Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Tony Stewart won his first NHRA national event, winning a Wally in Top Alcohol Dragster.
Good for him.
Tony Stewart is a gigantic douche - going back to run ins with Mike Mulhern - but you can't argue that he isn't a racer.

 

John Hunter Nemechek with a nice bit of sponsor synergy in the Xfinity race on Saturday. He set his car on fire doing a celebratory burnout, then thanks the sponsor — a fire extinguisher company.

 

That sucks, but I guess its convenient location makes the land more valuable to developers than it being an iconic NHRA stop.

 

That Ryan Preece vs. Kyle Larson wreck was pretty rough.
Larson was coming back up the track and got T-boned by Preece at, if not full speed, then pretty close to it. Preece hit the gas to try to get around him but there was nowhere to go. Seeing the car afterward, Larson is damn lucky he took the hit on the right side instead of the driver's side.
And then seeing Preece get bounced around on the in-car camera and his eyes afterward ... yikes.

 

I haven’t watched as long as the old-school fans, but I’ve never seen the roll cage bent.

I get that things are supposed to bend to dissipate the energy, but that seemed pretty close to Larson. As someone mentioned elsewhere, the drivers sit toward the middle of the car.

 

I'm certain that car is headed immediately for the R&D Center in North Carolina and would not be surprised to see additional rollcage modifications added to the rulebook before they come back to Talladega.



Here's a photo of what that's supposed to look like.

You can see how far those three door bars have been pushed in and upwards, at least a foot. There's also a center floor-to-ceiling bar on that side of the car which provides additional protection to the driver, plus the impact absorbent foam that's placed in between those bars.

Had that happened on the other side? Even though the driver's seat has been moved closer to the center of the car -- something like four-six inches, I believe -- that kind of impact and resulting rollcage damage may or may not have penetrated the carbon fiber seat or hit him in the upper torso or helmet. It certainly had the potential to break Larson's legs, if not cause more injury.

Great engineering and good fortune played equal measure in him climbing out of that.

 

I’m not going to post the Peter Windsor thing because Peter Windsor is a fucking idiot who was still talking up USF1 until like the day before USF1 shut down … and also because as recently as 2014, he was still referring to Indycar as “Champ Car.” Why was he doing that? Because he’s a fucking idiot.

That said, you do you. He pulled something out of his ass claiming that Liberty is going to buy Indycar and flip it into an F1 feeder series with no ovals.

 

Why would Penske buy the track/series three years ago only to sell them? He's not the selling type. Yes, I also realize he's 86.

 

He's 86 and I suspect he doesn't enjoy hemorrhaging money.

I think more highly of Peter Windsor than @2muchcoffeeman does, but he was pretty clearly just spitballing in reaction to a rumor here. I don't think it would make a lot of sense -- and the chief problem with turning IndyCar into a non-oval feeder series is just about the only thing of value in IndyCar is the Indy 500.

 

Liberty buying IndyCar means we’d be headed for another split. That worked out so well the first two times.