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

I might be reading too much into this... but I think we may have an American on the F1 grid this year.

A few hours ago Will Buxton tweeted that there would be "something big" in the news in 10 hours. Then he tweeted "out with the old, in with the new(ish)."

Then, about a half-hour ago, Alexander Rossi tweeted this: "A massive thank you to @MyCaterhamF1 and their support since 2011. Looking forward to continuing this exciting relationship. News pending."

Sounds to me like either Rossi is replacing Jarno Trulli, or (perhaps more likely) Giedo van der Garde is replacing Trulli and Rossi will take ven der Garde's spot as 3rd driver for Caterham.

I like Trulli, but it would be great to see Rossi in F1 on some level.

 

Well, half right. Trulli is out, but replaced by Vitaly Petrov.

No idea what Rossi was tweeting about.

 

Is there any doubt who the best driver in the world is? For Fernando Alonso to pull that crapwagon Ferrari to victory, even in wet conditions that wreaked havoc on strategies, is pretty outstanding. Ferrari didn't even screw it up with one of its patented dumb-ass pit calls.

Future teammate Sergio Perez was even better ... but for one unfortunate mistake.

And Rainmeister Felipe Massa shows why he's Rainmeister Felipe Massa. Why Ferrari keeps bringing him back is beyond me.

 

Castroneves wins St. Pete with an on-track pass for the lead and then pulling away. First win in more than a year.

Pretty well-done feature of Dan Wheldon in prerace by ESPN and cool tribute by Helio afterwards. He appeared to get pretty emotional in the car after climbing the fence and tapping the Dan Wheldon Way sign.

A solid race with a few bugs showing up in the new cars -- most notably several which appeared to have electrical issues (and an electronic clutch could have something to do with that) and the typical road race where most of the passing is done in the pits, but there was a lot of action on the front straightaway.

 

I still heart Helio.

 

Between F1 and Indycar, this is the year of the ugly car.
Many of the F1 rides look like a boxer that has been punched in the nose.
All the Indycars look like they took the front of an open wheel car and the rear of GT car and put them together.

 

Just finished watching the Speed TV replay. I watched the start live last night and DVRed the race.. and thanks to the red flag the recording ran out, so I've been avoiding the internet all day so I wouldn't know who won.

Great race. And yeah, hard to argue with Alonso as the best driver in the world. He wins in that Ferrari, while the only cars to finish behind his teammate were Caterhams, Marussias and HRTs.

How long 'til Perez replaces Massa? They've got three weeks before China -- I wouldn't be surprised if Perez is in the Ferrari by then.

 

Got a little misty here when Helio climbed the fence and tapped the "Dan Wheldon Way" sign. It's going to be misty come May at Indianapolis, too.

 

I was out of town Sunday and missed the race, but I heard about the Wheldon prerace feature and Helio tapping the Dan Wheldon Way sign. Just checked them out. Wow. Kudos, ABC and the drivers interviewed for that prerace segment. Dario and TK in particular were powerful.

And Helio after the race:

 

Interested in going to Barber Sunday, but less interested in paying $50 retail for general admission. So far, Craigslist has a total of two offers. Is there a board or site where open wheel gearheads sell tickets?

 

Helluva race at Barber on Sunday -- by far the best road course race IndyCar has put on in quite some time, if ever.

Power's MOV was about 3 seconds, and Dixon was about 16 seconds ahead of third-place Castroneves, but a great 3-4-5 duel between Castroneves, Rahal & Pageneaud, Sebastien Bourdais made a great move late to get up to 9th in a Lotus (which, so far, has been the underpowered engine of the three), Marco Andretti dicing it up for several positions ... lots of on-track lead changes at a track most of us thought would be too difficult to pass on -- as there really aren't any long straightaways at Barber and a lot of the curves are very long, sweeping, fast corners.

I'm from the "most of the races should be ovals" crowd (actually, I still believe half need to be on ovals at a minimum), but I can handle a road race with that much action.

 

Yeah, fun race today. Happy to see Barrichello do well today. That's a beautiful track -- looks like it would be a great place to spend a weekend.

Full disclosure: I'm a road track guy and find ovals really boring. But here's what I don't get about the "more ovals" crowd: have you looked at the crowds for the ovals outside of Indy? They look like high school football crowds. I get that fans in Indiana love the ovals, and a few others in the Midwest do too, but the series would die swiftly if they upped the oval count. (Which they can't do anyway, because they can't get the tracks, because the promoters aren't willing to throw away the money.)

I read Curt Cavin's Q&A blog daily, and it's filled with people screaming for more ovals. They always mention Phoenix as a place where they need to race. I attended the final IRL race in Phoenix. I'm pretty sure the number of people writing to Cavin about Phoenix exceeds the number of fans that actually attended that race.

I get the heritage of oval racing in the US, and I'd probably still follow the series if they went to a 50/50 split, but IndyCar would absolutely hemorrhage cash if they did that.