Good Call / Bad Call

Good day, everybody, and I mean that in the most literal sense. Cars (IndyCars, thanks very much) ran today for the first time in the Month of May 2009. That means that it's time for me to hum "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" over and over in my head for three and a half straight weeks. And it doesn't get old, either.

I've decided to introduce a new periodic entry here on my corner of the Interwebs. It's a little something that I'd like to call "Good Call / Bad Call". Bear with me and I think you'll get the hang of it.

Good Call: The FIA hands down a "suspended penalty" on McLaren for Liegate.

As I covered here earlier, McLaren had done several things to atone for the "sin" of lying about something that happened during the Australian GP.

1) Given up the six points Lewis Hamilton had theoretically scored for third place in Melbourne.
2) Fired Team Manager Davey Ryan.
3 (unofficially) ) Declared the effective resignation of Ron Dennis from the F1 team.

That's plenty. No need for a three race ban, or a 30 point constructor's championship penalty. McLaren's already in rough shape this season, and plenty of teams have gotten away with taking liberties with the truth in the past (like when Felipe Massa lied to the stewards at Monza in 2006 about getting held up by Fernando Alonso in qualifying, and Fernando got penalized grid positions in the race). Let's get on with the racing.

Bad Call: The opening two days of practice at Indianapolis are on a Tuesday and a Wednesday.

Huh? I realize that they're trying to condense the schedule for the month of May, thereby limiting the amount of mileage (and expense) that the teams pile up, but...wouldn't it make more sense to have opening day be on a weekend (Sunday, let's say), then you have a couple of days off, then a couple of days of practice, then Pole Weekend? How many spectators were at the track today? 30? 40? How many are going to be there tomorrow? About the same? Meanwhile, how many people were forced to watch the proceedings through live timing and scoring and Twitter while at work, when they'd have gladly shown up in person if that whole nasty "job" thing didn't get in the way? I'm guessing the answer to that is "more than 40".

Good Call: The triumphant return of Johnny and The Duke on the Live Fast Racing Podcast.


I Twittered about this a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating: go download their latest show from April 9th, right now. They pull no punches, put up with no BS, and tell the truth, always. Let me say it again: go download their latest show. Now.

Bad Call: Widely respected and revered (by me, as well) PR Supremo / Motorsports Writer / Blogger Michael Knight going "full coot" about Twitter.

Dude, there may be a lot of imposters on Twitter, but...what's the harm in that, really? Nobody's selling illegal merch or asking for credit card numbers on there, or really sullying anybody's name for real. Besides, most of the dumb ones are pretty easy to sniff out in a few posts. On the other hand, getting live, real time Tweets from race teams from trackside, and being able to chat with all of your online "racing buddies" during races...that's really cool. Besides, the Real Max Papis is, like, always on there.

Good Call: Some amount of variation in the car paint schemes at the Speedway.

Yes, some of them look like they're advertising for Pepto, and some may look like they're going to be REALLY trying to sneak up on people on race day, but at least we haven't had announcements for 15 new red-white-blue or red-white or all-black cars in the last week. Danica's at least staying distinctive, with her splashes of orange, even if I still stand by my statement that her teammate Marco Andretti is going to look pretty anonymous in an almost all-black car. A few more cars are yet to be announced, but there are quite a few folks who are tracking the paint schemes. Keep an eye there for the new stuff.

Bad Call: IndyCar.com, for not turning over all website decisions and content editing to the good folks at The Silent Pagoda.

The Silent Pagoda crew are the only people out there who are willing to print the real behind-the-scenes stuff that we all want to read. Like the conversation that would have happened between EJ Viso and Ryan Hunter-Reay, when they were slated to share a car at the barber Motorsports Park test.

Awful Call: "We are constantly evaluating safety initiatives."

This was the line from NASCAR VP of Communications Jim Hunter put out there after Carl Edwards almost wound up in the laps of 200 of his closest friends at Talladega a couple of weeks ago. The basic reaction that I've read from NASCAR and a lot of NASCAR-focused media is that "a car knocking another car up into the fence is basically the worst-case scenario, the sport is dangerous, people come because it's more dangerous than baseball, and there'll never be a way to make the sport perfectly safe". Some of those things are true, but I would say that one car getting into the fence is not even close to the worst-case scenario. It's not 1955 anymore. If a car were to get into the stands nowadays, on national TV, and in our litigious society, there wouldn't be much in the way of talk right now about Darlington or Indy. There would be talk about who within NASCAR is slated to be appearing in front of Congress this week. This is not worth tempting fate over. Something must be done, even if that something isn't exactly clear, but motions must be made to at least look into what could be done to improve the situation. A couple of other people have tackled this topic as well (and much better than I have or will), but the fact that we haven't seen NASCAR make promises that they are locking people inside their multi-million dollar tech center to try to figure out how to make the sport safer says an awful lot about where the actual priorities lie with that sanctioning body.

What could they do? Let me get them started:

1) Cut 500-600 pounds off of the minimun weight of the cars. Race cars do not need to weigh 3400 pounds, and material science has proceeded past the days when chrome moly steel was "high tech". 3400 pounds worth of steel carries a lot of energy, and therefore can deliver a lot more damage than a 2800 pound car can. Cut the weight of the cars and then work on dialing back the speed so that lap times are roughly what they are today.

2) BAN BLOCKING. NOW. The culprit of the Edwards Talladega accident is not a product of the yellow line rule, or even restrictor plate racing. It's a product of the attitude that NASCAR has fostered for the last 10-15 years that it's OK for a driver to do anything to protect his position, even if it's weaving down every straightaway, cutting up or down in the middle of turns, or trying to stuff other drivers into the infield on the last lap. That must end. Write a rule that says: if you make more than one move per straightaway to change your line, you will get an immediate drive through penalty. Do it on the last lap of the race, and we're docking you three laps in the scoring. Do it three times in a season, and you're sitting out a race. The racing will improve because people will be able to complete passes, and safety will improve because people won't be actively trying to stuff other people into the wall every chance they get. In fact, if NASCAR were to introduce such a rule, I think that many other sanctioning bodies worldwide would follow suit, and the racing world would be better off for it. Blocking rant over.

Great Call: It's the month of May. Go see a race. Enjoy it.

Danica to F1! Yeah!.....or not

New rumor concerning the USF1 team that I wrote about last week: Danica Patrick is going to drive! Holy crap! She’ll be the first female F1 driver since the esteemed Giovanna Amati!

Let’s slow down for a minute, shall we?

While this breathless conjecture is sort of fun to think about, I can’t imagine that it’s anywhere near reality. First off, Danica has not won a road course race since…well…uh, the Toyota Pro-Am race at Long Beach in 2002. She’s not exactly the #1 American road racer these days. In fact, I don’t even think that her results in an IndyCar on road courses would place her in the top-10 on such a list. Second, I’m sure that she’s looking to get paid, and would not be willing to drive for such an effort for a reduced price. As other folks have pointed out, any retainer that you’d have to pay her to drive for you would be that much less money that you could spend on your new-from-scratch F1 car. Not a good idea right now.

I can’t believe that hardly anybody has floated my favorite “obvious” pick for an American driver for the USF1 team: Graham Rahal. I don’t know what the terms of his contract with N/H/L look like, but if he’s on a 3-year deal, then that’s done at the end of this year. Even if it’s not, I can’t imagine that his retainer is anywhere close to Danica’s, so he’d be far easier to buy out. He’s only a couple of years older than Connor Daly or Josef Newgarden (two other rumored USF1 drivers), has some pretty extensive experience in high HP/downforce cars (those other guys have none), and he has actually shown some interest in going to F1, which Danica has not and Scott Speed has said is long gone for him.

Other drivers don’t quite make sense for me, either. Bryan Herta, I think, is a tad too old to take on a completely different style of car and driving. Ryan Hunter-Reay, while quite competent on road courses, has not shown the sort of dominant form that one would expect of a serious F1 candidate, even back in his Atlantic days. He’s just fine in an IndyCar, but going up against Kimi and Lewis and Felipe and Fernando? I’m not seeing it.

As I mentioned in my last post, the other guy I’d go with would be Jonathon Summerton. Of all the people who have driven for the US in A1GP (Marco included), he’s had by far the best results, including a win in a feature race last year. Literally no other American has had any sort of international single-seater success in the last 10 years, except for maybe Patrick Long. However, Pat has probably been out of a single seater for too long now and picked up too many tin-top habits to truly be an F1 aspirant any more. Anyway, why roll the dice with any of these other folks, when Graham and Jonathon are basically ready to go right now?

This Danica thing absolutely has to be a publicity stunt to get people interested in the concept of an American F1 team. Either that, or they are hoping that some sponsor (or sponsors) will cough up $50 million on the condition that Danica is one of the drivers. In that case, an USF1 team with a sub-world class driver would be better than no USF1 team, but maybe not by much. Nice try, Ken Anderson, but I don’t think anybody’s buying it.

USFWhat?

While enjoying the fantastic entertainment (read that: dozens of minutes of caution flag laps, and a "halftime" break that felt like it was 40 minutes long) during Saturday's NASCAR Sponsor Splatter (or, as my friend Rick calls it, the Tequiza Tangle), I had plenty of time to let my mind wander over the racing world's current events. I really managed to cover a lot of territory up there in the ol' brain bin. What's the car count going to look like in IndyCar this year? (20+, and that's fine, methinks.) Why does having the same size front tires as the rears make the new Acura LMP1 car look so weird and lumpy? (Dunno, they just do.) How could the FIA have screwed up the World Rally Championship so badly, when just a couple of years ago they had four or five manufacturers signed up long-term and a crop of drivers that includes possibly the greatest driver of all time? (Because screwing things up is what the FIA does best.) If a Porsche-engined car wins the next GrandAm race at VIR in April (three months off?!?), are we going to get to see a full-on kicking and screaming podium tantrum by Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett? (Yes.) Am I going to spend 2009 like I have the last three years and mainly write my blog posts in parentheticals? (...) (I hate me sometimes.)

But, the tastiest bit of racing-ish "news" that I kept coming back to during my NASCAR (and malted hops) induced slumber was the recent breathless conjecture over the supposedly forthcoming announcement of the new USF1-All-US-All-The-Time Formula 1 Team. Let me preface all of the following by saying that I'll be the first guy to hop aboard an All-American F1 effort. Believe me, I was one of those dudes going around racing message boards back around 1998 when BAR was just coming into the public consciousness (as a theoretical British-American concern), and debating who should be Jacques Villeneuve's teammate in '99. My pick was Jimmy Vasser, but if you've read me at all in the past, you get zero points for having guessed that. So, I'll be all about an American Formula 1 team, if it ever comes into being...

However. Wow. Where to start? The team's supposed principals are Peter Windsor (will he take along the unseen Jean-Michel, Pressdog?) and Ken Anderson. While I do not question either of those guys' credentials, are either of them really well versed enough in F1 circa-2009 to have a team up and running for 2010? Peter's been around F1 for, roughly, as long as Bernie Ecclestone's been interested in money, and Anderson's been around racing since before Rick Mears developed a limp, but recent F1 experience? Not so much. Windsor's been out of team management for the better part of the last decade, and while Anderson runs the Windshear wind tunnel, a fancy-shmancy wind tunnel does not an F1 team make (ask BAR/Honda; and besides, aren't wind tunnel hours being drastically cut by the FIA this year?). Also, has Anderson's recent history of projects been quite at a 100% hit rate of happening?

Sure, the arguments laid out by the always reliable Adam Cooper in that SpeedTV column I linked to above sound pretty decent. The FIA has slashed costs in F1 going forward. However, it's still going to take upwards of $50 million to start up and run a back marker F1 team. How many sponsors are floating around with that kind of cash right now? There are hundreds of recently laid-off NASCAR folks down in the Carolinas right now. Uh, those guys don't even use data acquisition during race weekends. Or fuel injection, ever, for that matter, let alone carbon fiber and titanium. All of the tube benders and sheet metal hangers in the world can't manifest an F1 car onto the grid in Melbourne in 14 months. A satellite base of operations can be had in Spain, with the Epsilon organization. OK, well, running a Renault World Series team and building a shoestring-ish LeMans prototype is still a world away from F1 (ask Prodrive or Dome about that). An off-the-shelf engine and transmission combo is supposed to be available for next year from Cosworth and Ricardo (big blue "R" represent!). OK, well, I'd feel a lot better about that being an option for 2010 if those pieces were running on dynos right now. Could 2012 or 2013 be a possibility for an all-new team? Sure. But 14 months from now? Hmmm. Maybe we all ought to take a deep breath and sit down before we all get too light headed about the whole thing.

Again, I really don't want to sound like the wet blanket here. I'm not one of those guys who think that the euros know better than we do, always, and that we could never catch up to them in an arena that they call their own personal playground. There are plenty of good people in the States who can wield a CAD digitizer or lay up carbon fiber with anybody in the world. I've worked with some of them. Unlike some of the greatly nuanced commenters on the SpeedTV article pages (have you read those guys? Yikes.), I also think that within a couple of years, the US could also have some top-line road racers who could be just about ready for F1. A kid named Rahal comes to mind. Another kid named Summerton has had some great results for a usually sub-par US A1GP team. If somebody were to come up with the $50 million to get a team off the ground in 3-4 years, I'm sure that that same somebody could probably front the necessary $3-4 million to get those two guys a season in GP2 or F2 to get them some European training.

I sort of hope I'm wrong on this. More details are supposedly due later in the week, or maybe they're even coming out right now, which would make this bit of word-hackery obsolete the moment I hit the "publish" button. Having a team on the grid in 2010 would be OK with me. On the other hand, I also think that US Formula 1 fans and fans of new F1 efforts the world over would be better served if the USF1 cake got a little more time to bake. That said, maybe an undercooked effort would turn out OK. After all, who knew that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream would be so tasty?

Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

I'd like to pretend that that's what I had to say at the end of yesterday's Formula 1 finale, but I'm afraid that it was probably closer to the noise that a 12 year old girl would make throughout the first 45 minutes of a Jonas Brothers concert (until they pass out of dehydration).

Through 18 years of watching nearly every major open wheel race (F1, CART/ChampCar, IRL - I've probably seen 90% or more of all of those since 1991), I have never seen anything quite like what went down at Interlagos. Yes, the IRL closer at Chicagoland last year was similar, but maybe years of 0.003 second margins of victory at the mile and a half ovals have somewhat numbed me to close IndyCar races (Scott Dixon would have had to have clinched the '08 title while sliding on his roll hoop to completely impress me). The kind of drama that we had in Brazil...it was written in the race review on Grandprix.com that this would have been laughed out of Hollywood if it'd been written in a movie script, but that really is true. That sort of thing just does not happen in F1.

Over the course of the last 20 laps of the race, the identity of the champion-to-be changed hands four or five times. From Lewis cruising in 4th or 5th for most of the middle portion of the race, to falling back to 6th during the next to last round of pitstops, to being threatened by Sebastian Vettel for 5th for 10+ laps (and the lack of a margin of error that that would have meant), to the Toyotas gambling on skipping wet weather tires and Glock leapfrogging Vettel and Hamilton, to Vettel passing Lewis for 5th (due to a bizarre pass by Kubica, who was a lap down; how was he so fast all of a sudden? Was the BMW set up for the wet and that's why he was so slow in qualifying?), to...finally...the pass by Vettel and Lewis on Glock on the last lap, after Glock had started the lap 16 seconds in front... I can still barely get my head around the whole set of circumstances.

I believe that justice was served in the end. If not for the FIA's penalty on Sebastien Bourdais at Fuji, Lewis would have gone to Brazil with an eight point gap, which would have meant that 6th would have clinched just as well as Lewis's eventual 5th place did. In my opinion, two other penalties had a negative effect on the championship as well: Lewis's penalty at Spa (which I think should have been more like 20 seconds, which would have only dropped him to 2nd; that just seemed more fitting, as a real drive through penalty at Spa wouldn't have taken a full 25 seconds), and Massa's effective non-penalty for trying to take Lewis out at Fuji (it'd take me taking a long, hard look at Ferrari's data traces to convince me that that wasn't deliberate; Felipe shouldn't have been allowed to score in Japan at all after that, in my opinion). Both of those penalties, to my mind, cost Lewis two extra points worth of a lead, and so without either one (and without the Bourdais penalty), he'd have been up by ten points going to Brazil. That would have been an absolute lay-up for Lewis to win the championship, which is precisely why the FIA didn't let things play out that way.

Meanwhile, I am glad that Felipe did manage to win the race, even if it meant some very bittersweet emotions for him on the rostrum and in the interview room (and he did a great job to not completely break down in tears). He deserved the race win, and if he'd been a legitimate seven points behind Lewis going into the race, I'd even have been OK with him winning the championship, too. Ferrari also did deserve to win the Constructor's title, as McLaren only managed to get both of their cars through to the end of a race without a major drama for one or the other a handful of times all season.

One thing that seemed to be missed on Sunday: Heikki Kovaleinen did the right thing in trying to tuck in behind Lewis on the start, even though he'd gotten a better start. That move meant that Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel were able to attack and pass him through the Senna Esses, but Heikki made a great exit from the Esses and was well positioned to pass both guys back on the run down the backstraight. However, after clearing Alonso, Vettel threw a gigantic block on Heikki in the middle of the straight, forcing Heikki to put two wheels on the grass (which was still soaked from the rain from 15 minutes before), which subsequently caused Heikki to be re-passed by Alonso. If the FIA actually penalized for driving tactics that were truly unsafe (as opposed to driving tactics that simply put you in the general vicinity of a Ferrari), this would never have happened, Heikki probably would have passed Alonso, Vettel or both, and he'd actually have been able to help Lewis by holding back the rest of the field. A moot point now, sure, but in view of the FIA also failing to penalize Jarno Trulli for a wildly kamikaze move (can I say that, if Jarno is driving a Toyota?) on Sebastien Bourdais, you've got to wonder what sort of tactics do and don't merit a penalty.

2008 is going to be a very, very tough act to follow. I have high hopes for next year, though. The introduction of KERS will be an interesting development, but for my money, the most important things will be which team is able to best optimize their car for the new aerodynamic restrictions which are supposed to eliminate 50% of the cars' downforce and reduce their wake-turbulence, and who can adapt to the re-introduction of slick tires. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing F1 cars on proper tires, and not the goofy grooved ones of the current era, which I never thought seemed to be compatible with a world class racing series.

Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton! He's won one of the best Formula 1 championships the sport has ever seen, and may he win many more.

Let's go!

We're almost to race time for the Formula 1 season finale at Interlagos today. So far, the weekend has played out pretty closely to how I figured it would. Felip Massa put his Ferrari on pole by roughly 15 seconds, and Lewis Hamilton is qualified in a relatively safe 4th, with what appears to be a relatively heavy fuel load. Going off of sector times in qualifying, McLaren has apparently also trimmed a lot of wing off of Lewis's car, and I imagine that the reason for that is that if he has a sub-standard start, then he'll be able to use his superior straightaway speed to pass enough cars to get back up to the championship-clinching 5th place. The real wild cards in the equation are Jarno Trulli (qualified 2nd, though I think he's running light fuel and won't be a true factor in the race), Fernando Alonso (qualified 6th, directly behind Lewis on the grid, and who has said that he's willing to help Felipe to the crown), and the dirty side of the grid, where Lewis will be starting. I think that we'll see Felipe take off at the start like he's got a Titan rocket booster strapped to the rear diffuser and take an easy victory, meanwhile Lewis will make a slow start, fall to maybe 6th or so, then leapfrog 2-3 cars at the first round of stops. This will be followed by Lewis cruising home and take home the title. What I don't think will happen (or at least, what I hope doesn't happen) is an unforced error from Lewis like we saw here or in China last year. I think (hope) Lewis has learned that it's not necessary to get all the way to the front, and that he can wrap up the title while avoiding much in the way of close calls with other drivers. I'm not going to pretend here, I'm rooting for Lewis, since I've been following him since his F3 days, and I've been a raving psychophant of his since halfway through his year in GP2.

Anyway, I'm OK with Felipe winning the race, though I wish that he'll at least have a little competition. And I'm definitely fine with Lewis being in "cruise and collect" mode today. After all, I haven't had a favorite driver of mine win a major open wheel championship since Jimmy Vasser won the CART title at Laguna Seca in 1996. That was a long time ago. Did I mention that I've been a Cubs fan since 1984, too? What I'm trying to say is that Lewis needs to win this one for me. It is all about me, and only me.

Better wrap this up before the pre-race gets going (and I get my last dose of the incomparable Varsha/Hobbs/Matchett comentating team for five months...it's a long off-season). Enjoy the race, everybody!

Don't know what to say anymore...

I'm not about to start making threats about no longer watching F1 (I don't think I could quit if I tried at this point), but it's really not very easy to be an F1 fan at this point. I'll start with this: if you recorded the Japanese GP and have not heard the results but are planning on watching the race, uh, there are going to be spoilers below.


Spoilers below!




I'm beyond frustrated with the FIA, and now I'm bordering on angry. I was vehemently opposed to last year's $100 million fine on McLaren for receiving data from another team, when there has been plenty of evidence that that was far from the first time that sort of thing had taken place (or that it would be the last, since the FIA basically let Renault off the hook for a similar transgression of stealing data from McLaren later in the season). Even in the days when I was more of a Ferrari fan than a McLaren fan (this would be in the early-Schumacher days, before they were an unbeatable team-order-giving juggernaut), I thought it odd that Ferrari was let off for certain things, like the barge boards that were out of spec at Maylasia in 1999. At the time, I was happy to look the other way, since it made for a good story with the championship coming down to the last race, and Ferrari was still something of an underdog.

However, this year's events at Spa and now Fuji make it completely obvious that the FIA is biased toward Ferrari. I can even sort of understand the penalty on Lewis Hamilton at Spa. He did, no doubt, derive an advantage by shortcutting the chicane, and only by doing that was he able to be close enough to Kimi Raikkonen to attempt a pass at La Source hairpin. However, a 25 second penalty, after McLaren had been told twice by race director Charlie Whiting that he'd done enough to make up for the shortcut, is just out of bounds. An actual drive through penalty at Spa would cost a driver roughly 20 seconds, so why should the penalty be 25? My money is on "because that would drop Lewis behind Nick Heidfeld and therefore cost him two extra points." On the other hand, I'd basically been able to move on since then, since Ferrari seemed intent on making things right again with Felipe's engine blowing up at Valencia, and then the pitlane miscue at Singapore which cost him any chance of scoring points.

This weekend's Japanese GP at Fuji may have contained several of the most puzzling penalties I've seen levied on racing drivers in my 18 years of watching racing. In that amount of time, I've probably watched several hundred races; you may draw your own conclusion on how much of a life I might or might not have.

For starters, Lewis Hamilton's drive through penalty for "forcing Kimi Raikkonen wide" at the first corner...how often has that sort of incident happened in the history of F1? 200? 500? How many penalties have previously been handed out for that before, in cases when no contact was made between cars? I'm going with...none. Until now. That is a brilliant precedent to set. It's basically saying, "You may not intimidate another car or take a position on the track such that it inconveniences another driver."

Later in the first lap, there was a completely toothless penalty given to Felipe Massa after he blatantly attempted to take Lewis Hamilton out of the race. Lewis made a great move inside of Felipe, causing Felipe to carry too much speed into the corner and then slide wide. Lewis completed the pass, only for Felipe to make a stab back at Lewis. Not only did Felipe go over the curbing on the inside of the chicane, he put two wheels over the grass inside of the curbing and drove directly into the side of Lewis's car. Patrick's excellent race notes at Too Much Racing indicate that Martin Brundle on the ITV coverage claimed that Lewis had not given Felipe enough room, but...you don't have to give any room at all when you're fully ahead of somebody and there's no realistic chance of an overtaking maneuver! Felipe was given a drive through penalty for this, but the damage was done: Lewis spun and had to wait for the entire field to pass by before resuming. Mission accomplished for Felipe. The fact that Lewis was handed his drive through penalty at exactly the same time as Felipe only served to reinforce that Felipe had gotten the better of the whole exchange, as the two drive throughs would cancel each other out, but leave Felipe further up the road from Lewis. During the Saturday qualifying show, Bob Varsha spent some time talking about how much Felipe Massa has been able to learn from Michael Schumacher over the years. I couldn't agree more.

The final "coup de gras" came late in the race, as Sebastien Bourdais was coming out of the pits after his last pit stop, directly in front of Massa. Felipe did manage to get fully alongside (though on the outside of ) Sebastien going into the first corner, but then Felipe obliviously turned into the apex, even though there was another car there. It appeared to me on the replays that Sebastien went over the inside curbing and even slowed down a little extra in order to give Felipe some more room, but in that instant, there's only so much you can do (I think F1 cars don't get a "beam up" feature until the 2025 regulations come into effect). At the time, there was no question to me that Felipe was in the wrong in this altercation, but I see that after the fact, the FIA gave Sebastien a 25 second penalty for "avoidable contact". I don't think that any even semi-impartial observer could make a claim that this was more than 50% Sebastien's fault, so where's the matching penalty for Felipe? I guess that the moral to this part of the story is "if you can even see a Ferrari anywhere near you, you probably ought to pull over and let him by before the FIA gives you a penalty for failing to do so".

This championship has been tampered with by the FIA. There is no doubt about that anymore. If there is any justice in F1 at all, Lewis will still pull it out in the end, and Ron Dennis will be accepting the Constructor's Championship trophy from Max Mosley at the FIA awards banquet. Lewis and McLaren have had far from a perfect season, and Lewis has been responsible for a lot of his own problems (ahem, Canada), but right now he's not just trying to beat the Ferrari team. He's also trying to beat the FIA Stewards and rulemakers, who've done a masterful job this year of making up new pro-Ferrari rules as they go. It's going to be an interesting last month of the season, but let's just hope that it comes down to what happens on the track, and not in the race control booth.

Some weekend, huh?

Well, how's about that for a weekend of racing? Petit Le Mans was as good as billed, though I think I managed to singlehandedly curse a couple of cars myself. Seems that two of the only four teams to get a mention in my last post met untimely ends, with one (the B-K Lola-Mazda coupe) crashing in the morning warmup and not even making the start and the other (the Zytek hybrid) having an early contretemps with a Turn 12 tire barrier (hint: the mostly immovable object won). Oops. My bad. Just don't send me the bill.

Anyway, Petit came right down to the last dozen or so laps with the outcome yet to be decided between the two Audis and the Peugeot. The Peugeot obviously had the superior speed, though for whatever reason, they decided to have Christian Klien in the car for the last couple of stints of the race. This decision came in the face of his having had no previous experience with the Road Atlanta track, and his only previous night driving experience coming at Le Mans this year. Meanwhile, Nicolas Minassian and Stephane Sarrazin (two of Peugeot's regular drivers in the Le Mans European Series, and both blindingly quick) just had to sit and cool their jets and think about what the new Peugeot hybrid will be like to drive at Sebring next year while their team choked away yet another major race. At the same time, Audi smartly went with Allan McNish in the #1 car, who promptly diced Klien up on a late race restart and drove off into the distance (I'd say sunset, but the actual sun had long since set by then). Great racing, though. Also, big ups to Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves on their P2 class win, coming just one day after Helio...uh, appeared in court in chains.

On the down side: GT1 was only attended by the two Corvettes, as the Bell Motorsport Aston Martin decided to sit this one out. I never heard quite why that happened, as the Aston has made it to the last few races and did not sustain any visible damage at the last round at Detroit. Very much on the downside: the P2 class championship is over, with Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas clinching after Scott Sharp crashed the Highcroft Acura and then walked away from the car...which is against ALMS rules. Instant retirementfor you. Oops.

I've been told that NASCAR was also in action this weekend. OK, that's a lie. I actually managed to catch about 30 laps worth of the fall Russian Roulette 500 from Talladega. As always, the action did not disappoint. Or, I should say, it did not disappoint anybody who likes lots of wreckin' and some shoddy rule enforcement by the sanctioning body. There were several big pileups this time around, but none bigger than the one caused by Carl Edwards stupidly attempting to bump draft his teammate Greg Biffle in Turn 3. Refresh me here, but I thought that NASCAR very publicly came out a couple of years ago and threatened draconian penalties against anybody who bump drafted outside of marked zones on the backstraight at both Daytona and Talladega. What happened to that? It appears to have been no more than big talk from Mr. Helton and the NASCAR Hauler Boys. Good work there. Also, when this happens again in the future, I want the accident to not be called "The Big One", but instead dubbed "The Dumb One".

Last NASCAR thing for now, promise: how about that last lap selective rules enforcement? Tony Stewart throws the mother of all block parties (thanks, Pressdog!) for Regan Smith and gets no penalty, while Regan gets called for improving his position and is docked back to the last car on the lead lap? Believe me, I'm a Tony Stewart fan from back in his pre-IRL days, but that was nonsense. To Stew's credit, he probably had a hunch that a driver who's in the middle of NASCAR's contrived "Chase" wouldn't get called for anything short of stabbing a guy during a round of yellow flag pitstops, so good on him for playing the system and scoring his first win of the year. Sorry for you, Regan Smith. Better luck next year. Oh, unless your team can't come up with a sponsor and goes out of business.

Hey, hey, F1's back in action at Fuji again this week! I absolutely love the Japan races. There's something about being able to actually stay up and catch a race live instead of having to get up early and watch at 6:00 AM. Of course, I don't really do either of those anymore, since the advent of TiVo and DVRs, but still. Also, it's rainy season on the Pacific Rim, which means a high probability of another fantastically entertaining wet race. Watch it. You won't be sorry.

The Aftermath...it's The Aftermath...

A quick shout-out there to my buddy (and one of my three regular readers) Pablo. Thanks for the comments, dude. As the resident Spaniard reader, I was very interested to hear that he was actually rooting for Lewis Hamilton, and not Freddy Alonso, as I'd have thought would have been required by Spanish law. It's been no secret around the Speedhouse that I'm a borderline Hamilton stalker, and have been since about a third of the way through his year in GP2, so I'm pleased that Big Lew is actually reaching across national lines to grab some folks who I know used to be Alonso fans. Lew did press too hard early in the race, and it cost him, so perhaps I should not have said what I did about learning from the mistakes made in Shanghai. Oops. As for Alosno, I've been a bit perplexed by the reaction of the Latin press, and their insistence that Fernando is not to blame for his troubles at McLaren. Frankly, I've thought he's handled the whole thing like (to quote the brilliant lads at sniffpetrol.com) "a massive baby." And today's post-race reaction by Alonso to McLaren's protest of Williams' and BMW's non-penalty is some extra fuel to that fire (no pun intended). I used to be an Alonso pseudo-fan (i.e. I was tired of Schumacher winning every year), but those days are long gone. Once you've crossed the line of racing jackassery (see also: Tracy, Paul; Harvick, Kevin), you're dead to me. I shan't be drafting you for my All-Racing Fantasy League team next year, Fred, and I hope you're stuck on two championships as long as you continue in F1.

With that said, I'm happy to see Kimi actually win a championship. He deserves it, after years of rotten luck in F1, and I'm only bummed out by the fact that I won't be anywhere near Finland for the next four months, or about as long as the party is likely to last.