We have been critical here of some of the new additions to the F1 season, but we do really welcome India to the fold and we hope that they have a great race tomorrow.
Filed under: Circuits, F1 | Tagged: autoracing, F1, formula one, Indian_GP, motorsport, racecar | Leave a comment »
#F1 – A great win for Jensen Button doing it in the style of Fangio and Stewart in winning at the slowest speed, managing his tyres and fuel to win by enough. Congrats also to a worthy double champ, and to MSC for leading a GP again. On the subject of MSC, chatting with other fans at the weekend the view was that Nico had blown him away again this year, but there are only 3 points between them in the title race.
Regular readers may also recal that we were critical of Renault for letting Nick H go, and it is only now that Petrov has overtaken his points haul. As for his replacement,? We’ve nothing to day.
#NASCAR – Last week we made the point that the #48 was back and bad, and yesterday he won to move within a sniff of the points lead. You can’t rule him out, or at least, you can’t rule him out because of the dumb Chase format.
Filed under: F1, NASCAR | Tagged: autoracing, F1, formula one, motorsport, NASCAR, racecar | Leave a comment »
Readers of recent posts will know that I stopped watching the BBC coverage of F1 as a personal protest about Bernie flogging the rights to Sky. I’ll not dwell on all that now though, you can dig through the #skypaynoway archive if you’re that bothered.
But those who have followed this blog and its predecessor will be aware that I also have a personal boycott of the #SingaporeGP since the diminutive one ordered it to be held in the evening to suit European TV schedules. If I can get up early to watch so can anyone else, and I am still not prepared to overlook the gross waste of electricity and its consequent environmental impact.
Unlike the grammatical double negative one boycott doesn’t cancel the other, but I can’t not watch it twice. Maybe I should both turn off and unplug the TV? Or should I also boycott the Twitter coverage that I’ve been using since stopping watching the BBC?
Good luck to the teams, drivers, officials and locals who turn out to watch and I hope that you have a safe and interesting race. My protest is probably a futile one, but if you can’t stand up for what you believe in it’s a sad world.
My pal Toggle will compile the round-up as far as the GP is concerned. I’ll save myself for the NASCAR.
Filed under: Circuits, F1 | Tagged: F1, formula one, media, singaporegp, skypaynoway | Leave a comment »
Starting with #F1, we wrote here in the week about the Indian GP and how good it would be to have Karun Chandhok back in F1, but we’ve since had confirmation that Narain Karthikeyan will also be in the field. The fans there are in for a bit of a treat anyway, but having two local heroes to cheer on should make it a bit special even if they won’t be up the front end of the grid.
#NASCAR. Some dark mutterings from Richmond about whether or not Paul Menard deliberately brought our a yellow to help team mate Harvick who subsequently won. Maybe they should have nipped over to the trucks and asked Nelson? There have been instances of dodgy cautions for years; people chucking padding out of the window for a “debris on the track” caution etc. Who knows for sure what happened when they went to channel 2?In any case, NASCAR have brought out enough phantom cautions over the years haven’t they, especially when some poor sap is way out in front and going away with 50 laps to go?
Meanwhile over at Chicago rain stopped play yet again and they will try to run the race today despite a 30% chance of rain. Was it a dumb decision to move the race to this time of year? Certainly it does seem to have been a bad year for postponed races and how can that be good for the fans or the TV schedules, let alone the teams?
Given our views here about The Chase being a waste of a good season’s racing maybe they should have given them all cycles and done 50 laps in the rain? Something for the fans to cheer maybe, and our money would have been on Mark Martin; still the fittest man in NASCAR?
We’ll give the results a mention here when they come through, meanwhile some of us have work to do!
#DTM. In a very wet Oschersleben the DTM teams were out on tracks and Miguel Molina picked up a surprise pole in his #Audi despite not having scored a point yet this season. In the race Mattias Ekstrom powerboated through the rain to win, Miguel fell off at the first corner and ended up 8th. Points leader Martin Tomczyk came back from a fraught race to second while main challenger Bruno Spengler retired with steering problems. Two rounds to go to decide the title.
#IndyCar. The circus travelled to Motegi in Japan where Scott Dixon won from Will Power despite a late caution for a Hunter-Ray spin out. Dario recovered into the top ten from having been sent to the back for rough driving (now what was it Will said about him the other week?). So WP wins the 2011 Mario Andretti Trophy for road course performances and re-takes the series lead by 11 points with 2 rounds to go here as well.
#BTCC or should we say WWF? Come on Messers Neal & Plato, we don’t need all this stupidity. Be fierce track rivals yes, but let’s leave the unsavoury stuff out. It sets a bad example and we don’t need it.
In between the Sunday showers here the Brits showed that you can race in the wet on the banking as Plato, Sheddon and Nash took the wins at the combined Rockingham oval & road course circuit, Nash’s win being his first in the series.
Filed under: Drivers, F1, Indycar, NASCAR, Tin Tops | Tagged: DTM, F1, formula one, Indian_GP, Indycar, motorsport, NASCAR, racecar | Leave a comment »
We were astonished to read in the row about import tax for the F1 teams that the Indian Government do not regard their inaugural F1 event as having “National Importance”.
Now we understand that this has been said in the context of whether or not to grant a temporary tax expemption certificate for the Grand Prix as a sporting event, and therefore that the remark could be being viewed out of context, but it seems strange that they see things that way.
The motoring market in India is exploding and the country has had two grand prix drivers in recent years, both of whom had the talent to be on the grand prix grid even if both have been outed by others with bigger wallets perhaps. One of them will be on the grid when the circus rolls into the country later this year. They also have their own F1 team, and one that isn’t doing too badly either.
And there seems to be a genuine exitement amongst the fans in the country, unlike other recent additions to the GP calendar where the TV cameras reveal acres of vacant viewing areas we believe that there will be a good crown at New Dehli this October.
Here at MotorsportMania we wish the Indian nation well for their inaugural GP. We think that it has national importance and hope that they have a great race. All power to them.
And good luck to Karun Chandhok in his Lotus.
Filed under: Circuits, F1 | Tagged: F1, formula one, Indian_GP, KarunChandhok | Leave a comment »
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