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Non-call In Pits Opens Door For Edwards’ Vegas Victory

I was traveling on Sunday and managed to watch the “tape” of the race thanks to our good friends at DirecTV and their fantastic DVR. It didn’t take long to figure out what happened: Sunday’s race was was Tony Stewart’s to lose, and he did just that. And in the pits, no less.

In fact, pit lane was nearly the only place where something significant happened this week. Crew chiefs up and down pit road earned their pay this week, having to decide between two-tire vs. four-tire stops, and time them right. As far as what happened and didn’t happen this week, here’s the short version.

• Tony Stewart was dominating the race, and came in for a mid-race pit stop. As he exited his pit, he dragged an air hose. NASCAR dropped the hammer and penalized Stewart, ruining his dominating day.
• In the same pit stop sequence, Carl Edwards pitted. During his stop, the 99 crew lost track of tire, and it rolled into a neighboring pit box. NASCAR…..well…NASCAR did nothing.
• Tony Stewart fought back and used a two-tire stop later in the race to re-take the lead
• In the final round of stops, Stewart had to take four tires while Edwards only had to take two.
• Race Over

I’m not an expert on tire rules, but I’m pretty sure that teams have to stay in control of their tires. In this case, NASCAR let the 99 crew off easy. Looking back, if Edwards was put to the back of the field, it is unlikely that he could have won this race.

Does anybody have a copy of the rulebook they can lend me?

Link: Edwards flips for Stewart’s bad fortune (denverpost.com)

Mark Martin scoops up Vegas Nationwide Series win, Danica scores first top 5

Today’s Nationwide series race started out with a snore but ended in a bang as Mark Martin won one for the old guys, stealing a win on the last lap of the race. Martin took advantage of the misfortune of Brad Keselowski who had a lock on the win until he blew a tire and hit the wall on the white flag lap. Instead of a win, Keselowski limped home to a heartbreaking fourth place finish.

In the early laps, however, the race was shaping up to be a Kyle Bush blowout. At one point in the race, he had lapped what seemed like all but the top 10.

But fast-forward to lap 123. Donnie Nuenberger spun in turn 4 to bring out the yellow, and a new round of pit stops. Crew Chief Jason Ratcliff called for a four-tire change on the 18 car putting Busch in the 10th spot on the restart.

What happened next is what I’m calling the “XBox Driving Moment of the Week”. This tribute is only given to drivers that demonstrate a driving style that should only be attempted in the world of video games.

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Grand Am Miami GP results: Ganassi and BMW rule the roost

Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas once again piloted their Chip Ganassi Riley/BMW to a victory in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car series today at the Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead. Hot off the win at the Rolex 24, the Ganassi boys are the team to beat in the prototypes.

BMW had a big day all around as Turner Motorsports took the checkers in GT with Paul Dalla Lana and Bill Auberlen co-driving their BMW M3 to the win.
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Indy Car Headlines: Ana Beatriz to Dreyer and Reinbold, VERSUS live Indy Lights package, Testing news from Texas and Barber

In today’s Indy Car “rock block” of stories, the top headline is news that Ana Beatriz has signed with Dreyer and Reinbolt for 2011. And if this is a trade for Milka Dunno to keep three ladies in Indy Car, this is a big trade up. Beatriz is the real deal with three Lights wins and a third place finish in the FIL points.

I have mixed feelings about this, because I think it is fantastic that she has landed a decent ride, and congrats to her. At the same time, neither Tony Kanaan and Paul Tracy have yet to find a chair to sit in, and nobody is sure if the music has stopped or not. Hopefully not.

Link: SPEED: Ana Beatriz Set To Join Wilson At DRR

–

Indy Car announced this morning that VERSUS is going to carry eight Indy Lights races live. In their release it says:

Eight Firestone Indy Lights races will be broadcast live this season by VERSUS. Additionally, the inaugural event in Quebec will be taped for broadcast at a later date.

The IZOD IndyCar Series window on VERSUS will expand to include the live broadcasts of Firestone Indy Lights events at Barber Motorsports Park, Streets of Long Beach, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway, Streets of Toronto, Edmonton City Centre Airport, Streets of Baltimore and Kentucky Speedway. The Firestone Indy Lights standalone event – the Streets of Trois Rivieres in Quebec– will be taped for broadcast at a later date.

This isn’t exactly huge news, but nice to know that VERSUS is stepping up and giving the support series some air.

Link: IndyCar.com Firestone Indy Lights races live on VERSUS

–

In testing news, Pippa Mann drove in a test with Conquest Racing at Texas Motor Speedway, and the report from RACER magazine is that it “went well”. No reports of lap times were released, but Eric Bachelart praised the young Brit:

“Pippa quickly got up to speed and was setting competitive lap times early on – and that isn’t always the case for someone turning their first laps in an Indy car. She did a really great job and provided really good feedback to the team, which helped us to make some changes and make the car even better balanced and faster.”

Meanwhile across the Gulf, PKV, Penske, and AJ Foyt Racing were joined by Charlie Kimball in his new Ganassi-2 car. Again, no test times were released, and nobody demolished a Dallara.

Come March 14-15, it’s an all-skate at Barber when Indy Car holds a series-wide open test leading up to the season opener in St. Pete.

Links: Racer.com has more on the Barber and Texas tests.

Pirelli gives thumbs-up to Bernie’s world of sprinklers

Just a couple of days after Bernie Ecclestone floated the idea of creating artificial wet races with sprinkler systems at F1 tracks, Pirelli honcho Paul Hembery has come out in support of the idea. He expressed his opinion to Autosport.com saying:

“I thought Bernie Ecclestone’s comments were quite interesting. Straight after our recent successful [wet-weather] Abu Dhabi test I saw him and said, ‘why don’t we do an artificial wet race?’ The technology is such that you can wet a circuit with a sprinkler system, so the idea is not as daft as it sounds.”

I find it interesting that Hembery basically says that this is this fake-rain idea is actually his idea. If that’s the case, Bernie seems to have taken a shine to the idea and is floating it to the press.

Hembery made it clear that artificial rain isn’t “fake” like a pace car to bunch of the field. He said:

“I would agree that something fake like throwing in safety cars frequently to close the field up if they got too spread out would be going too far, but in terms of throwing something of a new challenge, like an artificial wet race, at drivers, tacticians and engineers, it would be great.”

Of course artificial rain isn’t “something fake”. And the Emporer is wearing clothes, too.

Link: Autosport.com - Pirelli backs artificial wet races

The Aston Martin AMR-One flexes LMP1 muscle

The much anticipated unveiling of Aston Martin’s AMR-One happened today to some less-than-enthusiastic reviews. Twitter pundits have called it “derivative”, “unoriginal”, or even “fugly”.

Ok, maybe derivative, maybe unoriginal, but not fugly, at least not to me.

With an open cockpit, and chunky sidepods, the AMR-One looks a little like Acura’s recent LMP1 chassis. The Aston looks a little like it is ready to go into battle, mean and muscular. To me, this isn’t very “Aston-ish”, but they did design this racecar from scratch, and get to decide what is “Aston-ish” and what is not.

The shark fin over the rear wheels is pretty hot, giving the AMR-One a profile akin to a cross between a mid-90’s Champ Car Reynard and a current day F1 car (with fenders, of course) from the side.

Personally, I like it. I’d be pretty intimidated if I had this thing staring me down in the rear-view mirror, and I think it looks pretty mean.

It’s just a shame that the car won’t be ready for the 12 hours of Sebring so we can all see if the chassis is as sweet as that exhaust note it’s destined to have.

More Pictures and Story: RaceCarEngineering.com -Aston Martin AMR-One LMP1 unveiled

This post also appears at http://motorpundit.com/?p=1211.

Indy Car releases info on buy-one-get-Vegas-free offer

I don’t know if it gets much better than this. Randy Bernard has put out a pretty sweet offer to Indy Car fans: Buy a ticket to an Indy Car race in 2011, and get a ticket to the Las Vegas Grand Finale for free.

Folks, we aren’t talking about a free Slurpee with the purchase of an order of large nachos at the local QuickieMart. This is flippin’ 220 mph, heart-pounding oval racing in Las Vegas for zero, nada, zilch……for free.

It might be true that beer is only free “tomorrow”, but come October, a lot of people are going to have their butts in a free seat at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to see if anyone can claim the $5 million bounty.
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Bernie says “fake rain” would make F1 more exciting

I’ll say this at the top so there is no confusion. This isn’t a story from The Onion, this is a real story from ESPNF1.com. Whatever Bernie has been smoking, I want some, because it must be *really* good.

Bernie has come out and said that he would like to see sprinklers installed at F1 tracks so that race officials can artificially create wet conditions during a race.

From ESPNF1:

“Look at the races we have now,” Ecclestone told Formula1.com. “Overtaking is almost impossible because in the dry there is only one line good for maximum speed because of the rubber on the track. You have a completely different picture when it is wet. We always had the most exciting races in the wet so let’s think of making rain…

“There are race tracks that you can make artificially wet and it would be easy to have such systems at a number of tracks. Why not let it ‘rain’ in the middle of a race? For 20 minutes or the last ten laps? Maybe with a two-minute warning ahead of it. Suspense would be guaranteed and it would be the same for all.”

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Sam Schmidt’s new FAZZTer, full time Indy Car team

Sam Schmidt Motorsports announced today that they have acquired the FAZZT race team, and will be running Alex Tagliani in a full time ride this year.

My first reaction is happiness for Sam Schmidt who has to be proud to have reached the status of full-time contender in Indy Car. Sam has run a great program in Indy Lights for years, but now is his time to step up to the big cars.

My second reaction is relief. No longer will I have to wonder how to pronounce FAZZT, or wonder why the chose such a strange spelling for a race team.

But seriously, congrats to Sam Schmit and Alex Tagliani on entering the fray full time in 2011.

Link: Sam Schmidt buys FAZZT Team

This post can also be read at http://motorpundit.com/?p=1212.

Re-Load: Risi seeks to build on Utah win in ALMS GT battle at Lime Rock

Houston, Texas - Tuesday, July 20 - Hot on the heels of its dominant GT victory in the Utah Grand Prix, Risi Competizione now heads to Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut, for the second round of the five-race ALMS summer odyssey.

Its central aims will be to not only secure a back-to-back ‘sprint’ victory, but also to consolidate its position in the championship points’ battles. Melo and Bruni currently lead the Drivers’ Championship by two points over Bergmeister/Long, and Risi/Ferrari are one point away from leading the Teams/Manufacturers’ chase.

With a view to breaking the stranglehold that the Flying Lizard Porsches have had on class victories over the last three years, the Houston-based Ferrari team has drafted in a second F430 GTC to be driven by Finland’s Mika Salo and Germany’s Pierre Kaffer, racing alongside Miller Motorsport Park winners, Jaime Melo and Gianmaria Bruni.
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