Monday Morning Crew Chief
Written by Jonathan Ingram · October 1, 2007
Were F1 And NASCAR Separated At Birth? Two crazy races on the same weekend suggest possible long lost connection.
With apologies to those race fans who follow only one series or type of racing, did anybody notice the similarities between the F1 race at Fuji and the NASCAR race in Kansas?
Each series had crazy events due to weather and championship pressure, but that’s just the beginning. Were these series actually separated at birth long, long ago?
OK, so they didn’t race in the rain on the high banks of the Kansas Speedway. But, just as surely as the monsoon conditions in Japan dramatically affected the race’s outcome, so too the high winds and rain delays sent the usual pit stop strategies catawampus on the pit road in Toto-land.
In Japan the oddball rule controversy may have occurred at the beginning of the race when Ferrari did not start on “extreme wet” tires and was penalized despite protests from the Scuderia that it was the only team on the grid not to receive the special notification from the FIA. (McLaren, I presume, intercepted the e-mail intended for Ferrari sent by the stewards to team managers on the pit road. Or perhaps it was Nigel Stepney. More later on this from Ferrari’s attorneys and the Italian police.)
In Kansas, it was the finish that sent everybody searching for rulebooks. NASCAR decided Greg Biffle could putter across the finish line on the apron while running out of gas — despite trailing the pace of the safety car.
(Maybe it’s just me, but I thought Kimi Raikkonen and Biffle had a lot in common regarding the rules issues. The Finn said with his usual straight face that Ferrari somehow didn’t get the message despite receiving all other messages about safety car deployments and the uncharacteristic rolling start. For his part, Biffle, in Bunyan-esque exageration, said he was just saving gas for a post-race burnout… .)
Meanwhile, the CLK safety car driven expertly by Bernd Maylander had an incredible number of laps even for the predictably rainy Fuji — and at least as many miles, it would seem, as NASCAR’s Brett Bodine clocked behind the wheel in the American heartland. (And call me supercilious, if not suspicious, but the Mercedes-powered car won at the race where the safety vehicle was provided by Mercedes and a Ford won behind the auspices of a Mustang in KC.)
Beyond rules interpretations, officiating was sorely questioned in both places when it came to decision whether to race — or not to race? The idea of starting behind the safety car in Japan brought angry comments about a lack of visibility from some cockpits, then the decision to continue beyond the 75 percent of total laps in tough conditions was also questioned in various quarters (especially in sleeping quarters for those watching live in the Eastern time zone!). In Kansas, the decision to re-start the race after the second rain delay raised some eyebrows when the field, re-arranged by pit stops, was engulfed by carnage shortly after the green.
Granted, the F1 race only had one late-season title contender — Fernando Alonso — who was knocked out of contention by errant driving. Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin took direct hits in the points in Kansas when involved in accidents not directly of their making. (Well, I guess Felipe Massa was involved in a pit stop not of his own making as Ferrari advanced teammate Raikkonen for the sake of team tactics and points, now fashionably regarded as illegal by the FIA, which may want to attempt another e-mail to Ferrari.)
OK, so I guess I’m exagerating a bit about all the similarities.In Fuji, there was a helluva lot more exchanges of positions in the closing laps than there were in Kansas, given that Massa and Robert Kubica passed each other four times coming up the hill to the checkered flag at Mount Fuji. (On the other hand, by some counts, at
least four cars passed the belated Biffle at the checkers.)
There was another distinguishing characteristic. Home-grown hero and runner-up Clint Bowyer, who was racing on local dirt tracks until Richard Childress saw him on TV, nearly won the race in Kansas. Some say he did win since Biffle puttered his way to the stripe. In Japan, the home boys didn’t fare too well most of the weekend. In fact, Sakon Yamamoto drove more like Quasi Motor Control in the wet. As with the weather, local manufacturers hardly shined in Japan, either.
Oops. Come to think of it, there were Toyotas racing in both rainy places. And in neither case did they go very well.
Call me irresponsible, but perhaps all these similarities are an omen. After all, we’re going to see Villeneuve versus Montoya in Alabama this weekend, where an ARCA preliminary features Scott Speed on the entry list. Can Ralf Schumacher be far behind?
Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jonathan@jingrambooks.com.
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Can Ralf Schumacher be far behind?……I’m not sure, I mean with Ralf being a self proclaimed “top 3″ driver surely a F1 team will be snapping him up after Toyota have foolishly let him go.