Happy Big Race Weekend!

Good weekend on tap, everybody. ALMS finale from Laguna, Champ Car from Surfer's, and of course, the F1 Finale (capital F there) from Brazil. Of course, two of those races have already happened before I got the chance to write this, but they're still on the DVR and unwatched at this point, so I'm pretending I'm just watching 9 straight hours of live racing today. The SpeedGal has theoretically agreed to let me have the TV for the day, since I've been preparing her for this for over a month, but we'll see if our marriage survives the day.

Anyway, there's basically no championship drama for the ALMS and ChampCar races, which makes up a bit for the fact that there's a dizzying amount for the F1 race. Oh, I've just been told that Justin Wilson can still be eligible for the championship at Mexico City, though he has to win and Bourdais has to finish outside of the top-12, and theoretically, the GT2 championship is still up for grabs, though the Flying Lizard Porsche has to win the race, with the Risi Ferrari not completing 70% of the laps for anybody but the Risi guys to win that. It's almost too bad you can't run a teaser at one of the Council Bluffs casinos on a Seabass clinch parlayed with a boring Laguna race/Risi clinch.

On the other hand, there's that F1 race today, too. You can call me nuts, but I think that with the lessons learned at the Chinese GP, there's no way that Big Lew doesn't win the championship today. Freddy Alonso needs to win (unlikely, given that he's starting 4th, and on the dirty side of the grid), with Lew in 4th or worse (could happen, but not at the same time as an Alonso win) for Fred to get the title. And I'm not too worried about Kimi figuring in much, unless the McLaren guys absolutely lose their heads and crash each other out (most likely to happen with Alonso taking out Lew). Any way you slice it, though, it's going to be an extremely interesting race, and since it's the last time to see these guys in action until March (plus it'll be the last chance to see Alonso in a McLaren and the last chance to see Ralf Schumacher in anything but a touring car), enjoy it while you can.

Oh, also NASCAR is at Martinsville. I'm already getting drowsy. By the way, to clarify some remarks I made in my last post, the CoTs are extremely racy on the big tracks, as we saw in the last few laps at Talladega. Unfortunately, they did an excellent job of putting everybody to sleep for the first 450 miles. That was absolutely a horrendous race too watch for the first 2 1/2 hours. I'd almost feel bad for the fans who paid to see it in person, but they were likely mostly hammered by green flag time. Good for them. I, on the other hand, was sober and dozing off by lap 20. Luckily, I'd woken up by the end, which was excellent, though scary. I still think there will be a gigantic pileup at Daytona, with NASCAR needing to take measures to string the cars out (yeah, I know, I mean even more precautions than they've taken over the last 5 years) before the spring Talladega race. Handford device, maybe? Have everybody race their rental cars?