This Week in Motorsport
Formula Fun!
Formula One World Championship
Round 18
Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi
Sunday, 4 November 2012

Disaster! & disaster averted! Red Bull (Renault) blundered during qualifying at the Yas Marina Circuit. Reigning double World Champion Sebastian Vettel ('10 & '11) qualified third, behind '08 World Champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren (Mercedes) & '07 World Champion Kimi Räikkönen of Lotus (Renault), but then stopped on track on the instructions from his race engineer. This suspicious behavior drew the attention of the stewards & Vettel's RB8 was found not to have the required one liter of fuel remaining & available for inspection. Eight hundred fifty milliliters shy of the mark, Vettel was disqualified & had to start the grand prix from the back, not just the back of the grid but from the very pit lane itself. A stiff task was set the young German, as his chief rival double World Champion Fernando Alonso ('05 & '06) of Ferrari was to start from sixth (promoted from seventh by Vettel's disqualification), & Alonso is notable as an aggressive overtaker at the first corner.

There was the usual chaos at the first turn, but luck was with most of the field & only a single driver, Nico Hülkenberg of Force India (Mercedes), had his day ended. Mark Webber of Red Bull, who qualified second, made his customary dreadful start & was back in fifth place before the end of the first lap. Vettel began slicing his way through the back markers, but had his front wing damaged in a pair of incidents. There was an unholy smash up 'twixt the Mercedes A.M.G. of Nico Rosberg & the H.R.T. (Cosworth) of Narain Karthikeyan, with Rosberg's machine riding up & over Karthikeyan's, ripping the camera off the top of the roll hoop & sending carbon fiber shrapnel flying in all directions. Clearly & rightly afraid of fire, Rosberg hopped out of his wounded machine with uncanny quickness; fortunately, there was no fire. Vettel pitted during the resultant safety car period, had his wing replaced & received a new set of tires, was again relegated to the very back of the field, & began fighting his way back to the front. Hamilton was cruising serenely in the lead, untouchable by the pursuing Räikkönen, when his engine suddenly lost fuel pressure, ending his race. It was Hamilton's second retirement from the lead in the last five grands prix. Räikkönen assumed the race lead & was not to be denied; he lead from Hamilton's retirement through the pit stop rotation & all the way to Lotus's first* victory.

Behind him, Vettel showed the aggression & passing mastery last displayed at Spa in the end o' August, when he climbed from twelfth to second. At Abu Dhabi, Vettel overtook '09 World Champion Jenson Button of McLaren for third in the waning laps & might well have caught up to the second-place Alonso had he managed to get around Button two or three laps sooner. Vettel drove from twenty-fourth to third, one of the most amazing performances I've seen in my four years of watching motorsport. Hamilton, Räikkönen, & Webber were officially eliminated from championship contention; Alonso trails Vettel by ten points, with a maximum of fifty points available in the last two grands prix of the year, the United States & Brazil. With Vettel's exclusion from qualifying, Alonso had a golden opportunity to make up serious ground on his rival, or even resume the championship lead, but by claiming the third step on the podium Vettel kept his points-lead over Alonso in the double digits. Nothing is yet decided, & the championship will almost certainly not be decided 'til the season finale at Interlagos in São Paulo. This is thrilling stuff, & Abu Dhabi was amazing!

Next: the United States Grand Prix, for the first time since '07. The brand-new, purpose-build Circuit of the Americas looks mightily impressive, & will be plainly superior to the old, misbegotten "roval" at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (I.M.S.). This will be the race to watch, dear readers, the perfect chance to check out the F1 circus while basking in a glow of patriotism. Sunday, 18 November 2012, live at 1:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time for the pre-race show. The grand prix rolls off at 2:00 P.M., & Formula One races are time-limited to a maximum of two hours. Join me, won't you?

Indy Rock
Star Mazda Championship
Round 5
Night Before the 500
Saturday, 26 May 2012

U.S. F2000 National Championship
Round 5
Night Before the 500
Saturday, 26 May 2012

The "Road to Indy" is a Mazda-sponsored driver-development ladder meant to train-up the next generation of drivers in American open-wheeled racing. The four steps, from lowest to highest, are the U.S. F2000 National Championship, the Star Mazda Championship, Indy Lights, & the IndyCar Series proper. The races, both held at the smaller Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, not the larger, world-famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, were run months ago, & the respective championships long-ago decided, but that's O.K.; this is the time of year when the motorsports action is getting a little thin, & races from the meatier part of the year are most welcome. The "Night Before the 500" marked the only oval-track race on that F2000 schedule, & one of only two ovals for the Star Mazda drivers. I understand that if drivers are being trained to one-day race in the IndyCar Series & at the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race they have to get used to racing on ovals, but it still seemed… demented. Here are these kids, many of them teenagers & the oldest still in their early twenties, still learning their racecraft & the limits of their cars, how to navigate their way around a proper circuit, & suddenly they have to learn the new skill-set needed to "compete" in a crap-shoot oval-track race? Ovals are so incredibly inferior to road courses that I'm staggered, & irked if not slightly offended, that young pilots are still being taught to embrace those anarchic ovals. Also, as races, at least from the spectator's point of view, oval races are rubbish.

Semi-Pro
S.R.T. Viper Cup
Round 3
Road America, Race 1
Friday, 11 May 2012

Viper Cup races are short, only half an hour long, but they're kind of entertaining. They are, if nothing else, better than Mazda MX-5 Cup races. The cars are all previous generation Viper GTS-Rs, but watching them is also a pleasnt reminder of the new Viper GTS-Rs competing in the American Le Mans Series & soon, 'tis hoped, at Le Mans itself. But I digress. Big, loud, ludicrous American muscle? I can get behind that.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
William Shatner, "Ideal Woman" from Has Been (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "Ideal Woman" was featured in Monday's episode of Castle, a murder mystery set amidst a science fiction convention. "Ideal Woman" features one of my favorite turns of phrase, "turn of phrase." For so very many reasons, thank you, William Shatner!

"It's you I fell in love with:
Your turn of phrase,
Your sensitivity,
Your irrational moods…
Well, maybe that could go,
But everything else,
I want you to be you."