to the finish

On Wednesday night I headed up to Hagerstown, MD with my friend Brian for a meeting (the sixth of ten nights) of the Pennsylvania Sprint CarSpeedweek. Don’t know what you know about racing, but the 410 sprint cars are what they run in the World of Outlaws – 410 cubic inch, 6.7 liter engine, 900 horsepower/9000 rpm, triple-winged, open cockpit cars that turn 15-18 second ½ mile laps on dirt. Huge dual wings on the top, big wing on the front. Well, just look at the opening picture – that’s easier.

When I was young we often enough went out west of Omaha (at least west at the time) to Sunset Speedway for Sunday night late model modified racing. These were the days when everyone seems to be driving a modified Camaro, and the period when Bob Kosiski and family dominated the circuits in Nebraska. It probably cost us $5 to get in, $1 for a soda, and I’m pretty sure my Mom would drop us off and pick us up after racing in her Pontiac Executive. Those summer nights were my first exposure to racing and they carried me through Bill Elliot in the 80s and early 90s, Mark Martin in the 90s and early 2000s, and Michael Schumacher from the mid-90s to the mid-00s. Truthfully, I’ll watch just about anybody race anything – circles or circuits. Over the last eight months I’ve taken to following Kyle Larson (#42 Target car / Chip Ganassi owned) after the Brian scored us some pit lane tickets for his team at last year’s autumn race at Richmond International Speedway. Larson finished second that night and qualified for his first Chase. Larson, from California, looks about 16 years-old, and seems to really shine on restarts – I think he went from about eighth to second in Richmond on a green/white/checkered restart at the end. He’s leading the NASCAR standings right now.

(If you want to know about his restarts, here at the final two laps from the race we were at in Richmond last year. Larson is the red #42 Target car that opens the two-lap shootout way on the outside behind the white car, and then runs on the outside all the way to the finish two laps later.)

This brings us to Hagerstown. Kyle Larson started in sprint cars out West and apparently at 24 years-old he feels the need to race every night, if possible. They ran NASCAR in Daytona last Saturday night and they’ll be in Kentucky this Saturday night, but he still up racing sprints in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights (they were rained out last night). It’s purely happenstance that we ended up on Hagerstown because of last year’s race and the fact that Brian now follows Kyle Larson on Twitter so we knew he’d be up there. (By the way, Kasey Kahne and Dave Blaney of NASCAR were also running Speedweek.) Larson had won six straight sprint car features, three in the Midwest and three in Speedweek, so there was some excitement to see if the streak would continue*. Just for some math-y background, the fastest lap during the free practice was 15.3 seconds for the ½-mile lap. In qualifying, the fastest ran in the low 15.8s. Each heat is over in about 3 minutes, the feature in about 10-11 minutes. It’s loud, it’s fast, there’s loads of counter-steering in turns, and lots of acceleration over the 900-foot straightaways. Larson didn’t qualify well and ended up pretty deep in the pack for his heat, but he moved to the feature, where he started 18^th out of 24 cars. He finished 11th,with local Lance Dewease killing it from 10th to win – that dude can drive. As I pointed out to Brian before heading up, there’s nothing like dirt track racing and this was the first time I’d seen the sprint cars live. Great stuff. By the end of the night I was ready to plan for next year’s events – with an RV and racing all week. I’m sure I can save up five days of leave and traipse around southeast Pennsylvania drinking beer and watching them turn laps.

If you’re wondering, “where did they eat?” the answer is that we ate a Nick’s Airport Inn. Classic. I mean classic – restaurant AND lounge. We choose the lounge where we probably should have been drinking bourbon with the half-dozen locals at the bar, but stuck with beer and Millionaire burgers (sans foie gras). By the way, one of the two or three best burgers I’ve ever had.

*Each meeting has about 30-36 cars that run timed qualifying laps, 4 x 9-car heats (10 laps) with the top five through the A feature, a B feature (12 laps) that has the #6-#9 cars from the heats and puts the top four back into the A feature, and the final 24-car A feature (30 laps). There is some inverting within the starting positions for the heats and features, but we don’t need to talk about that now.

return of the king

(Update: it was a good entry but Schumacher has decided not to race again. He had a motorcycle accident earlier this year and his neck injury hasn't responded well to the strains of F1 driving.)

Michael Schumacher, retired for nearly three seasons, will slip back into the beautiful Prancing Horse in less than two weeks time. Schumi, easily my favorite driver of all time, is completing the season for the injured Felipe Massa after he was injured in a freaky and horrific accident two weeks ago. The seven-time World Champion (two with Benetton and five-in-a-row with Ferrari) and winner of 91 of 250 races in his career, has held an advisory position within the team since his retirement from driving after the 2006 season. At 40-years old he may not have been the obvious choice - especially since the team does have a paid test driver/F1 player in former teammate Luca Badoer - to step in but it's not that crazy. There are two sides to the coin that make me wonder; first, he wouldn't be doing this unless he felt could seriously compete in what's been, to this point, a pretty miserable car. (Bear in mind that Ferrari, prior to the accident, employed the 2007 World Champion, Kimi Raikkonen, and the driver, in Felipe Massa, that lost out on last year's title on the final turn of the final race. Neither of them have been able to squeeze anything out of this year's car.) I think Schumacher is worth two or three positions in a race based solely on his ability to manage a race better than any driver I ever watched. The second side of the coin is that his arrogance and sporting ego may well be getting in the way of his common sense; he could be totally outclassed. In the end, I think he could qualify mid-grid and finish the race in the top five - he is that good. I'll search the Web and try to catch my first race this season; it'll be worth it, regardless. An additional sideshow is that the top team in F1 this year is owned and run by Ross Brawn (taken over from Honda at the last gasp during the off season) who was Michael's team boss/technician during his glorious career. Believe me when I tell you that Brawn knows all of the Michael's tricks. With the new testing rules in effect this year the teams aren't allowed to actual test, or drive, their cars during the season. That's a fairly new rule and Ferrari did make an appeal to the other nine teams to allow Schumi to drive the 2009 version in order to prepare for his return - if you follow F1 at all you know that was met with distain by the entire field. It's sort of like Roger Federer or Tiger Woods asking for a little extra time in getting ready for a match or tournament. Even I laughed aloud at the sheer balls they showed in asking. Good luck, Michael.

lazy sunday, really.

I'm providing you, generously, with the final lap of this weekend's MotoGP from Barcelona; you can thank me later. The yellow rider is Valentino "the Doctor" Rossi, the eight-time World Champion. His competitor on this fine day is his team-mate, Jorge Lorenzo, who he is now tied with Rossi atop the championship standings along with Casey Stoner; not that any of that matters to you. Since I love just about any type of racing, Formula 1 and MotoGP in particular, I exposing you to a fantastic finish that you never see in auto racing these days. Feel free to overdub the Italian (or Spanish) commentator with your own version of "the door, the door..."



A second video to entertain you comes from some genius living in Arlington, VA. Every place you see in this video is in and around the neighborhood where we used to live - and where WonderTwin #2 and brood still live. I'm not sure this could have been any better. I do think the creator owes about 90% of any royalties to Andy Samburg of SNL.



The house has been cleaned to within an inch of its life - if a house had a life. The lawn, containing the deadly hill - is in dire need of a cutting. I think I'll hold out for closer to sunset and cooler temperatures. Betwixt now and then I'm off to the grocery to gather needs for taco variants: plain, standard, meat-and-bean for the hordes; some sort of fish tacos for the normal kids. Maybe I'll update you later, maybe I won't...

call of the track

There was a time, let’s say it was between about 1998 and 2004, when the Ferrari F1 team had impeccable performance. Those were the days of Schumacher, Bryne, Todt, and Brawn. What so amazed me during a decade of success was the reliability of the Ferrari cars throughout the season; there must have been an almost two season stretch when Michael Schumacher didn’t suffer a single failure. Even during the 1998 and 1999 seasons when Mika Hakkinen won titles for McLaren, the Ferrari was the more reliable on the grid. Every season during those Ferrari – McLaren battles played out the same: the Newey-designed McLaren was faster to start the season and the Bryne-designed Ferrari was bulletproof from day one. What this ended up producing was early results for Ferrari that often buoyed their campaign through the middle of the season as the McLaren team finally got their cars to stop blowing up every weekend. It seemed that every circuit produced at least one fast, on fire, and smoking McLaren. There were at least a few Schumacher titles (he won five straight 2000-2004) that were built on those early season successes and reliability of the beautiful, red prancing horses. I don’t know how many times I was reminded of the saying "one hundred percent of short putts don’t drop" when watching a race. For McLaren in those days, if didn’t matter how fast their cars were because they often didn’t make it to the finish line. The reason I bring this up, and I know you’re dying to find out, is that Ferrari over the last few years has seen a significant increase in car failures – two in the last two races. Last year they were able to overcome those problems as Kimi Raikkonen won the title, in equal parts, based on his driving ability and the McLaren drivers’ shortcomings in pressure situations. Even though the Ferraris are quick this year, the most important statistic - getting to the finish line - may well be their downfall.

Consider yourselves informed.

step away from the car

Right. Being as I’m a fan of just about any type of auto racing I was taken aback at an ad I saw on the inside cover of the latest New Yorker. It was an ad for the new Lexus LS and it took a few seconds to register in mind since I don’t generally read advertisements in any of my pubs. I was already into the table of contents before I flipped back to the ad. I’ll get to what caught my eye in a wee second.

My favorite racing series is Formula 1, followed closely by the World Rally Championship…I know my European is showing, I’ll try to tuck it in. I’ve long liked NASCAR but I’m more an open-wheel lover of American racing circuits. The 70s was much more memorable for watching the Indy 500 than the Daytona 500, at least if you were living in Omaha. If I purge my mind of my trivial NASCAR knowledge that has piled up over the years then I’m only being honest in saying that Richard Petty and David Pearson are the only stockcar drivers I knew in my youth. If we’re talking Indy Cars then I can overflow with names like AJ Foyt (I know, he drove stockcars too. Hell, AJ drove anything with wheels…probably the greatest ever American driver), Al Unser, Bobby Unser, Mario Andretti, Gordon Johncock, Johnny Rutherford, Rick Mears, Emmo Fittipaldi, etc. I think the ultimate test is the phrase that’s passed the lips of millions and millions of Americans riding in cars, “Who do you think you are? Mario Andretti?” I’ve heard that from kids in their teens…even now. I have never heard some punk say, “Who do you think you are? Jeff Gordon?” The next time they smart off from back seat ask them if they know who Mario Andretti is. Eventually, I moved to Bill Elliot and NASCAR but that’s another story.

Here are the basic engine specs on the 2007 engine being run by the defending world champion Renault Formula 1 team:

Capacity - 2400 cc
Architecture - 90° V8
Weight - 95 kg
Max rpm - 19,000 rpm

Do you know how many gears that beast has? 7 (plus a reverse…as if that’s used much). 7. 7. 7. 7. The last two World Championships for drivers and constructors have been won by the Renault team with Fernando Alonso at the wheel. I had a chance to attend a basic race driving school in England and I’ll tell you that hauling ass around Brands Hatch at nearly 100mph in an old open wheel Formula Ford is nerve wrecking enough. The idea of zipping around at 200+ mph in a Formula 1 car is terrifying. Is this too much of a back story? Sorry. My point is this: the new Lexus in the ad has EIGHT gears! if Fernando Alonso only needs seven gears to work his way around tracks from Monaco to China then I’m pretty sure Don of Leesburg, VA can get by on fewer. Exactly why does Don need the killer acceleration and power inherent in an 8-speed? Is he worried about his friction circle slipping outside of parameters as he blasts out of DuPont Circle with a VW Bug trying to pass on the outside? I’m pretty sure Don isn’t even capable of counting to 8 as he shifts at 6mph, 13mph, 25mph, 40mph, 60mph, 75mph, 100mph, and finally a kick at 125mph for the long run into Eau Rouge during his practice runs for qualifying. Who does he think he is, Jeff Gordon?. 8 gears? The dingletrons that are buying the sequential 8-speed are probably the same guys that attempt to downshift on the hard right-hand turn while exiting Key Bridge onto the Whitehurst Freeway (local joke). I can see this yahoo pulling into the local Shell, locking up the brakes into the ‘pit box’, and screaming to no one in particular that his car has understeer (‘tight’ for the NASCAR fans) and he needs less front wing. Didn’t we just move to 6-speeds not long ago? That was quite a reach from the kicking 5-speeds of my youth. You know what this reminds me of? This.

I rest my case.

T.