Sunday, April 17, 2011
Long Beach 2011
Hi Guys - Getting ready to head to downtown LB for today's festivities. As usual we're in Grandstand 40, halfway between the pit exit and turn 1 - - - best seats in the house! Not many surprises in qualifying yesterday except for the mediocre performance of the Ganassi boys - and the utterly DISMAL performance of PT. Guess he really is over the hill. At the risk of making him sound like a stripper . . . Will Power continued his flawless string of pole performances. Good to see Oriole Servia and NHR in the top 6. The weather today is considerably cooler than yesterday - probably on the order of 10-15 degrees (F) cooler. Overcast at the moment but the cloud cover should burn off by green flag time. It'll be interesting to see how that effects things since it was pretty hot yesterday and the sun was blazing. Stay tuned boys & girls. LBF
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Taped the race and haven't watched it yet - hope you enjoyed yourself!
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the Indycar race but the ALMS was pretty good so long as you paid attention to the GT class...
ReplyDeleteAs a blatant grab for visitors, the first few stories at www.feedmesportscars.com are exclusive photos from the sportscar races.
Good old speed channel here in Aust had the Nascar event live and my first recording missed the first 30 laps
ReplyDeletelucky i got another one on the cards at 8pm tonight where i will get the whole race
Damn! I just posted a LONG report on the entire weekend and now I can't see it!!!!!! Where'd it go???
ReplyDeleteNuts. Sorry guys. User error I'm sure. Don't have time to post it again and I'm not sure exactly what I did - - - I think I clicked on a link to another story before my post was completely locked in.
It was a great weekend with a lot of great racing - - - I'll leave it at that.
Hey Dave ... pity we lost your report ... from Stand 40 you would have had a great view of Elio taking out Power. At least we had another Aussie on the podium.
ReplyDeleteHey Jocksmemate ... do you really mean "tape"??? The Foxtel IQ box makes it s-o-o-o easy.:)
Hey Ferret ... I still keep looking for Indy races in the ESPN programming, before remembering we now have SpeedChannel :(
Hey Chris -
ReplyDeleteYa sorry I got lazy on that. I really did have a lengthy post but it evaporated.
That said - - - yes I had a great view of Castronevis and his sloppy braking. I read where Power was approached on three different occasions to offer up his post-race observations but he was still too worked up over the incident. Can't blame him. Maybe Helio should stick to dancing with the stars rather than dancing with the cars . . .
Other than that particular restart it was a pretty clean race. Conway put on an amazing show in the final 15 laps. Not sure where he found that kind of speed or where it was prior to that final restart, but he was absolutely untouchable on that final stint.
Actually the entire weekend was one of the best Long Beach weekends we have seen in a long time. The World Challenge race was great - so was ALMS. Although since the lights weren't working on the side of the ALMS cars - and since there was no leaderboard posted on the big screen TVs, it was impossible to keep track of the lead changes for all but the LMP1 cars (they only had two cars in LMP1). When you have 5 classes of cars on the track at the same time you really do need some help keeping track of things.
The Indy Lights race was a good race too. Lots of fun when you watch two different leaders find the wall during the course of a race!
And hell - - - even the celebrity race saw some good action! All in all one of the best Long Beach weekends in years.
Wow! And you said you lost your "long" report Dave :)
ReplyDeleteRe Power post-race: What we saw on TV was the typical laconic Will who actually witnessed the vision "on-air" for the first time.
Dismal? PT fought he way up through half the field during the race AFTER stopping for a black flag. He's not the young PT but he can still bring it.
ReplyDeleteThe race was OK. Lil Andretti dropped at least 3 F-bombs on TV.
I don't hold too much hope for this being a very good season. This is a spec series in their last year of a car. Too bad the 2012 cars couldn't be ready for this 100th anniversary year.
Re: ALMS and tracking the leaders
ReplyDeleteTrue. It is difficult but the cars do have lights right on their sides for P1, P2, & P3. I have often thought it would be a great idea to have something like that for all racing series. With LEDs today, a series could display the actual position on the car from P1 thru P99.
re: Helio's sloppy drive
I really used to like the guy. I'm glad he beat that IRS rap. But he's gone Hollywood. What used to be authentic charm seems so fake now. On top of that, I think what we are seeing makes the case that the car and team can often times make the driver. When is the last time anyone was impressed by Helio's driving?
Re ALMS tracking - - - the lights are a great system, but with the exception of the two P1 cars they weren't operating. That was the frustrating part.
ReplyDeleteRe PT: Qualifying was dismal, and the mistakes during the race were disappointing. A speeding ticket and the incident with Wilson. He did show some good speed but he was off by himself for a big part of the race. I've been a PT fan forever and I guess I'm just disappointed that I don't see more from him these days. This year is his most active open-wheel racing schedule since he lost his full time ride, so hopefully we'll see improvement along the way.
Re the 2011 Indycar season: American open wheel racing has been spec racing for at least a decade, so nothing new there. But yes - absolutely looking forward to next year. I will say that the driver talent this year is pretty deep. Franchitti / Ganassi and Power / Penske will obviously be leading the pack, but the other drivers and teams are looking competitive too. Conway really looked good in Long Beach - - - As PT noted in his Racer.com blog, it's not often that somebody will pass a Ganassi car (Franchitti) and a Penske car (Briscoe) on successive laps. That was a lot of fun to watch. And - - - GASP - - - Danica even looked good (uh - - - I mean her driving - - - ).
And re Helio: I couldn't have said it better. I would be very surprised to see Helio Hollywood in a Penske car next year.
RE: ALMS lights
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware these were not functioning. It would have been nearly impossible to follow then.
re: Tracy
GO PT!
re: Helio
Hollywood Castroneves - That could stick.
Re The LED Lights: Had the first-hand experience of Newman-Haas at Surfers 2001-ish running LED messages from their hubs. Somewhere in my Box-Brownie archives I've got pix ---impressive in view of their carbon-dated status :)
ReplyDeleteRe The Winner: Just how did he bolt through in the latter laps????????? Running on nitrous or what???? Certainly some performance enhancement surely!!!!!!!!!!