Weekend Preview: 31st January & 1st February 2009
After last week’s excitement at Daytona we have a couple of quiet weeks again, with my listings only showing two events happening at all this weekend and absolutely nothing next weekend. Time for everyone to get their houses in order before the racing madness kicks off again in earnest.
I was actually thinking of setting up a Google Calendar showing all of these events, but actually I’d be better off giving you the link to one of the sources of info for this series of posts.
FORIX Race Calendar < < < Bookmark this page!
Red dots show events upcoming, green dots are past events and are clickable! The list of series expands as the year progresses so don’t worry if it looks small now.
FORIX (main page) is a colossal motorsport database which aims to record the result of any race anywhere. It started out as a Formula 1 resource in the early 90s, until they eventually filled in the gaps in F1 history and started adding other series. Now they cover all sorts of things. I’m not saying their coverage of other series is as comprehensive as their F1 coverage, it’s getting there though.
These days the site is hosted by Autosport.com (hence the banners and domain) but as far as I know it is still free. I have a sub to Autosport so it’s free for me anyway!
You might think giving the link defeats the object of these posts but I disagree – these posts are to flesh out those single-line entries and hopefully provide a bit of background and context.
On to the listings:
World Rally Championship [website]
Rally Ireland
Round 1 of 12
Rally HQ: Sligo, Ireland
The first round of this year’s WRC gets under way with the cross-border event on the Emerald Isle. I don’t know if this is the only rally in the world held in two countries, in this case Ireland and the UK, as the cars will cross the border into Northern Ireland. For that reason alone this event should be supported by everybody – it’s nice to see that kind of positivity.
For the WRC, the loss of the Monte Carlo Rally to the IRC is a bitter blow but one they put upon themselves. WRC is going through a turbulent time at the moment with crazy rules and crazy schedules. If you are able you should watch this year anyway as it may be the last we’ll see of the current-spec World Rally Cars before IRC-style Super2000 comes in, and let’s face it these guys throwing cars at the scenery (and missing) is still pretty spectacular stuff.
Trophee Andros
Clermont/Superbesse, France
Round 7 of 7
The final round of the sideways ice racing series. Take a look!:
Okay I’m out of here, maybe for a few days, maybe not…
I Watch Too Much Racing 