22 January 2009 – I Watch Too Much Racing

Weekend Preview: 24 & 25 January 2009

Welcome to the first proper weekend of racing in 2009!

Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series [website]
Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona [website]
Round 1 of 12
Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
A field of 52 cars and a huge cast of drivers take to the ‘roval’ (horrible word) course at Daytona for the annual sportscar classic. Will Ganassi triumph again, will arch rivals Penske’s entry spoil their party, or will it be a team ‘native’ to Grand-Am rather than one of America’s big racing powerhouses?
It gets under way at 3.30pm local time, 8.30pm UK. Coverage is live in the US on Speed (with the start on Fox). It looks like you guys get lots of hours of coverage. Here in Europe we’ll get 5 hours live on Eurosport 2 with a highlights show some time later. Note these are not a continuous five hours, and we don’t get the start. We should get from 9.30-11pm Saturday, then 6.30-7pm and 8-9pm on Sunday. I say ‘we’, I don’t actually have Eurosport 1 or 2…

A1GP [website]
4 of 10 (or thereabouts)
Taupo, New Zealand
The World Cup of Motorsport arrives down under. Marco Andretti, Robert Doornbos and Dan Clarke do battle with A1 regulars Adam Carroll and Neel Jani in the new Ferrari cars. The race is live on Sky Sports 1 at 00.30 on Sunday morning (okay, Saturday night). There are replays throughout the day on Sunday on both Sky Sports 1 and 2, the same is true for qualifying.

GP2 Asia Series [website]
3 of 6
Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain
The revolving cast of drivers arrives in Bahrain for what should be an entertaining couple of races, not that anybody will see them. Bahrain attracts zero spectators. This one is for schmoozing the sponsors. These races are on Eurosport. They were due to be delayed but because women’s skiiing got cancelled, should actually be live. Note these races are on Friday and Saturday.

Speedcar Series [website]
2 of 6
Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain
Speedcar returns on the double-bill with GP2 Asia as part of the ‘Grand Weekend’ which I think is a translation error.. I don’t believe live coverage exists outside of Asia but I could be wrong.

Intercontinental Rally Challenge [website]
Monte Carlo Rally
1 of 12
Valence, France; Monaco
This former World Championship rally switches to the IRC this year and has actually got under way already, the organisers taking the opportunity to extend the rally away from the constraints of the WRC.
There is coverage on Eurosport – some of it live – because the network part-owns the series! I believe live coverage is on Friday evening.

Andros Trophy [website]
6 of 7
Serre Chevalier, France
The penultimate round of the French ice racing series.

***
I’d planned to put logos up for most of these but ran out of time.

Before you complain, yeah I know I’ve not done the BMW F1 launch post yet. I’m getting around to it. Tomorrow. Promise.

In a surprise announcement about 24 hours ago, Dreyer & Reinbold announced Mike Conway as their first race driver of 2009. I’m guessing that wording means one or two drivers will be added to the programme, and that one of those is probably Milka Duno. It’ll be interesting to see if she does the full year this time.

I’d just like to say hi to anyone coming over here as a result of Jeff’s kind link at MyNameIsIRL.com. I commented over there about Mike Conway’s race history. MyNameIsIRL.com has been the source of most of my visitors for some time now, so thanks for coming!

Mike Conway is a fast driver who doesn’t seem to pull a decent year together. He’s one of those guys who you always think it’ll only be a matter of time before he does pull a good year together. A bit like Vitor Meira, he runs quickly but always seems to have a backmarker take him out or a little bit of mechanicals go wrong at just the wrong time. There’s never a right time, but mid-race when you’re running in the top three or four is particularly galling.

I commented on his test with Panther at the time and noted how that story seemed to come from nowhere – and this new announcement certainly did as well.
I wrote at the time:

Conway won a race at the Monte Carlo round of the GP2 Series, supporting the Monaco GP, and currently sits 11th in points. Not stellar, but respectable given the competitiveness of the midfield in GP2, and a win at Monaco is nothing to be disregarded. I saw that race and he was dominant, it was not a fluke.

Since then he put in some good performances but still only wound up 12th in points. Given his speed this is a bizarre finishing position to find himself and I struggle to explain it because he was a top 5 driver all season. Okay so his team did fade a little toward the end of the year, but not THAT badly!

I also noted how only autosport.com had the story. Clearly the ‘name’ US journos we all know and love (Miller, Cavin) must have known about the test – the guy was fastest – but I assume they didn’t take the prospect of him driving in 2009 too seriously. I didn’t either, I expected him to go for a full GP2 title assault with a top team!

I wish him well for 2009, it’ll be fascinating to see how he adapts. I have a feeling he’ll turn out to be a good oval racer but it might take him most of the year to get into it.