Monday
Christian Horner on Bahrain: Political if you race, political if you don?t
Christian Horner says that his Red Bull team focussed on the sport in Bahrain over the weekend despite the obvious distractions that surrounded the event. ?We?ve focussed on motor racing this weekend,? said Horner, who had a chat with the … Continue reading
Asphalt! Drivers talk track surfaces and impending Kansas repave
KANSAS CITY, Kan. ? With the track changes at Bristol Motor Speedway underway and the imminent repaving of Kansas Speedway scheduled to start moments after the conclusion of Sunday's STP 400, repaving and track surface discussion dominated Friday's driver media sessions at Kansas Speedway.
Here are the comments from some drivers about repaving. And spoiler alert: old pavement is preferred, though Jimmie Johnson says that he views track repaves as an opportunity for he and his team to gain an advantage.
"No, it might be that mindset for some drivers, but for me I look at it as an opportunity," Johnson said. "The tracks are going to change, and it's going to be different. Whoever figures it out first will have the advantage and win. So, I'm excited about the new surfaces that go down. Some of them are very challenging, and I hope people pay attention to the tracks that have instant success and the others that take a long time to come around, and we can learn from that as well. I'm excited for the opportunity, and I love to test. I love to be at the race track learning, and am excited to have testing at tracks we race at. We can really get data files on tracks other than Milwaukee or Nashville, and these tracks that we don't race at anymore. I'm happy we have some testing at the real tracks on the correct tire."
Jeff Gordon says that the track surface looks good from a driver's perspective. However, track officials and engineers say that the repave at Kansas is absolutely necessary because of a combination of weather and environmental factors.
"I don't really understand why they are paving this race track," Gordon said. "It looks great out there. This place is awesome. I wish they wouldn't touch it. I'm not the business person. I'm not an engineer that looks at the construction, foundation, all the things that they feel like why they need to do it. Whatever they put in front of us we will just go about it the best way that we can. I feel like ISC has gotten enough information and experience paving race tracks that I have faith they can do the right thing. I think Homestead is a perfect example. They did a great job at Homestead. That was one of the only race tracks I can remember being repaved where we came there and raced the first race and it was a fun race. Of course, what they had before was so bad, it was easy to improve. What they have here is going to be hard to improve."
Carl Edwards said he'd love to race on a track that would never be repaved.
"I would not resurface this track ever. I wouldn't resurface tracks ever if it were up to me," Edwards said. "I'd patch the holes and keep on running."
Kansas Speedway is moving to progressive banking, which is it what is currently installed at Homestead, Bristol and Las Vegas. Bristol is concrete, a surface that Dale Earnhardt Jr. says doesn't respond as well to progressive banking as asphalt does.
"When you're using concrete, concrete has a lot of limitations for our cars," Junior said. "We only have a few tracks that are concrete or have been concrete in the series or the sport. None of them truly became multi-groove race tracks. Dover is the closest thing that we have to a multi-groove track, but to be honest with you, the majority of the racing is done on the bottom of that race track as ell. In a perfect world, in m opinion, if I owned the race track and had all the money that [SMI president Bruton Smith] has or the technology that we have today, I would pave the track with the configuration that they currently have with the progressive banking with asphalt. But its not my decision and I think what they're doing is going to be fun and I like that they're making a change. Even though when you pave a race track, it typically doesn't put on the best races after a few years of weather and wear on the surface, it tends to work out okay and the track really comes into its own again. As much as we'd like to have a lot of the tracks stay with the older asphalt, it's just some of them are deteriorating so bad that it's just not an option.
"I think progressive banking has done wonders at a lot of race tracks and been a real plus at a lot of places. It's just the combination of progressive banking and the limitations of that concrete is what's challenging to Bristol."
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Sunday
Tony Stewart notches second 2012 victory in rain-shortened California race
Last year, Tony Stewart famously said that his team didn't deserve to be in the Chase for the Sprint Cup after the August Michigan race. This year, they may very well be locked into the Chase after the season's first five races and all talk about Smoke's customary slow starts to seasons can be officially put to rest for 2012.
The reigning champion defied conventional wisdom (and his own) on his way to a blistering performance in last year's Chase for the Sprint Cup after a relatively porous regular season in 2011 and he's doing it again in 2012 after grabbing his second win of the season in the rain-affected Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway on Sunday -- his seventh win in the last 15 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races dating back to last year's Chase opener at Chicagoland.
Like David Reutimann and Joey Logano, winners of rain-shortened races in 2009 who found themselves in the right place at the right time because of well-timed decisions not to pit, Stewart's win was also because he didn't elect to pit when the only caution came out for rain on lap 123.
But unlike Reutimann and Logano, who were afterthoughts until the rains came, Stewart had arguably the best car of the race's 129 (of 200 scheduled) laps. Smoke, who qualified 10th, started moving through the top 10 after the first handful of laps clicked off, and quickly ran down the Joe Gibbs Racing cars of Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, who started on the front row. Green flag pit stops stymied Stewart's attempts at the lead through the race's first 85 laps, but he took the lead for good after passing Busch on lap 85.
Hamlin was able to briefly close in on Stewart's bumper a handful of laps before the rains came, but Stewart pulled away as quickly as Hamlin arrived.
However, Hamlin didn't finish in second. When Stewart elected not to pit, Hamlin and crew chief Darian Grubb, Stewart's championship-winning crew chief who was let go from Stewart-Haas before the Chase began, chose to hit pit road, betting that the rains weren't going to last very long. For a split second, it looked that Stewart had snookered Hamlin into pitting, deking to pit road before peeling back onto the track before descending upon the infield grass, but it was a calculated decision for the No. 11 team that ended up being the incorrect one. Hamlin finished 11th.
Hamlin grabbed the final wild-card spot in last year's Chase with one win, while Brad Keselowski snagged the other with three wins. With two wins, Smoke's sitting pretty in fourth in the points standings. At this rate, the wild card sure as heck isn't going to matter.
Into the Crystal Ball? Drama in the LBC, Edition
Pandora’s box has surely been opened this week. Nearly half the field will see grid penalties this weekend in Long Beach, the setting for the longest running street race in the western hemisphere. Open wheel racing has descended on the … Continue reading 
Source: http://anotherindycarblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/into-the-crystal-ball-drama-in-the-lbc-edition/
Kasey Kahne?s struggles continue at Martinsville
If Jimmie Johnson had a golden horseshoe you-know-where during his run of five straight championships from 2006-2010, there's no telling what color horseshoe his Hendrick teammate Kasey Kahne has right now. Because it's definitely not good.
At Daytona, Kahne was caught up in a crash and he slapped the wall at Phoenix. He was involved in a multi-car accident at Bristol when he made contact with Regan Smith, and on Sunday, his engine blew up after he started on the pole for the second time this year. It's been that kind of season.
"Well I mean it is and it isn't (disappointing)," Kahne said. "I am upset that we haven't run great this year, but we are great on Friday and Saturday, we were fast again today, and we have the speed so when it's our time we will be ready to take advantage of it."
Six races into the season, Kahne sits 31st in the points standings, behind Kurt Busch, David Ragan, David Gilliland, Dave Blaney and Casey Mears. Crazy, eh?
It's a start eerily reminiscent of Mears' first season in the No. 5 car in 2008. That year, Mears opened with finishes of 35th and 42nd in the season's first two races, and finished 42nd again at Bristol and entered Martinsville on the brink of falling out of the top 35.
That year, Mears, however, only had six top 10s and one top five. With the speed that Kahne has shown, those six top 10s could come in the next six races. Thanks to the Wild Card, a Chase berth is still a legitimate possibility.
2012 WSBK Assen QP2: Wet, wet, wet
Riders who were able to bank a fast lap yesterday will head off to Superpole and those who missed out will be regretting the fact they didn't get off the mark quickly enough. Yesterday's rains were no surprise as the radar system warned of rain at 15:30 local time, which is why everybody was out immediately trying to put in a 'banker' before conditions got too dangerous for slicks. Today's session was all about finding wet settings.
The big names missing out on Superpole are Max Biaggi and Hiroshi Aoyama who will start from the fifth and sixth rows respectively. It remains to see if Zanetti will be allowed to race as he was outside the 107% required, but Race Direction may allow him to continue at their discretion.
Results:
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/bxmdf5urzEs/2012_wsbk_assen_qp2_wet_wet_wet.html
Saturday
Eliseo Salazar Showcase Its Mini John Cooper Works WRC In The Mapocho
On Saturday 21 April at 10:30 hrs in the Mapocho (height between the bridges Pedro de Valdivia and Concepcion), the driver Eliseo Salazar of Chile show the car that will compete between 26 and 29 April in the fifth day of the World Rally Championship (WRC) to be held in Cordoba, Argentina. The car will [...]
Marco Andretti goes airborne in crash at Long Beach
The scariest moment of Sunday's Izod IndyCar Long Beach Grand Prix involved Graham Rahal and Marco Andretti and invoked some unnerving flashbacks to the last race of 2011.
As Andretti moved to overtake Rahal, he catapulted over Rahal's right rear tire and went airborne, thankfully landing right side up before spinning and slamming into the tire barriers. Andretti was unhurt, though he emerged from the car grabbing his left wrist.
It was the first time that an IndyCar has been airborne in a race since the fiery crash that took the life of Dan Wheldon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in October, and the first time that the new DW12 chassis -- named in honor of Wheldon -- had experienced that type of a real-world crash.
The DW12 chassis features rear wheel protectors behind the back wheels to hopefully prevent these type of incidents. Unfortunately, they seemed no deterrent, as Andretti's car appeared to easily vault over Rahal's. Both drivers placed the blame on the other, with Andretti offering this after the race:
"That was our stint to make hay and we were trying to do so," Andretti said. "It's one thing blocking but it's another thing chopping, and that was a chop. I'm lucky I didn't get upside down, I could have been killed."
Understandably, Andretti and others have been shaken by the loss of Wheldon. While we know all too well that the possibility of death still exists in auto racing, it's still jarring every time a driver references the notion after a crash, no matter the severity.
Thankfully, both drivers were OK. And hopefully we're not seeing any other cars airborne anytime soon.
Denny Hamlin Foundation gives $150,000 to Richmond Children?s Hospital
Nice news from the camp of Denny Hamlin: his foundation will be contributing $150,000 to Children's Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The donation will help fund research into cystic fibrosis in Richmond.
Hamlin, a Richmond local boy, was pleased to make the donation to a nearby institution: "VCU is one of the country's leading research centers for CF, and it is right here in our own backyard," Hamlin said. "I am honored to support such an outstanding organization with people who are making a difference in the world."
The donation will be spaced out over the course of the next three years. There is no known cure for cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects 30,000 children and adults in the United States, but research has doubled the life expectancy of children diagnosed with the disease. The overall median age of survival now stands at 38.
Hamlin, who has a cousin with the disease, has donated money from his race winnings to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation since he was racing go-karts as a child. His upcoming Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown, scheduled for April 26, will pit local drivers against NASCAR drivers, and proceeds from the race will go to the hospital and other charities.
Related NASCAR highlights from Yahoo! Sports
Jimmy Daywalt JeanDenis Deletraz Patrick Depailler Pedro Diniz
An isolated incident?
We were sitting in Dubai International Airport, trying to access the Internet ( as often we are) when we saw word that Force India personnel had been caught up in the troubles in Manama overnight. It was entirely predictable – and indeed has been predicted – because the dice are being rolled every day as [...]
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/an-isolated-incident/
Friday
Juan Pablo Montoya has a much better life than you
Juan Pablo Montoya was at Homestead Speedway a few months early, taking the nine contestants on Univision's Nuestra Belleza Latina for a spin around the track. Or, as the show's website puts it, "Las 9 finalistas estuvieron con el reconocido corredor de autos, el colombiano Juan Pablo Montoya, quien las dirigi� en una aventura de m�xima velocidad. Esto es un adelanto de lo que ver�n el pr�ximo domingo 22 de abril en la s�ptima gala." Whatever that means. A little translation help?
Taking nine beautiful women for a high-speed drive in Miami. Yeah, Montoya really doesn't much care what you think of his performance this season.
Thursday
F1 waltzes into a proverbial minefield
Sport may aspire to be separate from politics, but throughout history state intervention in sport has been seen: from ancient Greece, when sport was used to demonstrate the superiority of one city-state over another, to the Roman Empire where ruling elites used sport to entertain and control the masses. There have always been political and [...]
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/f1-waltzes-into-a-proverbial-minefield/
Ten Kate Honda Squad Complete Testing at Assen Ahead of Dutch WSBK Round
A press release issued by the Ten Kate Honda squad after their recent test at Assen ahead of the upcoming World Superbike round there:
Year:
2012
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