Clutch already covered Danica's IRL IndyCar win in Japan. Yay. I already knew women could race. See: Lyn St. James.


----- IRL's "unification" stepchild Champ Cars ran their last race Sunday at Long Beach. I have stated before that Long Beach is the only street course other than Monaco with history/credibility. That said; the surface is pretty lousy compared to Monaco.


Polesitter Justin Wilson was dispatched quickly by race winner Will Power (Aus). The racing seemed quick and violent on the crappy surface. Little mistakes be big mistakes in open-wheel cars. Note lap times (last we will see).

Pole: 1:06.902s/105.898mph. Fast Lap: 1:08.252s/108.8mph.


Champ Car "power-to-pass" (extra 50HP for limited time) produces (produced) weird numbers. Backfield runners get their act together and shoot their PTP wad on good rubber in clean air. Fast lap was set by 16th place/-3 laps/last running Antonio Pizzonia on lap 68! Race winner Power's fastest lap, #75, was 5th fastest 1:08.661


It's a sad day. These cars will wind up in private collections or gathering dust for years before Vintage Racing will allow them in.


-----ALMS ran Long Beach Saturday. 4 classes on a street course is stupid (sue me). Brief flashes of great racing were mostly obscured (crappy ABC day-late, compressed, lousy coverage helped.) by slow cars and blatant blockage.


2 Penske P2 Porsches + 3 P2 Acuras started ahead of the smokers. Polesitter #6 P2 Penske driver Patrick Long (set FL on #10, .216s quicker than #2 P1 smoker on lap #12.) led the first 40 laps. #7 Penske teammate Romain Dumas worked traffic and tires for 9 laps to no avail. A smoker got by for the lead with 14 to go. The other soon followed for a 1-2 Audi win. To add insult to injury; the Brabham/Sharp/Johansson Acura took 3rd with less than 1:00 remaining on the last lap! 4.8 seconds covered the top 4.


Compare: Pole 1:11.33s/99.32mph; and Fast Lap 1:12.383s/97.88mph with above Champ Car times. Comments?


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The best racing was in Mexico City. 7400'/2255M means HP and downforce are in reduced supply.

Rolex Grand Am raced the 2.5 mile Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez Saturday. Hometown boy Memo Rojas set pole position in the #01 Telmex Ganassi/Sabates Lexus/Riley. The team had wins at Daytona and Miami. After an early pit from the lead (to negate the STOOPID 45min rule!) on lap 15; Rojas inherited the lead again on a lap 21 caution for 13 rounds. He eventually led a race-high 31 laps. Scott Pruett took over on a later stop and led only 13 laps until the 15th place (!) starter took over for the last 29 laps.


You heard correctly. The #91 Bob Stallings/Riley-Matthews Motorsports Pontiac/Riley started 15th driven by team principal Jim Matthews (maybe got money? the silver car has no stickers!). Belgian Marc Goossens took it to the checker. Maybe having Rileys (father & son) on board is an advantage. Yuh think? Kudos to them anyway.


Kudos to the AIM Motorsports #61 Ford/Riley driven by Brian Friselle and Mark Wilkins. They started 2nd and hounded the #01 Ganassi car, setting 3rd fastest lap on #5, in the early going. This was rumored to be Ganassi's 1st Riley chassis to have won a Championship chasing the newest.


Pole: 1:19.508s/113.196mph. Fast lap: 1:20.521s/111.77mph (#99/lap 69)

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The Nascar Nationwide (Busch/GP2/2nd string) cars raced Mexico City Sunday. I haven't written that one up yet... Excellent race cost me crow from my boss Monday.

Thanks for that write up Steve. Appreciate it :)

Nice write up. It'd be cool to have a recap after every weekend, but thats a lot of writing. So thanks a lot.

Hey Steve, what can I fill that giant festering hole left in my life now that IRL took over Champ Car?

Cheers Steve, nice write up. :)

Also, I never knew Antonio Pizzonia raced in Champ Cars. I wasn't sure where he went after his brief spell in F1.

But I also have another massive question: what's happened with the IRL and Champ Cars? You mentioned no more Champ Car races? Why? What's happened? I absolutely love watcing IRL when it's on and sadly I haven't had the oppurtunity to watch Champ Cars on the TV. I guess the chance is gone now?

IRL spread onto Champ car like cancer spreads onto a smokers lungs. It destroyed it, and left just a crappy shriveling remain. It is no more, it is an ex-racing league!

Hey Steve, what can I fill that giant festering hole left in my life now that IRL took over Champ Car?http://www.racepage.eu/images/f1_grand_prix_logo.jpg:D

:D

I love the thread, still reading it, but had to make this comment.

Thanks for the information Steve.

F1 is too up it's own ass about how "great" it is. In the end, everyone seems to be just bitching about god knows what and actually RACING seems to be the last thing on everyones mind.

Does ALMS come to Oregon or Washington?

F1 is too up it's own ass about how "great" it is. In the end, everyone seems to be just bitching about god knows what and actually RACING seems to be the last thing on everyones mind.

I think that's more so the stupid media making a big deal out of everything. I really dislike how the media twist pretty much everything that comes out of anyone's mouth.

If you ignore the media, and focus solely on the teams, and the engineers, and the designers, and the drivers, it's really great. I don't really care what Raikkonen does in his spare time, nor do I care what Alonso's favourite biscuit is. I care about the cars, and while some may think that spending umpteen million dollars each year is pointless, I really love the whole thing, way back to 1950.

In the end, the engineers and drivers all want to win, so I pay attention to them, not some board of directors who want results and major corporate image boosting.

Thanks for the comments, guys! I have been way absent here. I'll try to catch up this weekend (nobody races Mother's Day in the US).

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Don't blame IRL for CART/Champ Car's demise. Blame IRL for sucky racing. Like SCCA with Trans Am; Champ Car proved themselves unable to promote an orgy in a frat house.

The CC owners could have sold out to IRL 2 yrs ago for 3 times the money. Champ Car teams never got their prize/contigency money for '07. The '07 Mazda Atlantic Series winner declined his (non-forthcoming) $1MIL assistance/sponsorship with a CC team well in advance to go with an IRL team.

Danica was the first driver from the US to win a major open-wheel race here (OK, it was in Japan) in a while. That's not going to sell tickets to the Talladega hordes (125,000 strong, some of whom will throw beer cans over the fence if jeff gordon wins; even if it means going to jail.)