IRL

Kind of a snoozer on Sunday at PIR. Congrats to Tony Kanaan for a fine drive that saw him pretty much run away from the field to win his second straight at Phoenix. Questions will abound though of what could have been had Sammy not spun the 6 car early in the race. He lost 6 laps and never recovered.

Robbie Buhl’s good run at Homestead was backed up with a complete turd in the desert. He was slowest in practice and in qualifying he was almost 9 mph off the pace. He started dead last even behind little AJ. In the race he improved only because of Adrian Fernandez going out and Sam’s spin and the fact that little AJ has no business on the track. His weekend was complete when he looped it coming out of 4. To add insult to injury he was slammed in to by Tomas Wreckter who was punted up the banking by a charging Dario Franchitti.

Speaking of Franchitti, his crew chief was on TV claiming they kept getting blocked by Wreckter. But in the crash replay Dario was so far behind that it almost looked intentional.

Anyway, Japan is next in about a month with Kanaan leading Julio by 6 early on in the championship chase. For those of you scoring at home that is one win for Honda, one for Toyota, and zero for the Chevworth.

F1

Sunday’s race in Malaysia put an exclamation point on how far ahead of the pack Ferrari is. While Juan made a valiant effort to come home second, only an off road excursion prevented Rubens from knocking him down a position and keeping Jensen Button from his first podium finish.

This week testing resumes at the Paul Ricard circuit in France and ALL of the teams chasing the Ferrari’s have a lot of work to do. One thing of note is that 2003 IRL champion Scott Dixon will get a test ride in the FW26. I fully expect Scott to be in one of those seats next year.

And of Williams, reports are swirling about Ralfie and Toyota. GrandPrix.com is reporting that deal is done and Ralfie will be in the Toy next year. Another report had Ralfie allegedly saying he would take a pay cut to stay at Williams. That doesn’t sound like him. Frankly I wouldn’t let that boob drive me to the airport.

Changes to the F1 qualifying procedures are being discussed in Paris today. Don’t expect any major changes.

Next up is Bahrain. A new track for the F1 circus. The track is similar to the Catalunya circuit in that it turns back in on itself and is sort of “self-contained” if you will. This whole thing really intrigues me. Who would have ever thought a bunch of rag heads would care about auto racing, let alone get an F1 race? I saw their website yesterday and the track looks nice and the facility first class. But there is a lot of money over there. Probably won’t be a lot of American citizens at the race, but interestingly enough, all of the gear for sale on their site is in American dollars.

Hey, if anyone is going, get me a hat!