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Word-Butchering Talent Scouts

I’ve kindly been asked to join a co-operative of bloggers known as the United Open Wheel Word Butchers Association, which has been set up to cross-promote a selection of racing blogs to like-minded people.
After you’ve read this post take yourself over to the UOWWBA site and check out some of my colleagues’ blogs in the sidebar there, you might find some you’ve never seen before. I’d never seen Pit Out before and I’ve gone on to bookmark it (I also added it and Planet-IRL and Motorsports Ramblings to my sidebar). Pit Out is close to what this blog would be like if I could find the time / effort to update it as often.

Part of being with the UOWWBA is to answer a weekly question, in order to get our own individual take on any given burning issue. This week’s question is this:

“You have just been appointed to be the new “talent scout” for the IRL. Your first mission is to bring 5 drivers to the series. These can be former drivers from Indycar or from any other series. Which 5 would you pick and why?”

So here are my picks in no particular order:

1. Paul Tracy.
This might only be for the one season because let’s face it, even if Champ Car had continued Paul would be getting close to the end of his open-wheel career by now. His career should end the way it seems to have ended. He should go out fighting, that’s the Paul Tracy Way. I miss watching him race. I wish we could see him adapt to what he once called ‘those crapwagons’. When ‘unification’ was announced he was one of the first drivers I wanted to watch mix it among the IRL crowd, alongside Wilson, Servia and Power. He needs to be back. Just for one season. He just DOES dammit.

2. A J Allmendinger.
I don’t know much about this guy, but what I do know is that once he stepped up from a midfield team to Forsythe he completely killed the opposition. Then walked away. He shouldn’t be trolling around in back-of-the-field N-word teams. Even if Toyota plus Red Bull shouldn’t be back-of-the-field teams. Just like Toyota and Red Bull in F1, in fact.

3. Sam Hornish Jr.
Because he was getting better at road courses, wasn’t he? In any case we need drivers who are stronger on ovals than on road courses, as much as we need drivers who are stronger on road courses than on ovals. And we need flag-bearers from the ‘old’ IRL just as much we need those from the ‘old’ CART. Hornish is the best of that bunch. And the same applies to Hornish as it does to Allmendinger, vis a vis being in NASCAR.

4. Justin Wilson.
It looks like Justin is out of a ride so I’ll include him here, because he damn well shouldn’t be out of a ride. I hope N/H/L get some more funding and are able to run a second car with him in it. I’m sure he must be ‘first call’ in that instance. Look at his progress on road courses this year. He was one of the few to take it to Bourdais regularly in Champ Car. He dragged a half-assed Minardi around the F1 tracks to positions it should never have been, that car being the only one at the time without power steering.

5a. Robert Doornbos.
It looks like he may have signed for HVM, I’m not sure if that’s an announcement or just a rumour I’ve seen on websites. In any case he’s wasting his time in Superleague Formula. His sporadic F1 appearances showed potential, which he went on to prove in Champ Car before the series collapsed from under him. He was supposed to go into 2008 as a serious title contender against Wilson and Power. In reality he spent the year scratching around making a living in SF, A1GP and GT racing. He needs to be back in a top line open wheel car. I think he’d love ovals.

In case he’s signed already, an alternative no.5:
5b. Alex Lloyd.
He’s British, I’m British, and he’s a proven winner in that he’s the 2007 Indy Lights champ. The Indy Lights champ should always get at least few races in the main series during the following year or two. I know running the Indy 500 itself is a big deal, and if the winner of Lights always wins a prize drive at the 500 then that’s fantastic – but I don’t think they do. He needs a run with somebody who can give him a fair shot even if it is only half a season. Maybe he can run the road courses for Fisher (or a second car?).

For the last twelve months the automatic entry to this list was Dario Franchitti. Thankfully he’s back already!

Thanks again to Kohl for the invite to join the OWWBA.

To everyone else, I promise I *will* get the first of my Top Tens posted next weekend! I’ll probably start with the IndyCar one.

Race of Champions 2008

At the end of a hard year of racing, drivers like to relax with a little challenge. A head-to-head competition in equal cars around a circuit laid inside Wembley Stadium. The Race of Champions.

The 2008 event happens tomorrow and the draw has been made for both the Nations Cup and for the main event, the Race of Champions. Britain gets two teams, presumably as the host nation.

You have to take this loosely, some Nations aren’t really nations, some Champions aren’t really champions. Don’t let that spoil it because this is a varied and eclectic line-up.

Nations Cup
Heat 1: France vs Scandinavia*
Heat 2: USA vs Autosport Team GB
Heat 3: F1 Racing GB vs All Stars**
Heat 4: Germany vs Ireland

* Sweden and Denmark.
** The All Stars team was formerly Australia, however Mark Webber broke his leg and his place was taken by the Spanish champion of this year’s British F3 series, Jaime Alguersuari.

Each heat is a ‘best of 3’ and each team has 2 drivers.

Race of Champions
Gareth McHale (rally) vs David Coulthard (F1)

Adam Carroll (GP2, A1GP) vs Mattias Ekstrom (DTM, reiging ROC champ)

Tom Kristensen (Le Mans, DTM) vs Michael Schumacher (F1)

Jason Plato (BTCC) vs Andy Priaulx (WTCC)

Tanner Foust (drifting) vs Jenson Button (F1)

Troy Bayliss (Superbikes) vs Sebastian Vettel (F1)

Jaime Alguersuari (F3) vs Carl Edwards (NASCAR)

Yvan Muller (WTCC) vs Sebastien Loeb (World Rally)

Each heat is a ‘best of 3’. Tanner Foust is in because Travis Pastrana, star of last year’s event, got injured messing with a motorcross bike during the week. And as mentioned above, Mark Webber is out after injuring himself in an endurance event he organised.

Coverage

You can watch the ROC live on Sunday from 13:50 GMT (14:50 CET) at RaceOfChampions.com and simulcast at a variety of websites including Autosport and Pitpass.
In Britain it will be live on Sky Sports Extra and Sky Sports 3 HD (later there is delayed coverage on British Eurosport).
Across Europe it’ll be live on Eurosport International.
Fans in the US can see it live on Discovery HD.
Further coverage details.

The Nations Cup begins at 14:30 GMT, the Race of Champions gets under way at 17:30 GMT. Each competition is scheduled for two hours and there will be activities before and between the events.

I was at Wembley last year. It was a little over-priced, it was hard to see the drivers, there were big gaps in the crowd and it was VERY cold.
But there were solid reasons for all of these and the organisers have worked to overcome them this year. The new KTM X-Bow is open-topped so you can see the drivers more easily. The prices are lower this year. And the newly-rebuilt Wembley is frikkin’ HUGE (it looks great at night) – you can’t expect to fill a place that size first time out. I hope word of mouth and the lower prices make for increased attendance. I’m not going, I said last year it wasn’t worth going to it every year. Now I kind of wish I was.

You can see my 2007 photos here.

Taking stock

Okay, let’s take stock and see where we are. I don’t mean to be downbeat about all of the crappy news we’ve had over the last six weeks, but I do think it prudent to give a summary of what has changed since the end of the 2008 racing season.

– Honda out of F1. Big news for all concerned. Since last week, Honda has claimed they have 3 potential buyers lined up. I’m not sure how likely that is. I hope someone does buy the team and continue, even if they have to make swingeing cuts to survive. If nobody buys it we’re down to 18 cars and dangerously close to the other teams having to field a third car per Bernie’s contracts. Team orders? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

– Audi out of ALMS and LMS. I’d half-suspected they’d only do the LMS for the one year, the bigger surprise to me is dropping the ALMS almost entirely apart from Sebring. Instead they choose to take a new car to Sebring and Le Mans (and I bet they show up at Petit as well). Methinks Peugeot will win Le Mans.

– AGR out of Acura/ALMS and into A1GP. I’m sure if they jumped or if they were pushed, either way you have to think running the A1 car is a significant cost-saving over developing a prototype sportscar – I’m assuming they were helping develop it.

– Penske out of ALMS, and seemingly no Porsches at all in P2 in America OR Europe. Weird. In the US someone needs to run a customer car to go against Acura, and in Europe there are are easy wins going begging.

– I was going to mention GT1 collapsing globally, but I think that was happening anyway.

– SEAT out of BTCC. This was an announcement a couple of months back. SEAT are out of British Touring Cars, although they seem to be continuing in World Touring. The claim at the time was SEAT UK had met its marketing expectations and had reached the end of the programme. Now we’ve had all these other announcements, I’m not so sure that’s true.

– If any of the US carmakers go under (particularly GM) then it will knock on to racing activities somewhere or other, especially NASCAR but all over the world as well in Aussie V8s (Holden), WTCC (Chevrolet), BTCC (Vauxhall), and who knows where else.

– Don’t forget Super Aguri’s collapse earlier in the year.

There will have been more I’ve missed here (let me know in the comments), and more will unfortunately follow I’m sure.

One thing is very clear. 2009 is going to have a VERY different look.

Don’t get too disheartened though, think of this as a natural correction. Things got way out of hand especially in Formula 1. It’s time for a bit of restructuring before we head into the eco era.

Some good news:

– Acura is still moving up to P1 in ALMS as well as running a couple of P2 cars.

– BMW will have a new GT2 car in ALMS which will be run by Rahal/Letterman. A group of BMW’s WTCC drivers have been out at Road Atlanta developing it.

– Audi will have their new R8 GT car out. I saw it marked as a GT3 but I’m sure I’ve seen word of it going into GT2.

– More independent/privateer cars entering touring cars and world rally. This is a mixed blessing. Sometimes these teams and/or drivers are delusional no-hopers making up the numbers, yet sometimes it allows an underfunded but otherwise excellent team to take part and prove themselves. I like those guys, I always root for them.

– Honda’s F1 woes will not affect their IndyCar, MotoGP, ALMS interests or any other racing activity.

– IRL will seemingly still get 24+ cars at each round.

– We still have shitloads of racing – Too Much Racing for one person to follow, and long may it be so.

Again, let me know of any more good news in the comments.

Sorry for not posting on Friday as promised.

Honda out of F1 with immediate effect?

A few of the F1 news websites are abuzz with talk of Honda pulling out of Formula 1 with almost immediate effect. I must stress at this stage: this is just a rumour.
However, this looks to be more than the frequent will they / won’t they rumours we usually see about Renault. From the tone of the reports it looks as though SOMETHING is up at Honda. Whether that is a budget cut, a sale, or a shut down we just don’t know yet. Anyway, to the reports:

—–

GrandPrix.com is reporting that their US car sales are down 32% (and so was Toyota’s) compared to last year. They are scaling back on production and their plans to build more factories are on ice.
In terms of the F1 team the story includes this note:

On Thursday afternoon we received a flurry of reports that Honda F1 personnel have suddenly started applying for jobs in large numbers. We have been trying to contact Honda Racing F1 this afternoon but have thus far been unable to reach anyone.

The very next story on the site suggests that they are looking to sell the team by Christmas. Pitpass.com reports that a sale must be made before March 2009. I would suggest either date to be a very tall order although the Pitpass story suggests they have two potential buyers lined up already. Pitpass also says that Honda won’t supply engines to the new owners.

Again that second GrandPrix.com story notes of much higher than usual staff movement:

There is no confirmation from any Honda company officials, but teams across Europe are reporting that they have received a rush of applications from Honda F1 personnel in the course of the day. The fact that the team is not responding to requests for statements is a bad sign, as if the rumours are not correct they would need to be killed as quickly as possible.

It should be noted at this point that there is always a fairly big amount of movement between the F1 teams at this time of year among all levels of staff. GrandPrix.com knows this too, so it must be an unusual pattern for them to comment on it, and a ‘flurry’ in one day is certainly unusual.

The lack of activity from the PR / communications department is highly unusual too, as Honda (along with Renault) usually appear to be among the best at supplying info to the specialist press or TV, at least to my layman eyes.
As GrandPrix.com says, it may be best to wait a few hours and see what the parent company in Japan says after their business day begins.

My thoughts….

This was a complete surprise to me. That this is supposedly a full pull-out is also a surprise as after seeing the news, I thought they’d at least supply engines to the new owners, even if only for a year or two.

While this might not be big in terms of where the team is on the grid at the moment, this is absolutely huge in terms of a major manufacturer leaving Formula 1 – if indeed they are. I hope that they aren’t because, well, this is Honda! If any car company can turn around the fortunes of a badly performing F1 team then surely that company is Honda.

I also feel for the people at Brackley and other sites. I’ve been through a redundancy, it isn’t a nice experience. I hope this is either a) budget cuts, or b) a sale – and I hope it is not c) a shut down of the team.

The other consideration is this: If this is true and they are pulling out, what does this mean for the IRL and ALMS programmes? Are Honda looking at other savings, or are the costs sufficiently smaller that they are able to continue? ALMS can live without Acura/Honda, the series would be weaker (combined with Penske/Porsche out) but long-term it would get over it. IndyCar would be a different story. That would be a world of hurt.

Anyway. This is all conjecture. Let’s see what the Japanese parent company says on Friday.

Just to be clear, I must stress that these ARE just rumours at this point. I hope the websites aren’t putting 2 + 2 together to get 5. Both are known names in the F1 world and both have sources within it. I trust GrandPrix.com because they keep their ear to the ground when it comes to the business side of F1. I also know that Pitpass does some fact-checking before posting stories like this.
I strongly advise checking both. Autosport.com also fact-checks but they don’t have anything on this as I type – keep an eye out for something soon.

If it had been a lesser site I wouldn’t have pointed it out. I wasn’t going to post anything at all today as I have an exam in the morning and need to cram like crazy, but this couldn’t wait!

UPDATE @ 23.38 UK – an announcement is due in Japan at 4.30am UK time. The BBC now has a report up citing Reuters, it seems Fry and Brawn told the other teams at the FOTA meeting earlier this week. I’ll post more tomorrow.