Lies, Damned Lies, & the News
Interesting, is it not, that a few weeks ago, before the debates, N.P.R. was like every other news outfit, reporting that the Gallup poll favored President Obama over Governor Romney—& that therefore the election was essentially over—‚ but now that the Gallup is reversed & Governor Romney holds a bigger lead over President Obama than Mr. Obama held before the debates I heard—just yesterday—not one but two different stories on N.P.R. on the unreliability of polls & how the real way to predict an election's outcome is to consult overseas bookmakers, where the odds still favored the president's re-election. When the polls favor Mr. Obama, the polls were so reliable that we might as well not even bother with the election; when the polls do not favor Mr. Obama, the polls are so unreliable that bookies are promoted as the new Oracle at Delphi. That kind of naked partisanship is not exactly what was meant when many persons called out for greater transparency from the Fourth Estate.

This Week in Motorsport
By Endurance We Conquer
American Le Mans Series (A.L.M.S.)
Round 5
Grand Prix of Mosport
Sunday, 22 July 2012

The race from (sponsor) Motorsports Park, formerly Mosport (pronounced "Moe-sport"), was the second of three races broadcast live on television. Rather, at least part of the race was broadcast live. The race was two hours forty-five minutes long; the live coverage started one hour into the race & covered the remaining hour & forty five minutes, plus fifteen minutes for interviews with class winners & the trophy presentations. This is an imperfect solution, but it entirely superior to the other procedure, which it to take a two hour forty five minutes race & edit it down to be broadcast in two hours on the following day.

Mosport is an excellent track, one worth the frustration of having the A.L.M.S. journey to the loathsome Canadas.

Round 6
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge
Saturday, 4 August 2012

Mid-Ohio, like Lime Rock & Mosport before it, saw another partially live television broadcast, but I saw the race live in its entirety from the Turn 4 grand stands. Woot! There is a tremendous speed differential betwixt the P1 prototype & the other four classes of cars in the race, especially the spec. G.T. Challenge Porsches. I knew this from television & reading about the races, but didn't fully comprehend 'til I saw with mine own eyes the Muscle Milk Honda ARX-o3a pass other cars as if they were standing still. It seemed that every thirty seconds (in reality, about a minutes & ten seconds) the white & black blur flashed by, appearing & disappearing in little more than the blink of an eye. Holy smoke!

My father & I opted not to rent a race radio, which might well have been a mistake. (I know, I know, I still owe you a proper accounting of my first real race experience. I am terribly behind on everything.) It was only with some not insignificant difficulty, including leaving our seats to take a gander at the nearby Jumbo-tron, which carried the T.V. feed, that were we able to keep clear which car was leading each class (with the obvious exception of the P1-leading Honda mentioned above). At the end of the day, Corvette Racing prevailed over the damnably quick Porsche from Flying Lizard Motorsports. Hooray! All was right with the world.

Round 7
Road Race Showcase
Saturday, 18 August 2012

The four-hour race at Road America (quite possibly America's greatest racing circuit) featured the closest finish I've ever seen, literally fractions of the second after four hours of hard racing. The Mazda-powered Dyson Racing prototype does not have the pace to keep up with the Honda-powered Muscle Milk entry, not over a whole race lap, but the turbocharged Mazda powerplant doesn't have some advantage over the Honda engine is low-end torque, allowing the Dyson to get uto speed faster from a standing start & to accelerate more quickly out of slow corners & up hills. Muscle Milk was fast, but was plagued by electrical gremlins; Dyson made hay while the sun shone & pounded out lap after lap after lap. When the Muscle Milk finally emerged from the garage area, it was blisteringly fast, but several laps behind the Dyson. Inexorably, the Honda gained ground & gained ground & eventually unlapped itself. The Honda drew closer & closer to the Mazda, following right on its tail through the last few laps. On the final lap, at the very last corner, the Honda made a desperate drive to the inside, got "underneath" the Mazda, & assumed the lead! But the last corner is at the bottom of a hill, & as the two prototypes climbed the hill the turbocharging of the Mazda-engined Dyson gave it an edge in power & the two cars crossed the finish line with the nose of the Muscle Milk Honda in line with the rear wheels of the Dyson Mazda. It was the next closest thing to a photo finish! There is more to endurance racing than pure speed. had the Honda been more reliable, it would have carried the day, but because the Dyson squad were able to keep their slower car on the road, the day was theirs. "By endurance we conquer." What a race!

Round 8
Baltimore Sports Car Challenge
Saturday, 1 September 2012

In an earlier episode of "This Week in Motorsport," I described the Baltimore steer circuit as a "train wreck" (Wayback Machine, scroll down to "Indy Rock"). That was in the context of the IndyCar Series, open-wheeled single-seaters being the most nimble of race cars; for prototypes meant to conquer the wide open, high-speed Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France, the narrow concrete canyons of Baltimore, especially marred as they are by railroad tracks, are entirely inappropriate. The prototypes can't even really race at Baltimore, they can merely circulate & hope not to crash. The appalling Baltimore street circuit is on the just-announced 2013 schedule, but the lovely Mid-Ohio road course (& you know how much it takes for me to praise anything in Ohio) is not. Scandal! The race results don't matter, they were the result of chance not skill or preparation.

Round 9
V.I.R. 240
Saturday, 15 September 2012

There had not before been a race at the Virginia International Raceway (V.I.R., stylized as VIRginia International Raceway), but as a testing course Car and Driver magazine had raved about the facility. Perhaps their praise had created unrealistic expectations. I found the "Full Course" layout suitable, but unremarkable. The № 4 Corvette won the race in the G.T. class & thereby won the G.T. Team Championship for Corvette Racing & the G.T. Drivers' Championship for pilots Oliver Gavin & Tommy Milner. Huzzah! David Letterman's B.M.W.s are dethroned, the Corvettes are back on top, & all's right with the world!

Next: the season finale is being run today, the 15th Annual Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The race is ten hours or one thousand miles, whichever comes first (always one thousand miles). The Petit Le Mans is not a round of the new F.I.A./A.C.O. World Endurance Championship (W.E.C.) as it was part of the A.C.O.'s solo Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (which was so successful that the F.I.A. asked the A.C.O. to form & run the W.E.C.), but is being run jointly as the season finale of the European Le Mans Series; so, both the prototype & G.T. ranks are swollen, with forty-three cars in the field, including the unclassified, ultra exotic DeltaWing, which ran with such fanfare at Le Mans.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
The University of Michigan Marching Band, "M Fanfare" from Hurrah For the Yellow and Blue (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Go Blue!