motorsportmania

On the NASCAR front all is still quiet regarding Shrub Jnr following the parting of the ways with Penske of Shrub Snr. As we wrote here at the end of the season, the latter’s behaviour was pretty shameful, and especially so in the way it showed a lack of respect for the team’s heritage. Captain Nice would not have behaved that way and nor would Rusty. We’re always sad to see talent wasted, especially by the individual, but these two boys just do not seem to be able to contain themselves, and so the standards have to be set by others. We applaud Penske, and Shell, for taking a stand, but we also applaud JGR for trying with their man, albeit that his future may not be with the team.

The Darien Grubb story looks to have ended well with him going to JGR to work with Denny Hamlin. He deserved a decent job; just because he and Smoke didn’t gel to the latter’s satisfaction doesn’t mean that he hasn’t got talent and he did crew chief the #14 through to the title even if he knew he was under notice. The bloke is made of the right stuff.

In F1 the 2012 line up is starting to come together with the Iceman going to what will be Lotus and being joined by Romain who clearly deserved better than he got there in the time he was alongside Alfonso. Petrov is out, but he deserves to have a place on the grid and, being well-funded, maybe that can be at Williams. The Grove boys had a dire year in 2011, but maybe with Patrick moving aside things could improve. It would be hard to get worse, and the big man cast a long shadow.

Also in F1 we are still seeing a calendar silly season emerge. Austin may or may not hold a US GP, Bahrain may or may not be on and so on. Is this an attempt by Bernie to keep F1 on the sports pages? Who knows, but it all seems a shamble to us here at MM. Sort it out Bernie; they are in or they are not.

Returning to Lotus, nee Renault, is the top seat there cursed? Last year we had Robert putting himself out of action and now we have Kimi hurting himself falling off a snow mobile. Hopefully he is OK and can take his ride, but we do wonder if the team can pull round. If they can’t, then their linear progression backwards might suggest that the Iceman would have done better going to HRT.

Filed under: Drivers, F1, NASCAR | Tagged: autoracing, F1, formula one, motorsport, NASCAR, racecar |