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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 – 3 October 2011 #NASCAR #DTM #NASCAR #BTCC

Posted on October 3, 2011 by truckertoggle

#NASCAR – not much to report really as one of the Ugly Brothers won and we don’t like them here on these pages. The #48 came up a bit short, but had a good run and a typical chase result for JJ. Is he back?

The Petty boys did well with both in the top 10 and The Dinger managing to lead a lap. Good job guys.

Smoke dropped the ball maybe and slips to joint third in the standings.

#IndyCar – more problems here too for our favourite as Miss B gets released into his path on pit road. Exit the fastest car in the race. Not Miss B’s fault; her crew should never have released her, but pit road saw more that its fair share of chaos last night. Hope those who got hurt get well soon.

Big swing in the points back in favour of Dario. One race to go.

#DTM – One to go here too, but Martin Tomczyk takes the title anyway for Audi in Valencia, the first guy to do it in an old spec car. A great series and should get better next year with BMW back to give Audi and Mercedes some competition.

#BTCC – Another series with one more weekend to run, albeit that there will be three races that day in the current BTCC format. On the Brands Hatch GP circuit two wins for Jason Plato in his Chevrolet put him in front in the title race, but success ballast and the reverse grid held him back for the third race of the day and Matt Neal took a win for Honda and takes a 5 point championship lead into the last trio of races at Silverstone.

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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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weekend round up – 4th September 2011 #NASCAR #Indycar #DTM

Posted on September 5, 2011 by thatconsultantbloke

#NASCAR Rain stopped play in Atlanta and they run tomorrow.

#IndyCar Will Power dominates at Baltimore, Oriol Servia runs 32 laps on old tyres to finish second and Tony Kanaan pulls all the way through from well down to third, even after a real scare in practice when car failure saw him get airborne over the back of Helio; one major shunt. The title race down to 5 points as Dario comes home third.

#DTM action at Brands Hatch where they do run in the wet, Martin Tomczyk produced a masterful performance to win his third race of the season and slip back into the title race by just a single point.

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weekend round up – 28th August 2011 #F1 #Indycar #NASCAR #MartinHines

Posted on August 29, 2011 by truckertoggle

#BelgianGP – starting with pre race, let’s say that we accept the Renault logic for dropping Nick Heidfeld, so we were wrong to criticise last week. Also to say that we think Nick is bonkers going to court to try and get his drive back. They don’t want you man, walk away.

Qualifying. Sad at the cock up that kept JB from a decent start position. He was on for a top 4 at least and, as things played out, where might he have finished. As for Lewis and Pastor! Start at the beginning; Lewis was catching the two Williams cars on the run up to bus stop and they were in turn behind Massa. In the heat of that how was Pastor to know that he was about to get shoved rudely aside as Lewis just barged him out of the way? He did appear to try and give Lewis room once he found the McLaren bouncing off him but Lewis’ momentum saw the McLaren hit the Williams again on the exit of the corner.

OK, the time Lewis lost there might just have been enough to have cost him pole and he was pumped up, but he didn’t need to swerve at Pastor as the latter came alongside him out of La Source. Pastor must also have been pumped. He too had been on a hot one and looked to be catching Rubens around the lap. If the blue flags were being waved at the bus stop who were they for as far as Pastor was concerned? He was blocked up behind Massa and his team mate, so it could have been for any of them, and then all of a sudden he has a McLaren punting him wide and costing him time.

What Pastor did after Lewis swerved at him out of La Source was unacceptable at any level and I would have thought that a one race ban might have been more appropriate, but Lewis does need to watch his temper. He has an aggression level that crosses boundaries still. That said, he redeemed himself later…

As for the race, why do they insist on starting with a short run to the hairpin? Surely moving the start back round the other side would reduce the annual crash fest? Anyway, we got cars bouncing all around and one that got clobbered was a certain mid grid starting McLaren and he was to run just a few laps before stopping for a new wing and to dump the harder tyres. We then got a classic charge through to third but, as we said at the top, what might that have been had they not had to change the front wing and how much time did the damaged rear one cost? Surely now we can lay the reputation for JB not being a racer?

And Lewis? Someone referred to Kobakrashi as being a bit of a Kamikaze pilot. Sorry, but he failed that course; Kamikaze pilots don’t come back, but Kamui seems to almost always be around at the finish and in the points. The bloke is an amazing survivor. I’d agree that Lewis was more to blame for the contact with Kamui, but what was the latter doing where he was? He really couldn’t have expected to gain any advantage from having his nose up the outside of the McLaren at that point. A great shame that the incident put Lewis out and he was very lucky that he didn’t get hurt.

Man of the Race? Well MSC gets a mention for a great drive through to 5th, team mate Nico also worth a mention for passing Vettel for the lead early on and heading the race twice with confidence. JB demonstrated overtaking ability par excellence (including stiffing MSC), but our Man of the Race goes to Lewis. Why? Because he held his hand up and accepted his exit from the race was his own fault once he’d seen the replay. Well played Lewis.

Vettel’s win? He fluked it with the safety car call and I don’t think that he could have beaten Webbo or JB without that help, possibly not even Alonso. But you make your own luck sometimes.

#Indycar – Out in CA Will Power showed his mastery of courses that go both ways again with a commanding pole position and backed up the Penske 1-2-3 lock out in qualifying to lead them 1-2-3 at the flag in Sonoma. Dario picked up fourth, but his lead is now down to 26 points in the title race. Off the Baltimore next week for the Labor Day weekend clash.

#NASCAR – Well, the #2 certainly has some momentum coming up to the Chase. Could young Brad win the title this year? Hard to bet against in many ways, but will his inexperience tell?  Mot mush else to say other than good to see the RPM Fords finishing well up again. The #43 doesn’t look like it will make the chase, but consistently good results see the Dinger well up and the Digger in the #9 looks set for a solid top 20 finish in his first season at RPM.

#Karting – just an honourable mention for Mr Karting Martin Hines who left the grid over the weekend. His enthusiasm for Kart racing saw him help so many stars of grand prix racing over the years. And it wasn’t just the direct help that he gave to certain individuals, Kart racing would probably not have been such a well run and popular sport had it not been for Martin’s input over the last 40+ years. Without that first rung on the ladder, would so many people have got to learn their craft? RIP Martin Hines, we are going to miss you.

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