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Lorenzo’s super season continues, takes Silverstone pole

Jorge Lorenzo will start from pole postion for the MotoGP British Grand Prix after setting the best time in today’s qualifying at Silverstone. Lorenzo has rocketed to two wins this year, and is poised to take control of the MotoGP championship if he can win from pole again this weekend.

Randy De Puniet’s run to P2 was surprising as he used is LCR Hond to beat both Repsol Hondas and Both Ducatis.

Nicky Hayden continues to gain confidence on his new Ducati machine, this time edging Casey Stoner for the fifth starting sport. Stoner expressed his nervousness about finding the limit on some of the bumps on the older part of the Silverstone circuit.

“The layout of the track is simply fantastic”, said Stoner after Friday practice. “It is great fun to ride and some of the corners are awesome. Unfortunately there are a few bumps on the ‘old’ part of the track where the asphalt hasn’t been relaid but when they get around to doing it I think we can safely say it will be one of the best circuits in the world. We’ve worked hard on the set-up today and for the moment we are still looking for the right solution. The bike was a little too stiff for the bumps and it was difficult to find the limit or understand how fast we can really go. We’ll make some changes tomorrow and hope the weather is good to us.”

Perhaps those bumps feel a little bit more treacherous to Stoner who has done a lot of crashing this season, and needs to regroup and find his pace in 2010.
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Hamilton’s brilliant drive yields Canadian GP pole

It’s a busy sports day around the world, especially for people in England and the USA with the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a world Cup game featuring both countries, and two NASCAR races to boot. Oh yes, and one more thing, F1 is in North America this weekend as the series returns to Montreal after a year’s absence from racing on this side of the pond.

Lewis Hamilton drove brilliantly today to take the pole. And when I say he drove brilliantly, I just have to believe what I read, not what I see, because qualifying won’t air on TV here for a little while. In fact, with a rain delayed truck race happening now at Michigan, we may never get to see qualifying in the US today.

Lewis somehow beat the wickedly fast Red Bull pair of Webber and Vettel, and even Jenson Button was impressed with his teammate and says that Hamilton usually does well at Montreal.

Michael Schumacher had a terrible day, and will start 13th. He was beaten by both Force-India cars, and whipped by three grid positions by teammate Nico Rosberg. That’s not a good day at the office for Schuey.

DVR Reminder: For all of you that have your DVR set to tape all the F1 races on SPEED, remember that this weekend’s the race will be aired on the FOX network. Set your TiVo accordingly.

STARTING GRID - F1 CANADA

Starting	Driver	Team
1	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes
2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault
3	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault
4	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari
5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes
6	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India-Mercedes
7	Felipe Massa	Ferrari
8	Robert Kubica	Renault
9	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes
10	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes
11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Williams-Cosworth
13	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes
14	Vitaly Petrov	Renault
15	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari
16	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari
17	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber-Ferrari
18	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari
19	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Cosworth
20	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Cosworth
21	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth
22	Bruno Senna	HRT-Cosworth
23	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin-Cosworth
24	Karun Chandhok	HRT-Cosworth

Le Mans news alert: Peugeot #3 retires, Bourdais out

You didn’t even have to see his face. With a shrug in his shoulders and helmet sagging into his chest, you knew the dejection Sebastian Bourdais was feeling as he found out that his mighty #3 Peugeot LMP1 machine had just dropped out due to a mechanical failure and resulting chassis damage.

Bourdais, who grew up near Le Mans, had put this car on pole, and seemed poised to lead his three-driver team that included Pedro LAMY and Simon PAGENAUD to another 24 Hour victory. It wasn’t to be.

This is sure to give the Audi LMP1 camp a morale boost, because they’ve not been able to keep up the pace. But can they win the endurance battle? There’s 21 more hours left before we find out.

Live Timing and Scoring: http://www.lemans.org/en/courses/24h-chrono-en-direct-2010.html

24 Hours of Le Mans Hour 1 Tweetcast

Hour 1 of the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans has been pretty exciting and eventful despite the Peugeots early drubbing of the LMP1 class. The big story of the first hour was a fairly large shunt by Nigel Mansell in the Beechdean LMP1 Ginetta-Zytek that brought out the safety cars for a long full course yellow period. Mansell was transported to a hospital via ambulance, but SPEED TV reported that Mansell is ok.

The safety car “situation” created by the early crash really screwed the Audi P1 effort. Track officials don’t use one safety car, they use four, all seemingly spaced out evenly on the race track. The Audi’s get caught by a different safety car than the leading Peugeot cars, and were put 3 or 4 minutes down due to the ridiculous safety car rules.

The cast of characters on Twitter have been doing a heck of a job keeping the world updated on this years “#LM24″. Here’s some of the best for Hour One’s “Tweetcast”.

TWEETCAST - HOUR 1 - 2010 24 HOURS OF LEMANS

sniffpetrol: Cars on parade lap. For some reason the ACO is pumping out EuroToss music on the pit straight about 1 hour ago via Twitterrific

TheAardvrk: Here we go!! About to start the #24Hours of Le Mans. LIVE on #SPEED. The coolest race you’ll see all year! Good luck to the #ALMS teams!!

MidwkMotorsport: So bloody excited with #LM24 on the flat screen @radiolemans reverberating around the house! Just magic! Come on Nishy & @Audi!
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Graham Rahal - the super-sub of 2010

If you paid any attention to CART/Champ Car in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, you know that Roberto Moreno seemed to be the dude that car owners would tap whenever they needed a substitute driver. Eventually Moreno became known as the “Super-Sub“.

But fast-forward a decade to 2010, and a new super-sub of sorts has appeared in the Indy Car paddock: Graham Rahal.

Since finding himself on the outside looking in for the 2010 season after a drive for Newman-Haas racing fell through, Graham has been able to put together a few runs, including the Indy 500 two weeks ago. He’s driven for Sarah Fisher Racing, Rahal-Letterman Racing, and next week in Iowa he will make his debut with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing as a sub for Mike Conway who was roughed up pretty bad in a crash at Indy.

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Briscoe keeps his cool while others boil over in the Texas heat

Now *that* was an Indy Car oval race. The Indy Car Series exchanged the flat track of Indy for the 24-degree lunacy of Texas, and put on one heck of a show. Ryan Briscoe won from the pole, giving a boost to the Penske team that had a less-than-spectacular race at Indy. And for a guy who was hired by Roger to drive Porsche prototypes in ALMS, Briscoe has unexpectedly become a force on the 1-1/2 mile tracks like Kansas, Texas, and Homestead.

As the race unfolded, the main challenge to a race that Briscoe had controlled most of the night came from Danica Patrick. Patrick started eighth, but moved up into the top five early in the race. Danica even held the lead for a brief moment after she and Briscoe made their first stops. In the end, she just didn’t have the kind of car that Briscoe had, and she finished second.
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Memorial Day Weekend Racing Review

Dario Franchitti dominates to win second Indy 500

The 2010 Indy 500 won’t go down in the history books as a race for the ages, but it did have some interesting story lines and one terrible crash. The big story was the absolutely destruction of the field by Dario’s Target car which seemed to have a gear nobody else had which enabled him to lead 155 laps.

Unfortunately for the fans, no only did Dario’s domination make for somewhat of an uneventful race at the front of the field, but the race turned into a fuel mileage marathon at the end. In fact, Franchitti may not have made it to the end if it were not for a terrible crash that involved Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay in the closing laps.

In post-race celebrations, Ashley Judd once again displayed her love for attention, and made sure the world knows that her man is “the man”. We know, Ashley, we know.
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Indy 500 Bump Day 2010 - Highs and lows

Every year at the Indy 500 time trials, bump day usually provides plenty of drama as the field gets set for the Greatest Spectacle In Racing. And not only did this year’s bump day live up to the hype, but the closing hour left viewers and fans catching their breath with everything that unfolded.

Lead Story - Kanaan’s conundrum
The story that dominated the day was that of Tony Kanaan’s troubles in getting into the field. An annual favorite to win the race and take the pole in recent years, Kanaan found himself on the outside looking in today after a qualifying crash on Saturday that caused heavy damage to the 7-Eleven car.

To make things worse, Kanaan took out his repaired car in morning practice, and crashed again in turn one in an episode of the worst kind of déjà vu. Kanaan’s team picked up the pieces (pun intended), pawned off some parts from other Andretti Autosport cars, and put Kanaan back ont he track. And Kanaan responded by firmly putting his car in the field. The man earned his paycheck today and showed just what he’s made of, that is for sure.
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Tony Fernandes Of Lotus F1: Call Me Mr. Blue; Rural New York F1 Track?

Some of you may recall the old Fleetwoods’ tune “Call Me Mr. Blue”? Anyone, anyone, Buehler? Didn’t think so. Regardless, me thinks Tony Fernandes should adopt it as his team/personal theme song. Read more

Monaco GP: Webber, Vettel, Kubica Too; Williams And Schumy Cry Boo-Hoo-Hoo.

Yeah my poetry (if you can call it that) might suck, but it’s an accurate short version of the 2010 Monaco Grand Prix results.

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