F1

Bad news for Ralfie boy. After an examination in France yesterday it was revealed that the Williams driver has 2 fractures in his spine and will most likely miss the rest of the season. Grandprix.com is reporting that test driver Marc Gene will be in the car this weekend at Magny-Cours and that Mark Webber will drive the rest of the season.

This does a couple of things. One, it confirms one of the worst kept secrets of the season, that Webber will be in the Williams in 2005. Two, it kind of puts Ralfies future up in the air. Schumacher is supposed to be announced as one of the drivers for Toyota for 2005, but his health has to be a question mark at this point.

Further ramifications can be felt down at Jaguar. Former F3000 champ Bjorn Wirdheim is the test driver, but word is that the team is enamored of Brit Anthony Davidson, who is currently the test driver for BAR.

So for 2005, this is what we know as far as team/driver combos:

Ferrari-Michael Schumacher Rubens Barichello
McLaren-Kimi Raikkonen Juan Pablo Montoya
Renault-Jarno Trulli Fernando Alonso
BAR-Takuma Sato Jensen Buttons
Williams-Mark Webber
Jaguar-Christian Klein


Speculation goes as such:

Toyota-Olivier Panis Ralf Schumacher
Williams-Jeff Gordon Jacques Villeneuve

As usual, Jordan, Sauber and Minardi are too hard to call at this point. These teams switch drivers at the drop of a hat and with some pretty solid names floating around out there it is hard to tell who will be where. Here are some names that are not confirmed or even speculated that might be somewhere in F1 next year:

Christian daMatta
Giancarlo Fischicella
Anthony Davidson
Bjorn Wirdheim
Scott Dixon
Zsolt Baumgartner
Gianmaria Brunni
Nick Heidfeld
Felipe Massa
Giorgio Pantano
Timo Glock

Now that we have reached the mid point of the season things will certainly change in the back of the pack. If Webber makes the move to Williams at Silverstone it will mark a rare occurrence that a top team makes a switch. Of course with Ralfies’ health being a question mark, it may not be as unusual as it may seem.

IRL

Big day for the IRL. AL " Little Al" Unser Jr. announced his retirement from racing today effective immediately. Jeff Simmons was named to replace him at least for the race at Kansas City this weekend. Also, Panther Racing announced that Mark Taylor was being let go immediately, but no replacement was announced. It was thought that Simmons might get that ride, but Buddy Lazier may be able to swoop in there now although Townsend Bell is a possibility.

Little Al's career spanned more than 20 years. He was a two time winner of the Indianapolis 500, a two-time CART champion and he retires with 31 CART wins and 3 IRL wins, his last being a year ago at Texas.

Little Al came to Indy in 1983 and was immediately in the center of controversy. In that race, it appeared as though he was blocking for his father before eventual winner Tom Sneva got past him. In the post race interview he admitted as much, but changed his tune as the year went on. Unser and Scott Goodyear outdueled to the closest finish in the history of the 500 in 1992 after Michael Andretti went out after dominating the race.

Little Al was the first major CART defection in 2001 opening the floodgates for several other teams to come to the upstart league. Recently Al has been know more for his off track antics. In 2002 a drunk Unser left his girlfriend stranded on the highway. When the police escorted her home he claimed he didn't know her and was arrested. Al went into rehab and emerged to finish the 2003 season.

I never liked this guy and am not sorry to see him go, but he does have a lot of fans and I hope they stay with the league.

IRL

So I guess the IRL wants to be like NASCAR eh? For some dumbass reason they decided to try the old white/green flag deal and unfortunately the yellow light stayed on. The move made the league look more amateurish than normal and was dangerous as well with the some cars heeding the light and some the flag.

In what was a pretty good race until the end, Dan Wheldon claimed his second win of the season, but he was certainly not the fastest car out there. That claim had to belong to Julio who was chasing Wheldon down , but due to some good pit strategy, Weldon would not be headed. Horny was fast this weekend too, but an altercation with Wreckter took him out of consideration when his car stalled after spinning.

The end of the race was a joke. With Wheldon leading and Julio getting the jump on the last lap as they went green, the yellow lights on the track stayed on. Brian Barnhart said they had to leave it as yellow, so Vitor Meira picked up third place.

Dario Judd had a solid run, but finished off the pace with car problems. AJIV actually managed to soldier home in 11th.

All in all it was a pretty good race until the end. The crowd pretty much sucked again and there was no announcement form Roger or FTRG regarding any unification of the IRL and OWRS.


NASCAR/F1

You are reading it here first. Jeff Gordon will be in the Williams BMW car next season. His dominating performance in yesterdays race at Infineon has led me to believe it.

F1

Prior to the start of the season I made some selections on who I thought would do what this year. My predictions were as follows:

World Champion – Michael Schumacher
Runner up – Juan Montoya
Third – Rubens Barichello

Constructor Champion – Ferrari
Runner up - Williams – BMW
Third – Renault
Fourth – McLaren-Mercedes
Fifth – BAR – Honda
Sixth – Toyota
Seventh – Sauber
Eighth – Jordan
Ninth – Jaguar
Tenth - Minardi

At the midpoint I will make new predictions and see how things go and how they stack up against the preseason picks.

Drivers

Champion Michael Schumacher
Runner Up Rubens
Third Takuma Sato

Constructors

Ferrari
Renault
BAR
Williams
McLaren
Sauber
Toyota
Jordan
Jaguar
Minardi


IRL

Rain has been the story so far today at the Richmond International Raceway. In the morning practice Buddy Rice was fastest at over 170 mph. More as results become available.

IRL/OWRS

So Roger wants a truce, a reunification, a merger if you will, with the boys over at OWRS. What’s the matter Roger, haven’t won since the first race of the season so you have to go trolling for other competition?

The day before the Indy 500 Penske wrote an op/ed piece in the NY Times saying basically that there needed to be a reunification of the warring open wheel racing factions in this country. To that end Roger orchestrated a meeting between himself and the three powers that be in OWRS, Kevin Kalkoven, Paul Gentilozzi and Jerry Forsythe in Michigan. Apparently Roger left the meeting with a “framework” on how this can happen. I won’t bore you with all of the details of the Autoweek article, but here is my opinion on a couple of items.

First of all it appears as though the two sides should both have an equal stake in the venture. In other words, each side would contribute an equal amount of assets. Well that is great, so let’s see, no one puts in anything, is that it? OWRS has no assets and certainly nothing that the IRL can not have if it just waits a year. They are broke, the three powers are subsidizing half the field and attendance is slipping. Why would FTRG ever agree to an outlandish agreement like that? I have no respect for FTRG, but I know he is not stupid enough to sign on to that. Well…..

Tony George has the Indy 500. His power grab was no different than what CART did 24 years ago, except their grab was against an inefficient and awful USAC. Other than the fact that CART had gone almost exclusively road course racing, there wasn’t anything really wrong with open wheel racing. Of course some still say the owners running the show was bad, but what makes the owner of the biggest race any more qualified to run open wheel? It doesn’t and no matter what people will tell you, the IRL is a joke. Sure the racing is good, but as a business it sucks. No attendance and horrible TV ratings. How long can THEY sustain? I’ve said it before, the 500 is taking the second biggest hit here, us fans the biggest.

The simple solution to all of it is to kill OWRS once and for all, but that is proving to be harder than FTRG thought. If the moron would just raise the purse for the 500 to $30 million and make it so even the bottom third of the teams could make some money on it he would have people beating the doors down to get in. Instead he has made it a race that only the top 5 make any money and anyone on the fence has to make those tough decisions to get in, and lately have chose not to get in. Plus, if he does make it so everyone wants to be at Indy and can logistically afford to do it, OWRS will die a natural death. Marketing FTRG, marketing! If the OWRS triumvirate knows nothing else, they do know how to talk up their game.

The second thing that really bothered me was “a combination of schedules.” What the fuck is that? That is what the article says. The only thing OWRS has that I would want is
Long Beach, Cleveland, Road America and maybe Mexico (Monterrey). Toronto? Fuck
no; Portland, no; Mid Ohio, no; Denver, Vancouver, no, no; Europe, no, and for
the love of God, leave the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to the F1 boys. IRL already
has Milwaukee, OWRS abandoned California. If we could get (in no particular order)
Indy
Texas
Milwaukee
Michigan
California
Long Beach
Cleveland
Road America
Motegi
Mexico (Monterrey)
Kentucky (purely selfish reasons on my part)
Richmond
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Chicagoland
Homestead

Then maybe I would throw them a bone and add Mexico City and we keep one of
Nashville, Pikes Peak or Kansas.

Short of that I don't see where they need to run any more than 4 out of 16 or 5
out of 18 races on road courses.

FTRG, the Stooges and Penske are all to blame for this mess and let’s face it, these egos are too big to ever come to an agreement. FTRG has the trump card with the 500, but that is all he has. Penske has the name and that is all he has. OWRS doesn’t have anything that anyone will be able to pick up for a song at next years bankruptcy hearing.

F1

We have reached the halfway point of the season and as we turn towards the home stretch some things have become apparent. So to cover these items and to look forward to the rest of the season here is my midyear report.

Obviously Ferrari has had a superb season so far. Michael Schumacher has dominated the competition. He has won 8 of the 9 races and has taken pole position at 5 of the races. Although his rush to the pole has been slowed since San Marino, the only real trouble he had in qualifying has been at Monaco where grid position is so important. By starting 5th he probably cost himself a chance to win the race even though he blames JPM.

Schummi is only 18 points ahead of Rubens, but he might as well be a million. There is no way Ferrari allows Rubens to catch AND beat Schummi. Frankly Rubens has looked pretty ordinary until the past couple of weeks. He took pole at Indy and was racy. I don’t think he had the car, but he was solid. On the other hand it appeared he did have a faster car at Montreal the previous week and the general consensus is that team orders prevented a pass.

With the Sandwich as his tail gunner, Schummi is a lock to win yet another championship.

Behind Ferrari there has been some good racing. BAR has absolutely been as good as advertised. They have been fast at every track just as they were fast in preseason testing. The scuttlebutt prior to the season was that the numbers BAR was putting out were inflated or just plain lies, but Buttons and Takuma have been nothing short of spectacular some weeks, as has test driver Anthony Davidson. Currently Buttons stands third in the Driver Championship with 44 points. Sato only has 14 and is back in 7th place. Unfortunately for the hard charging Japanese driver he has suffered through engine problems.

While BAR is definitely a better team without Jacques, they are still struggling trying to field 2 cars. For what it is worth they do sit third in the Constructor championship with 58 points. Only 8 back from Renault, but 84 behind Ferrari.

Renault definitely has had their shit together this year. Jarno Trulli scored his first ever win at Monaco in May and is currently 4th in the title chase. Team mate Fernando Alonso who suffered a hard crash yesterday at Indy is 5th just 16 points back from Trulli with 25 points.

As for success, that is just about the extent of it for this season so far. Every other team would have to consider the season a failure. Sure Minardi got a point for the first time in two years yesterday, but they have consistently been 4+ seconds off the pole time and usually post 2 DNF’s. Of course this is to be expected from Minardi’s under funded effort.

What was not expected was the performance of the Williams and McLaren teams. They have been pitiful.

JPM is 6th in the points, but he has not looked good. His finishes, 5, 10, 13, 3, retired, 4, 8, DQ and DQ tell the story of his season. Only in Spain has he started from the front row and he is looking like a guy running out the string with Williams. I thought this might happen, but he has insisted he is still working hard.

One thing for sure is that BMW has lost any horsepower advantage they may have enjoyed the past couple of seasons. I am sure they detuned the engine in an effort to make it last but the results have not been good.

Then there is Ralfie. Thought to be going to Toyota Ralfie boy sits 8th in points with 12. Miraculously he did grab the pole in Canada, but Indy proved to be the usual bad stop on the tour for the team. Ralfie crashed and JPM’s car wouldn’t start on the grid.

Also disappointing is the McLaren effort. Currently 5th behind Williams, this team has just been awful this year. Kimi Raikkonen is back in 11th spot in the chase after losing the championship by a point last year. David Coulthard has not been any better. He is in 10th position and, like Montoya, seems to be running out the string for the team.

Mercedes did detune their engine this offseason to get better reliability over the course of an F1 weekend and the results have been disastrous. They have suffered one engine failure after another. Obviously the Mercedes V-10 needs the torque to survive and they should rethink their engineering program.

At this point it would have to be said that McLaren is the biggest disappointment in the paddock. BAR and Renault have to be the biggest surprises and of course Ferrari the best team.

Jaguar and Toyota are both struggling with poor results. Jag driver Mark Webber may be tanking so he can get that Williams ride next season, but Christian Klien has actually been more consistent. Webber had a great start to the season, but a couple of poor starts to those races killed his hopes for a good season.

Toyota looks like they are ready to give Christiano deMatta the heave ho after the season. It’s a shame for Christiano. Toyota just hasn’t produced since they have been in and don’t seem on the verge of it now by signing Ralfie boy for next season.

Jordan is Jordan and that isn’t good. Eddie may be a fun guy, but his team sucks and poor Minardi just can’t catch a break.

Sauber sits sixth in the Constructor championship and has a pretty nondescript season.

So what is in store for the rest of the season? Most likely more of the same. While McLaren might reverse their engine woes the Coulthard issue will drone on and they are too far back now to chase down the Ferrari’s. Pretty much the same with Williams.

BAR and Renault look poised to battle it out for number 2. I like the BAR drivers better. Sato is fearless, and a little reckless, and will probably win a race before the season is out. Buttons has showed a lot of promise since Jacques ran his mouth last year. Trulli has one win, but I get the feeling he will be one of those drivers who retire with one total. Alonso has shown some flashes but he seems content as well. Therefore I think BAR will bring home the 2nd place bacon with Renault 3rd.

Beyond that I don’t see any real changes. We get some semblance of the old qualifying session style back in a couple weeks at Silverstone which will be nice. Love the new date for Indy, that was awesome, but I feel for the folks down in Brazil who now get a race that will essentially decide nothing. It’s too bad that it works out like that some years, but until someone is ready to challenge the Prancing Horse, that will be the rule rather than the exception.

F1

Another USGP down and the results were of no real surprise. Schummi was first, the Sandwich second and Takuma Sato came home third. It was a great weekend though and there were some interesting things about the race. First of all there were as many incidents as I have seen this year. Four cars were out before turn 2, Fernando Alonso lost a wheel and smacked the wall hard and Ralfie hit the turn 13 wall a ton. In fact, Ralfie is still in the hospital here in Indy and his status for the French Grand Prix is in question.

The move of the day had to be Schummi’s pit stop when Ralfie crashed on lap 10. He was in perfect position to enter the pits. When he did, he was able to get service and get back out in second position as the field slowed for debris. The Sandwich who might have been able to pit first had to wait another lap to wait for the crew. From there Schummi was dominating. I will say this though, I am getting a little sick of Schummi's blocking move at the start of the race. Yesterday he just about took Sato into the wall. The fucker does it every week. Now I will say this especially to all of you Rubens fans. Last week you may have had a bitch about "Team Orders" but this week, you just weren't as fast as the winner.

JPM added to another forgettable day at Indianapolis for the Williams BMW team. Juan’s car wouldn’t fire for the formation lap and he was forced to sprint back to the garage for the backup car. Apparently the car had not been inspected by tech though. 58 laps after starting from pit lane and getting up to third, JPM was disqualified.

When it was all said and done only 8 drivers were still on the track. Zsolt Baumgartner got his first points ever and Minardi’s first points in two years.

What a weekend though. From the very cool pit walkthrough to Friday’s practice sessions to a very comfortable qualifying and race day the weather was perfect. The fans as always were courteous and knowledgeable. Something you won’t see much of in 6 weeks at the Brickyard.

Finally, on a very positive note, a contract extension for two years was signed and Bernie himself went on TV to say how he thought it would eventually become a long term deal.



NASCAR

Ryan Newman won at Michigan. Jr. lost the points lead to Johnson. Tony Stewart hit Whiffle.


OWRS

Allegedly an OWRS race was run at Portland yesterday. Sebastian Bourdais lead basically wire to wire. The great American Ryan Hunter-Reay finished 10th.

IRL

Congrats to the winner of the Bombardier 500 Tony Kanaan. As predicted here last week! Kanaan held off team mate Dario Franchitti for the win, his second of the season, AGR’s third of the season and Honda’s fourth in a row.

Alex Baron finished third in a fine drive with the Chevrolet engine. Toyota grabbed fourth with Sam.

A couple of disturbing things did take place in the race. Once again, Scotty D failed to finish. This time he was a victim of being hit by Adrian Fernandez who was exiting his pit box. Also, Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice was driving all over the place. In fact, Kanaan was disturbed by Rice’s driving and actually passed him to keep himself out of harms way. With 20 laps remaining, Rice tangled with Darren Manning. Rice claims he never knew he was there.

Also disturbing was Mark Taylor hitting the wall again and AJIV once again finishing dead last. AJ Foyt Jr. said that IV was getting to aggressive when the car was loose. Hey AJ, how about giving him a car that isn’t loose.

Overall the racing was as good as usual. There were some concerns because of the smaller engine capacity, but those fears were laid to rest early.

Now it is on to Richmond in a couple of weeks. A good track for these guys. This week a lot of the teams are going to Milwaukee for testing. Other than that this really hasn’t been much of a season for rumors. Maybe things will pick up in the summer!


F1

Another race another…well you know the drill. Schummi wins his 7th race of the season at Canada. It is also his 7th in the Canadian Grand Prix.

Schumacher who started 6th used a 2 pit stop race strategy to beat his competition who were mainly on 3 stop strategies.

One of the biggest surprises had to be the fact that Williams, followed by Toyota were both disqualified from the final results due to improper brakes. Williams was first DQ’ed then complained that Toyota was running the same setup. When the officials checked, they too were DQ’ed.

BAR managed to get Buttons home in third behind the Sandwich, but Takuma Sato once again had engine failure. This had a lot of the pundits talking that Sato is not given the same opportunity that Buttons has. A lot of fans seem to think this team is just incapable of running a tow car team. Personally I would like to see Sato get a chance.

There was quite a bit of slamming on Ferrari as well. Along about the middle of the race, Rubens seemed to have a car that was quicker than Schummi’s. Yet the Sandwich stayed tucked in behind the 1 car. Now I don’t know if there are still team orders, contract stipulations or just unwritten laws, but if F1 is to thrive in the new markets it seeks, especially here in the US, this type of thing has to end now. We get enough manufactured racing in NASCAR.

This week is Indy and the USGP. I hope to see all of you out there Friday, Saturday and Sunday. At least this year, if it rains, it won’t be cold!


NASCAR

Allegedly the taxicabs went a racing this weekend at Pocono and Jimmie Johnson won. I mean does anyone really care about this crap anymore?

IRL

Dario Franchitti is your Pole winner at Texas for tomorrow nights Bombardier 500. Judd’s lap of 209.690 was nearly a mile an hour faster than Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice. But the real story continues to be the Honda dominance.

Honda owns the top 5 positions and 6 of the top 10 out of the 22 car field. The slowest qualifier was Scott Sharp with a Toyota at 203.740. Alex Baron failed to post a speed.

With Horny and the Gentleman Dan Weldon back in row 6 it should make for an interesting start. You know Horny is going to want to go forward and Weldon has just been on fire this year.

Noticeably absent is Sarah. I thought maybe she would have a ride for this race, but she doesn’t. I’m also not sure why AJ didn’t bother to try to stick Larry in the field. I sure would have liked to have had 24.

Still it should be a good race. I will predict that TK will win, with Horny second and Rice third. Oh, and good luck Mike, who starts back in the 19th position.

F1

It’s been a slow couple of weeks since the back to back weekends of Monaco and the European Grands Prix. Most of the teams spent last week testing and now are winging their way to North America for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix followed a week later by the US Grand Prix.

Despite the slow schedule and the “drudgery” that comes with the middle of the season, especially one where one guy has won all but one race, there never seems to be a shortage of rumors.

First of all the highly anticipated new McLaren will apparently not be ready for the track this week which probably means it won’t make its debut until the French Grand Prix a fortnight after Indy.

Second, the Jacques Villeneuve thing just keeps hanging around. Williams for their part isn’t saying anything. Villeneuve’s camp seems to be floating rumors of a Williams test, although they do say nothing has been confirmed. I still think that the teams passing on Scott Dixon opens the seat up for the 1995 Indy 500 winner and 1997 World Champion.

Mika Hakkinen also got into the mix last week. Rumors of his return were squashed Friday though as the Finn decided not to leave retirement.


IRL

Look for 24 cars to take the green flag this week at Texas in what has become one of the most competitive and exciting races on the schedule.

Roger Penske has sent an editorial to the NY Times expressing his desire to see the IRL and OWRS back together. Odd that Roger would want that. Is it because the IRL needs more teams and he feels there are strengths on the other side, or is he just trying to be benevolent and offer them a chance at survival. Either way, unless FTRG gets his way there will be no changes.

I still believe there will be 4 road course races next year on the schedule. Four is an okay number by me. Long Beach, Watkins Glen, Road America and another real race track would be fine but no street races. No Toronto, Denver, Belle Isle, Vancouver or St. Pete.

For OWRS part, they seem willing to negotiate, but then why wouldn’t they? I just would hate to see what all they try to push through. I welcome a few road courses. For the drivers they have to be more fun, but for the fans they aren’t as exciting.

This whole thing will probably get a lot uglier before it gets better. Indy was down on ratings again this year and there were noticeable empty sections in the North Vista. OWRS for what its worth drew a paltry 20K to its race in Milwaukee.

I seriously doubt if the two groups ever get together, but the rumors and innuendo that should permeate the next few weeks should be fun!


NASCAR

Congrats to Mark Martin who won the crashfest on Sunday at Dover. Martin who hadn’t won since 2001 was able to hold off Tony Stewart and a charging Jr. and avoid the mishaps that took out half the field to win.

The race was marked by two big accidents that took out the leaders and a host of other cars. The first one was on a restart. Kasey Kahne and Jeremy Mayfield were the leaders but were back in the pack due to pits stops when Mayfield was spun and took out 11 cars including himself. Later with Kahne leading the race, he slipped in some oil laid down by Casey Mears car and hit the wall. Martin and Stewart were able to see what was happening and stay out of harms way, but the crash collected another 8 cars.

Earlier in the race NASCAR kept a yellow flag out to try to determine where Newman was supposed to be after a penalty, but I don’t think they got it right.

Dover is a good track for those boys. It is almost always a good show and Sunday didn’t disappoint.

IRL

Congrats to Buddy Rice, the winner of the 88th Indianapolis 500. Rice’s Rahal/Letterman team takes home more than $1.7 million of the $10 + million purse. The 1.7 isn’t bad, but the total purse really needs to be raised to garner more interest by teams and drivers to compete in the 500. But that is another argument and we have been over that before and will cover it again I am sure. Kosuke Matsuura was named Rookie of the Year.

When they finally did go racing it was a good one. Rice really did seem to have the fastest car of the day although Vitor Meira actually turned the fastest lap. Rice took off like a shot from the green flag and really pulled away from Tony Kanaan and Dan Weldon who seemed to be the only other two in his zip code most of the day. Of course strategy played a part and Rice was shuffled back on a couple of pit stops, but he was able to get through. On his last stop his team demonstrated why he won the Carb Day pit stop competition with a fantastic stop that kept him ahead of TK and The Gentleman.

There was intrigue at the end as Bruno was leading at lap 150 because he had gotten out of sequence with the leaders on pit stops. Had it rained 10 minutes earlier, he or possibly Bryan Herta would have won. Herta too was out of sequence. All in all it was a good day of racing, but a long day nonetheless.

We got on the road from my place about 8:15. By 9:15 the next set of rains came and came hard. That delayed the start of the race by a little more than an hour. After just 27 laps the rains came again. Not as hard so we stayed in our seats as most everyone else bolted for the exits. They did allow pass outs so a lot of people left the grounds. Miraculously they were only down about an hour and a half before resuming the race.

As I am sure you know the race was called at lap 180 and shortly thereafter, the skies opened up. I took my time getting back to the car as I was rain geared up. We eventually left Speedway at 7. It was a long day, but I am glad we got it in on Sunday. As much as I love that place, I just didn’t want to do it all over on Monday!


F1

Michael Schumacher won an uneventful European Grand Prix Sunday at the Nurburgring. The Sandwich was second. So much for the Renault reign!