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Weekend round up – 16th October 2011 #F1 #NASCAR #BTCC #Indycar

Posted on October 17, 2011 by truckertoggle

Toggle & I are up and about early for tea and toast and tend to check for the US results that have come in after our (early) bedtime. So to open up the computer before dawn this morning and be greeted by the news from Vegas was a real shock. We’ll come back to IndyCars at the end of the round up, but RIP Dan Wheldon and thanks for all the memories. Condolences to the Wheldon family and our thoughts are with the whole Indy racing community and to all those fans, officials and corner workers at the track whose night ended so tragically.

#F1 Korean GP – So Seb wins another one, but redemption for Lewis? Certainly that was a much more committed and confident looking performance both in qualifying and the race. And as for Massa’s claims that Hamilton is dangerous, well it didn’t stop Webbo having the confidence in him to go wheel to wheel on a few occasions do it? Like Lewis, Felipe is in a dark place right now and needs some good results too.

A horrible track though, and where were the crowds again? The rubbish places the circus has to go to these days in search of Bernie’s dollars.

#NASCAR – Has the #48 resurgence come to an end? After two good results to lull back and early contact with the wall sends JJ to pretty much the back of the pack in the race and a big tumble in the points. A good day for the Blue Oval boys though, with 4 cars in the top 7. Good to see the RPM cars doing well again and maybe we’ll get to see the #43 back in victory lane again soon.

Five races to go and  fairly open still.

#BTCC – Well done Matt Neal on another title. DJ is old enough to have seen your Dad racing.

#IndyCar – What can we say? Motor racing is dangerous and times like this bring back the immortal words of Sid Collins from Indy in 1964. You can find the full text of his eulogy to Eddie Sachs elsewhere in our archives here (perhaps because of yesterday’s tragedy that post has had over 100 hits today alone).

There is no point saying that the track is at fault. There have always been dangerous tracks and Motor Sport featured various views on Spa in its old guise last month as an example. For our US friends, maybe Langhorne Speedway would be an appropriate equivalent, albeit for different reasons? If you take away the danger you take away the sport. Losing someone is always hard, but as long as we race there will always be the risk that it will happen.

Best wishes to Pippa, Will and JR for speedy recoveries. Congratulations to Dario and his team for another title, commiserations to Will and Penske for coming up just a touch short again.

We’ve been critical here of the Indy organisers for some of what they’ve done in recent times, but have to hand it to them for the dignified way they seem to have handled yesterday’s events and plans for the awards ceremony. You did the right thing. And the 5 lap tibute was a nice touch.

 

 

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Weekend round up – 9th October 2011 – #F1 #NASCAR

Posted on October 10, 2011 by driverjohn

#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.

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Weekend round up – 25th September 2011 #F1 #NASCAR

Posted on September 26, 2011 by truckertoggle

#F1 Fairly inevitable winner, but perhaps JB’s second place wasn’t on the cards after practice. Lewis was really very unlucky with the Massa contact and the drive through was possibly underserved. MSC was equally unlucky we think with the contact that took him out of the race. Back markers were a problem and there are a few guys out there who show their inexperience, but the stewards decision is final and that is that.

The Singapore organisers are apparently considering whether or not to continue the event. Here at MSM we would not be sorry to see it go. Leaving aside DJ’s opposition to the night race, it is not a great circuit and we would rather see the race at a decent venue.

#NASCAR was back in New Hampshire where Ryan Newman followed up his team owner’s win last week with pole, but in another fuel mileage decided race it was Smoke in the #14 who pulled off a second straight win and takes a 7 point lead into the Monster Mile.

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Singapore GP. How do you boycott something twice?

Posted on September 21, 2011 by driverjohn

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.

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Weekend round up – 18th September 2011 #NASCAR #IndyCar #F1 #DTM #BTCC

Posted on September 19, 2011 by driverjohn

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.

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