My ticket to the Thruxton CSCC meeting arrived yesterday. Looking forward to this - it's a new thing for me. I haven't attended any proper motorsport since I was a kid. The fact that classic cars are involved makes it for me, of course.
Hamilton wins the Chinese Grand Prix from Vettel. Good race that, started in mixed conditions and lots of confusion over the best tyres early on. Then DRS was rendered effectively useless thanks to the technicalities of this year's designs, so the overtakes we all saw were "organic" to use Martin Brundle's word. And there were passes this time, unlike Melbourne. Proper racing.
Yes, good stuff so far in F1. And another very mature (if that isn't patronising) drive from Max Verstappen. Also it pleases me to see the variety of car colours on the grid - even little things like that make it a better viewing experience. Pink cars were a stroke of genius.
Round 3 of WRC was Rally Mexico. Here's the highlights programme on C5:
https://www.my5.tv/fia-world-rally-championship-highlights/season-2/mexico
Gah, lost track of myself there. Mexico was last month - and ended ridiculously. In fact, if you've not seen it, you ought to. The one I'm trying to find is from last weekend's Corsica round, but C5 air those highlights tomorrow. Soz.
Fernando Alonso is going to miss the Monaco Grand Prix and race the Indy 500 instead. He's going to be in a car run by Andretti, branded as a McLaren, powered by Honda. Is there any realistic prospect of him actually winning the thing?
Kudos to McLaren for letting him go and do that, not least because Monte Carlo is the one place that might suit their car given all the corners and not many straights. Might be a brief comeback for Jenson Button in prospect, he's still contracted to the team as reserve driver.
I don't really understand the differences between the various American motor racing codes like Nascar, IndyCar, Indy500. Some are on ovals, some are on tracks, some are in open wheel cars, some aren't... What's the thing that JP Montoya is/was good at? Is that what Alonso is going to do?
Button lives in Monaco, doesn't he? He seems to be doing triathlon at the moment, but you'd imagine it's not too big an ask for him to do a few laps of his home town...
The big split is between NASCAR and what is now called IndyCar.
NASCAR races closed wheel "stock cars" that bear some superficial resemblance in terms of body work to models that are for sale to the general public in this country and thus bear marques such as Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota. The races are primarily on ovals and "tri-ovals", though there are generally two or three races on "road courses" (usually Watkins Glen and Sears Point in Sonoma) every season. NASCAR is by far the most popular form of motor sport in this country and challenges college football as the number one sport in the South.
IndyCar races open wheel cars that look quite a bit like F1 cars, though historically they have been less technically sophisticated and featured more brute power. They race in a series that includes the Indy 500 (raced on an oval), but primarily features "road courses" (including street courses in places like Long Beach). From the mid-90s to 2008, there was a stupid split in the formula that saw largely identical cars racing in two competing series (CART/Champ Car, which didn't have the Indy 500, and the IRL, which did). That split was engineered by the owners of the Indy 500 (and the track), who felt that their "premier" event wasn't getting enough of the money, attention, etc from the series. The result was a feud that seriously harmed both sides and significantly weakened open wheel racing in this country, with IndyCar's decline being matched by NASCAR's rise to national prominence.
JP Montoya now races in IndyCar (where he began before joining F1), but spent the period from 2006 to 2013 in NASCAR.
As to Alonso's chances at Indy, it is much too early to tell, but we will learn more during the month of qualifying (yes, really) that precedes the race.
Until I read the Beeb's article about the Alonso news, I hadn't realised that Graham Hill had won the Le Mans 24 Hour. Shows just how quickly I lost interest in the sport after Jim Clark's demise...
I'd say Alonso is definitely worth a tenner, as Marussia/Caterham reserve driver Alexander Rossi did pretty okay last year.
Ursus's post was quite comprehensive and covered most of it. But obviously, libraries can and have been written about the history of American racing. If you can be arsed to check out Flynnie's posts from the past three years with Indycar vs CART and the Indy 500, there's really good info. (At least I think it was Flynnie. Apologies if it wasn't.)
Stock car racing started with moonshiners in Appalachia running moonshine to Al Capone during Prohibition during the week, then betting on who had the fastest booze-runner on the weekends. (Think Robert Mitchum's Thunder Road.. )
Is it just my imagination or has the 'Le Mans series' / 'World Endurance Championship' style of racing been making inroads into the American market and consciousness over the last 5 years or so? It certainly seems to be getting more and more TV time over here.
Aha, it seems Red Bull TV has worldwide rights to WRC highlights. They look to be more extensive, (i.e. will require more time to watch!) with 45 mins for day 1, and 35 for each of days 2 and 3.
There has always been a relatively small group of US motor sport types who have been obsessed by Le Mans in particular and "sports car" racing in general, but I don't get the sense that it has broken through to broader public consciousness in the very crowded US sport landscape.
We have a good friend who drives in support races of this kind, and he says that they remain something for the cognoscenti
The fact that motorsport dedicated cable channels have struggled for traction over here (at least in part because the networks have NASCAR, F1 and IndyCar) certainly hasn't helped.
Kevin S wrote: This is all good. I now just need to figure out how Lightning McQueen, Doc the 'Hudson Hornet' and the Piston Cup all fit into place.
Hudson Hornet was the early days of "The Grand National," which became "The Winston Cup" - named after North Cacky Tabaccky companies, which became various fly-by-night-tech-company or energy-drink Cups after cigarette ads were banned in the 90s, which was the basis for the Piston Cup. The Nascar history wikipedia covers most of it.
LeMans may have had it's American peak before I was born, but yes, on a line graph it's definitely gathered more interest over the past 5 years. I can't remember it ever being on tv, but it's now on one of the myriad of sports networks (one year it was on 1 every few hours.) The free streaming that LeMans did a few years got some coverage. A lot of the coverage disappeared once they made you pay. Patrick Dempsey's runs and podium helped a lot to get it in the news. Then not racing to get back with his ex-wife also helped to keep it in the news. Sort of. A little bit.
The internet has helped. Deadspin and Jalopnik always make a big deal of LeMans. The 24 hours of LeMons is quite the hoot.
The 24 hours of Daytona was always somewhat a big deal (being that it's run around the time of the Daytona 500 and the major American cars would run commericals about how they did on it,) but it's obviously out of the WEC or sportscar realm. The 6 hours at COTA in Austin TX has plugged along.
But it doesn't nearly have the audience of Street Outlaws. But neither does NASCAR most of the time, not to mention Indy.
Kevchenko wrote: Ah, missed that - on reflection the Wehrlein articles are all 'reportedly' and 'understood to have'.
Just looking at the F3 lineup so far and Schumacher Jr is in the same team - Prema Powerteam - as Callum Ilott. Ilott is 18 and from Cambridge and has been a rising star, though didn't quite live up to expectations in 2016. Wonder how that will pan out over the year?
Canadian Lance Stroll has left that same team having won the European F3 title in 2016, as he is taking up one of the Williams F1 drives (where Bottas is still provisionally in the other).
Another young Brit, Lando Norris from Bristol, took part in the last European F3 race of 2016 and goes full time for 2017. He was born on 13 November 1999. Blimey. And he won three Championships lat year: Toyota Racing Series, Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 and Formula Renault 2.0 NEC.
Norris won't be driving in Monaco simply because he's not eligible. The FIA has a points system nowadays whereby drivers have to build a certain level of achievement and competence to get a superlicence to drive F1. Here's the table at the start of the year - some of those will be driving at the Indy 500 anyway, some are under contract to other teams. Webber has retired from racing outright.
It'll be Button (he already has a superlicence so doesn't appear on the list).
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