All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Who is running the IRL now, the local youth league?
"Let's give everyone a trophy."
Of course the drivers like the new, overall champ, road champ, oval champ crap. They can tell sponsors "We're a championship team."
Uhhhhhhhh no.
This is a bigger contrived bunch of crap than NASCAR's Chase and the NHRA's Countdown.

 

At least they're not resetting the points and treating the first 3/4 of the season like they don't matter.

 

And it looks like IndyCar is adding a street circuit near Baltimore's Inner Harbor to the schedule next year.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-ci-grand-prix-announce-20100505,0,4712795.story

 

Is it me, or do the numbers they are putting forward seem wildly optimistic? 100,000 people, pumping $250 million into the economy? Seems absurd to me. Long Beach tops that in attendance and the economic impact is more like $35 million.

In an unrelated note, it was revealed that the proposed site for the next F1 race in the US was at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, and Jersey City leaders killed the proposal in just 24 hours.

 

A Baltimore street race would be pretty cool, though, and could very well be an East Coast Long Beach based on the scenery.

 

Those numbers smell just a bit fudged, like they were stolen from an ISC document pushing the need for a NASCAR date.
Speaking of the Jersey F1 deal, was that what Bernie had been mentioning a few weeks ago?

 

Yeah, that's the one. Some assumed he was talking about the Meadowlands, but he was working on the deal for Liberty State Park. From what I've seen, it sounds like Bernie and the supporters badly misjudged the opposition they would face.

 

Bernie issued a statement this morning:

 

For a race won from pole, I thought Monaco was pretty entertaining. Hell of a drive from Alonso.

 

Totally agreed. Love Monaco. It's the one race on the schedule where the running order can barely shift from start to finish and I'll barely notice.

Glad to see Chandhok's head is still attached.

The Schumacher situation at the end in interesting. The rule seems pretty clear cut: you cannot pass on the last section of the last lap once the safety car pulls in. But given that,why did the track go green when the safety car pulled in?

And one other comment: Lewis Hamilton. Whatta tool. Bubbler, I hereby retract any defense of Lewis I may have offered in the Hamilton-Alonso feud.

 

Alonso's drive was fun to watch, but he got lucky. Early safety car allows him to change tires, other safety car periods wipes out his gap.

Hamilton is a little bitch, but how 'bout Barrichello throwing his steering wheel INTO THE PATH OF AN ONCOMING CAR! What a douche move that was.

Schumacher being Schumacher at the end. On one hand, it was total chutzpah considering the rules (and could have really ended in tears considering where they were on track), but Alonso smoked his worn tires on the restart, so Schumacher must have figured, "why not go for it?" Perhaps he'll get a friendly ruling from the stewards.