Well the Chase for the Championship is truly on now and the boys in the IRL and F1 are down to their penultimate races this weekend and next respectively. Even OWRS is down to their final two races, but they are a month away and really, who cares? In a way it is always sad to see the end of the racing season, but with the NFL to fill the void, it makes the end so much more palatable. And besides, the taxis still have another two months before they call it a season.

It’s been a good season for a few teams and drivers and a tumultuous season for many teams, drivers and a couple of series. Ferrari with Michael Schumacher, the Sandwich, Jean Todt and Ross Brawn put up one of those dream seasons winning 14 of the 16 races so far with Schummi getting 12. In fact he started the season with 5 in a row before Jarno Trulli got him at Monaco. After that Michael rang up 7 in a row. Currently Rubens has won the past two after Kimi won at Spa.

Like him or not, and I don’t, Schummi has shown this year how good he is. He just beat everyone to death until they cried uncle and by then it was over. I’ve seen Michael wrap up the title earlier than he did this year, but only because the Sandwich was getting so many second places. Honestly I have never seen anything like it from a driver or a team and that is a lot of racing.

Buttons looks like he will finish third in the drivers championship. Fernando Alonso is just 4 points ahead of Trulli and JPM, but Jarno is out for the season before making the move to Toyota next year. JPM seems to have lost interest in driving the Williams, but he may be able to garner enough points to overtake Fernando. On the other hand Alonso will be keen to keep ahead of new, at least for the rest of this season, team mate Jacques Villeneuve.

But with all of the good driving and fantastic venues for the F1 crowd there is trouble afoot. Last week Ford Motor Co. announced it was pulling the plug on its Jaguar F1 program and on the Cosworth engine program. Besides the obvious sting of losing two cars on the grid, Ford supplies the Jag as well as the Jordan and the Minardi teams with engines. In fact ripples can be heard here in America where the Cosworth is the only engine in OWRS and is a partner with Chevrolet in their IRL engine program.

Now the scuttlebutt is that Cosworth will be sold and kept in business. That is the good news. The bad news is that team principals in F1 agree on only one thing, that costs are too high and must be cut. What gets cut and who agrees on what is a sheer crap shoot. These guys never agree on anything.

I reported on here earlier in the summer about the changes proposed by Max Mosley. No one has made any move to approve them. Mosley says the changes are coming, but now the teams are saying the costs of change are too high. Max has lately resorted to using safety as his reasoning for the changes. He says the cars are too fast and corner too quickly. Yet it has been more than 10 years since the last fatality in F1. The older, more dangerous tracks are being replaced by newer, safer and modern racing facilities. Sure everyone will miss the speed of Silverstone, Eau Rouge at Spa and the part oval at Monza, but these tracks were designed at a different time for different cars. Some can be made safe enough. Some can not.

The real problem with F1 lies with the FOM and Bernie Ecclestone. They are simply taking too much money from the sport. There, I said it. No one else seems to want to. Bernie is one of the wealthiest men on the planet. I don’t begrudge him his wealth, but F1 is his golden goose and if he kills it then he is the biggest asshole in the world.

So this offseason will feature a lot of fighting and discussion over the future of the series. Personally I love it and I don’t want it to go away. I also lover the cars and the technology and know that it costs a shitload of money.

Then we have the IRL. God love ‘em! The racing is fantastic regardless of the no brain OWRS fans say, but Tony George just leaves me wondering what he will pull next. He is no better than the owner board of CART that he wanted on. Fuck he had the Indy 500, why did he want to be involved any more than that?

The league is coming to a crossroads. Probably not this year or even next, but unless attendance and those all important TV ratings start to go up, there will be no IRL. An honestly, I don’t think they will. For some reason you can have great racing, but so many fans were put off by the split that it will never be the same. Then fucking NASCAR has its snobby fans who think the sun rises and sets on some damn taxi cab. Oh they’re not all snobs, but there are a lot of them and I just don’t see why. The drivers aren’t all that compelling once you get past Jr. Jeffy, Schturt and Busch. The cars are all exactly alike and the rules are a joke.

I guess judging by what I have wrote you would wonder if I really am a race fan, but rest assured I am. If I didn’t care I wouldn’t talk about it and this blog would never have been done. We still have a couple months until it is all over, but I just want to say how much fun its been and I am already looking forward to Melbourne next March!

F1

The first ever Chinese Grand Prix was won on Sunday by Reubens Barichello. The sandwich held off Buttons and Kimi for the win. It also wrapped up second place in the drivers championship for the Brazillian.

Jacques Villeneuve returned to the cockpit for the first time this season. He hopped in the Renault Jarno Trulli was fired from and finished in 11th spot. Jacques will be at Sauber next year so he better cherish what he has now because it will probably be a long season next year.

Everyone's favorite, Ralfie boy got mad and hopped out of a perfectly good race car. Apparently he was pissed about being a couple laps down and just got out at a pit stop. It now sounds like Ralfie is done for the season and for good at Williams. Good riddance you piece of shit!


NASCAR

We are now two racecas in to the championship chase and it looks like there are a couple of guys already out of the running. Here are the standings with 8 races to go...


Jeff Gordon 5371
Kurt Busch 5370
Dale Earnhardt Jr. 5353
Jimmie Johnson 5314
Mark Martin 5314
Elliott Sadler 5275
Matt Kenseth5272
Ryan Newman5264
Tony Stewart5236
Jeremy Mayfield5214

Now 5th back to 10th have a shitload of work to do to get back in this thing, but it is possible. I'll have more on this as we get to the halfway mark.

It looks like TK has just about wrapped up the IRL title for the season. The league takes a three week break before heading to California and the penultimate race of the season, but only Dan Wheldon has a chance to catch him and I don’t see that happening given they are team mates and TK penchant for top 5 finishes.

In NASCAR the Chase will begin this week at New Hampshire. How that turd got on the rotation is beyond me. Congrats to Jeremy Mayfield for winning at Richmond Saturday night and getting himself in the mix

Finally, the Sandwich won at Monza as the F1 circus leaves Europe for a couple of races in Asia before finishing the season in Brazil. One item of note is that it looks like Jacques will be in the Renault for the rest of the season while Top Knot sits. Since Renault is set for next year it appears as though JV might end up at Sauber. It also appears as though Ralfie will be back in the car next week at Shanghai. He tested yesterday at Silverstone and seemed to be okay.

Now I come to the real reason of this post. Obviously the posts have tailed off a bit lately and as long as it is football season, they will continue to be more spotty. However, the latest news from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway must be addressed.

For the record the changes will be that the race will now start at noon instead of 11:00 am. Carb Day will now be on the Friday before the race and in addition to practice and the pit stop competition, the MIPS race will be held. Practice each day will begin at noon rather than 11:00 am. And finally, the big one, qualifying returns to four days with a completely revised system. Each day only the 11 fastest will qualify. However, bumping is allowed and bumped cars will be allowed to retry. In fact, as near as I can tell by the rules as I have seen them, a car will be allowed up to twelve attempts to make the field.

So far, no change of the traditional Sunday opening of the track has been announced and with these changes I don’t expect one.

So what of these changes? First of all, the 11:00 am start time for practice was fine and I see no reason to change it. Seems gratuitous to me. The start time of the race is fine with me. Frankly they can start it at 1 and give everyone an extra hour in the morning. However, for Robby Gordon and anyone else attempting to do “the Double” it will just about kill any possibility of that. With Tony Stewart being a big news story this past year and him saying he would be there this year, one has to wonder if it is still feasible. The Carb Day being moved to Friday may prove to be fun as long as I am still able to get my cadre of pix!

As for qualifying, well I am going to take a wait and see approach to see if it works. It is such a radical change that I am having a tough time even imagining how well or poorly it will work.

While I am going to hold judgment for now I do have some comments about the changes in general. FTRG says he is doing this to help bring more teams in, entice the smaller teams to not wait until the last minute and increase television ratings. Well FTRG, if you wanted higher TV ratings and more money then you should have just kept your mouth shut back in 1994 and forgot about forming the IRL.

Don’t get me wrong the IRL is wonderful and CART was run by a group of owners who couldn’t agree on shit. But the bottom line is that there was nothing wrong with the Indianapolis 500. Now we have crappy TV ratings, barely enough cars to fill the field (and then only if FTRG pays according to some) and a drop in attendance at every event in May with the exception of Carb Day and the Parade.

FTRG, there is but one way to fix what you have done to the 500 and that is to increase the purse to make sure that everyone who qualifies makes money on it. It can’t be some crap shoot that only the top 5 make any money on. What incentive is there to come to Indy anymore. It costs a half a million to try to make the race and for what? A chance to make a couple million sure, but more likely a couple hundred thousand. It just doesn’t add up.

Once again we have a knee jerk reaction and unfortunately a boob who has no clue. Whether or not this pulls the 500 out of its doldrums and moves it back into the limelight it once enjoyed remains to be seen. What is already assured is that the one guy running the IRL is no better than the group of owners who ran CART.

NASCAR

Following one of the biggest weekends of the racing season, the Labor Day weekend was one of the slowest with only the NASCAR boys doing their thing. It wasn’t much of a thing either, but with just two races left before the Finals, it seemed like it would have been a good day to put up or shut up. Insofar as that goes, it was,

Elliot Sadler got the win, although a late caution probably prevented Mark Martin from taking the victory. Mark ended up third with Kasey Kahne second. Martin seemed to have the fastest car, but struggled on restarts.

The real race was for the final spots in the Top 10 which will go into the big shootout over the final 10 races. All but 18 had been eliminated from mathematical consideration which after the race was just 15. Sadler, Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth all clinched Top 10 slots to join Junior, Gordon and Johnson.

The big winner was Martin who jumped from 12^th to 10^th in the standings heading to Richmond next week. Kahne jumped 2 slots from 11^th to 9^th while Jamie MacMurray sits in 11^th up four from the previous week. The losers were Bobby Labonte who dropped out of the top 10 to 12^th and Kevin Harvick who dropped from 8^th to 15^th with his 28^th place finish.

Next week they go on Saturday night and it should be a good one. There should be some no holds barred racing out there. I might actually have to tune in for that one!