Some of the historic Indy 500 machinery on display at IMIS
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has a vibrant, visible presence this week at the International Motorsports Industry Show (IMIS) in Indianapolis, one of the largest, most prestigious racing trade shows in the United States.
IMIS has strong Indiana ties. The show was founded by Indiana residents Chris Paulsen, owner of Indianapolis-based equipment manufacturer and supplier C&R Racing; Tom Weisenbach, executive director of the Indiana Motorsports Association (IMA); Jeff Stoops, president of Stoops Freightliner; and two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart, also a two-time winner of the Brickyard 400.
This is a hardcore racing show with global appeal. It’s based in Indiana. It’s organized and run by Hoosiers. So it’s a perfect fit for IMS.
Cars from all eras of the "500" are on display at IMIS
The large IMS display at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis included 10 classic Indianapolis 500 cars. IMS staff and the IMS Street Team promoted the popular Grounds Tour of IMS and the three Speedway events in 2011 — the Indianapolis 500 on May 29, the Brickyard 400 on July 31 and the Red Bull Indianapolis GP on Aug. 28 — by distributing collateral material and just good, old-fashioned handshakes, smiles and conversations all three days of the Dec. 1-3 show.
Impressive variety of Indy 500 machinery on display at IMIS
Another popular piece of collateral distributed by IMS was a poster of the 33 Indy 500-winning cars lined up earlier this fall on the main straightaway at the Speedway, also promoting the 100th Anniversary Indianapolis 500 in 2011. A few Indy 500 veterans stopped by to say hello, including Tyce Carlson and PJ Jones.
IMS was one of 579 racing companies that purchased 1,145 booths for the three-day, sold-out trade show. IMIS offers individuals and companies from all facets of the racing industry the chance to interact, share ideas and products, build relationships and attend seminars to improve motorsports business around the world.
For more photos of the IMS presence at IMIS, click here.
The clock is ticking, so let the dissection begin.
No, we’re not talking about the Biology final you took as a sophomore in high school. We’re talking about the final countdown to the NASCAR Sprint Cup season finale this Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Denny Hamlin leads four-time reigning champion Jimmie Johnson by 15 points, with Kevin Harvick third, 46 points behind Hamlin. The math is so simple, yet so tough, for Hamlin: If he wins, or finishes second and leads the most laps, at Homestead, he will hoist the Sprint Cup for the first time.
Can you believe this was $150 in 1972?
If that doesn’t happen, have a slide rule, abacus or an old, four-function Texas Instruments pocket calculator ready.
NASCAR beat writers and bloggers are starting to trot out various scenarios for victory for Hamlin, Johnson and Harvick this weekend. Jim McCoy at All Left Turns makes the point that Hamlin has been the dominant driver this season, won two weeks ago at Texas and was ruling the Desert Mile at Phoenix before fuel-mileage follies emerged.
But Long also writes why it wouldn’t be one bit surprising if Johnson earns his fifth consecutive Sprint Cup this weekend at Homestead, and the reasons boil down to two men: Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson. They’ve been the best driver-crew chief combination in NASCAR for the last five or six seasons. They’ve been here and done it, which neither Hamlin nor Harvick can say.
I also think Johnson is winning the psychological battle entering Homestead. He spoke like a man without a care in the world after slicing Hamlin’s lead to 15 points at Phoenix, laying all the pressure on Hamlin’s garage door. Johnson also knew Hamlin was cracking emotionally after seeing fuel strategy foil his chance to expand his points lead, and like any ruthless competitor, Johnson pressed down the boot even harder on Hamlin’s fragile psyche.
My racing weekend could be summed up by one sentence: I didn’t see that coming.
Denny Hamlin surrendering a padded lead in the Chase for the Sprint Cup in the final laps at Phoenix due to bad fuel mileage? I didn’t see that coming. Sebastian Vettel becoming just the second driver in Formula One history to rally from third in the standings to the World Championship in the final race of the season? I didn’t see that coming.
It was one of those weekends why we dig this sport. The unexpected happened, which is one of the most appealing aspects of motor racing.
Here are the facts after the Kobalt Tools 500 Sunday at Phoenix: Hamlin leads four-time reigning champion Jimmie Johnson by 15 points entering the season finale this Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. 2003 Brickyard 400 winner Kevin Harvick is third, 46 points behind. It’s the closest three-way Chase with one race remaining.
Muzzle the mouth or walk the walk, Mike.
Now to the opinions. It might be a good idea for Hamlin’s crew chief, Mike Ford, to keep a low profile heading into South Florida this week. Ford crowed after the Texas race Nov. 7 that crew chief Chad Knaus may have lost a fifth consecutive title for Johnson by essentially firing Johnson’s crew mid-race and replacing it with the crew of Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon.
The end result was that Hamlin is rattled. He ripped his team after the race by saying, “Like I said, I did my job.” Not exactly a rousing vote of confidence or rallying of the beleaguered troops by a wise veteran. More of the impetuous Denny we thought had grown up. And at just the wrong time.
Hamlin pledges a pedal-to-the-metal approach at Homestead. He’s going to need it, as there are only two guaranteed routes to the championship for him, either winning the race or finishing second and leading the most laps.
My money still remains on Johnson to hoist the Cup for the fifth straight year. Who is your pick, and why?
NASCAR is in the midst of its most exciting Chase for the Sprint Cup since the inaugural year of the format, 2004, when just 16 points separated champion Kurt Busch, second place Jimmie Johnson and third place Jeff Gordon at the end of the season. Yet the endless bleating, soul-searching and head-scratching continues about NASCAR in reverse gear.
Make no mistake: NASCAR has problems. Declining TV ratings and race attendance. Top teams struggling for sponsorship. Yet it’s still the most popular form of motorsports in America, by far. Every other series in the U.S. would love to have NASCAR’s “problems.”
But can we just focus on the racing for the next three weeks? There are three races remaining in what has been a compelling Chase for the Sprint Cup. Four-time reigning champion Jimmie Johnson leads Denny Hamlin by just 14 points and Kevin Harvick by 38.
It’s high-octane drama, yet from Tuesday through Thursday of every race week during the Chase — after the race reports and analysis are out of the way by Monday and before the race previews and coverage start Friday — all I read about on NASCAR blogs and websites are theories and speculation about the root cause of the great withering of NASCAR. Dustin Long, who I read daily and whose work I admire greatly, even wrote that the close Chase could be hurting NASCAR.
Say what?
Isn’t there a two-month offseason during which endless column inches and online bytes can be devoted to the Great NASCAR Decession? You know, when no actual racing is taking place?
A bit of housekeeping and two public service announcements before Splash And Go begins. Sorry for the lack of recent posts — I was splashing and going on vacation last week. And if you’re 18 or older and a U.S. citizen, please vote today. You lose your right to complain about your government if you don’t do anything about changing it. Finally, please help Hoosiers in need by donating to the 1 Lap, 1 Great Cause food drive at IMS.
On to racing.
Sorry, Carl, but Happy Harvick is too busy fighting to win the Sprint Cup
Talladega was an interesting show last Sunday for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, but it wasn’t the decisive “wild-card” race many expected. All it did was reinforce that this is a three-man show with three races to go, as Jimmie Johnson leads Denny Hamlin by 14 points and Kevin Harvick by 38 points.
This is the kind of bandstand finish that NASCAR envisioned when it created the Chase. I’m starting to believe that Harvick can be the dark horse in this race and take it all, as he has the right attitude regarding the final three races: Top-10 finishes, simply staying out of trouble, don’t cut it.
Harvick also has a consistent, solid teammate to help him, Clint Bowyer. Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin are too inconsistent to be solid wingmen for Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. continues to be largely irrelevant. Kyle Busch is too much of a wild man and wild card to be much of a help for Hamlin, and Joey Logano is no factor.
Take a minute to think about Bowyer. He has won two of the seven races during the Chase. Yet he’s 12th and last in the Chase standings because of the 150-point penalty levied by NASCAR for driving an illegal car to victory lane in the Chase opener in September at Loudon.
Bowyer deserves applause. He’s driving hard, like a man with nothing to lose, despite being buried in the Chase because his car was out of whack by about the width of a hair. He’s the Chase’s version of the Buffalo Bills, still playing with intensity despite being 0-7.
The “Big One,” which ESPN’s announcers seemingly so desperately wanted to see last Sunday at Talladega, never really happened until A.J. Allmendinger’s wild ride on the final lap that precipitated the extending scoring review to determine Bowyer edged teammate Harvick for the victory.
But there was a massive wreck last Sunday in the DTM (German touring car) race at Adria, Italy. This looked every bit like a tumble-and-spin job from restrictor-plate racing, yet it was on a road course. Thankfully driver Alexandre Premat was OK:
Television, namely low ratings, continues to be a sticking point for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this fall during the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Ratings are off by double-digit drops on ESPN, sounding shrill alarms for NASCAR, ESPN and sponsors.
The plunge off the ratings’ cliff is odd, because the racing has been very good this entire season, including the Chase. Even Auto Club Speedway, NASCAR’s generic prescription for Ambien, put on a very competitive race two weeks ago.
If you’ve tuned out the Chase on The Worldwide Leader in Sports this fall, you still should tune into ESPN tonight for what promises to be a fascinating 60 minutes of NASCAR programming. ESPN’s superb series of short documentaries, “30 For 30,” looks back at the life, legend and truths of Tim Richmond in “Tim Richmond: To The Limit” at 8 p.m. (ET) on ESPN and 11 p.m. (ET) on ESPN2.
The Last Rock and Roll Star: Tim Richmond
Richmond has sadly faded into the vanishing point of the rear-view mirror of NASCAR. This guy was an incredible force of nature and an incredible talent in Winston Cup racing during the 80s. He raced, partied and lived harder than most of the corporate automatons disguised as drivers today probably could ever dream. Imagine Kyle Busch’s speed and carefree talent mixed with the rock-star magnetism and lifestyle of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones or Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, and you had Tim Richmond.
Much like James Hunt in F1, the number of Richmond’s laps led and ladies bedded ran side-by-side. But he had tremendous skill and huge attachments behind the wheel of a stock car and appeared headed to the high altitude of the legends of the sport before he contracted AIDS and died in 1989.
Want to see Richmond’s otherworldly talent encapsulated in one short video? Watch this below. Richmond is swallowing the field whole on a restart at North Wilkesboro while continuing to talk from his car with ESPN commentators in the booth after the green flag:
Due to his illness and the misconceptions associated with it, Richmond never has received his due from either NASCAR or its flag-waving, God-fearing fan base. Hopefully this documentary will help those who have forgotten or never knew about Richmond realize he was a rare supernova.
Watch this show tonight. Richmond is exactly the kind of character that corporate sponsors in 2010 never would bless even though racing needs talented showmen like him more than ever.
Back to racing 2010. It’s a quiet day in worldwide motorsport — a rarity during the season. But there’s still some news to chew on.
There might be only three guys in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing who have it better right now than Jamie McMurray — Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick — even though McMurray isn’t one of the 12 drivers this year in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
You'd be stoked if you won at Daytona, Indy and Charlotte in the same season, too. Even if you weren't in the Chase.
McMurray continued his banner season with a victory last Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Jamie Mac’s three victories this season came at the three most prestigious tracks in NASCAR – Daytona, Indianapolis and Charlotte.
I wrote this before, but McMurray’s primary sponsors, Bass Pro Shops and McDonald’s, must be pretty stoked these days. I know I’d rather benefit from the exposure of winning the Daytona 500, Brickyard 400 and a race at Charlotte and miss the Chase than make the Chase and go winless, as Carl Edwards, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth have done so far this season.
Only Johnson, Hamlin and Harvick should be happier than Jamie Mac these days because they’re the only three drivers with a chance to lift the Sprint Cup on Nov. 21 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Johnson finished third at Charlotte, with Hamlin fourth, stretching JJ’s lead to 41 points over Hamlin in the standings. Harvick is third, 77 points back.
Everyone else from fourth-place Jeff Gordon to 12th-place Clint Bowyer are at least 156 points behind Johnson. They can turn out the lights on 2010, Irene. With just five races remaining, they’re toast.
While most media members and fans think Johnson is easing away from Hamlin heading into Martinsville this weekend, Dustin Long begs to differ. He believes this could be Hamlin’s Chase to lose and presents an interesting statistical case.
Kasey Kahne’s lost season continued with illness and a third brake failure Saturday night at Charlotte, and the relations between Kahne and Richard Petty Motorsports plunged to an even deeper malaise. Kahne claimed illness for his reason for leaving the team after his early accident, yet he was healthy enough to run a 5K race for charity the next morning. Granted, RPM has provided Kahne with cars barely worthy of Fred Sanford’s junkyard this season.
It’s an ugly example of how a lame-duck driver and team should not end a partnership.
There are some things in racing that make everything else — including the NASCAR Chase, MotoGP crowning two World Champions and the F1 race at Suzuka — feel irrelevant. Shane Hmiel’s accident in a USAC Silver Crown car during qualifications Saturday night at the Terre Haute Action Track is one of those.
Get well soon, Shane
Hmiel was badly injured and faces an arduous journey of recovery after a sickening, single-car wreck in which his car bicycled into the outside wall, directly impacting the roll cage. I thought about posting video of the accident that’s out there on the usual places on the Interwebs, but it turns my stomach every time I see it.
If you’re a fan of NASCAR or USAC racing, you know Hmiel’s story. He is the son of longtime NASCAR crew chief and team executive Steve Hmiel. He was banned for life from NASCAR in 2006 for failing three separate drug tests.
But Hmiel was navigating the road to redemption through the tough arena of USAC short-track racing and had won features in Sprint and Midget competition. He was seemingly doing everything right as he rebuilt his professional and personal life.
That’s what makes this accident even more painful for the racing community. America is the land of second chances, and here was a 30-year-old guy who was making the most of his. Now he faces a much greater fight.
If you believe in a higher power, pray for Shane Hmiel. If you don’t, think of him often. He needs all of the prayers and positive thoughts we can offer. A Facebook page is available for fans to offer support and thoughts, with updates on Hmiel’s condition also posted.
There is no such thing as a smooth transition from the sadness of Hmiel’s accident to the rest of the racing results from last weekend. But the octane show did go on around the globe.
Two-time Brickyard 400 winner Tony Stewart jumped from 10th to fifth in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup after his victory at Auto Club Speedway. Smoke is still 107 points behind points leader Jimmie Johnson, who has switched on his Mr. Consistency mode after finishing third.
Jimmie Johnson at age 60: "Stay thirsty for Cup titles, my friend."
The Bearded Man of Mystery has finished first, second and third in his last three Chase starts after a rough opener at New Hampshire. Is there any wonder why this cat has won four consecutive season championships and seems to be destined for a fifth this year?
This was the last fall race at Auto Club Speedway, as NASCAR responded to the ho-hum attitude toward the sport by Southern California by moving this Chase event to Kansas next season. Past races on the 2-mile oval at California have been NASCAR’s alternative to Ambien, but that wasn’t the case Sunday.
There was plenty of action in the Cup race Sunday and the Nationwide race Saturday, including a hell of a comeback drive by four-time Brickyard 400 winner Jeff Gordon after he was nailed for speeding on pit road Sunday and Danica Patrick learning the ropes of NASCAR give and take Saturday with a firm bumper up the posterior.
Cars also drove four- and five-wide on late restarts in the Cup race Sunday, and there was a questionable debris caution that pulled the pin on Clint Bowyer’s race. Engine problems also put a serious hurt into the Chase chances of Roush teammates Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle, and Kyle Busch’s engine condition mirrored his personality, too, spewing hot, black lava.
One of my favorite parts of any Monday during the Chase is reading which drivers are being coronated and written off after the weekend’s results. Remember, media were crowning Denny Hamlin and crucifying Johnson after New Hampshire. So it’s always fun to observe the spastic knee jerks of scribes.
Instead of distilling the Chase contenders from pretenders, Tom Bowles of SI.com is playing the “what if?” game. A fun read, but it reminds me of one of my favorite sayings from my college cross country and track coach: “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.”
Speaking of attachments, as David Hobbs calls them, was there a gutsier performance in a major event all weekend than the victory produced by Valentino Rossi at Sepang? Seven-time MotoGP World Champion Rossi slipped to 11th after a horrible start in the Malaysian Grand Prix, but he sliced through the field in an imperious, improbable ride to the top step of the podium on his Fiat Yamaha.
Still, one couldn’t help but think Rossi’s fantastic ride and victory were messages Lorenzo for 2011: “Yeah, kid, you’re the champ this year. But I’m going to kick your ass back to Mallorca next year when I get on the red bike.”
Nobody plays mind games in MotoGP quite like Rossi.
It was a good weekend for MotoGP at Sepang. There was a stirring victory by Rossi, a popular new champion crowned in MotoGP, a nice story of redemption through the crowning of Toni Elias as the first Moto2 World Champion and news that Dani Pedrosa is returning next weekend for the Australian Grand Prix just two weeks after suffering a broken collarbone.
But all is not sunny for MotoGP. The bike count for the premier class in 2011 is looking pretty bleak, fluctuating between 15 and 17 depending on the rumor du jour. It’s a far cry from just five years ago, when there were 23 bikes on the grid for this event during the height of the incredibly competitive and exciting 990cc era.
There is a simple solution: MotoGP should just return to the exact specs of the 990 era. The racing was fantastic, the costs were lower, and the cornering speeds were safer. But the electronics’ groundhog has seen his ugly shadow over the last four seasons. So the all-controlling, all-powerful black boxes sadly never will be removed from the bikes.
In Formula One, Red Bull teammates Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber ran away and finished one-two, respectively, in the Japanese Grand Prix at the sensational Suzuka circuit. Webber leads Vettel and Fernando Alonso, who finished third at Suzuka, by 14 points heading into the Korean Grand Prix on Oct. 24.
And it looks like there will be an inaugural Korean Grand Prix, after all. The top layer of asphalt was just paved late last week, with the FIA’s Charlie Whiting on site for an inspection today.
The track is a typical crap Tilkedrome, with 17 turns, no flow, very few high-speed corners and maybe two good overtaking areas. It’s going to be a jarring contrast from Suzuka, which ranks right up there with Spa as the ultimate challenge among current F1 circuits.
Suzuka is a masterpiece designed by the late John Hugenholtz. Hermann Tilke, the designer of nearly all of F1’s boring new circuits over the last decade, isn’t even worthy to carry Hugenholtz’s sketch pad.
The mighty Mount Panorama circuit in Australia also is a man’s track that never could come out of the mind of Tilke. It’s the site of one of the world’s great races, the Bathurst 1000 for the awesome Aussie V8 Supercars. These machines are fantastic, basically agile Sprint Cup cars on steroids. Series stars Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife teamed up to win the most prestigious touring car race in the world Sunday.
Stewart Friesen won another big race Sunday that’s off the radar of many American racing fans, the SEF Small Engines Fuel 200 at Syracuse, N.Y. It’s the Super Bowl for DIRT modifieds, the top form of short-track racing in New York and Pennsylvania. Friesen became the first Canadian winner of the race.
In NHRA, Top Fuel superstar Larry Dixon continued to be the most clutch performer in drag racing — if not the entire motorsports world — this season. He beat Cory McClenathan in the finals of the national event at Reading, Pa., and has 12 victories in 12 final-round appearances this year. Perfection.
Dixon is 89 points ahead of Cory Mac in the NHRA standings with just two races remaining.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” — The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Dario drives like Daltrey sang in his glory days with The Who - cerebral but with pure power.
That lyric from one of my favorite bands bounced around my head tonight as I thought about Dario Franchitti winning his third IZOD IndyCar Series championship Oct. 2 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It was his third title on the trot if you figure he skipped the 2008 season to race NASCAR. And he’s also won two Indianapolis 500’s in the last four years.
Make no doubt about it: This guy is the boss of IndyCar racing over the last 15 years. Robin Miller, who knows a thing or 100,000 about great drivers, thinks so. I don’t need as large of an abacus to count my racing knowledge as Robin, but I think so, too.
It also was a good night in South Florida for one Danica Patrick, who tied a season best by finishing second in the Cafes do Brasil Indy 300. It was a solid salvage job by America’s Princess of Speed, who ended the season in the top 10 with the strong result after an intense duel with Andretti Autosport teammate Tony Kanaan down the stretch laps of the race.
But there’s no rest for weary Danica, who probably would give some of her sizable endorsement income to approach a single-digit finish in her Grand NASCAR Nationwide Experiment of 2010, which continues full-bore now that the IndyCar season is done.
You had to feel for Will Power after the Homestead race. The laid-back Aussie dude was visibly oozing the pressure of the title chase last weekend at Homestead. I was there, and Will was uncharacteristically tense and even borderline snippy in a press conference Friday night after Franchitti won the pole, trimming one point from Power’s 12-point lead entering the event.
And the coil spring of Will’s psyche finally snapped when he brushed the wall trying to avoid lapped traffic in the race, ending his race and his championship hopes. Contrast that with Dario’s chilly nerves when avoiding the spinning, crashing car of rolling chicane Milka Duno later in the race.
Power lost the title by five points, but he gained a ton of respect and injected a heavy dose of fear into his rivals this season. As Danica said of Power in the post-race press conference: “He did a hell of a job this year. He kicked ass on the road courses, for sure.” That he did, winning the inaugural Mario Andretti Road Course Championship Trophy. And Power also improved quite a bit on ovals, even though that first win on roundy-rounds eludes him.
Will, a tremendously likable guy, is going to be right there again for the championship next season with Team Penske.
Prospects for a strong year also are looking up for Graham Rahal. He announced a big sponsorship deal for 2011-12 with TBC Retail Group, a major American tire and automotive retail company, on Saturday afternoon at Homestead. Whispers are getting louder than Graham is heading to a third Ganassi team in 2011. Was it any coincidence that a Ganassi executive was in the deadline room when the press conference took place Saturday at Homestead? Hmm …
IndyCar’s favorite bad boy, Paul Tracy, also is aiming for a strong full-season ride in 2011. PT is beating the bushes and says he’s close to having enough funding for next year. Let’s hope so. You never can get too much of The Thrill from West Hill.
While Graham is set and things are looking up for PT, there was a bit of bad news for Tony Kanaan and Andretti Autosport. 7-Eleven, TK’s longtime primary sponsor in the IZOD IndyCar Series, is returning only as an associate on Danica’s car next year. AA has given TK permission to look around the series for another ride.
Sorry, but I just can’t imagine TK at another team besides Andretti. He has been the one fixture — the pillar — of that outfit since it came to the series in 2003 as Andretti Green Racing. No one has worked harder, no one has driven harder and no one has kept the team more focused and unified than TK. To lapse into American sportscaster-speak, TK is the glue guy at Andretti. The team simply cannot afford to lose Kanaan, who immediately becomes the most coveted free agent in IndyCar.
The rousing battle between TK and Danica over the last 30 laps at Homestead wasn’t the only compelling bout last weekend between teammates who aren’t exactly best buddies. The heated rivalry between seven-time MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi and 2010 champion-elect Jorge Lorenzo finally boiled over at Motegi in a phenomenal, elbow-rubbing duel Sunday.
Seriously, the only difference between the scrap between Fiat Yamaha teammates Rossi and Lorenzo over the last three laps of the race and the classic old video game “Road Rash” was the lack of spiked balls and chains. This was as close to 180-mph two-wheeled combat as you’re going to see.
And Jorge was not happy with The Doctor after the race. As if Rossi cares. He knows Lorenzo and another rival, 2007 World Champion Casey Stoner, hate him, and he doesn’t give a rat’s posterior. Ah, the beauty of psychological warfare. Vale is a master of it. Just ask Sete Gibernau and Max Biaggi. The brilliant Julian Ryder offers his always spot-on analysis of the Battle of Motegi at Superbike Planet.
Lorenzo, who just signed a two-year contract renewal with Yamaha, will get a bit of revenge this weekend at Malaysia: He’ll likely clinch his first MotoGP World Championship. Lorenzo’s closest pursuer in the standings, 2010 Red Bull Indianapolis GP winner Dani Pedrosa, almost certainly will miss his second consecutive race after suffering a broken collarbone in a crash during practice at Motegi.
Three-time Brickyard 400 winner Jimmie Johnson took the lead from Denny Hamlin in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup after finishing second behind Greg Biffle on Sunday at Kansas. But unlike MotoGP, it’s going to be awhile until this year’s champion is decided, as just 85 points separate eighth-place Biffle from points leader Johnson.
The tight points race should be a major topic of conversation heading into Tinseltown for the race this Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California, but instead a typical NASCAR soap opera is devouring the headlines. Kyle Busch and David Reutimann traded sheet metal and post-race barbs after they clashed twice on track at Kansas. The intent of Busch’s contact was debatable; Reutimann’s was not. He wanted to take out Busch and succeeded, helping to drop Rowdy to a 21st-place finish.
And thus the filmy residue of NASCAR’s “boys, have at it” policy was left on this race like soap scum around the base of the bathtub. Is it really in NASCAR’s best interests to have a non-Chase driver intentionally trash the race of a Chase driver? Jeff Gluck plays attorney, judge and jury in this blog, and his point is solid: NASCAR’s hands-off policy only will encourage more Chase-altering melees like Sunday at Kansas.
Maybe that’s what NASCAR fans want. But don’t you think NASCAR Nation would react a bit differently, with fewer “That puke got what was coming to him” comments spewed toward Busch, if the object of Reutimann’s bumper was Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Yeah, so do I.
Finally, Franchitti wasn’t the only world-class driver to lock up a title last weekend. Sebastien Loeb clinched his seventh consecutive World Rally Championship crown by winning his home Rally of France. Sorry, Herr Schumacher and Signore Rossi, but Loeb is the most dominant driver in the world over the last two decades. Hands down.
So maybe it’s not so bad to be Clint Bowyer, after all.
Remember last Thursday when I linked to a blog entry about whether it was better to be Clint Bowyer, winless but in the Chase, or Jamie McMurray, out of the Chase but the winner of the mega-monstrous Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400? I leaned toward the side of Jamie Mac, as people remember winners more than drivers who bring home their car safely in a nice points spot every week.
OK, Clint, I was wrong! No soup for me!
Well, Clint is a winner now. Bowyer won the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, the Sylvania 300, on Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and skyrocketed from the 12th and last spot in the Chase up to second.
While everyone is talking about Bowyer’s victory, Monte Dutton points out that it’s not unprecedented for an upstart to begin the Chase with a victory. Hell, Bowyer did it in 2007, and Jimmie Johnson still won his second consecutive title that year. But how will Clint adjust to being the main man of Richard Childress Racing’s three cars in the Chase?
Tony Stewart’s situation in Sunday’s fun race shows just how thin the line is between the penthouse and the outhouse. If Smoke had enough gas to hold off Bowyer over the closing laps, media would have anointed him as the favorite to win the Chase. Instead, he finished 24th and fell to 11th in the points.
But Smoke wasn’t the only popular Chase-winning pick to have trouble. Four-time reigning champ Jimmie Johnson finished 25th. But remember, JJ finished 39th in the opening Chase race in 2006 and still won the title. Jeff Burton finished 15th. A few people’s dark horse pick, Matt Kenseth, probably rode off into the sunset after finishing 23rd.
Kyle Busch finished ninth, but Rowdy’s immaturity — sometimes my 9-year-old son acts more grown-up than this guy — isn’t exactly a crucible of grace under pressure. I’m just not sure if Kyle has the mental toughness to survive the pressure of a 10-race grind. He’s THE classic example of checkers or wreckers, in the car and in his brain.
So where does that leave Denny Hamlin? As the leader of the Chase after finishing second to Bowyer, which maybe isn’t that surprising after Hamlin was the stylish pick to win the whole enchilada after taking the checkers at the final pre-Chase race Sept. 11 at Richmond.
Hamlin admitted that he didn’t have the greatest day or car Sunday, but he still ended up second. That should trigger the theme from “Jaws” in his rivals’ mind. That’s what champions do: Take rotten apples and still make damn good tasty cider.
One final comment about the New Hampshire race. It was an exciting show, with a lot of action and drama packed into a nice, three-hour window. Note to Daytona Beach: Sprint Cup races do NOT need to be 500 miles or 500 laps. This was a classic case of less is more.
Sure, some races should stay at the classic distance or lap total. But most of the NASCAR shows could, and should, be cut down to a more reasonable length. It’s less time plopped in front of the TV to see drivers cut meaningless laps, and it provides more of a sense of urgency and a better show.
OK, time to climb off the soap box.
The IZOD IndyCar Series’ championship chase — which doesn’t need a postseason to be close, I might add — has come down to Will Power vs. Dario Franchitti on Oct. 2 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Power’s Team Penske teammate, Helio Castroneves, won the Indy Japan 300 on Sept. 19 at Twin Ring Motegi, while two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Franchitti finished second. Power finished third, his best result on an oval.
But Dario looms closer than ever in Will’s rear-view mirror. Just 12 points behind. The math is pretty simple for Power: He needs to beat Dario at Homestead. Easier said than done, especially when you remember who won last year at Homestead to clinch the title. Yeah, that Franchitti kid.
Tony Johns takes a look at a few other trends from Motegi, including love for IndyCar in the Land of the Rising Sun and a solid performance by Danica.
Much rejoicing in the OWB
MotoGP served up one of its best races of the 2010 season Sunday at the new circuit at Motorland Aragon. Casey Stoner pulled free from the dogged pursuit of 2010 Red Bull Indianapolis GP winner Dani Pedrosa over the final laps for the first win by Ducati this year. American Nicky Hayden used a ballsy pass on the final lap to pass Jorge Lorenzo for third, the Kentucky Kid’s first podium finish since placing third in August 2009 at the Red Bull Indianapolis GP at IMS.
It was Lorenzo’s first finish off the podium in 13 races this season. But what’s even more shocking is that Lorenzo’s fourth place ended a run of 47 consecutive MotoGP podium finishes for Yamaha. Damn, that’s amazing. The Crossed Tuning Forks put at least one rider on the box for nearly the equivalent of three straight seasons.
Lorenzo’s Yamaha factory teammate, Valentino Rossi, suffered through his second-worst weekend of the season by finishing sixth. It’s pretty safe to say that Vale’s crash at Mugello in which he broke both bones in his lower leg will be tough to top as the lowest point of his year.
Rossi dropped a bit of a bombshell after the race by saying he may skip the final two races of the season, at Estoril, Portugal, and Valencia, Spain, to have surgery on the shoulder injury that has troubled him even more than the broken leg this season. It will be interesting to see if The Doctor changes his mind if Lorenzo’s 56-point lead over Pedrosa shrinks to dangerous margins by then.
Vale and Jorge aren’t buds, and there’s also a lot of friction between Rossi and Yamaha now that Rossi is moving to Ducati next season. And it looks like Rossi’s wizard/crew chief, Jeremy Burgess, and his entire Yamaha crew will follow Vale to Ducati in 2011. Rossi, the Pied Piper of MotoGP.
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