This Week in Motorsport
This weekend saw the running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona (a.k.a. the 24 Hours of Daytona), the opening round & crown jewel of the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series. Sure, I don't like the Rolex Sports Car Series as well as the American Le Mans Series (A.L.M.S.), & I weep at the thought of that sorry circuit at Daytona as the "heart of American motorsport," but there are six weeks 'til the first round of the Formula One World Championships & seven weeks 'til the 12 Hours of Sebring, the beginning of the A.L.M.S. season; you know the bit about beggars & choosers. I watched the day-long race only sporadically, but 'twas a delight to hear again the dulcet tones of Bob Varsha & David Hobbes, two of the three chaps who anchor Speed's coverage of F1.

Possibly interesting fact: my fathers refers disdainfully to Porsches as "panzers." This apparently dates back to the early '70s, when the Porsche 917/10 dominated the Can-Am series, acquiring a reputation as the "Can-Am Killer," though in reality the Arab oil embargo played a much more significant role in Can-Am's demise. McLaren's apparently dominated Can-Am for years prior to the arrival of the "panzers," yet I've never heard him utter a word against the New Zealanders. An additionally curious facet of his antipathy toward Porsche is his expertise in & extensive collection of models based on the tanks designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche before & during the Second World War. He's go no problem with actual Porsche panzers, only the racing "panzers."

24 Heures du Mans
Audi has unveiled their new closed-cockpit Le Mans prototype, the R18; let's hope it looks better once it's in full racing livery: R18link. The R18 won't race at Sebring, where Peugeot are expected to debut their new 90X (nine-oh-ex, not ninety-ex); instead, Audi will compete with the R15 Plus, which depended on reliability not speed to beat the retired Peugeot 908.

There are new regulations for 2011: will this be the year that a petrol-powered car can challenge the dominance of Audi's & Peugeot's Diesels?

American Le Mans Series
The A.L.M.S. has sold its soul to E.S.P.N., a vicious cancer at the heart of modern American sport. This year's races won't be presented in their entirety on T.V., only on the espn3.com website, with edited recap versions to be broadcast later on E.S.P.N. 2 & A.B.C. I watched an edited recap version of a race last year on C.B.S., & it was unpalatable. So, from my perspective the A.L.M.S. just isn't going to be on T.V. at all. The president of the series has put up a couple of videos explaining that T.V. & the internet are basically the same thing these days; so, this is a great deal "for the fans." I beg to differ, in that the chair at the desk in my room upon which sits my Mac Mini & flatscreen monitor is not nearly so comfortable as the plump green armchair with matching ottoman from which I have heretofore watched motorsport (with the expection of those few hours of the 2010 24 Heures du Mans that were not broadcast on Speed, but rather streamed on speed.com). I spend long hours in my room at my desk studying & using the internet; part of the joy of motorsport has been that it gets me out of the ten-foot-by-ten-foot cell for a breath of proverbial fresh air. I'm surely not going to sit in here for the half-a-day of the 12 Hours of Sebring, nor the ten hours of the season-ending Petit Le Mans. And I have no ability to record streaming races for later viewing; so, during those times when I'm unavailable to watch the race as it happens, I just won't be able to see the race at all. I loved watching the A.L.M.S. in '10 & will try to make the best of '11, but to quote almost every character in Star Wars, "I've got a bad feeling about this." I am in the process of composing a missive to the A.L.M.S. leadership expressing my dismay at this wrongheaded decision, but despite their hypocritical insistence that everything they do is "for the fans," we don't amount to a hill of beans next to the lucrative bribes & enticements emanating from the den of iniquity known as Bristol, Connecticut.

Formula One
Scuderia Ferrari has named their 2011 car the F150, in honor of Italy's sesquicentennial. I mention this mostly as an excuse to type the word sesquicentennial, toward which I shall always have warm feelings due to the celebration of Michigan's sesquicentennial of statehood in 1987, when I was a wee lad. Who doesn't love a good sesquicentennial? Happy sesquicentennial, Italy, you land-grabbing fiends! (Give us back the Papal States!)

Project MERCATOR
On Friday, I motored to B.F.E. (Davison) for Love/Hate's birthday party. It is a sadly accurate measure of her immaturity, perhaps even infantilism, that she regards herself as "old" now that she's twenty-three. Through no skill of mine own, I dodged a bullet there. Stupid child. I use the term "party" loosely: the gathering consisted for communal observation of one or two of our number playing with the Kinect system for the Xbox 360, & later of communal viewing of an episode of Ghost Adventures. I had fun, I'm not trying to say I didn't, I'm simply dubious that those activities really amount to a party.

Project GLOWWORM
To the party, I wore my brand-new fez. I love owning a fez.