Wednesday Racing Thread

Open to all subscribers, focusing on F1 and IMSA this week but anything goes

not bad, rookies

Formula Unn

Was it just a few weeks ago that some (remarkably stupid) people were seriously considering the prospect of a Sergio Perez championship challenge? No doubt they’re all busy right now deleting their old social media posts. It seems obvious, to me at least, that the much-lamented Red Bull Gap is at least partially a product of driver skill. Sure, it’s the best car — but perhaps not to the extent that the Mercedes W-Whatever has been in past years.

And speaking of Mercedes… We are only one-third of the way through this season. There is still a chance — not just a mathematical chance, but an actual chance — of a Mercedes driver being World Champion this year. But which Mercedes driver? Will it be the dependably-acceptable-but-no-longer-brilliant Sir Lewis, or will it be Princess George, who alternates wildly between making Lewis look like a pay driver and having emotional breakdowns due to sweat on his visor?

I fear this might be the end of the Aston/Alonso fairytale, as well. Like Brawn GP in the distant past, they showed up strong but perhaps can’t develop the car at the rate of their larger and more technically skilled competitors. Still, you have to admire Alonso’s complete mastery of the sport — whether he’s accurately predicting penalties during qualifying, assuring Lance Stroll(‘s father) that he won’t attempt a pass he could easily make, or waving to the crowd and wheel-waggling before the end of the race, Fernando is very much on top of his game. If you were coming to F1 right now, and had no detail knowledge of any driver, you’d be forgiven for thinking Alonso was five years younger than Sir Lewis, rather than three and a half years older.

As for Ferrari… I’ll let social-media gadfly and occasional enduro racer Andrea Cairone sum it up.

The numbers don’t tell the full tale; Sainz drove like a man possessed… by narcolepsy. The only time he even tried to hold off an approaching driver was a half-hearted swerve at George Russell. Ferrari should consider giving up on this season, focusing their efforts on 2024, and hiring two rookie drivers for next year. Right now their closest real-world competitors are… Alpine?

Down the order, there was an interesting conflict between Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu in which the stewards intervened on Zhou’s behalf. Yuki didn’t actually do anything wrong so one assumes this was a business decision in a world where China’s importance now eclipses Japan’s to an extent not seen in a thousand years. What’s interesting is that both of these, er, Oriental fellows are soundly thrashing their Occidental co-drivers. You can’t watch F1 this year and not conclude that Zhou could have won at least six world championships with Mercedes. Possibly seven. The Zhou-Bottas gap is considerably larger than the Hamilton-Bottas gap ever was.

Last but not least, you have to feel bad for Lando Norris, who performed brilliantly in qualifying only to get stacked up in the first lap.

Michelin Pilot Challenge

My son and I made the trek up to the Detroit GP to see the debut of Thaze Competition and their AMG-Mercedes GT4. I am peripherally responsible for this effort; I dragged Brian Makse along with me for the 2005 One Lap Of America, where we met Faisal Ahmad. The three of us ran One Lap together in 2006. Faisal and Brian teamed up to create the “Pakistan Express” club-racing team in 2008, I was both one of their competitors (in my Neon) and an occasional team driver, running class-winning enduro efforts in their cars a few times.

(One of those times is documented at TTAC, minus all the weird sex stuff I did with the two girls between the concert and the race.)

Brian and Faisal took a few years off but are now back as Thaze Competition, having made the decision to jump from NASA Performance Touring to IMSA GS. Most interestingly, they are team owners only, as opposed to owner/drivers. In truth they are both more than good enough to run at this level but I think they’re also both old enough and settled enough to prefer being on the management end.

The Detroit GP was close to a dream debut for them; they qualified sixth and finished third, with a twenty-lap battle for second that ensured their gorgeous green-and-gold AMG got more screen time than any other competitor on the grid. Everybody’s talking about Thaze now, which is good; they have a second car to fill for the rest of the season. Interested drivers with access to around two million dollars of liquid funding should contact me and I’ll make the introductions.

My other friends in the GS class, the McLaren Artura team of Motorsports in Action, got ahead of Thaze at the start but took a bump or two that removed the Artura’s mirrors and bent the tie rod. Jesse Lazare, the Daytona-winning wunderkind who won a couple of AER races with me five years ago, held on for a mid-pack finish despite the damage.

IoM TT

I don’t follow this race, largely because I’m afraid that if I paid too much attention to it I would wind up trying to enter it. Some of you will have opinions, however!