Wednesday, September 27, 2006

”MAC” Montoya

McLaren has finally released Juan Pablo Montoya from his contract, enabling the Colombian to begin his NASCAR testing for next year’s full season Nextel Cup campaign.

Montoya tested a Chip Ganassi ARCA car Monday at Talladega, along with possible races in either Busch or Nextel Cup this season prior to his rookie debut in the 2007 Daytona 500.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Road America Journal

Da Matta flies home
While the Champ Cars returned to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin after a one year hiatus this weekend, the best news of all was that Cristano da Matta has finally left the hospital and flew home aboard a private Gulfstream jet to Miami. Da Matta had been in a medically induced coma for one month after striking a wayward deer that cleared an 8’ fence topped with barbed wire during the Champ Car test on Aug. 3rd. Da Matta was shown on TV walking down a hospital corridor, chatting with Jimmy Vassser, playing guitar solo along with a duet with his brother before giving today’s command for “Drivers to Start their Engines.” Da Matta will soon return to bicycling along with returning home to Brazil and hopefully will make a full recovery after completing his rehabilitation in Miami…

“Speedy-dry”
Rookie “Speedy” Dan Clarke used a gambling tire strategy during Friday’s provisional qualifying session to claim his very first Champ Car pole position, also the team’s first pole since 2004 and first pole under the CTE/HVM banner. Clarke switched from rain tires to slicks in the latter moments of qualifying to emerge a fastest on a slow drying track. Rookie Charles Zwolsman employed a similar tactic to claim 2nd place on Friday. During Saturday’s final qualifying session, the rain continued with Sebastian Bourdais grabbing quickest time in the rain to grab 1 point and line up 2nd behind Clarke for Sunday’s race…

Driver roulette
Making his Champ Car debut for the revolving door driver shuffle at Dale Coyne Racing was Juan Caceres, 22 years old from Uruguay. Caceres, previously competed in European F3000, a step below the FIA’s GP2 category.
Rocketsports continues its driver shuffle with Tony Kasemets back behind the wheel of the #18. Mario Dominguez will pilot the #8 for the remainder of the season with new PEMEX (Petroleum Mexico) sponsorship livery.

”The Rick Daly Show”
Although I know they’re just doing the job they’re being paid for… Unfortunately I’m not a huge fan of Derrick Daly whose gift of the ‘ole Blarney-Stone seems to make him think he’s “Juan” ‘O America’s premiere motorsports analysts. I simply prefer the intelligent insights of pit reporter Jon Beekhuis…
Meanwhile Rick “Insert $ponsor’s name Here” Benjamin seems infatuated upon Andrew Ranger’s new “WALL$MART” le Canada sponsorship. See if you can count how many times he mentions this during the Road America coverage...

Surprisingly “Dudley D” (Derrick Daly) was fairly restrained during Sunday’s broadcast. The only time he seemed to get into a lather was when he began gushing over his main man “Sugar Ray” (Paul) Tracy… He did however make an entertaining comment about Justin Wilson’s drink bottle being located inside the helmet as he circled the drink hose with the telestrator…

Bridgestone presented a special Red Alternate tire autographed by all the drivers to Cristano da Mata’s doctor…

In his never-ending quest to insert sponsor’s names, Rick Benjamin did his usual bang-up job. His favourite sponsor plug “WALL$MART” outscored CDW 5-4…


Legge’s “NOT so Excellent" Adventure
“Dudley D’s” best one-liner of the weekend was: “Katherine’s Corner, Katherine’s Kink,” which fortunately he was able to joke about after Katherine Legge’s savage crash after an apparent rear wing flap failure. Legge became a passenger in the 180mph corner, loosing rear end downforce, slamming into the concrete wall backwards. Her car went airborne before being collected by the catch fencing. The car exploded into multiple pieces, the engine and transmission shearing clean off! Then the carbon fibre monococque tub barrel rolled several times on the racetrack… Amazingly Legge emerged from the emergency care center on her own two legs and gave a brief interview to Jon Beekhuis…
Showing an unbelievable coolness, bravado and tenacity, Legge quipped: “You’ve got to have a screw loose to be a racecar driver!” Legge said that she was ready to jump back into the car immediately. It was quite the interview as Legge kidded that she’d had her eyes closed through much of the incident… Her worst fear was potential fire, but when she saw the engine pass by, she felt relieved, SHEISA!
This in part led too much kidding in the announce booth about having Legge autograph leftover pieces of the car since Legge was part of a special CARA auction this weekend. Legge sported a special “one-off” pink paint scheme, pink driver’s suit & pink helmet as part of “Warrior’s in Pink.” The auction is to raise funds for breast cancer… Legge’s driving suit & helmet are to be sold in an on-line auction. Even Bridgestone got in on the action by producing pink “alternate” sidewall tires for the occasion…

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Open wheel Chatter

As usual, the lion’s share of Robin Miller’s rant on The Speed Report focused upon the IRL and its over-hyped “silly season” scuttlebutt… Miller focused upon “tries hombres” searching for rides, Dario Franchitti, Buddy Rice & Scott Sharp. Miller noted that Franchitti is the unknown piece of the puzzle in regards to which series he’ll return to? You know, the rock star with the Hollywood wife. Rice is a past Indy winner who can’t find a ride and Sharp is the inaugural IRL champion who’ll probably go quietly into the sunset as an owner-driver... Miller speculated that he was 99% sure that Franchitti would not fill in for the steadily improving Cristano da Matta at RuSPORT for the final 3 Cham p Car races.

RuSPORT has also announced that Franchitti will not drive for them, electing instead to host a driver shootout to fill the vacant seat. It’s anticipated that Ryan Briscoe, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Frank Montangy will be the drivers battling to drive da Matta’s car for the final 2 races of the season.

Miller noted the official debut of Danica Patrick’s new 3-year sponsorship deal with Motorola for $21 million dollars. Miller said that if Michael Andretti can make winners out of son Marco, Patrick and dark horse 4th Andretti Green Racing driver AJ Foyt IV, then people will have to pay attention to the IRL…

In the never-ending Champ Car driver roulette, Mario Dominguez has now joined his third team for the season. Dominguez leaves Dale Coyne to drive for Rocketsports fir the final 3 races of the season.

Graham Rahal made his Champ Car test debut behind the wheel of a Newman/Haas Lola at Sebring alongside the new 2007 DP01 Champ Car chassis’s completion if 3 weeks testing with Roberto Moreno behind the wheel.


For more Robin Miller rantings, see: Miller Time

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Red Tide

The rumours reported last week in German newspapers that 7 time World Champion Michael Schumacher would announce his retirement Sunday at Monza, Italy did indeed occur.
After loosing pole position to his true replacement Kimi Raikkonen by .002 second, Michael ensued in a “mano-e-mano” duel with Kimi as the two rival drivers simply decimated the entire field by pulling out a 25 second gap over third place. After the first round of pit stops Michael never looked back, keeping Kimi at bay to claim his 5th Italian Grand Prix victory and 90th overall…
Speculation ran rampant the entire weekend as Ferrari would only confirm that a press release would be issued after the race announcing its 2007 driver line-up. Yet first Michael’s manager Willi Weber publicly stating that Michael had made a decision that was “very difficult.” And then Michael complimented his arch nemesis Nick Heidfeld in the Saturday post-qualifying press conference. This seemed to indicate it was pretty obvious that the “gig” was up, eh?
Interestingly Ferrari seems intent to continue its “Younger Generation” driver upgrades by replacing the current elder statesman of F1 with a Finn with raw speed seeking to emulate his predecessor’s Championship form. (Mika Hakkinen) Although Kimi Raikkonen (27) has struggled with Mercedes reliability over the past years, Raikkonen has just surpassed “The Professor’s” (Alain Prost) record pole positions at McLaren.
With Felipe Massa (25) fresh off his first career victory and bold spring in his step it seemed tough to believe Massa would be benched in favour of a Ferrari Schumacher-Raikkonen “super team” a la McLaren’s Raikkonen-Montoya line-up. Massa replaced his senior countryman Rubens Barrichello at the beginning of the season…
In typical German fashion, Michael got the jump on Ferrari when he made the announcement of his impending retirement at the end of the season during the post race interview.
While SPEED’s commentator’s speculated over Michael being pushed aside by Ferrari’s top management, much conjecture was made over Michael giving Luca di Montezemolo the cold shoulder. Ironically Michael was di Montezemolo’s limonene chauffeur for his wedding…
I found it quite amusing to hear Michael prattle on about how it was Felipe’s time and how he wanted to make room for Felipe while sitting alongside “The Iceman.” (Raikkonen) Later on Wind Tunnel Bob Varsha commented how David Coulthard had once said that Kimi was “dead from the feet up” personality-wise. Yet his nickname seems to soot him since he’s now replaced two multi-world champions! Raikkonen’s deal with Ferrari is reportedly for 3 years and a truckload of cash, yet far less then what the Scuderia paid Schumacher...

Miller-Time

Although the majority of Robin Miller’s rant on The Speed Report was focused upon the season ending IRL race, he did have a few interesting tidbits to report on Champ Cars...
Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe have packaged an extremely attractive lease option to entice new teams to move up to Champ Cars in 2007. For $1 million dollars you’ll be able to lease one rolling DP01 chassis, one Ford-Cosworth XFE engine along with a full complement of Bridgestone tires for testing and racing the entire season. Miller noted that this was a pretty good deal since he knew that the Ford-Cosworth lease alone was $950,000 per season with the IRL’s Honda engine lease running for over a million-plus...
Pacific Coast Motorsports has already taken advantage of the offer and will field a two car entry for 2007 with American Alex Figge and Scotland's Ryan Dalziel. Miller said what’s good about this is that there’ll be 3 American drivers in Champ Cars next season: AJ Almendinger, Alex Figge and Graham Rahal. (Look for Rahal to drive for Newman/Haas)
Miller stated that Polestar Racing may make the jump next year. This is the team that Katherine Legge won 3 Toyota Atlantic races for in 2005. Miller speculated that Legge would be their driver with financial assistance from Kalkhoven.
As for the Red Bull sponsorship deal that Christian Klien turned down to drive for PKV Racing, Red Bull’s money will most likely go to Almendinger since he’s already sponsored by them. If Legge departs for Polestar then there appears to be an open seat at PKV for next season…

Monday, September 11, 2006

Red Bull really does “Give you Wings”

While the majority of the media spotlight focuses on his fellow countryman Michael Schumacher, another German is making waves. BMW-Sauber’s new Friday third driver Sebastian Vettel became the youngest driver ever to take the wheel of an F1 car at age 19 in Istanbul, Turkey. Vettel also became the fastest to ever be fined by FIA for speeding through the pit lane in his haste to be first onto track during Friday’s practice session.
Although Friday third drivers have unlimited rev’s, light fuel tanks and multiple sets of tyres, Vettel has made the most of his opportunity by topping the time sheets on his first two Friday practice sessions.
(Friday-Practise 2)
Vettel made his name in Formula BMW, winning the rookie title in 2003. The following season he easily captured the championship while winning 18 of 20 events. In 2005 he moved up to Formula 3 Euroseries where he claimed another rookie title. Vettel won the Hockenheim & Nurburgring rounds this season prior to joining BMW-Sauber. Currently under contract to Red Bull, expect Vettel move to BMW-Sauber full time next season…

F1: ”Qualie-Quips” - Italy, 2006 edition

Just finished watching SPEED’s qualifying coverage from Monza, Italy. As always the Speed Posse was entertaining as always… Here are a few selected tidbits.

All 22 cars exceeded 200mph on the front straight. Top 3 speeds were posted by BMW-Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld, (213.3) Robert Kubica (212.5) and Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher. (210.6) Although top straight-line speed doesn’t necessarily translate to fastest lap time, with Heidfeld 2nd, Kubica 4th and “ralfie” 11th while Felipe Massa claimed the fastest lap. During qualifying Massa recorded a top speed of 214.5mph…

During the Q1 session a red flag stoppage was caused when Salon Yamamoto’s Bridgestone tyre failing on the front straight at 200+ mph. As typical the radio transmission was self explanatory. Yamamoto: “I’m OK, I’m OK.” Race Engineer: “Slow down and return to the pits.” Bob Varsha was quick to jump on this… “Sometimes things are so obvious. Slow down, come to the garage and then we’ll change underwear…”

While Steve Matchett explained that the two massive “KABLAMOE” engine failures in Anthony Davidson’s Honda on Friday were to the 2007 spec engines and seemed to be bottom end failures which suggested oil scavenging failure to him. Peter Winsor quipped: “It’s hard to tell since there’s not much bottom end to scavenge!”

Varsha speculated that Anthony Davidson will join “Super Best Friends” (Super Aguri) as the teams second race driver for 2007. Peter Winsor reminded us of the irony as Davidson’s last race drive was filling in for “Taku” at BAR-Honda where his engine “Done Blew Up” on lap 3…

Varsha speculated that the Midland F1 team has been sold to a Dutch-Arab consortium (Spyker?) for a cool $90 million with no official announcement as of yet.

Regarding Michael Schumacher’s possible retirement of which only 6-7 people know his decision, brother Ralf claimed: “I know nothing… I’ll probably just get a text message on Sunday.” David Hobbs quipped: “There’s nothing like brotherly love…”

Klien rejects Red Bull offer

Despite being offered a fully funded Red Bull ride with champ Car’s PKV Racing in 2007, Christian Klien has declined Dietrich Mateschitz’s rather blunt suggestion to pack his bags for America…

Understandably the young Austrian wishes to remain in F1 and will now focus upon landing either a testing role or securing a race drive with one of the remaining F1 “minnow’s?” With rumours suggesting that Anthony Davidson will move to Super Aguri in 2007 the only seat remaining available would be with the newly acquired ex-Midland F1 operation.