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

Alonso finally gets a competitive Honda. Maybe this is why he stuck with McLaren and Honda. Definitely the biggest coup for Indy since Mansell. Just imagine if Senna and Penske could have worked out a deal for 1993...

 

The weather is going to be absolutely gorgeous for the Indy race at Barber's this weekend. If any of you ever get the chance you should take in a race there, it is a gem of a facility. The museum also houses an absolutely jaw dropping motorcycle collection and the largest collection of Lotuses (both street and racing cars) outside of the Lotus factory museum. If there is one thing in Birmingham which can be described as absolutely world class, it's Barber's.

Barber Motorsports Museum: Home

Home - Official Event Site of the Barber Motorsports Park

 

It's a good race as a spectator as well. There are grandstand reserved seats, but the majority is catch as you can lawn and hill seating. I know a spot where you have a good view of two straightaways and five turns, so there is always something going on. If you want a change, you can walk out to the perimeter road and catch a tram and get off elsewhere. Several local restaurants have tents serving sit down food, as well as the usual concession stand stuff. I can't overstate how well designed and beautiful the entire facility is, and George Barber is anal about it being perfect.

When the track was built, Barber brought in an out of state paving company which specialized in racetracks. Once the pavement was done, he put a motorcycle racer out to run some laps and give his opinion of the paving job. The guy said that it was very good. Barber continued to press him, asking if he had noticed any flaws at all. "Well, there are a few ripples just past turn seven..."

Barber had another layer of paving put down on the entire length of the track.

The museum is mind blowing. Go to the link above and look at pictures. I like bikes but I'm not a big motorcycle buff, and I walked around bug eyed at what this guy has, from 1920's racing bikes which ran on banked hardwood tracks in auditoriums (with white rubber tires, this was before vulcanizing of rubber) to WWII military bikes to one off customs. Five stories, probably 1500 or so bikes on display and more that rotate in and out. If it is ridiculously rare, beautiful, or a landmark in design tech, he probably has one.

 

Barber's is weekend after Easter.

 

Roger that, my error. I'm not going this year. We'll be at the Gumbo Gala, eating gumbo and drinking beer till we can barely waddle home. It's a real good time if you haven't been, Dixie. It is on Sat. the 22nd at Regions Park.

 

I understand letting sponsors dictate your paint scheme, but pink F1 cars? The only good thing is they aren't up front, so they're not seen too much.

 

I actually really like it. The livery at the car's unveiling was an incredibly boring, McLaren Lite silver thing. I think the pink is kind of cool.

Love the new Toro Rosso livery. The blue is beautiful.

 

Damn. I think that Jenna Fryer column just made my brain explode. She doesn't have the slightest idea what in the hell she's talking about.

Fernando Alonso is, at the very worst, a top 3 driver in the world right now. He will be the best driver in the Indy 500 and it's not particularly close. (Not the best oval driver, of course -- but it's a huge coup for IndyCar to get Alonso even for one race.)

The McLaren-Honda he is driving right now is an almost unprecedented piece of shit. For perfectly understandable reasons, McLaren went all-in with Honda a few years ago. Honda responded by building an engine that is (a) shockingly slow and (b) not capable of running an entire race distance. It's a disaster. Alonso's teammate couldn't even start the last race because the engine wasn't working, after losing a different engine during the race weekend.

That leads to the line in the Fryer column:

"I've never raced with so little power in my life," Alonso reportedly said on his radio during Sunday's race in Bahrain.

Big news, Alo; You get one of those Honda engines for the Indy 500, too.

No, he does not. They have absolutely nothing to do with one another. The engines are entirely different. And I could go point by point through the column, but I'm off my blood pressure meds and I probably wouldn't survive it.

She seems to think that this is a ploy to sell more tickets to the race, and that it's somehow unfair to Stefan Fucking Wilson that Alonso got his drive. Which is moronic.

For starters, Indy's problem is that no one gives a shit about it outside of Indiana. They'll sell tickets to the race. They just can't find anyone who cares who isn't at the track on Memorial Day.

Fernando Alonso is one of the biggest non-soccer sports names in the world. This is drawing more interest to the race than anything in years -- probably since Nigel Mansell, for similar reasons. (Even if Jenna's 13 year old daughter hasn't heard of him. My 12 year old son hasn't heard of Serena Williams, so she must be a terrible tennis player.)

But overall, this isn't an IndyCar thing. It's a Honda thing.

Honda is being humiliated by building an F1 engine so shitty, Alonso is laughing about it mid-race on the radio. Alonso was rumored to be considering walking out on the team mid-season so he wouldn't have to drive that car. Now, Alonso is happy and Honda gets to show the world that it can build a racing engine that isn't a complete pile of shit. The viewership in the rest of the world will be huge. McLaren also has a shot of holding onto Alonso by doing this (and it's very likely he'll also be driving at LeMans this year with McLaren's help).

Goddamn. You know, I don't expect sportswriters to have any depth of knowledge about F1. I've followed it for 40 years and I've read countless clueless articles about it, but I get that. It's an esoteric sport in this country. But if you're an AP columnist on motor racing and you grind out such a lazy, ignorant piece and figure it's OK because you're not writing about NASCAR.... that should be unacceptable.

 

By the way, Fryer says Alonso is "apparently" skipping the rookie orientation. She's wrong; he plans to be there. She "apparently" didn't bother to ask anyone.