February 21, 2008
The racing season’s already begun (yay!). As noted in the comments to the post from last year, Ryan Newman won the Daytona 500, and amazingly did it without shoving other people out of the way like he usually does.
I was disappointed that Stewart didn’t win, and thought he kinda gave it away, moving down to Kyle Busch, instead of staying high with the Penske cars. It really seemed like Stewart was the ONLY person who could pass another car on his own at the end of the race, but unfortunately, he just didn’t get the break he needed.
Looks like a pretty good season coming up. I was hoping Dario would do better, but it looked like Ganassi was just totally at-sea with their cars. They performed badly all through Speedweeks, unlike their DP cars.
And now less than a month before the start of F1! Hopefully the early testing Ferrari speed will continue through the season, and we won’t see McLaren at the front for the whole year. I think they’re really going to be hurt, testing wise, losing Alonso, and I don’t think that Renault will have enough time with Alonso to have the car competitive enough at the beginning. I also don’t think that Renault can be nearly the force at the front of the field without the Michelin tire advantage they had for their last two championships. It was pretty obvious that Bridgestone let Ferrari down those two years, and now they’re letting everyone down equally!
March 18, 2008 at 8:58 am
Well, so much for those hopes & dreams.
The Ferrari’s are indeed fast, but Hamilton and the McLaren are right with them.
After Sunday’s wreck-fest, there are probably are lot of teams scrambling to figure out what the heck happened. Well, maybe not Timo Glock’s team (he should be a hitman, seriously). Hopefully, the track officials have already smoothed out that ramp that sent Glock airborne.
As for the rest, Kimi & Taku were blistering on the start, and if not for the car just dying, both would have been much higher up in the points. Kimi’s spins probably didn’t help his motor’s lifespan though.
Good steady debut for ex CART pilot Sebastian Bourdais. Hopefully he can improve upon the efforts of the last few CART drivers to make the jump. Yes, Villeneuve won the Championship, but did nothing afterwards, Montoya won some races, and Andretti was with the wrong team at the wrong time, as McLaren was a one car team that just put the 2nd car out there to take points away from the rest of the field.
Anyway, back on home soil, the split is over finally, but I’m not cheering. The asstacular flipmobile IRL chassis and boring normally aspirated motor are still around, and they’re still going to run at Texas, so nothing good happens except there will be one set of races to not care about. Hopefully they’ll approach the near perfect balance of oval, natural road, and street courses that CART had at it’s peak.
As for NASCAR, the new car seems to be doing well, and I think once Goodyear comes up with some new compounds that complement it and not try to use the same tire for the Nation… feh, the Busch cars, Stewart and the rest will quit moaning, and focus on the glaring wall issues at the tracks, and get back to driving.
Happy to see Jr running well, as well as the RCR 1-2-3 at Bristol.
Sad to see Dale Jarret hang up the helmet, but I think he’ll do very well following in his Dad’s path up in the booth.
Am I the only one that though they should have asked Ned to come upstairs and fill in for DW sunday? That would have rocked.