Racing Of The United States Variety

[Massa 0]

He's testing at Sebring Monday and Tuesday. See what happens next...

Also worth pointing out that David Martínez and "Racing for Mexico" have intentions to race IndyCar and ALMS. I know a team that competes in both series and needs his money. Pretty appropriately named team, too, because conquistadores etc.

[JHS18 0]

So Rubens Barrichello can't run ovals...

...but he's doing a seat fitting with KV, where his buddy Tony Kanaan races...

...maybe Handy was right again and there's something for Rubens to do road/street races, and Vitor Meira doing the ovals...

Strange...

I remember an interview BBC did not so long ago with Barrichello, where they asked him what he might do after his racing days in F1 were over. He said he'd rather stay at home and spend time with his family over racing anything else.

But I guess when a driver's been bitten by the racing bug, or they've been racing for so long, it'd be too big a change for many of them to completely retire and not race anything.

I thought he'd be more likely to go the route of sportscars, but I guess Indycar is more convenient in terms of getting more time to spend at home, particularly if he's not even doing half the races.

[Massa 0]

I'm sure he says that for the media so he looks really committed to F1 to try to get any offers he can. It's all PR. For years he's said he wanted to run the Indy 500; but his wife also says no, so...

As far as the new Fusion goes, it's a step up, but at the same time, it's a four-cylinder four-door sedan being turned into an eight-cylinder, two-door (zero-door but on a two-door design) racing car. They used to mandate that the cars entered were two-doors in production, to the point Ford had to produce a two-door Taurus to enter in the 90s. Obviously, they got away from that once Chevrolet wanted to run Impala over Monte Carlo, Toyota wanted to join with Camry over Solara, etc.

It's still nice. Toyota unveiled at Speedweeks; private test on the first with all the new cars, so we'll have to see what pictures leak from that.

[JHS18 0]

Hoping for a live video stream of the Rolex 24 this weekend. If there isn't, I'll just have to rely on live timing and Eric hourly updates, which is a worrying thought.

(Just kidding)

Sounds like it should be a good race. I've heard talk that there's chance of rain, although that was from a preview show that was recorded a few days ago, so I guess it could have changed since then.

[Massa 0]

There's always a chance of rain in Florida, friend. I've been in Florida in the summer, been in the fall, and been in the winter, and it has rained literally every single day I've been there (I'd assume about three weeks of my life were spent in Florida)...

...however, there is only a 10% chance of rain on Saturday and Sunday so I wouldn't expect it.

As for streaming, SPEEDTV.com will stream all the hours they aren't showing live on TV on their site. I believe they have always allowed non-U.S. viewers to watch those streams, unlike many others with regional content (i.e. BBC's player thing, NHL on NBC live streams, etc). That will be from Saturday 11:00 PM ET to Sunday 9:00 AM ET (Eastern Time in the U.S. is GMT -5 as far as I know). The race starts at 3:00 PM ET on Saturday.

I can guarantee people will be streaming on Justin, and SPEED almost never closes those feeds.

Spotters' guide here: assets.speedtv.com/event-docs/130/Rolex_24_Spotter_Guide.pdf (can't make it a link for whatever reason) (only complaint is that they made all DP3 cars identical; it is not true. The Corvette is differentiated)...

...as you can see here:

The Starworks #2 lost funding, so Tony Kanaan, E.J. Viso, and Ryan Hunter-Reay will not be racing. Whether or not the car will find new drivers and run is TBD.

Still a great field. No DP teams that I really am supporting; every lineup with a driver I like has at least one I don't. GT, always back the Mazdas, but especially the 36 as John and Jarrett Andretti are good people, as is Anders Krohn, and the Dempsey Racing ones because Patrick <33333333333333 (in all seriousness, I'm a fan of what Dempsey Racing does).

[Massa 0]

NASCAR media goes down as if shot, GET UP!!!

Talk about slacking. It took TWO DAYS, two whole days, for the new Fusion to spark the Honda and Volkswagen to NASCAR rumors.

COME ON GUYS YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS.

Volkswagen and Honda won't be coming to NASCAR, though, unless the rules change.

Rules require an automaker to spend at least one season exclusively in the Camping World Truck Series prior to entering Cup. Though Honda could enter the Ridgeline, it would be a big waste of money; if they're only interested in Cup, which they are, for the body lines and brand identity, they won't get that in CWTS, and the return on being in Cup will not be very high for a company like Honda that will spend so much on development but will still sell an a**load of cars whether or not they race...

As for Volkswagen, they don't market a pickup truck in the U.S. (I know they have a small pickup in Europe, but not here, and CWTS is for full-size pickups anyway), so they really can't enter.

Either way, I'm disappointed these rumors didn't start the second the Fusion was unveiled.

[JHS18 0]

Thanks for the information, that's really helpful.

I guess I'm more inclined to support the car Allan McNish is in, because he's a top guy, but there's no real car that jumps out as me as one I'll be ruiting for. Not that there's drivers I dislike, more that there's a lot of good drivers I respect so it is hard to NOT support them.

I do like the look of the new Corvette DPs though, I remember when that car was initially designed for the ACO "Evo" rules that never saw the light of day. Remember seeing a rendering of that car thinking how cool it looked and what a shame it was it'd never race. So glad it is finally reality.

Nice to see some new machinery in the GT class, particularly with the Ferraris, Audis and BMWs. Again, hard to choose a favourite, but I'm a Ferrari fan so I guess I'll be supporting the Risi cars.

Has Volvo been linked to NASCAR again yet? Haha.

[Massa 0]

All is right in the world, Walmart is sponsoring a car in Sprint Cup.

One race deal to bring Bill Elliott out of "retirement" for the ninetieth time in his career. #50 Chevrolet for Turner Motorsports. Will run the July Daytona race.

I guess it makes sense. Elliott's son Chase is like...9 years old and racing in the K&N Pro Series for Hendrick Motorsports, so I guess Elliott, like Walmart, supports child labor.

(Seriously kidding. The best way to end child labor is to just buy the stuff anyway. Boycott the stuff, close the sweatshops...and the children go out on the streets and either become prostitutes or get abandoned by their families because they aren't bringing in any income. But that's not what this thread is about, I just wanted to make the joke but also not look like a naïve dumbass who thinks the children would go to wonderful schools while their parents magically find jobs as doctors and lawyers and then they all come to America to attend the best colleges and be successful job-creating businesspeople and proud patriots, because if I were that naïve, I'd be running for president under whichever political party it is that you don't like).

Just odd really that Walmart are testing the water with a driver who was testing the water in the late 1800s.

2002 Daytona 500 champion Ward Burton will share a truck with his son Jeb this year. This is good news. Why? Because Ward Burton interviews are the best.

[Massa 0]

Dr. Joseph Mattioli passed away today. He was the founder of Pocono Raceway, a track that at which, as most of you probably know, I have attended seven Sprint Cup races. He was fiercely independent, and cared so much about his track and preserving it from the two main companies that own oval tracks in the U.S. They kept the track alive, and made sure it had two race dates every year, no matter what NASCAR wanted, or what the NASCAR-owned ISC wanted, or what the Bruton Smith-owned SMI wanted. He was responsible for keeping a track with so much character on the schedule, and did so because he and his wife had so much character themselves. I really applaud that family for the job they have done with Pocono. An absolute top-notch experience. There's a reason we've only attended races at independent tracks, and I'm glad they have managed to keep Pocono standing, with innovations such as the solar energy farm they built right near the track. Attending races there was a great experience because of the people who ran the track.

http://espn.go.com/racing/story/_/id/7506927/dr-joseph-mattioli-pocono-raceway-founder-dies-86

[Massa 0]

Ryan Dalziel won the pole for Starworks Motorsports. Pole doesn't mean much, but you give a lineup with Dalziel, Lucas Luhr, and Allan McNish a fast car and I'd consider that a contending vehicle.

The Ganassi 01 didn't seem to make any laps in qualifying. This would make me happy because, well, there are some drivers in the 01 that I don't like a whole lot. Between the 01 and the 02 you could make one car all villains and one all wonderful people, but unfortunately, they decided to spread the bad guys around both cars to ruin the whole race for everyone.

That means, however, that they start 14th. Grand-Am will always start all the DPs ahead of the GT cars. So while they should start 59th, they actually won't. This is a shame, but those are the rules.

Full results, which will confuse because they won't really start in this order (the 5 will start 13th, the 01 will start 14th):

Qualifying results

[Massa 0]

NASCAR is going to look into reevaluating their "have at it, boys" (or "boys, have at it") policy because Danica Patrick is a Cup driver now they are wishy-washy and have no idea what they want, mostly because the fans just want whatever it is they don't have (waaah there's no drama it's so boring there are no fights...waaaah Kyle Busch is going to kill someone I remember when there was respect and gentlemanly behavior).

If I ran NASCAR, and I don't and I never will and that's probably a good thing, I would keep the "have at it, boys" policy, but set clear boundaries with standardized corresponding penalties. I'm not going to say what should be in or out of the rules, but they need to have rules. You can't say Kyle Busch wrecking Ron Hornaday under a caution is a weekend suspension...unless there's a rule saying that and there is no rule in the NASCAR rulebook that suggests anything of that nature. Likewise, even if it did, it isn't standardized. If Ron Hornaday had done it to Kyle Busch, well, Hornaday doesn't run the other races of the weekend (Nationwide and Cup), so what would his penalty have been? You can ban him for the next two Truck races, but the loss of income is significantly less than that of missing one Nationwide and one Cup race...which is why discipline should just stick to the series itself, and if guys like Busch don't care about the Truck races since they're running for the Cup title, well, you either don't let those guys run the series or...let the self-enforcement work! The part where Joe Gibbs and the sponsors stepped in and made Kyle stop running those races, and the part where Kyle would have been wrecked in retaliation had he tried to race. Notice how Dollar General is still sponsoring the Truck, even with Jason Leffler in it! You don't drive people away by not having these guys, and those who don't respect the competition, won't last, because the fans won't respect them, so the sponsors won't associate with them...

But of course NASCAR will never really do any of that. They'll just say "retaliation is sort of alright sometimes at the discretion of race control," or say "it's legal but there's a penalty for it," or "retaliation is completely banned but we encourage you to do it," or "retaliation cannot be done with cars but only by dropping the gloves/helmets and fighting" which is probably what they should do until you realize that's how you get a concussion whereas spinning a stock car around never really results in much of anything.

Oh well.

[Massa 0]

Here's an article that was so pointless I had to share it:

http://www.examiner.com/formula-one-in-national/chip-ganassi-won-t-enter-formula-one

Okay that's all.

[JHS18 0]

With the greatest of respect to Ganassi and all the success they've achieved over the years, I think it is one thing to run a car in a series, and something else entirely to design and engineer a car for another.

Would they have the know-how? Probably. Would they have the tools and expertise? Probably not.

Surprised if he gets asked about that too often to be honest.

[Massa 0]

While I understand what you're saying...

...Chip's NASCAR team build their own chassis and engines (through Earnhardt-Childress, which doesn't have Ganassi's name on it, but Ganassi owns Earnhardt-Ganassi. Teresa Earnhardt is a figurehead; the Earnhardt part of Earnhardt-Childress is all Ganassi people) from the ground-up in NASCAR. Believe it or not, you don't actually "buy" a stock car and an engine. There's no universal supplier.

I realize it's different, but NASCAR is one of the few forms of motor racing where the majority of the teams build their own chassis (there are a few customers out there), and teams, not the automakers, build the engines (not every team builds an engine; there are third-party engine builders like Ernie Elliott, as well as customers, like those smaller teams who buy Earnhardt-Childress engines from Ganassi/Childress).

Obviously, Ganassi would open a shop in the U.K. and hire the best people he could with actual F1 experience. He isn't just going to take his NASCAR engineering team and tell them to build open-wheel cars on the side. He successfully came from CART to NASCAR in the same way, by not bringing his CART people with him, just his team's philosophy. The point is, while building a stock car is different than building a Formula One car and would require some different people and machinery, you'd be very surprised at the facilities a NASCAR team has, and the budgets they spend to do this. As I said before, even though the cars all look the same by automaker, the automakers aren't really involved. You don't go to Chevrolet and buy a Chevrolet Sprint Cup car. You get the regulations of what a Chevrolet is and you design (yes, design, no one Sprint Cup car is alike...a lot of room to play with, it's just not "obvious" on the outside of the car), build that yourself (and it's not IKEA furniture here), build an engine (that's the impressive part), and hope Chevrolet throws you some money for research and development.

Their main facilities from the outside, for fun:

185,000 square feet/17,187 sq m (which is nothing on something like Penske has: 425,000 sq ft/39,484 sq m)...for perspective, Red Bull's Milton Keynes factory only covers 100,000 sq ft/9,290 sq m. I realize sq ft won't win you a WCC but the point is they have facilities. They'd have to obviously make some changes, but the space is there, and they have some staff that could work F1 too (some engineers, marketing, etc. Hell, they were very much involved with designing the DeltaWing out of nothing, I realize it's a different concept than designing something in F1 but again, they can do a lot of diverse things).

In fact, look what else Chip Ganassi has: www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/nascar/the-secrets-of-laurel-hill/

They also have access to the Windshear rolling wind tunnel in North Carolina, like any other team...that wind tunnel has been used in the past by Renault F1 and a few others. Laurel Hill is their own little "secret," and that article highlights some advantages of Laurel Hill over Windshear.

Not that any of it matters because he wouldn't do it. They have a lot of money...which is why they aren't going to spend it on F1. Still, they'd have a much better chance at it than a start-up like US F1 or Cypher Group ever did.

[Massa 0]

Anyway, if that post was too long for you, here are the SparkNotes:

YAY AMERICA!

(I don't really like many of Chip's drivers, but I'm a big fan of Chip himself, and you know that if someone tells me there's no designing and engineering of your own car in NASCAR I'm going to jump right in and correct that. There's enough designing and engineering that Steve Hallam, ex-McLaren, when joining Michael Waltrip Racing, declared NASCAR and oval racing an even great challenge in design and engineering than F1 had been. So much of a challenge he never was able to contribute much to the team and was later released. That point is by no means to say NASCAR is harder than F1 or F1 is harder than NASCAR or anything, just to point out that it isn't so cut and dry even if the bodies look the same...but if you think NASCAR teams aren't constantly finding loopholes to exploit such that the bodies aren't the same, think again. These people in NASCAR go to top-flight engineering schools and all that fancy stuff, too. I know a few guys who are engineers in NASCAR. I'll leave you with this: Ganassi and Penske are incredibly successful businessmen. A good businessman wouldn't have a "factory" bigger than the WCC-winning F1 team does, and wind tunnel facilities that are F1-worthy, if he didn't have a need for it...)

[Massa 0]

SparkNotes of what I wrote after the SparkNotes:

YAY NASCAR BECAUSE AMERICA!

[Massa 0]

You know what's a shame?

That having one U.S. sports car series is totally impossible due to politics and sanctioning bodies and egos and contracts and all that ****. Consider:

P1: Combine ALMS LMP1 and LMP2 again, as they have been in the past (and even prior to being combined, the P2 Porsche and Acura was always giving the P1 diesel Audi absolute fits and beating it plenty of times). Not hard to equalize into one class.

P2: Combine LMPC and Daytona Prototype. Seriously. They run nearly identical lap times at the mutual tracks; LMPC is a hair faster, but the new DPs are faster than the old ones, and are also being held back by the Grand-Am regulations; cut them loose and they'd be as fast as the LMPCs.

GT1: Current ALMS GT.

GT2: The ALMS GTC Porsches are the same ones that race in Grand-Am GT, so you just combine those two classes with no tweaks needed.

Take the best of both schedules, tell the ACO and the WEC to go **** themselves, and I fail to see how this isn't the most bad*** American championship conceivable. All the drivers, teams, and big races, under our own rules that have always produced a different show than the European ones, which is a matter of opinion if you think it's better or worse, but the point is an American series caters to American tastes so running it under rules that don't translate well here has always been, and will continue to be, sheer stupidity on the part of Dr. Don Panoz who seems to care more about having the ability to use the "Le Mans" brand on his series than having a successful series because, in reality, the Le Mans name means very little to anyone outside the racing enthusiasts, and the racing enthusiasts watching ALMS would watch it whatever it was called because they're already extremely devoted.

That's all.

[Massa 0]

Randy Bernard has a major Brazilian sponsor waiting to sign. This is why someone of the same initials was testing yesterday and will do so again today.

[Quiet One 15]

So this is what this thread looks like? *looks around*

Oh, well, I'm here just to mention that Rubinho matched Tony Kakakakananana (I might have placed a few extra "k"s "a"s and "n"s for good measure) lap times on his first test of an Indy car from some very illustrious Indy team whose name and accomplishments cannot remember for the love of me.

Anyways, he still has it, in case anybody was wondering.

[BradSpeedMan 6]

If only Eric could be as passionate about F1 as this....sigh....

[Massa 0]

So this is what this thread looks like? *looks around*

Oh, well, I'm here just to mention that Rubinho matched Tony Kakakakananana (I might have placed a few extra "k"s "a"s and "n"s for good measure) lap times on his first test of an Indy car from some very illustrious Indy team whose name and accomplishments cannot remember for the love of me.

Anyways, he still has it, in case anybody was wondering.

Not a big surprise, but nice to see. The new IndyCar chassis has carbon fiber brakes. The old ones did not and that's been a huge adjustment for some less experienced drivers. Barrichello would do quite well, I think, and Sato should be more competitive, too, when he gets a ride locked up. Previously, the IndyCar had terrible brakes, awful bite, and a real reliance on mechanical grip. It was so foreign to an F1 car that the adjustment was so much harder than it had been previously (i.e. when Mansell or Fittipaldi came to CART). Tomas Scheckter, in fact, said driving the IndyCar on ovals (in single-car qualifying, at least) was much more similar to F1 than driving it on road and street circuits. Something about the smooth cornering and grip. The new car is more of a typical formula car (though not in appearance), so F1 experience would be a big advantage and I think that's showing here.

If only Eric could be as passionate about F1 as this....sigh....

How about we compromise, and I'll make a 17 page thread of me talking predominantly to myself for the Canadian Grand Prix?

[HandyNZL 1]

Eric, the Canadian Grand Prix, whilst good, is never THAT good!

Will be interesting to see if Rubens does sign on...he's not yet committing to it in the press, so we shall see what is happening behind closed doors soon enough.

[JHS18 0]

If only Eric could be as passionate about F1 as this....sigh....

If only most F1 cans could realise there's more to motorsport than F1....sigh....

[Massa 0]

From the Sebring test...

Three Honda engines let go. Honda hasn't had an engine failure in years...because they were the only supplier and had a cute little rev limit and lied about engine failures being other things. Very unreliable throughout testing...

...and not even that fast. The Chevrolet engines took the top six spots.

The Lotus has not been very good.

Speed: Chevrolet, Honda, Lotus

Reliability: Chevrolet, Lotus, Honda

This is a shame given that all my favorites drive for Lotus and most of the guys I can't stand drive for Chevrolet. Plus, I don't like GM as a company (damn socialist stupidity).

[Massa 0]

Found a time sheet:

1. Ryan Hunter-Reay (Chevrolet) 52.230

2. Hélio Castroneves (Chevrolet) +0.374

3. Tony Kanaan (Chevrolet) +0.662

4. Will Power (Chevrolet) +0.672

5. James Hinchcliffe (Chevrolet) +0.689

6. Ryan Briscoe (Chevrolet) +0.771

7. Dario Franchitti (Honda) +0.831

8. J.R. Hildebrand (Chevrolet) +0.858

9. Rubens Barrichello (Chevrolet) +0.889

10. Scott Dixon (Honda) +1.319

11. Graham Rahal (Honda) +1.516

12. Oriol Servià (Lotus) +1.833

13. Charlie Kimball (Honda) +2.632

14. Mike Conway (Honda) +3.327

15. Justin Wilson (Honda) +20:07.178 (no, seriously)