pool of talent they can rely on and top class facilities, not because there so happens to be an F1 a metaphorical stone’s throw from their front door.

Also, from what I see so far, it’s the fans who are crying out for a British Grand Prix rather than the teams.

After all, fans are what keep the sport going. Fans make the sport saleable for sponsors, suppliers and manufacturers.

And are British fans going to still be watching F1, either at the tracks or on TV, even if there is no British Grand Prix?

Yes. Yes we are.

We will kick up a fuss for a few months, but by March next year, we’ll all be sat back in our normal chairs watching the first F1 races of a new season? Compare that to what Bernie will no doubt call "emerging" markets, such as Korea or India where fans need to be introduced to F1 on their doorstep.

OK, so no-one will get the gate receipts from a Silverstone, or even a Donington, weekend but many of the same fans who would attend a British Grand Prix will start change plans to go to another race. Spa, Monza, maybe a race further afield.

Sports fans, after all, are already used to spending money on flights (or other travel) and tickets to follow their favourites. Why else would sports stadiums around the world have “away ends”, why else would the Channel Tunnel be packed with cars headed for Le Mans every June.

Bernie will still be able to rely on the British Pound reaching F1’s pocket, so on a business level he doesn’t need the British Grand Prix, he simply needs the British, and the two are very separate.

But I repeat, that’s on a business level, not a sporting level.

I suspect Bernie doesn’t care about that.

-----------------------------------------

NB: I, under no circumstances, support Bernie Ecclestone, the man is a greedy, evil man with no sense of how to run a sport. And that is what F1 is - a sport.

Brawn GP win constructors' title. Remember it.

2009-10-19T22:32:00.001+01:00

I want to take this time to congratulate Brawn GP as much, if not more, on their winning of their winning of the constructors’ crown as Jenson Button an winning the drivers’ title.

In the furore that always the crowning of a new world champion in anything the turns in the road they have travelled to get there get smoothed out. This year there are those who have bucked that trend, mostly by implying that Button is somehow a less worthy champion because he remained winless for the second half of the season.

Another fact of most F1 titles is that the winner of the constructors’, teams’, manufacturers’ (call it what you will) title is often quickly forgotten by all except the anorak community. The winning constructor is never a pub quiz question, the winning constructor is never heralded with multiple awards and the chief mechanic never gives a gushing acceptance speech. If I ask you to reel off every winning constructor of the 90s and you’d probably falter (unless you are a ‘special’ kind of fan), drivers of the same era and you’d never even stumble.

But Button is world champion.

He made the best of the situation that was presented to him, winning six of the first seven races while his teammate, by way of contrast, won none in the same equipment.

But this year it was more apparent than ever just how big a role the team and car play in scoring wins.

At the start of the Button was transformed from a man who had previously won a grand total of one Grand Prix in a career filled with midfield mediocrity into a multiple race winner.

On the other hand Lewis Hamilton, a man whose form since entering F1 made you suspect he might also be able to have a stroll across Monaco’s harbour, was left looking enviously at the top half of the grid. And that’s before all the mad too-ing and fro-ing during the season.

But Brawn aren’t just any team.

They are, of course, the rescued Honda outfit, thanks to a management buyout led by Ross Brawn, after the Japanese manufacturer pulled out after two disappointing seasons.

But even if Honda may have left useful things like designs for cars and the occasional stack of cash around Brackley, it was only part of the job.

Brawn and Nick Fry still had to build the car, get as much testing as possible before the ban fell and secure an engine deal. This is where, in my opinion, the team won the title.

Firstly Button needs to give a big warm hand shake to the man who found the loophole for the double-decker diffuser. Yes someone at Williams and Toyota found the same loophole, but no-one seemed to exploit it the way Brawn did. That may be down to the fact Honda abandoned their 2008 campaign almost as soon as it began, so had six or so months longer than everyone else to study a massive raft of rule changes.

The second master stroke made in the back room was whoever decided to give Mercedes a call over supplying engines. A marque that had not been a customer supplier before this year, was suddenly the most prolific powerplant in F1, and the fastest. There have been very few times this year when one of the six Mercedes engines has not been at (or near) the top of the speedcharts.

Even once these choices had been made and the team had taken their early successes times were tough. The residual Honda money, and any gained from sponsorship as the team’s potential became obvious, was not enough. The team had to fire several workers even after the victory in Melbourne.

Then as the season moved to Europe chinks began to show in the Brawn armour. Vettel and Red Bull already had one win in China and were now introducing updates at a rate very few, let alone Brawn, could keep up with. Other teams were getting updates, including the once crucial double diffuser, and the march Brawn had stolen in the winter had melted away by the summer.

Doom-mongers doubted the team’s means and ability to keep their car competitive as Red Bull clawed back into range over the summer.

But Brawn did introduce upgrades. A one-two finish in Monza a tour de force for the team as the brute force of the engine was complemented by strategy choices by the team that pushed both drivers past the rapid two-stoppers ahead.

That result aside the upgrades did not win races, but rather did just enough. They no longer needed to win races, a reward for their early and off season work.

And for that alone Brawn’s title should be remembered.

All Filler, No Killer - The I Still Refuse to Call it Auto Club Speedway Edition

2009-10-16T14:22:00.001+01:00

Oh dear merciful Lord, it’s back! Just when you thought it was safe to be a NASCAR driver and do something vaguely stupid “All Killer, No Filler” returns after one it’s brief getaways.

This means that instead of being stuck with the seven dwarfs of the race before I get to pick and choose who I want from a bunch of races, so sit back (not that far back, you’ll probably need to scroll down) and enjoy the shambling, shuffling (and rather late) return of AFNK as it slips in the back door like you do when you come home three hours late after a night at the pub.

Let’s just hope they’re not up still.....

Dave Blaney – Yes, I get to pick and choose who gets to ride the bus this week, but it just wouldn’t be an edition of AKNK without Dave Blaney, he’s the field filler comfort blanket that keeps us all warm at night. Sunday night at Fontana he didn’t disappoint (although he was still recovering from a dizzying 37th place in Dover) as he fumbled to finish 40th, completing just 22 laps before “overheating” parked the car............10/10

Michael McDowell – People of California. I ask you “was it absurdly hot on Sunday afternoon?” Could you fry eggs on the pavement? Were people breaking hydrants simply to get some fresh, cooling water that evaporated before it even touched the ground where it would have instantly boiled on contact? I only ask as there seems to have been an outbreak of overheating at Fontana, with Blaney, Mcdowell and David Gilliland all had their races ended by over-heating (although between you and me the only “heat” involved in Gilliland and the #71’s retirement was Kyle Busch’s fever and the Gibbs money burning a whole in the team’s pocket...................10/10

Michael Waltrip – MWR have gone insane! First you have Michael’s Evil Kneivel impression through the big accident on Sunday. Everyone else is crashing, spinning and wrecking around you, what do you do? a) back off until you the smoke clears or your spotter tells you the spinning, crashing and wrecking has stopped or b) floor it right through the middle, doing a combination of fervent prayer and the song your mother used to sing to you? If you picked a) you’re sensible, if you picked b) you’re Michael Waltrip (hello Michael) or you’re just being silly. Then comes the news they’re chatting up Danica Patrick about a move to NASCAR. They can’t be that desperate for publicity.....4/10

Sam Hornish – Honey, I’m worried about Sam. I think he might actually be a NASCAR driver. The artist formally known as Sideways turned in another creditable performance by finishing 12th, a result that once would have only been because of the top contenders crashing, flukish fuel economy or divine intervention. Sam may have outlived his days as a NASCAR joke, which mean we need someone to fill his shoes..........3/10

Casey Mears – And who better to move onto that Casey Mears, a man who has had every opportunity thrust upon him and has failed to do anything, other than with the help of the same divine intervention mentioned above. The TV people are obviously fearful for Casey’s future, going to great lengths to point out how he was running sixth for a few laps, which was his highest finish of the season (I wonder how many fully funded multi-car teams would be proud of that?). Casey soon slumped to eleventh, which isn’t his best finish of the season.........4/10

Ryan Newman – Perhaps it’s because I’m not American, or because I like watching racing, rather that listening to infomercials, that NASCAR constant product placement makes me squirm in my seat like I’ve just had an accident in my trousers (sorry, pants). But at Lowe’s on Saturday Ryan and Jeff Gordon will promote the Transformers sequel, but “becoming” Transformers themselves (I’m not sure but I don’t think they’re going to fit the templates somehow). The only way it could be any better is if Jimmie Johnson were the evil Megatron – actually there is no way we know he isn’t......5/10

Brian Vickers – My guess is Brian is probably hoping he didn’t make the Chase right now. That was he’d be getting all his appalling luck and bad weekends out of the way while no-one was looking, concentrating on the efforts of Kyle Busch after he made the Chase at Richmond. This weeks misfortune was a broken shock absorber, which the team overcame with the same sort of technical expertise you use when you lick a battery to see if it’s working, by shoving four spring rubbers in. Then they managed to get involved in the big crash – more on that later.......7/10

And the Brikkie Goes To............

Let us address the Brikkie by tapping into movie and/or book quotes. What, everyone are the rules of Fight Club? 1. You don’t talk about Fight Club. 2. You don’t talk about Fight Club. Now let’s compare that to the rules of NASCAR (or at least what we imagine the rules to be, the book itself being as elusive as Unicorn crap) 1. You don’t talk about debris cautions. 2. You don’t talk debris cautions. I think Kasey Kahne’s in trouble.

Next Week.

A right mixed bag. David Ragan and Paul Menard, Michael “crazyman” Watrip and Denny Hamlin, alongside the field filler trio of Dave Blaney, Mike Bliss and David Gilliland.

Suzuka: The end for gravel traps?

2009-10-05T00:04:00.002+01:00

The various accidents over the Japanese Grand Prix weekend at Suzuka – especially those suffered by Timo Glock in qualifying and Jaime Alguersuari in the race – are likely to cause the debate about run off areas to be re-opened.

It is one of the criticisms often levelled at the new Hermann Tilke "Tilke-drome" circuits (and those older tracks that have been “improved”) that the huge swathes of high grip tarmac that act as run off areas detract something from the challenge of driving a race car round a track fast. There is no (or very little) punishment for running off track.

A driver can simply carry on, maybe flicking down a gear and losing some track position, but carrying with he and his car none the worse for wear. F1 should be difficult, and gravel traps make it more so, and that’s before you consider that more gravel traps would render the chicane cutting dilemmas null and void.

As you may be able to tell I normally count myself squarely in the group who support the use of gravel traps and walls to stop cars and punish mistakes with retirement.

But the events at Suzuka may have changed that.

The Japanese track has been improved massively since its previous F1 races, new paddock buildings, massive resurfacing and the addition of concrete run off areas.

In commentary for the practice sessions for the race at Suzuka former (and probably future) F1 driver Anthony Davidson described how Spoon Curve used to have a vast gravel trap to its outside, that any mistake would send you skipping over at pretty high speed.

A daunting experience.

However, in these days of personal injury lawyers and litigation “daunting” is not a word people like, along with “risky” and that Spoon gravel trap has given way to another sea of tarmac (save for an awkward section at very end).

But unlike the new "Tilke-drome"s Suzuka has split its run-offs between tarmac and gravel. The turn one gravel where Senna and Prost once came to a halt is gone, the outside of 130R is similarly tarmaced over.

But grass and tyre walls still flank the esses, the Degner curves and the final bend – a location not unknown for big accidents even before Glock’s impact.

But Glock and Alguersuari put a massive dent in any argument for gravel traps (and their cars).

In both cases the gravel traps did not stop the car. No matter whether we want drivers punished for their mistakes we don’t want them injured.

Even more worrying was the manor in which both cars, most noticeably Alguersuari, were sent airborne by skipping over the gravel or the change in running on grass to gravel. There are all too many accidents where an airborne car hitting the barrier has terrible consequences. Put simply you can design barriers to cope with “conventional” impacts where a car hits at the base of walls, but put a car airborne, even slightly, with all the pitching and yawing, and (no pun intended) everything is up in the air.

Now, if you still support gravel traps you can argue that the traps that both drivers encountered were narrow, meaning there was very little room between the track and the barrier. You can also argue that Alguersuari’s crash was an odd place on the track.

And it was.

But perhaps gravel just isn’t the best way to stop and F1 car. Perhaps they are just too fast, and too light, and with the skid plant tend to skim over the traps like a flat stone over a lake.

Whatever the technical reasons the fact remains. If there was no grass and gravel then the four wheels retain contact with road and higher grip levels.

And higher grip levels means more chance to scrub off speed, or steer way from the worst of the impact, which means fewer injured drivers.

Which we can all agree is good.

All Filler, No Killer - The Confusion Abounds Edition

2009-09-24T23:49:00.002+01:00

NASCAR drivers are simple beings.

Why else would the complain the end to the race was confusing?

Yes there was tyre smoke, and yes there was a yellow flag, but that's not exactly uncommon is it?

What are they going to be like when it gets really confusing (checks NASCAR schedule for Talladega), how do they cope in the real world where we have really confusing things, like having to cook at roast dinner, or women (please not, I'm saying women are confusing, not that cooking women is confusing (although it would be, you need to find a place to buy a bigger oven for starters))

Anyway - on with the show.

Max Papis - An easy start. The was no Max Papis at Loudon, and there is only so much you can write about fresh air - it's mostly nitrogen you know............10/10

Dave Blaney - One more race. One more retirement. One more excuse (electrical this week). It really is coming to the point where there is only so much you can say about Dave Blaney's "season"....................10/10

Michael McDowell - M&M called it a day after only 36 laps (maybe Tommy Baldwin wanted to work on his Phil Parsons-esque money counting). At this point in the season, cast your mind back to Daytona. What were we being told where the "feel good stories" of the season. Tommy Baldwin and Jeremy Mayfield, and what do we have now - just another field filler, and nothing at all............10/10

Aric Almirola - I have a confession to make. It wasn't until I can to start writing AFNK this week that I realised that Aric was in the #09 car (rather than Mike Bliss whose slot this is). Now that is a poor start (especially as I am one of the few who believes the young man deserves a proper Cup chance), even worse is going a lap down early and finishing 29th. Dear Aric, you only get so many chances in the shop window when people are looking, and you were looking in the wrong direction................8/10

Jamie McMurray - In the least surprising news since [insert a very unsurprising news story here, feel free to suggest your own in the comments section] Jamie McMurray is pretty much signed for Earnhardt Ganassi. However, still behind the wheel of a Ford he came a creditable 18th (one behind chief-Roushketeer Carl Edwards). And by way of comparison he was behind only one of the drivers who took 'his' ride at Yates (but what do I know of the people who make decisions)....................4/10

Brian Vickers - If anyone doubted Vickers' Chase credentials (OK, you can put your hands down now) then his run at Loudon should have done a lot to shut you up. His 26th place start, compared to Shrub's 9th, seemed to show the wrong Camry man was in the shootout, and although Kyle's 5th (admitedly with cheating) beat BV (which in nature stands for Belch Vocalisation, how gorillas communicate) by 6 places the Red Bull driver's push though the field and up to 8th in the standings showed that he might yet have a part to play yet...........2/10

Tony Stewart - Can we all club together and buy Tony Stewart a lucky rabbit's foot, or a four leafed clover, or at least repair the mirror he broke to try and solve the shoddy luck he and his #14 team have had the last few weeks. This week's curious failure was an axel cap, that plunged a front running drive, and return to form, to a battle for track position and very early Chase damage limitation...................4/10

And the Brikkie Goes To.............

OK, let's not beat around the bush, it's Dale Earnhardt Jr. I'm no fan at all of when driver's call each other out for a percieved lack of talent, and Jr. did exactly that to David Reutimann after their late race crash. David just got loose and Jr. happened to be in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens to everyone, I'm sure even St. Junior of Kannapolis has made the mistake occasionally. However, in his defence I suppose if anyone should be able to recognise anyone running out of talent it should be Dale Jr.

Next Week

The circus head to Dover, with the man on the tightrope of control, Sam Hornish Jr, Rocketman Ryan Newman, acrobat Carl Edwards, the trio of clowns with Tony Raines, Dave Blaney and Michael McDowell and Michael Waltrip - the bearded lady.

All Filler, No Killer - The Chasing Your Tail Edition

2009-09-17T23:25:00.002+01:00

OK, so it's the Chase again.

Do you like it or loath it?

Do you love the fact that drivers were fighting each other with single positions the difference between Chase and no Chase, and will be fighting for the next ten races for the title? Or loath the fact that the man who won the sport's biggest race and (arguably) the best driver in NASCAR will have to be contended with 13th.

Of course, NASCAR face a dilemma, as Dale "the cash-cow" Jr. isn't in the Chase (let's see them change the rules of next year). Nor, currently is he anywhere near the cut-off for next year's shootout, being about the 11th best Chevy in the standings, but that is but a small hurdle. Yes, there are quite a few Jr. rants week. You'll see.

Mike Bliss - Welcome to the merry-go-round that never stops that is the NASCAR driver market. On the merry-go-round this week Mike Bliss got off the horse-that-goes-up-and-down that is the #09 car and onto the static-sleigh-thingy of the #71 (if your interested in this strange metaphor David Gilliland was onto the bit-on-the-middle-that-doesn't-turn). And this week that static-sleigh-thingy had "transmission" troubles and finished 42nd....................10/10

Dave Blaney - The only man who failed to beat Mike was, the one, the only (thankfully as far as this season's "displays" have gone) Dave Blaney. Once more the Buckeye Blank was pulled in very, very early (36 laps the official count). And the good news is, with Yates and Petty merging for next year we're likely to have at least one more field filler. Competition for last place may soon become more fierce than for first......................10/10

Joe Nemechek - Are you sitting down? Good. Joe actually finished. I mean he almost did the proper race distance, only finishing 4 laps down, in 35th (for anyone else 35th would have me labelling them "anonymous" and "filler-ish", but Joe managing that this year is similar in surprise level to him managing to part the Red Sea, but if he can manage to get a proper sponsor for that I suppose there is always hope.............8/10

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - OK, so Jr. once again Dale Jr. looked like he might do something to warrant the hours of TV time that are dedicated to him, but once more failed miserably - I just want to find the first TV person to point out that Jr. is a failure as he's the only Hendrick car not in the Chase (and then follow him as he cashes his first Social Security check). However, the worst thing is the "Most Valuable Pit Crew", or whatever it is (it's probably got a sponsor in there somewhere). How in the name of chocolate covered pretzels can Dale Jr.'s pitcrew be considered valuable? They spent the first half of the season finding every excuse fathomable to be completely and utterly rubbish, and have spent the second half of the season being mediocre at best. No, it's clearly a sign that there are NASCAR fans who don't actually watch the racing, and only listen to the sentences that begin "look at Dale Earnhardt Jr...." or "Dick's got something on the 88 car." Rant Over...................7/10

Reed Sorenson - Reed Sorenson needs to win the lottery - that way we can get rid of Paul Menard to go and spend his inheritance and learn to shave properly. That's the only reason Menard the mobile chicane has a drive for next season, and Reed is out on his ear, despite finishing 16th to Menard's 28th, and while it was nice to see Reed trying to diversify into stunt driving as part of "Tony Stewart's Synchronised Spin Team" he is far better than to be jobless. Also, am I the only one who thinks that simply saying "Reynolds Wrap" is funny?.......4/10

Carl Edwards - Crippled Flipper did enough to get through to the Chase, there's not much you can say more than that. That was as well as winning the Nationwide race, and not being able to flip in celebration, which I suppose is a good thing, mainly because the scream of agony would have vapourised the first few rows of the crowd. However, it would be quite interesting to see how easy it is to thank all your sponsors while your foot is in jigsaw form...............4/10

Brian Vickers - Dale Jr. fans are very confused this week. They like Brian Vickers because he's kept Kyle Busch (the sworn enemy of Jr. nation) out of the Chase, but still have residual hatred for him from all the way in Talladega in what feels like a previous century, and of course for Lap124-gate at Daytona in February, where we all remember Vickers took out Jr. But Vickers fan(s), just rest safe i the knowledge that your man is in the Chase in a team that didn't exist three years ago, and Jr.'s a long way outside in the team that's set the pace for pretty much the past decade.........2/10

And the Brikkie goes too...........

Well, Clint Bowyer made a decent attempt at getting the last regular season Brikkie, but instead it gets aimed firmly at Matt Kenseth. Frankly, that was rubbish. To be honest the Brikkie was getting aimed as soon as your qualifying attempt was slower than thick syrup, and it looked like you'd rather be anywhere than Richmond this week, and anywhere other than the Chase next week, and if that was the case the second part of your wish came true.

Next Week

Another stellar line-up for AFNK, with Chase contenders Brian Vickers and Tony Stewart, the (officially) employmentally challenged Jamie McMurray, Italy's own Max Papis. And of course the trifecta of excuses of Dave Blaney, Mike Bliss and Michael McDowell.

The All-Motorsport Power Rankings No. 35

2009-09-16T17:50:00.007+01:00

Bad news everyone, I fear the beginning of the end is near as far as the racing season goes.

NASCAR has its 12 drivers that will fight it out of the title and elsewhere the first titles of the year being decided. Jan Charouz, Tomas Enge and Stefan Mucke too the European Le Mans Series title (and their Aston Martin Racing team took the teams championship) and Nico Hulkenburg became the first driver ever to wrap up the GP2 title before the final weekend.

But at the same time, 2010 is already taking shape, with NASCAR's silly season warming up, with yet another merger. Meanwhile, in F1, "Lotus" (scare quotes very necessary) have been awarded the 13th slot on next year's grid (and the new owners to BMW-Sauber have been given the 14th). Renault may also be there, though not with Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds at the helm.

15 Jarno Trulli (F1)
Jarno’s attention is slipping.

In Spa he was depressed into retirement after following Luca Badoer, and in Monza he explained his move on Nakajima by saying he “got a bit bored to be honest”.

14 Bernie Ecclestone (F1)
F1 in a recession.

Testing bans, engine freezes, budget cuts, major stakeholders making million dollar losses and Bernie gets a 15% pay rise.

13 Fernando Alonso (F1)
“I know nothing”.

Yes we know Manuel, I mean Fernando.

I’m sorry, he’s from Oviedo.

12 Mike Gascoyne (F1)
Back in F1 with Norfolk based, Malaysian backed “Lotus”.

Malaysian Prime Minister: “the cars will be made in Malaysia, by Malaysians.”

Last I checked Norfolk wasn’t in Malaysia (or the 21st century).

11 Nigel Mansell (Le Mans Series)
Is getting to drive with your dad in a 1000km race the adult equivalent of getting to sit in the passenger seat in the family car?

If so, I want to know why I always ended up in the back, and I still haven’t got my Ferrari.

Le Mans Series Silverstone report and results.

10 Mark Martin (NASCAR)
He’s jumped 9 places thanks to the Chase seeding.

That’s the old guy’s biggest leap since someone woke him up after he fell asleep watching MacGyver.

9 Jan Kopecky (IRC)
Winner in the IRC again.

Skoda still a punch line.

IRC Rally Asturias report and results.

8 Garth Tander (V8 Supercars)
Winner of the first Australian V8 Supercar Enduro race of the year.

His wife, Leanne, finished 19th.

Insert a stereotype of your choice here.

7 Jan Charouz (Le Mans Series)
Newly crowed Le Mans Series champion, expected to make it a double success at the upcoming “Smiliest Czech” competition.

6 Adrian Sutil (F1)
Yes, well done you got points.

Unfortunately you’re a fortnight too late of the fanfare, fireworks and first place in the Power Rankings.

5 Brian Vickers (NASCAR)
The only positive Red Bull related news week.

4 Nico Hulkenburg (GP2)
Here’s what GP2 champion Nico said about his engineer;

“He’s my bitch”

Despite winning the GP2 title, Nico won’t be in F1 year. His mother’s grounded him and carries on asking where he heard that word.

3 Denny Hamlin (NASCAR)
To Denny Richmond is like everyone else’s Daytona.

Richmond is roughly one-third the size of Daytona, so, applying logic, Denny must be the third the size of everyone else (roughly the size of a Labrador).

2 Jenson Button (F1)
Jenson on Rubens:

“He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow when it comes to racing cars”

Funnily enough, that was going Flav’s defense next week.

1 Rubens Barrichello (F1)
His helmet in Monza supported Nelson Piquet Jr.

Surely the best way to support him would to show easy it was to crash and help your teammate?

Photo Credits with Ranking Number. 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, 2 & 1: Getty Images, via bleacherreport.com. 11, 7 & 4: LAT. 9: Autosport.

McMurray out in the cold? Others will follow

2009-09-13T19:53:00.000+01:00

Last week, almost silently the Yates Racing team and Richard Petty Motorsport reported they were to merge into a single four car team for 2010.

This is nothing new, these days merges and co-operative efforts are all the rage in NASCAR. Yates, already has a tie in with Roush Racing, and with Hall of Fame Racing for the running of the No.96 car. RPM on the other hand has already been through one complete merge, having blended with Ray Evernham’s efforts for this season, resulting in the four car team that this year has run cars for Reed Sorenson, A.J. Allmendinger, Elliott Sadler and Kasey Kahne.

The announcement of the new merged team also came with an announcement of the four drivers who will pilot the Fords they will run.

Kahne, Sadler and Allmendinger will join from RPM, while Paul Menard (and his daddy’s money) will come in from Yates’ existing team.

With the announcement all eyes were on the odd ones out. Hall of Fame look to be out on their own again, and Reed Sorenson is the sole RPM driver to find himself without a ride in the new team, and judging by talk at Richmond over the weekend, for 2010 at all as yet.

However, the real odd man out may have escaped notice.

Jamie McMurray.

We all know that Roush has to trim their five car effort to four over the off season as per NASCAR’s rule. And we all know (barring a massive turn around) that it’s McMurray who will be shown the door.

Knowing this for months whenever quips of questions flew surrounding McMurray’s future, just about everyone was saying he would be let out by Roush in name only.

Everyone expected Roush to continue, if not increase its interest in Yates’ operation and install McMurray in the team.

And that might still happen – Roush increasing it’s interest in the new team running Fords. But McMurray won’t (or can’t as it appears) be there, as with four drivers already named they are limited by the same rule that puts Jamie out at Roush.

So, where can Jamie McMurray go?

More than ever there are a dwindling number of open competitive rides, and still the same number of drivers looking to fill them.

You can point, as many have, at the seat Martin Truex Jr. is vacating at Earnhardt-Ganassi (oh, look another merged team), and he may well go there (although personally I’d like to Aric Almirola given a fighting chance for the seat). And then what else is there?

Not much.

And Jamie McMurray is only one name looking for a ride.

All Filler, No Killer - The Kid in the Candy Shop Edition

2009-09-10T23:20:00.003+01:00

I am a kid who has been given the keys to the candy shop, and the delivery times of the candy truck every week so he can get the fresh stuff before anyone else gets their grubby hands on it.

Yes, through my other amatuer writing I have been given the keys to the realm of NASCAR media.

And, of course, like the metaphorical kid in sweet shop, I haven't a clue what to do with it right. I'm sure you'll agree AFNK isn't exactly the most statistically in depth peice of writing in the world, but there are so many shiny numbers and quotes and facts and figures and more numbers and pictures.

Well it's enough to make you think so hard you'll let a little bit of wee out.

And with that stunning bodily-function related revelation, let's get on with it.

Tony Raines - Kicking off a bumper crop of field fillers this week, comes the man in the #37 car, who managed to limbo under the bar of lowness set by Blaney, Nemechek and company by actually failing to qualify, turning a lap at 176mph, some 3mph slower than the lowest other go-or-go-home car. However, he was 2mph faster than Eric Darnell, who must have lapped the entire Atlanta metro area he was so slow...................12/10

Regan Smith - And this week I bring you not just one, but two DNQ sob stories - and this one has even more sob, as it has slightly less rubbish driver. Regan Smith would have been fast enough to get in the field (4mph faster than Darnell the Cab driver) had Atlanta not been one of the races that the, apparently retired, Terry Labonte turned up to with his Champions' Provisional round his neck (I always imagine they wear these things round their neck like media passes). (Oh - media - look there were 31 cars on the lead lap on lap 160)..........11/10

Dave Blaney - Back to the well trodden field filler pastures of Dave Blaney and Prism Racing, who this week managed only 19 laps (the days when Dave would complete a dizzying 49 laps are but a distant happy memory now) before retiring to the pits, with an "electrical" problem. Presumably it's the same sort of electrical 'problem' I have when I forget to plug my laptop in and it runs out of battery.................10/10

Joe Nemechek - And completing only 6 more laps than Dave, but paradoxically banking 300 fewer almighty dollars, comes Joe Nemechek, whose excuse this week was brakes. That means, stat fans, that Atlanta was the fourth time Joe has claimed brakes stopped his race, making it his favourite excuse, with 'brakes' now being a clear leader over 'transmission'. And I didn't even need the media gubbins to find that out..............10/10

A.J. Allmendinger - Hooray for someone that actually raced! OK, so it's only A.J. Allmendinger, but it's an improvement. A.J. just avoided the 20-somethings of anonymity by finishing a glorious 20th from a 35th starting position, but otherwise had a very quiet race, completing absolutely zero "quality passes" (I'm a beginner at statistics, I haven't a clue what a quality pass is - presumably one where he has no hands on the wheel, or is steering with his feet as he's passing or something else to raise it from 'ordinary' into 'quality')....................6/10

Kurt Busch - The winner of the first Atlanta race brought back the same car, and found the situation very different indeed, struggling to hold on to his car (but then I think everyone was at some point) until he decided to try and reprise his 'Unwind Lap' routine and only succeeded in finding the wall, and waking Joey Logano up..............................5/10

David Reutimann - I'm guessing David doesn't much care for the statistics I now have at my fingertips this week. With his fourth place finish he is still in mathmatical contention for The Chase, using the word 'mathmatical' in the way only sports analysts can of dismissing someone's chances out of hand. And let's be fair to actually be in the top-12 after Richmond David needs a large swathe of Virginia to open up and swallow about a dozen NASCAR drivers (or 42 to be on the safe side), or at least find a way of taking Matt Kenseth out before Blaney, Nemechek and their gang decide to stop for coffee..................3/10

And the Brikkie Goes To.......................

Carl Edwards. Carl, consider this a hold over Brikkie as AFNK doesn't explicitely cover the Nationwide Series. You steal Marcos' Nationwide victory and write off his Grand-Am car last week. That had me calling for Karma to come and get you (read the Power Rankings and you'll understand) and it did. Karma punishes you with a broken foot, and engine trouble (although at least it meant we saw less of that paint job - I know it was a cancer charity, and it's not PC to say so, but that was hideous). That cumulative two week extravaganza of moronic behaviour earn Flipper a Brikkie - aimed at his foot.

Next Week

NASCAR heads for the paradise of The Chase by the dashboard light of a Richmonf night race. And AFNK gets some high profile play mates, with limping Flipper Carl Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Chase hopeful Brian Vickers and Reed Sorenson (provided he's not scanning classifieds for a job next year). And, of course your weekly dose of field filler with Dave Blaney, Joe Nemechek and Mike Bliss

Nelson Piquet: Criminal Mastermind II The Family Affair

2009-09-09T23:01:00.001+01:00

A few days ago, I wrote (on these every pages – scroll down a little) half jokingly that Nelson Piquet Jr was some sort of criminal genius after the FIA took him seriously enough to launch a publicised investigation into his role in Fernando Alonso’s win in Singapore.

Now it appears that, with the latest news, the criminal ingenuity may run deep in the Piquet family.

While, I, and presumably you, found out about this event slowly through the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, when it was reported on Brazilian TV it seems the FIA knew about it beforehand.

As early as the Hungarian Grand Prix, when, you’ll remember, Piquet was still racing for Renault.

A report for Autosport says how Nelson’s former world champion father, rather unoriginally also called Nelson, told FIA President Max Mosley.

We’ve also learnt more of what other (and by other I mean non-Piquet speech) evidence they have.

They are partly related to technology, with the telemetry showing that Piquet didn’t lift off at the normal place to stop the car from spinning.

Now, exactly how this means that anything was deliberate is beyond me – it’s a mistake, drivers make them (and Nelson Piquet Jr. makes more than most) every accident, almost by definition is caused by a mistake – the driver braking too late or wrongly timed steering input for example, yet no-one claims every accident is deliberate.

Second, and seemingly central to the investigation is a three way meeting between Piquet Jr., Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, the team’s director of engineering.

Now, this might be great evidence, and all three of them actually admit there was a meeting, they just differ on what was discussed, or rather who said what.

While Piquet suggests it was Symonds who told him when and where to crash, in order to ensure a Safety Car period at the best time for Alonso, both Briatore and Symonds claim it was the driver who first suggested a staged accident. I imagine the conversation started something like “You know I’ve crashed a lot this season......”.

That, to me suggests something like the conversation happened – otherwise why wouldn’t Briatore and Symonds simply deny the meeting ever happened, or that crashing was ever mentioned.

But why would Nelson Piquet suggest he cause an accident himself, damaging his credibility (actually the was probably in tatters already) and potentially his entire career?

Did he get extra money for staging the accident? Briatore described that Piquet was in a “fragile state of mind”. Why? The mystery deepens

Or maybe Flavio Briatore’s rather bizarre claim is closer to the truth than you might think.

He claims he is “a victim of extortion by the Piquet family”.

What if Piquet Jr. did suggest and cause the accident himself, knowing what the likely outcome would be – that of an Alonso victory – knowing (as many suspected) that his tenure at Renault was unstable?

What if he used it as a back-up plan, or even to blackmail Renault into keeping him longer than they wanted given his poor performance?

And, in Hungary, when it started to become very clear that he was headed squarely to the door, he cashed in his metaphorical chips against Renault, by getting his father to tell the FIA.

The Motorsport Power Rankings: No. 34

2009-09-09T18:28:00.007+01:00

This week the world of Formula One invented a new party game, well two new party games depending on what kind of parties you like. The first is Musical Italians, where you put some Pavarotti on and all swap your Italians until the music stops, any Italian left without a seat is called Luca.

The second is more complicated, and better suited to more mature parties. It's like a game where you have to guess the murderer, only you have to guess who conspired to make Nelson Piquet Jr. crash, Flav, Pat Symonds, Nelson, Nelson's dad Nelson, or whether is all made up nonsense the PIquet clan have cooked up to get revenge on Renault.

Elsewhere my call for NASCAR Karma was answered by a frisbee, the Australians proved they even plan protests better than anyone else, and Sebastien Bourdais tried to make Superleague Formula racing look respectable.

15 Paul Gentilozzi (ALMS)
Delayed for two months, based on old models, indecisive and probably rubbish. Are we sure it’s not a Jaguar factory effort?

14 Luca Badoer (F1)
He blames the press for outing him from his race drive.

Well, at least we know it wasn’t high speed that caused these hallucinations.

13 Fernando Alonso (F1)
Renault are bringing back KERS for Monza, claiming it will gain then 15 metres off the start. So that’s more positive spin from Renault then.

12 Nelson Piquet Jr. (Criminal Genius)
The only way I could be more suspicious of Piquet’s claims is if Renault pull out of F1 and Piquet Sport take their entry slot.

11 Carl Edwards (NASCAR)
Broken foot from playing Frisbee and engine trouble.

Don’t mess with Karma.

10 Dani Sordo (WRC)
He was leading Rally Australia after day one.

Which clearly means he wasn’t deemed important enough to throw a frozen Koala at.

9 Sebastien Bourdais (Superleague Formula)
Winning on his Superleague Formula debut.

Red Bull claim Seville tapped him up.

8 Sebastien Loeb (WRC)
More cheating Frenchmen!

7 Augusto Farfus (WTCC)
Crash in race one. Check

Win in race two. Check

Yep, just another Farfus weekend.

6 Jorge Lorenzo (Moto GP)
Might need reminding exactly why he’s signed for another year at Yamaha right now.

5 Mikko Hirvonen (WRC)
As if the possibility of him winning the WRC needed to be any less legitimate, he’s now being given wins by FIA stewards.

4 Kasey Kahne (NASCAR)
This week’s NASCAR winner, banking $363,000, so hardly Petty cash.

3 Tonio Liuzzi (F1)
OK, so who’s running the book on Liuzzi taking out Fisichella somewhere on the first lap?

2 Valentino Rossi (Moto GP)
Now, if all Donkey rides were like that we’d all holiday in this country!

1 Giancarlo Fisichella (F1)
Ferrari staff slam Fisichella “he’s too smiley, he’s showing Kimi up.”

Nelson Piquet: Criminal Mastermind?

2009-09-04T21:27:00.002+01:00

Today his former team, Renault, have been called before an extraordinary meeting of the World Motorsport Council (WMSC) to answer charges they, along with Piquet, conspired to cause an accident that would benefit Fernando Alonso in Singapore last year.

The official FIA document, a delightfully short press release, details how “representatives of ING Renault F1” have been called to the meeting on September 21.

There is nothing there about ‘representatives of Mr. Piquet’, and given his split from the team I find it difficult to believe that the FIA would include him as part of the team ordered to attend.

Now, those of you who watched last year’s Singapore Grand Prix will recall that Piquet himself had a rather crucial part to play in the accident in question.

He was behind the wheel.

If, as you suspect if this is true Piquet was given orders over the radio, or even before the race to crash soon after Alonso made his pitstop, Nelson (presuming he was in possession of a spine at the time) had the opportunity to go ‘no’ and carry on racing.

No crash.

No Safety Car.

And probably no win for Alonso.

Of course, the explicit absence of Piquet from the FIA press release may be because they wish to punish Renault (the team, presumably, ultimately responsible for the order, and the party involved still competing in F1) first, before then moving on to place any sanctions on Piquet.
However, there is the chance that Piquet has been given some sort of ‘free pass’ as it’s his honesty, some year after the fact, that has brought the matter to the FIA’s attention.

And if that’s true Piquet may have got exactly what he wanted – public distain upon Renault and the men who run the team, including Flavio Briatore, who Piquet labelled his “executioner” after his sacking by the team.

However, the fact that the FIA have even deemed there to be enough substance to the claim to call this extraordinary meeting suggest there is more to this story than the ‘jilted ex-employee invents a story to get revenge’ some (or at least me) thought it was when it first emerged.

Now, it’s doubtful any extra evidence is in the form of in-race radio transmissions, as these are all made available to, at least, FOM (hence we get the delayed snippets during the race) if not the FIA, so anything less than curious code would have been noticed before now.

So what exactly is this evidence?

Has someone else at Renault come forward?

Have the FIA found a convenient piece of paper someone at Renault HQ wishes they’d have shredded?

Or, and all aboard the Cynic-mobile here, have the FIA discovered another way to get back at Renault after the punishment for the loose wheel at Hungary punishment was overturned?

The All-Motorsport Power Rankings: Week 33

2009-09-02T13:49:00.008+01:00

This week's rankings have a north of the border feeling, as three of America's major racing series slipped north to Canada, with the ALMS returning for its annual race at Mosport, while the Nationwide Series teamed up with Grand-Am to take Montreal.

The Grand-Am race was dominated by Carl Edwards and Marcos Ambrose (or at least it would have been had Flipped not managed to invent a corner and re-arrange the front of the car on the out lap (yes, that's even before they get round to the grid). On Sunday "43 of the best drivers in the world" managed to make driving in the rain look on a difficulty par with Rocket Science as everyone seemingly was aiming to spend as much time pointing in the wrong direction as possible.

And in Europe F1 minnows Force India grabbed their first points with a second place, despite having to replace bits of the car because of a impact with a rabbit (at least I presume it's a rabbit there wasn't enough left to tell really)

15 Steven Wallace (Every which way but forwards)
AP: Charlotte, NC.

Ex-NASCAR champ Rusty Wallace begins civil procedure to disown useless son.

14 Nelson Piquet Jr (Ex-F1)
Hell hath no fury like a Piquet scorned.

Read more here

13 Romain Grosjean (F1)
Says he was taken off by Button in the Belgium melee.

That sort of attitude is what made making fun of Piquet acceptable, son.

Belgian GP results.

12 Brad Keselowski (NASCAR)
The new driver of the No.12 Penske car from 2010.

Look out for David Stemme behind the counter in your nearest Starbucks then.

11 Scott Dixon (Indycar)
He’s frustrated at finishing second “I’ve seen this before several times.”

Luckily Scott has DirecTV, so he won’t have to see Indycar again.

10 Vijay Mallya (F1)
Aztecs finally vindicated as animal sacrifice brings first points, Mallya to open rabbit farm.

9 Jan Magnussen (ALMS)
Taking the GT2 Corvette’s first win in the ALMS in Mosport, along with Johnny O’Connell.

8 Carl Edwards (NASCAR)
Carl’s weekend was evidence there is no benevolent Lord in motor racing.

First Carl junks his Grand-Am ride on the out lap, before Marcos Ambrose even gets in the car, then on Sunday Carl robs Marcos blind of the Nationwide win.

I'm supporting Karma at Atlanta.

7 Ryan Briscoe (Indycar)
Winner in Chicagoland, leading the Indycar point standings.

Not much else to say.

Indycar Chicagoland results.

6 David Brabham (ALMS)
Random, tenuously related thought.

If when Dyson Racing modify a car they are Dysonising it, are Highcroft always Patronising the field?

ALMS Mosport report and results.

5 Marcos Ambrose (NASCAR)
Marcos to visit a psychic to discover exactly how he wronged Canada (or Carl Edwards) in a past life.

4 Jorge Lorenzo (Moto GP)
What’s wrong with this sentence?

Two top MotoGP riders fall off and not one of them is Jorge Lorenzo.

To make matters worse he actually wins.

3 Andrew Ranger (NASCAR)
Third in the Montreal Nationwide race, top Canadian, and judging by the clips of Canadian Tire races in the broadcast, a complete mad man.

NASCAR Nationwide Series Montreal results.

2 Kimi Raikkonen (F1)
Thankfully in front of the famous Force India this week.

1 Giancarlo Fisichella (F1)
Another misunderstanding at Ferrari HQ

Human Resources department ordered to get busy with the Fisi.

Mistakenly buy Soda Stream.

Indycar Entering a Minefield NASCAR Knows Well

2009-08-30T16:25:00.003+01:00

Various hardline fans of the two series might not agree but on recent evidence Indycar seems to be heading for the same sort of worries that have been writ large during this NASCAR season.

As fans of Indycar will no doubt be aware the powers-that-be within the series introduced a raft of measures aimed at improving the races, especially on the oval tracks they visit. There were various aerodynamic widgets added, or made optional, to increase downforce, while others were taken away to increase close racing, and then they introduced an engine boost that a driver can use a set number of times during a race, to help pass a rival, defend from a rival, or catch up to a rival.

The first oval race, in Kentucky, was a revelation (especially compared to what had gone before it). There was close racing, doses of overtaking and lowly Ed Carpenter for Vision Racing came as close to breaking the life extinguishing stranglehold that the powerhouses of Penske and Ganassi have had on ovals as anyone has in eons.

Reviews were almost universally positive, or at least heralded the first steps out of the levels of catatonic boredom Indycar had all too regularly visited, and so it was a certain level of excitement that fans braced themselves for the second oval race since the rule changes. This time at Chicagoland.

Now, here I have to point out my observations on the race are based on Indycar’s online highlight package and various written reports, so they may not be perfect.

The finish was the race was spectacular (as recent finishes at the Illinois track have been) but this was a little extra than recent finishes. Without wishing to pour scorn on greatness Ryan Briscoe’s winning margin of 0.0077 seconds pales into insignificance compared to last year’s so-close-they-called-it-wrong episode. What made this a little special was the fact that covering the top 13 cars – every lead lap finisher – was 0.8269 seconds. In fact there was only a shade over half a second covering the top 12. There may only have been a handful of green laps before the finish, but what it still shows is that the stringing out of the field can be almost non-existent.

Now, you can’t fault close racing. It’s what people want to see when they spin the turnstiles and sit in the stands or pay the subscription and sit in front of their TV, which is what Indycar wants and needs right now, but a look away from the open wheel world shows the minefield they may be stepping into.

A minefield in which NASCAR has been getting its legs blown off in for years.

Where can you get close, fast racing in NASCAR? Daytona and Talladega, the restrictor plate tracks, where the sanctioning body artificially bunches up the field by taking away horsepower from the engines. Now, there is nothing that artificial about Indycar’s rule changes, but it’s having a similar effect.

And what else, aside from close racing, have NASCAR’s plate races become synonymous with?

Huge crashes.

Even to the point that the networks that are “lucky” enough to be broadcasting these races use the threat of “The Big One” in its marketing for the race. Huge crashes may get viewing figures, but I’d guess that even the IRL don’t want that.

Two of the three plate races this year have had massive crashes in their closing laps (often after late cautions like yesterday’s Indycar race), with several very damaged cars, and handful of injured fans and a return to post-Dale-Sr levels of fear over safety in plate races, with several drivers being very vocal in their criticism of the racing.

And as far as safety goes NASCAR’s jalopy knocks an Indycar into a cocked hat. They have fenders, so minor touches are just that, rather than the danger of inter-locking wheels in Indycar. NASCARs also have a roof, and have nothing of an Indycar Dallara’s tendency to take off if the air flow gets under them.

Perhaps the latest (and most re-shown) instance of this last trait has been Dario Franchitti’s flight at Michigan when he drove for AGR.

A small amount of contact at speed gets him sideways, the car get’s airborne, before landing back on the track (and other cars) and sending any nearby scattering.

Now, instead of the half a dozen or so cars he has within a second of him there, put 12, 15 or a full field behind them as would have happened if the same accident struck at Chicagoland last night.

You have the makings of Indycar’s very own “Big One” with all the consequences you don’t want to think of.

That said, there are some there is nothing wrong with NASCARs plate races, and they continue to be huge audience draw, which is what Indycar needs.

They just don’t need it to go wrong.

All Filler, No Killer - The Back on the Road Edition

2009-08-28T00:10:00.003+01:00

I've returned from my three week summer blogging break, which of couse gives me one of the AFNK editions where I get to pick and choose what drivers I want to rant about. They're my rules, and I'm sticking to them.

And so we pick the Cup Series up at their second trip to Bristol, TN, and one of the rare night races I actually get to watch live (incidentally the average human consumes enough caffeine to kil a horse - every year).

Enough wittering, on with the usual gubbins, 7 drivers with paragraphs of nonsense that often actually manage to mention NASCAR.

Dave Blaney - Dave, Dave, Dave, what are we going to do with you. You can manage to get the Prism heap of scrap car to start 4th, but then Prism heap of scrap team and the return of Phil Parson's legendary Moth Wallet (along with a helpful nudge from David Gilliland) managed to end his after an official count of 8 laps. The official reason for the retirement was an "accident". That was a rubbish accident! If "accidents" like that put cars out at Bristol (or anywhere) then no-one would actually finish, Personal Injury Lawyers would be inudated with people having "accidents" (I decided to chainsaw my arm off), and many, many more children would have to be told by their parents they were an "accident" (Well, Jonny, you were an accident, first we had a candlelight dinner, then a bath together, before watching a blue movie in bed while I licked body chocolate off your mother......) Oh, and showing my colours here, but with the economy picking up again (apparently, no-one's told my bank account) can we please get Dave into a 2010 ride with a team that isn't so 'environmentally friendly'.....................8/10

Joe Nemechek - While there may be hope for The Blaney, there can be no hope for Joe Nemechek. Even with a sponsor his season has plumbed such depths that the TV team don't even bother to mention he's gone "behind the wall" or "to the garage" anymore. In fact, I fully expect them to start telling us that Joe (or Blaney) haven't done either of those things by, say, lap 50. This week Joe was seen skulking off to count his Greenies after an official count of 48 laps...................10/10

Tony Stewart - Put your fingers in your ears now Tony Stewart fans (or actually skip down a paragraph as your hearing does not effect your ability to read) because you know this isn't going to be pretty. You done that now? Good. What the hell was that?! Just because you have an umpteen hundred point lead doesn't mean you can decide to complete rubbish for a week. First you are the first car to go a lap down, then you have so many spare radios that must have had more dud equipment than your local AV swap meet, then you go speeding down pit road, and when you finally have had enough of (almost certainly) turning the air inside the car blue and decide to try and park it, NASCAR come along with a 'helpful' truck to get you going again. Don't they know who you are?! When you just want to go home they should just let you.....................7/10

Joey Logano - Sliced Bread's race was a little like a single round or toast with strawberry jam which you later find has a maggot in it. Short and sweet at the beginning, before hours of fret and worry, with a nasty ending. He backs his car into the wall early on to scupper his own race, before donning the black cape and picking up a scithe to read the final last rites (priests do hold a scithe when reading the last rites, right, just for effect) for Clint Bowyer's Chase hopes, by giving him a helping the Hamburger Helper into Michael Waltrip....................7/10

Martin Truex Jr - More ups and downs than a roller coaster (or a whore's drawer's for a crude British turn of phrase) is one (or two) ways to describe Truex's race. Speeding off pit road was the first big drop, before working his way all the way back up to the sharp end of the field, before a tyre let go. Then came the loop-the-loop, or corkscrew (if we're continuing the roller coaster metaphor, I'll let you think of something else for the other other) when we were shown employee relations MWR style and Martin got together with his boss next year en route to shortening Michael's car and watering the Bristol apron (I wonder if Martin's been told that was one of his chassis for next year?).................5/10

Sam Hornish Jr. - Praise be! Sam Hornish has returned. After a number of recent weeks when 'Sam Hornish' did quite well in races, Sam returned to the sideways form we know and love him for (not you David Stremme, you're just rubbish, no get out and let the new spotty kid in), by wiping his livery off on the wall, seriously Sam, sponsors don't like that, you can't even read their names on the wall after you've done it. He didn't even manage to beat the steam driven world record (which was actually broken this week). From this we can only summise that Sam hasn't been Sam in recent weeks, and well, the latest series of Top Gear finished here a few weeks ago, so The Stig's been free......................7/10

Kurt Busch - Congratulations Kurt Busch! You have done something that most of us previously though impossible, you have managed to have a pit problem that even Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't had. Was that tear off just extra sticky, or did you have a particularly weedy crewman this week? Kristen, is there a weedy #2 crewman, like one you needs help getting the lids off yogurts or is always claiming he "loosened" jar lids? On the good side we we're given the American Beauty moment of NASCAR as camera's watched the suddenly freed tear off wend it's way into the catch fencing, although no-one has confirmed the director as saying "it's the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed"..............3/10

And the Brikkie goes to...........

As if there was ever any competition this week, of course it's Kevin Harvick. He was the knee-capping to Joey Logano's mob-hit execution of Clint Bowyer's chase hopes, managed to tear up his own equipment, and by all accounts was living up to the name of a completely different Dwarf to his nickname, and he wasn't Doc, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful (although in previous seasons he's been one full of bashes) or Dopey (actually scratch that, Dopey might explain a few things).

Next Week

Well, of course, as is happens, I'm back off my break just as NASCAR's premier series have a week off ahead of going to Atlanta. There we'll have a return for Kurt Busch, a possible no-show from Regan Smith, all too rare visits from A.J. Allmendinger and David Reutimann, and of course, your recommended weekly allowance of the fibre that goes straight through NASCAR, with Dave Blaney, Joe Nemechek and Tony Raines.

The All-Motorsport Power Rankings: Week 32

2009-08-26T15:39:00.026+01:00

Time for my flag-ship column (aren't I important sounding) to join the party.

Welcome to The All-Motorsport Power Rankings, taking drivers, teams and personalities from every international (or otherwise high profile, which covers me for NASCAR) motorsport shakes them into a random order and pokes fun at them and recaps the week that was.

The Power Rankings have been rumbling on since January, so naturally, we start here in Week 32, which if you wish to be confused anymore is actually edition 31.

The countdown runs from 15 to 1, you probably won't agree with the order, I probably won't agree with the order in 20 minutes.

15 Sebastien Bourdais (Moaning)
According to Seabass STR have no style after pushing him from the “revolving ejector seat”.

No style?! They have a revolving ejector seat for crying out loud! That just sounds fun!

14 Luca Badoer (F1)
Well, the only positive news I could find for Luca was he was inside the old 107% rule.

13 Allan McNish (ALMS)
Yay!

Excuse my childish excitement.

12 Romain Grosjean (F1)
Consistency is a key part in sport.

So Romain had to spin off at some point.

11 Paul, Lord Drayson (ALMS)
Paul is stepping up to P1 for Petit Le Mans.

This is my government, I voted them in. Where’s Barack’s NASCAR team anyway?

10 Jorge Lorenzo (Moto GP)
On board for another year at Yamaha.

And as I’ve been away for a week, I’ll assume he’s injured.

9 Mark Martin (NASCAR)
He couldn’t have pushed Kyle Busch out of the way for the win.

He might have broken a hip.

8 Jan Kopecky (IRC)
As IRC looks to expand it’s fanbase it aims for toddlers, with an even named after the noise a car makes, with Jan winning the Barum Rally.

7 Marcos Ambrose (NASCAR)
Third.

Well, I suppose there has to be some good news in Australian sport.

6 Lewis Hamilton (F1)
McLaren regret showing team replays or Eddie Irvine’s ’99 European GP pitstop.

5 Dario Franchitti (Indycar)
Endless commercials, I can forgive.

Rubbish commentary, I can forgive.

Not being able to tell Oriol Servia and Robert Doornbos apart, I can forgive.

Not interviewing Ashley Judd for her mindless post Dario win soundbite. Unforgivable.

4 Aston Martin Racing (Le Mans Series)
A team 1-2-3 at the weekend’s Nurburgring Le Mans Series race.

Not bad.

3 Mike Conway (Indycar)
Mike’s car had a vinyl suit at Sonoma.

Seriously, if Dario was running the Vaseline livery it would have been perfect.

2 Kyle Busch (NASCAR)
Steve Addington spotted eating M&Ms in Victory Lane.

Now, if only the Intersate Batteries livery can win a race....

1 Rubens Barrichello (F1)
Note rumoured to have been put on Brawn GP fridge;

“Jenson,

I really like the podium, you should stop by more often.

Rubens.”
-------------------------------

Comment away, question away, I am an educator.

Photo credits, with ranking number: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14 & 15 Getty Images (via bleacherreport.com), 3, 4 & 10 LAT Photographic, 8 Autosport.com, 11 Drayson Racing.

All Filler, No Killer - The House-warming edition

2009-07-31T00:24:00.003+01:00

All Filler, No Killer, NASCAR's most curiously titled and scatter brained review blog has a new home. Right here. We're still living out of the cardboard boxes, and we can't find half our stuff.

NASCAR wise it was week for being annoyed, but not surprised.

Let’s get this straight, the race was monumentally boring. The only reason I haven’t written a typically British strongly worded letter to NASCAR is because over here, on the same channel they went straight to the Indycar race in Edmonton, which made competitive origami or speed toe-nail cutting seem an applealing spectator sport.

But I wasn’t surprised, NASCAR have produced a nightmare of a car that loves clean air and hates anything else. As the latest peice of evidence I show you Juan Montoya. Clearing off at massive chunks of seconds a lap from everyone else in clean air, struggles to get past a kid who can’t buy a beer in traffic. I remember what a racing pass looked like, I have a VHS tape of one.

Then came the least surprising news of the week. Allstate are pulling the plug on their sponsorship of the Brickyard 400.

And that’s exactly why. Nobody (unless their checks are signed by NASCAR) reffered to the race as “The Allstate 400 at the Brickyard” (and yes, I expect my check to be in the post), it’s just the Brickyard 400, and a sponsor isn’t getting though to anyone worthwhile, if we all forget the race is actually sponsored.

Anyhoo, new home, same deal. Seven none-to-randomly are put in the electric chair of examination and sarcasm and then the dial is flicked to 11.

Joe Nemechek – Actual question that was asked by my nearest and dearest during the race. “Is there ever a weekend when Nemechek and Blaney aren’t out?” I then explained that they show up, pay lip service to racing park and are probably somewhere on the highway counting the cash by the time the race is over. “That doesn’t seem right,” she said. You see even she knows that Field Fillers aren’t good. However, Joe still managed to rob everyone of $142,216 for 21 laps work (which works out at $2708.88 per racing mile).........................10/10

Dave Blaney – The other part of the Field Filler duo exposed by Girl Wonder, Dave managed to do two more laps than Joe. And how was he rewarded for this extreme feat of endurance, by taking home $400 less than Nemechek at $141,825 ($2467.39 per racing mile). Oh, and just to give you an idea of how these numbers compare, Jimmie Johnson took home the equivalent of $1120 per racing mile and Mark Martin banked a paltry $840 per mile! No wonder teams are queuing up for Sprint Cup starts. It must be said that these field filler analysis are money based because that’s all they understand....................10/10

David Gilliland – TRG are my favourite field fillers, in that they are only field fillers some weeks. This week they were not, as David took the car to 30th place, plus five bonus points for leading a lap. The team also confirmed this week, as I hinted at way back when, that they are tapping into their road racing heritage for the second road course race at Watkins Glen, by bringing in Andy Lally, who most recently runs in the Grand-Am series for the team, for his Sprint Cup debut. Lally is used to big sleek aerodynamic rear engine Porsches. His reaction to driving Sprint Cup Slab, opps I mean car, will probably not be printable...............7/10

John Andretti – John Andretti is the bench mark of mediocrity. He doesn’t crash (often), he doesn’t get mentioned by the TV team, they never have a pit reported to have “something on the #34 car”. He just goes round and round and round. This week’s monotony brought him home 32nd, for a 35th place start to further cement his anonymity in NASCAR............9/10

Kurt Busch – I don’t know whether the Captain was at Indy at the weekend, but if he was he probably didn’t realise it. His lead car, Busch, started the race 40th – that’s so low it’s not even on the scoring tower, and was then dealt a further blow by having a loose wheel (Kurt’s lucky, in F1 that’s a hanging offence now). From then he just pounded round and round, not losing another lap (he even overtook John Andretti although no-one noticed) and eventually finished 27th (which is good enough to get on the scoring tower)....................7/10

Elliott Sadler – The name’s Sadler, Elliott Sadler, license to make Robby Gordon go sideways. The guys at GEM are clearly bond fans, and their own Q must have developed a device to put out an oil slick to put off those behind him (Dale Jr.’s team are working on the same thing, though have been typically rubbish given their Indy test). Unfortunately for them no-one has ever black flagged Bond (but then, it just isn’t right to black flag an Aston Martin).....................9/10

Brian Vickers – Brian was the top Toyota was pretty much the entire afternoon (not that anyone notices the ‘Yotas anymore when it’s not The Human Shrub or Sliced Bread at the wheel) holding station in the top-5 for his third top-5 finish and a very respectable ninth top-10, as many as Carl Edwards. Vickers currently sits 15th in points, 120 points out the chase and the Tail End Charlie of a trio of the Toyota’s that are outside the chase looking in......................2/10

And the Brikkie goes to...........

Juan Pablo Montoya. Juan, Juan, Juan, nothing should surprise you about NASCAR anymore. Not only do they refuse to acknowledge technology more up to date that Stephensons Rocket, but their cars don’t even have speedometers, so you don’t know when you’re speeding, and that leads to calls that (more often than not) tend to ruin a day. But then, to make things worse you enter into a battle of words with the men in the yellow trailer. You threaten to kill them (this isn’t good whether you’re dealing with NASCAR officials or, well, anyone) then you start swearing on the lives of the wife and children that you didn’t speed. Basically with their understanding you just entered into a binding contract with an organisation who can change rules like the wind on the lives of your family. Expect Connie and kids to be shelling out hotdogs and Coors Light – the official beer of NASCAR – at Pocono.

Next Week

Poc Oh No! The Tiresome Triangle, 180 degrees of a cure for insomnia. Trying to help me get through it will be the Dodge trio of Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch and Sam Hornish, the Camry (and incidentally Field Filler) comrades of Joe Nemechek, Dave Blaney and Mike Skinner and a lone bow tie boy in Martin Truex Jr. And we’ll try and get scatter cushions, and maybe paint an accent wall in our new home.

Sweet Home Alabama for Indycar?

2009-07-27T19:55:00.002+01:00

Today the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama will confirm it has secured a place on the Indycar Series calendar for 2010.

For some it marks another step in the expansion of America’s premier open-wheel series, and another step on the road to recovery after the decades of bickering.

For me it marks folly, a decision that, while well, meaning is mistimed.

The race, titled the Grand Prix of Alabama, will be held at Barber, a venue that hosted a winter test for the Indycar Series, to rave reviews based both on the teams’ and drivers’ opinions of the track and the number of fans who turned out to see the event.

On the surface, it is a good thing. The Indycar series, post reunification, needs to find a balance between the different configurations of track – oval, street and road – it visits through the season. Another road course would help that and, Sunday’s please-can-a-plane-land-and-spice-this-thing-up-athon at Edmonton’s airport track, the road and street course produce some of Indycar’s better racing (although everything is relative).

However, take a look a little deeper at the announcement.

Barber Motorsports Park is in Alabama. NASCAR’s heartland, with Talladega’s monstrous Superspeedway lying 50miles or so away.

I’m sure there are open wheel fans in the traditional NASCAR states, Florida supports two Indycar events, and Indycar and NASCAR both race at Fort Worth’s Texas Motor Speedway. But immediately trying to nurture a start-up event in “rival territory” puts you at a disadvantage straight away.

Of course, if Indycar is ever to once more challenge NASCAR as America’s most popular Motorsport it will need to win some fans of the Stock Car series over, and Barber is as good a place to start doing that as any – not already saturated by open-wheel events, close to the captive audience of a major city, with the peripheral facilities that brings.

But why just now?

Even those of us who profess to be Indycar fans know that the series isn’t at the top of its game lately. Fields are thin, both in number and (let’s be honest here) talent. The series is being strangled by the dominance of the Penske and Ganassi outfits, and is facing the loss of Danica Patrick.

I know you may not like her, but I’m afraid she remains one of Indycar’s biggest marketing pluses.

Even star drivers Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti have been publically critical of the quality of racing the series has produced at the recent oval races at Iowa and Richmond. Even the Indy 500, Indycar’s world famous showpiece was dismissed as a boring race.

Now, my common sense dictates, if you’re going to try and conquer new ground and win new hearts, you want to make sure your own house is in order first. Think of like having a good business pitch if you’re looking for a new contract. You organise yourself so you know you’re going to put in the best performance possible.

On its current form if Indycar’s Alabama debut turns out to be a snorefest then any new fans the series has attracted to the series will be out the gates before half distance, and never come back.

To make matters worse there is the problem with the schedule that seems to be emerging. Press releases confirm the race will be held on the 9-11 April next year.

Hmmm, I wonder what else happens in Alabama in April? Oh, yes, that’s right, NASCAR’s spring Talladega race.

Indycar fans, feel free to put your head in your hands at the point.

A proto-2010 NASCAR calendar has the Talladega race on the May 2, which puts only two weekends between it and the Barber race.

Those conflicting dates, along with the spectre of the wounded economy is likely to knock on the head the support of many casual Indycar fans, maybe NASCAR fans contemplating a trip to Barber to get their first taste of open-wheel racing in the flesh. If they’ve already shelled out I-can-only-guess-how-much for tickets to Talladega they’re unlikely to want to pay much-less-amount for Indycar tickets.

And make them pick one race to attend, and I have more than a little inkling what one they’ll pick.

And that pick could decide the future of Indycar in Alabama.

Closed Cockpits are not the answer to F1's worries

2009-07-26T12:20:00.000+01:00

After two chillingly similar accidents in two weeks have killed one driver and left another seriously ill in hospital there are is bound to be talk of safety.

And one concept that seems to be being brought up by fans, drivers and team bosses is a closed cockpit.

However, despite the shocking nature of recent events a closed canopy F1 car is certainly not the answer.

Now, just to clear this up, I’m not saying this on aesthetic value. Personally the mental image I have of a closed cockpit F1 car is far from ugly, and bear a striking resemblance to WWII fighter planes or the current machinery in the Red Bull Air Race (without the wings). However, I much prefer the closed coupe Le Mans prototypes, so I might just have a thing about roofs.

Obviously having another surface to stop or deflect debris before it reaches the driver lessens the chances of these kind of accidents occurring again.

However, the practicalities of having a closed cockpit F1 car boggle the mind when you begin to think about them.

Of course, the primary concern is safety. After all it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that having a roof between you and safety may not be a good thing.

Now, start putting a car in every conceivable position and situation you can. Upside down, on top of another car, on fire, filling with smoke or embedded in a tyre wall.

Very quickly the list of boxes any canopy needs to tick becomes long and contradictory.

You need something strong enough, perhaps up to the same standard as the main tub, to deflect the kind of debris that has sparked this debate, yet F1 teams, always after the smallest advantage will want it as light as possible.

You’re going to need something secure when the car is travelling at 300Kmph, you don’t want it flying off, or even opening, mid race, yet easy to remove once the car is stopped.

It has to be able to be opened easily from both the inside and outside. On the inside by a driver potentially blind from smoke or other gases, put Kimi Raikkonen in a canopy car when he had the KERS/Fire extinguisher/whatever problem in practice for Malaysia that had white smoke billowing up into the cockpit.

The locking mechanism has to be simple enough for the marshalls to operate quickly, with potentially every team having the same mechanism. When a car is on fire, a driver incapacitated the vital seconds track workers spend remembering whether the car has a canopy which opens from the left, right, slides forward or opens after knocking three times and the password is “sausages”.

Can you see a dozen or some coming up with the same mechanism? No.

Look at the range and variety in the cars that took to the grid in Melbourne in March. That’s what happens when F1 teams get a new rule. They couldn’t even agree on a KERS system, with BMW opting for a flywheel originally.

And that’s before you consider the designs that will appear in junior formula.

They would have to open from every conceivable angle. What would happen in a car with a canopy that opens on one side that side of the car damaged? In a situation when every second is vital you can’t have track workers waiting for the Jaws of Life to free a driver.

OK, and what if it rains.

The curvature that an F1 canopy would need (if we are preserving the level of vision afforded by an open cockpit) would render normal wipers useless, so what happens if it rains.

Well, fans of Touring Cars will be familiar with the chemical solution, often called Rain-ex, that a team will squirt on a windscreen to help the rain run off the screen quickly. But that’s not fool proof. Those cars have a wiper to work with the chemical, and you can’t expect a driver to pit just to have the chemicals applied if an unexpected rain shower appears.

And what about other things that will affect vision. What if a driver is behind a car dropping one of the various vital fluids in F1 cars?

His vision is stuffed.

What happens if a driver goes off and has his front wheels kicking up grass and dirt, not to mention the ever present rubber marbles, onto his screen. Worse still what if a driver is behind a car that goes off, and has the lifting power of four wheels throwing rubbish at him.

Of course, the obvious answer is screen tear-offs. A bigger version of the visor tear-offs we’re all used to seeing dispatched by F1 drivers several times a race. A whole screen tear-off exists in NASCAR, so it is possible, but unless a driver is going to come in everytime his vision is blocked by oil, water, grass or anything else, ruining his race, then having half blind drivers going round is as much a safety risk as the potential for flying debris injuries.

Then there is the fact that having a screen in front of you doesn’t automatically mean you’re safe. Look for footage of Austrailian Touring Car driver Craig Lowndes encountering a loose tyre at Bathurst. Even with a screen and a roof, the deformation is likely to make a closed cockpit F1 car very uncomfortable to say the least.

In the recent NASCAR restrictor plate melees, the cars of Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne, all showed considerable deformation, and a whole in Edwards’ case, in their screens after impacts.

Of course the designs of V8 Supercar or NASCAR screens would be a million miles removed from F1 canopies, but the damages suffered in these cases show that a canopy is not the guaranteed fix it seems to be being made out to be.

The problem is that we are in danger of knee-jerking to a safety conclusion, something everyone agrees is bad, on the back of two (fairly) freak accidents.

If Henry Surtees has been three feet (milliseconds) behind where he was last Sunday the tyre would have bounced either harmlessly over his car, of landed on the nose of it, with Surtees, limping back to the pits or pulling off the track with a damaged front wing or front suspension.

If Mass had been six inches to the left of where he was the spring would have missed his helmet, glanced off the engine cover and maybe hit the rear wing, and the worst we’d be speaking of is Massa starting the Grand Prix tenth because of rear wing damage ruling him out of qualifying’s final session.

Of course, we’re not, and what happened happened, but everything should be kept in perspective.

Felipe Massa in Budapest Hospital after "Groundhog Day" accident

2009-07-25T17:24:00.002+01:00

Have you ever had one of those moments when something you’ve only just heard about suddenly comes up in a random conversation?

Maybe it’s just me.

But the same thing was only just avoided in the world of motorsport this weekend.

Six days after we lost F2 driver Henry Surtees after he was struck on the head by a loose wheel from a car that had hit the barriers ahead of him, we seem to have frighteningly close to a Groundhog Day like follow up in Formula 1.

In the final minutes of the second part of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix TV pictures cut away from showing the normal range of angles following drivers through the final corners, and over the finish line, to show a Ferrari embedded in a tyre wall, in an state similar to Heikki Kovalainen’s crash at Barcelona last year.

As marshalls poured over and round the wall to attend to the car, it became apparent that all was not well. One marshall signalled frantically for the medical car as it lapped the track at the end of the session.

Massa wasn’t out of the car.

One ambulance pulled up, then another. TV cameras focused in the normally unimportant scene of a track doctor walking down the pit lane.

No replays were being shown, everything was speculation. Just as motorsport was getting back to normal, fans were thinking the worse again.

Then, facts began to emerge. Massa had been struck on the head by a piece of debris.

Oh no, not again, we can’t do this again.

Track workers scoured the track walking in search lines as if searching for a murder weapon in a field.

Mass was out of the car, the pictures showed him moving. Rubens Barrichello, Massa’s countryman had spoken to him.

The fears abated.

However, Massa is possibly the luckiest man on the planet right now.

Disagree? Take a glance at the top picture on this Finnish website - , which despite my lack of Finnish language skills, at this point may be taken as genuine,

As you can see by the soft tissue (sorry, getting medical) damage the relatively thin visor appears to have afforded very little protection from the suspension spring that has been revealed as the culprit by TV replays.

If that spring had hit him in the centre of that visor, rather than a glancing blow to the side of the helmet, then. Well, I would be writing a totally different article right now.

By latest update, some three-and-a-half-hours after the event, while the official F1 website reports Massa as “safe” there are still some rather worrying words being used in updates. He remains in intensive care in a Budapest hospital, where he will be kept in for observation.

It is expected he will need surgery on the injury, which includes bone damage to the brain, and a serious concussion.

Thus he will not take the green flag tomorrow, while the rest of the his season is unclear, especially with F1 taking a month break before the next round.

Hello, I'm Adrian Sutil* Remember Me?

2009-07-23T23:58:00.000+01:00

I am a Force India fan.

OK, correction. I was a Jordan fan, then I was a Midland fan, then I was a Spyker fan.

Now I am a Force India fan.

And as such I have been fenced into a corner over being a fan of the various drivers who have spun through the revolving door or the team over since the Yellow liveried cars shuffled from the last F1 track.

With a majority of the peddling “talent” the team have employed in the interim listening to or watching them race as a supporter has been like cheering on the bad guy in a Batman movie. You know they were not going to win, and even if they did win it wouldn’t be pretty and it just wouldn’t feel “right”.

However, now, the team appears to have two drivers who appear capable of scoring points, in a car that, likewise, appears capable of scoring points.

While Fisichella has the race finishes that put him closest to the point holy grail, having finished ninth at Monaco, it has been Adrian Sutil who has been more deserving of the any points that should fall the team’s way.

Put simply Adrian Sutil is an F1 driving gem, but one that no-one realises the value of, like Jet or something.

But this is nothing new. Cast your mind back to 2007 (yes, yes I know it hurts to think that far back), to the Monaco Grand Prix to example and to a rain marred practice session. And who, I hear you asking rhetorically was fastest in said session. Why, Adrian Sutil.

Whenever the conversation comes up as to who is the finest F1 driver when the wet stuff descends my answer, amid the Schumachers (who believe it’s still 2002) the Sennas (who believe it’s still 1992), the Vettels or Hamiltons, is always Adrian Sutil. I have actually been known to inject myself in the F1-related conversations of total strangers just to get this comment in (which is part of the reason why I am currently banned from at least 7 drinking establishments with a 15 minute drive of where I live) (not that I drink and drive).

On top of that Monaco practice run, I also put before you last year’s Monaco race, before Kimi-gate I, the Chinese GP earlier this year and his qualifying performance in the dry-wet-dry session at the Nurburgring.

Yet, now Sutil has a car worth of the description he is showing the pace to run up front in the dry, as he did in Germany, before Kimi-gate II. There’s only so much you can put down to an ability to drive in the wet and pure, dumb luck.

And so, I ask you, isn’t it time that Adrian Sutil graduated to a team (in all fairness to Force India) fitting of the talent he seems to possess?

He is currently (from what I can fathom) on a year-by-year contract at Force India, meaning he is (presumably) free to move elsewhere should he feel the need.

So, why is nobody seemingly willing to take the man on?

Everyone’s silly season talk has been of whether Fernando Alonso is going to Ferrari to replace either Kimi of Massa (or perhaps both, as Fernie seems to believe himself to be that good), Renault’s line-up, the six mystery seats at the three new teams, and whether Sebastien Loeb can ovoid stationary objects in rallying long enough to get an F1 drive, no-one appears to see Adrian moving from Force India.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Adrian should get a Ferrari drive (although the delicious irony in that career move cannot be underestimated), but surely, after what would be three full years with the minnows of F1 it is time Adrian Sutil got to sit at the top table of F1 (or at least stopped having to eat of a skip, with a fork).

*I'm not really Adrian Sutil, incase you were uncertain.

Today we were reminded of the danger

2009-07-20T01:15:00.000+01:00

This is hardly the way I wanted to start off here, but doing anything else would be wrong right now.

If you are a motorsport fan of just about any kind, you should by now have heard about the accident that claimed the life of 18 year old Henry Surtees at Brands Hatch yesterday.

Exactly what happened is not my concern here. There dozens of print stories detailing the accident, and, of course, there are the obligatory videos in Youtube. If you want to watch them you can, but out of common decency I’m not going to post them here.

Motorsport is inherently dangerous. Many may claim that this flirtation with danger and speed is part of the appeal for drivers (alongside glory and money) and fans alike, who keep coming back, to the wheel, to the track and to the TV, week after week.

And while everyone knows of the danger you don’t expect anyone to die anymore.

Perhaps we have come too complacent about safety in motorsport. With the safety advances that have come in over the past few decades, most obviously items like the HANS device, we are all too used to seeing drivers destroy their cars, only to jump out, wave to the crowd and be back next week pushing for the win like nothing ever happened.

There was, no doubt, a time when racing fans constantly had their hearts in their mouths everytime there was an accident such was the level of mortality within the sport. Now crashes are seen as a crucial part of the entertainment value in racing, NASCAR’s constant promotion of “The Big One” ahead of races at Talladega or Daytona, being the primary example.

Of course, just as modern racing has got safer, it has also got more litigious.

In the more dangerous years a death in racing would probably have been greeted with weeks of sombre faces carrying on racing, acknowledging the danger and the mortality of the human race.

However, only hours after the accident, it was reported that an investigation was likely. Now, this may simply be down to “closure” for everyone involved, I fear that it may be equally down to the various parties covering their legal behinds. After all there are a lot of maybes, and what ifs.

What if the Westfield barrier had been at a better designed angle, rather than angled around a tree.

What if the wheel tethers on the car had been stronger, was the design of the car to blame.

Maybe it was just an accidental tragedy. A chain reaction of events that defied the law of averages and fell into place for one event.

Maybe today we were all reminded that motorsport is dangerous.