Wednesday Racing Thread

Focusing on F1 and NASCAR this week, but anything goes

alright, mate, relax

A Very British Grand Prix

If this happened anywhere but in F1 — say, for example, in NASCAR or IMSA — everyone would be right to be suspicious. Out of just about nowhere, a British team rockets to 2nd and 3rd in qualifying. At the start, the British driver for that team grabs the lead and holds it for five thrilling laps before falling back to a second-place position that he somehow has the pace and ability to keep despite pressure from Ferrari. But wait, there’s MORE! A car very conveniently catches on fire in what would have been perhaps a three-lap window between pitstops for the Mercedes drivers, allowing SIR LEWIS HAMILTON a chance to adjust his position from “following George Russell around, at a distance, just like he’s done all weekend” to A SURPRISE PODIUM!

After the fact, there was more than enough bitchiness and bad blood to go around; George Russell openly told the press that Oscar Piastri deserved the podium more than his own teammate did, while said teammate arrived into the “cooldown room” running his mouth about the McLaren being a “rocket ship” to the point that an annoyed Lando Norris, who had just been forced to vigorously defend his second place on the hard compound tires from a charging Hamilton on softs, cut him off with “Alright, mate, relax.” The implication in Hamilton’s “positive words” was obvious to any club racer: Must be nice to beat me in a faster car! Norris had no patience with that.

Pierre Gasly appeared to give Carlos Sainz a light shove during a press conference, while Lance Stroll suggested he’d like to meet Gasly in the parking lot after the race. Max Verstappen, taking a not quite effortless win as his teammate flailed around in the second half of the field for much of the race, expressed annoyance and a general who-gives-a-shit attitude regarding the presence of Brad Pitt and Brad Pitt’s movie — but Sir Lewis disagreed and said that Brad Pitt was great! Alex Albon repeatedly made his competition look foolish, while George Russell executed a pass so perfectly judged that the normally pro-Lewis-and-anti-Russell F1 announcers took a moment to express raw admiration.

“We just need for Logan to be able to connect with the car as Alex has,” warned newly-minted Williams supremo “Valtteri, it’s” James Vowles, a man who is not above making what a candy-assed, highly-emotional, ultra-simp former vice-president of mine once called “the tough decisions” for real.

At this point, it seems fruitless to pick on Sergio Perez. Sure, he never had an equal shot at the championship, any more than Bottas was given in his time at Mercedes — but had he run a faithful second place to Verstappen’s consistent first, he would have a secure paying job at Red Bull for a long time to come. Now there is an obvious seat to fill, but for whom? We’d all like to see the opportunity go to Fernando Alonso, but if they need a younger driver why not the mercurial Tsunoda, who commands a whole nation of eager spenders as fans and who has shown flashes of brilliance in equal proportion to his iffy judgment?

NASCAR at Mid-Ohio!

My son and I were in Las Vegas so we didn’t get to see Casey Carden’s unpleasant re-introduction to Mid-Ohio last week. Carden’s endurance team was an occasional foil for my wife’s AER effort during 2017 and 2018; like us, they ran an MX-5 but I don’t recall them being ahead of us any time our car wasn’t out on a mechanical. In the five years since Casey has focused on ARCA and NASCAR opportunities. After missing practice and qualifying in the pursuit of a mechanical issue, Casey had several miserable laps in the 1:42 to 1:45 range — that’s Spec Miata pace, not ARCA pace, which is more like 1:32 or 1:31 — before wandering off the track and scattering pieces of his car all around.

It’s easy to be catty about this but the fact is that those of us who struggle mightily to get a brief look at “The Show” often have this kind of bad luck. I’ve run two IMSA races, one CTCC, and one Pirelli World Challenge race, and none of them went flawlessly. The most frustrating one was probably losing an easy 2nd place in Grand-Am Total Challenge due to a fuel pump that quit with seven laps to go at Laguna Seca. Sitting in for an ARCA weekend is probably a $20,000 commitment if nothing goes wrong, but your liability could end up being $80k or more. So here’s to Casey for being the man in the arena, rather than the know-it-all on the Internet.

I’m also fascinated by the fact that the ARCA cars run just 1.5 seconds behind my little Radical PR6 at Mid-Ohio. The contrast in vehicles is startling. My Radical weighs about 1,080 pounds empty and has 160 horsepower from a stock Hayabusa 1299cc inline-four. A modern ARCA racer is 3,300 pounds and extracts 700 horsepower from a custom Ilmor V-8. At my SVRA race two weeks ago, I saw an all-time back-straight maximum speed of 133.7mph, but Carden indicated that he was doing 150mph before the kink on that back straight, a point in time when my PR6 is doing maybe 120! I’m seeing a consistent 2.05g at triple-digit speeds in Turns 1 and 11 — by contrast, the ARCA cars are a little, ah. cautious in those corners.

The final lap of the ARCA race had some genuine drama:

Personally, I love seeing stock cars on road courses and I won’t miss ARCA (and the truck series) if they come back to race at Mid-O. Oh, and to put the ARCA pace in perspective for those of you who don’t club race: A good Viper Comp coupe — you remember the fourth-gen car that wasn’t street legal? — prepped to the limit of the rules and with brand-new Hoosiers, runs about a 1:30.5 in NASA Super Unlimited, which is the same neighborhood as the ARCA and my PR6. Street-car Porsche GT3s and whatnot aren’t close to that.

As always, feel free to bring the rest of us up to speed on your favorite series from the past weekend.