2013 Valencia Moto3 Race Preview: Winner Takes All In Valencia

There have been an awful lot of good Moto3 races this year. So many, in fact, that it's hard to pick out a single one for particular praise. But the final round at Valencia could very well be the best of the year. Moto3 riders are not known for riding conservatively or with undue caution at the best of times, but with the championship up for grabs at Valencia and the top three riders involved in a three-way winner-takes-all shootout for the title, this could be a real heart stopper. Cardiologists around the world will be rubbing their hands with glee at the amount of extra business they are about to generate.

The mathematics of the situation is simple. Just five points separate Luis Salom, who leads the championship, from Alex Rins, who is third, while Maverick Viñales is two points behind Salom and three ahead of Rins. If either Salom or Viñales win, they take the title with an outright points advantage; if Rins wins and Salom is second, the two men are tied on points and on the number of wins, but Rins is crowned champion based on the number of second place finishes he has scored. If none of the three men leading the championship win, then it all gets a lot more complicated - see the full breakdown here - but it comes down to the fact that the first of the three across the line will take the championship.

The chances of one of Luis Salom, Maverick Viñales or Alex Rins not winning is surprisingly slim. Between them, the three men who have dominated the Moto3 series in 2013 have won 16 of the 17 races, and occupying 39 of the 48 podium positions so far. Only three other men have joined the leading trio on the podium, with Alex Marquez, Jonas Folger and Miguel Oliviera the awkward interlopers. Marquez is the only rider to win a race, and even then, he was assisted by Rins and Salom taking themselves out of contention.

Race results and championship standings

round_number: 

18

2013

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/D6D-ZXjpCyI/2013_valencia_moto3_race_preview_winner_.html

Eugenio Castellotti Johnny Cecotto Andrea de Cesaris Francois Cevert

Jamie McMurray wins Talladega race that finishes without its signature wreck

Jamie McMurray didn't know what he was going to do.

Was Dale Earnhardt Jr. going to make a move on McMurray for the lead coming off of turn two on the final lap? Was he going to do it on the backstretch? Was he going to wait until the field was football fields from the finish line? How was McMurray going to defend it?

None of us know.

With McMurray in the lead on the final lap of Sunday's race at Talladega, the caution flag flew for a crash involving Austin Dillon and Casey Mears before Junior had a chance to make that move. On last-lap cautions, the field is frozen. McMurray was the winner.

"I don't know how the last lap would have played out," an emotional McMurray said in victory lane. "I could see the 88 trying to set me up and figure out where he could get a run on me but when I saw -- the caution came out behind me -- and honestly I wanted to end under green but at the same time I wanted a caution and I'm OK with it right now."

The race had made it to that point without a Talladega staple, the Big One, a wreck that encompasses a double digit number of cars. As many a NASCAR fan can attest, the longer a race goes without a Big One, the more inevitable it feels. But we still don't ever know if it'll happen until it happens.

Add in the jockeying for position that heats up over the final laps of a restrictor plate race, and when Dillon's car snapped around from third place in front of a whole pack of cars behind him, mass crashing immediately became a possibility.

But that didn't happen. This Big One only meant severe damage for Dillon and Casey Mears, who clobbered Dillon's car so violently that it popped up into the air before it landed on its wheels.

While the timing benefitted McMurray, who took the lead with 15 laps to go and never relinquished it, the placement of the car crashing did too. The race's final pit stops came more than 25 laps from the finish, and over the last 10 laps, drivers were forced to move to a line on the high side of the track to manage their tires. Remember, Dillon was in third.

"I don't know -- the thing about the package we have now -- if you can get the third car in line to push the guy in second, it's hard to defend," McMurray said. "You just gotta try to make your car as wide as you can ... And then when they could never get the bottom line to form, I'm like it's going to come down to the first three or four cars."

But do you ever truly know? Both in NASCAR and at Talladega. Sunday's win was McMurray's first since October of 2010, a three-win season that included wins in the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400. He missed the Chase that season, but the season looked to be the start of a fruitful partnership between McMurray and car owner Chip Ganassi.

Since then, the team has struggled, and McMurray's had just 15 top 10s in 108 starts. But in that time period, McMurray and his wife Christy have had a son and daughter. And there are signs of a turnaround on the track.

The team switched to Hendrick engines before 2013 and seven of those top 10s had come this season before Sunday, the first time that McMurray was able to celebrate with his wife and children in victory lane. He's now 14th in the standings, the same place he finished in 2010, and is signed with Earnhardt-Ganassi for 2014 to team with Kyle Larson.

Will the improvement continue? That too, we don't know. But isn't that why we all keep driving?

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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
Follow @NickBromberg

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/jamie-mcmurray-wins-talladega-race-finishes-without-signature-222039332--nascar.html

Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi Erwin Bauer Zsolt Baumgartner

Raikkonen sent to the back of the grid

Kimi Raikkonen has been excluded from qualifying after his car failed a floor deflection test in Abu Dhabi. He will be allowed to start from the back of the grid. He also has the option to drop out of parc … Continue reading →

Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2013/11/02/raikkonen-sent-to-the-back-of-the-grid/

Marco Apicella Mбrio de Araъjo Cabral Frank Armi Chuck Arnold

Carl Edwards wins the pole at Texas while Jimmie Johnson is third and Matt Kenseth is sixth

Maybe Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson are bound to be near each other at all times over the last three weeks?

The two drivers tied atop the Sprint Cup Series points standings shared a golf cart ride to the grid on Friday afternoon and qualified back-to-back. And there isn't much distance between them, as Johnson will start third and Kenseth will start sixth.

But it's Carl Edwards who is on the pole, beating Johnson by two hundredths of a second with a lap of 196.114 MPH, just ahead of Brad Keselowski. The gap between the two, according to ESPN based on their qualifying times? Seven seconds.

[Watch: Jimmie Johnson trivia]

Johnson went ahead of Kenseth and was so loose of off turn four that the back right rear corner of his car scraped the wall. But he stayed in the throttle and shot to the pole, two tenths of a second ahead of Joey Logano, who was the polesitter at the time.

Kenseth couldn't match Johnson but he came close, missing Johnson's time by five one-hundredths of a second.

The rest of the Chasers go like this: Kyle Busch starts fifth, Dale Earnhardt Jr. starts seventh, Jeff Gordon is eighth, Kasey Kahne is 11th, Logano is 12th, Ryan Newman is 13th, Greg Biffle is 18, Kevin Harvick starts 19th, Clint Bowyer starts 26th and Kurt Busch is 31st.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/carl-edwards-wins-pole-texas-while-jimmie-johnson-214230506--nascar.html

Bob Bondurant Felice Bonetto Jo Bonnier Roberto Bonomi

Lewis Hamilton move would not be a huge surprise

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/09/lewis_hamilton_move_would_not.html

Paul Belmondo Tom Belso JeanPierre Beltoise Olivier Beretta

Rahal To Test IMS Road Course

Source: http://www.16thandgeorgetown.com/2013/08/rahal-to-test-ims-road-course.html

George Constantine John Cordts David Coulthard Piers Courage

The Man Who Should Have Been A Champion?

I?ve admired Fisi for almost as long as I?ve been a Formula One fanatic ? which, sadly enough, accounts for most of my life.. Fisi, or Fisico or Giano, as he?s also colloquially known, was one of a bunch of up-and-coming youngsters who broke into F1 with perennial minnows Minardi back in 1996. Having been [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/03bM3FTet74/the-man-who-should-have-been-a-champion

Michael Bleekemolen Alex Blignaut Trevor Blokdyk Mark Blundell

Yamaha Video: Kazutoshi Seki, The Man Behind Valentino Rossi's Electronics

The role that electronics plays in MotoGP cannot be underestimated. Every aspect of bike performance depends on how well the the systems monitoring the bikes read the data, interpret it and then modulate the power as it is applied to the road through the rear tire. Despite their performance, the systems which provide that control are kept carefully hidden from the public, and the people behind those systems remain anonymous.

Yamaha has sought to change this, producing a video spotlighting the work of Kazutoshi Seki, the engine control engineer for Valentino Rossi. The two have worked together at Yamaha since 2004, when Rossi first joined the factory, and again since Rossi's return after his two-year hiatus at Ducati. The video provides an insight into the role which Seki plays in helping to set up the bike for Rossi, and puts the passion and commitment the Japanese engineer pours into the sport. Despite being produced by Yamaha's global marketing department, it is a beautifully produced 14-minute portrait of one of the men so crucial to racing at this level. For more background on Seki and Yamaha, see the story behind the video on the Yamaha corporate website.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/XDBW9Jrv78A/yamaha_video_kazutoshi_seki_the_man_behi.html

Christijan Albers Michele Alboreto Jean Alesi Jaime Alguersuari