The Explorers' Club
№ CCCXXIV - The United States Supreme Court's ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 1922.







This Week in Motorsport
Tourists
World Touring Car Championship
Rounds 13 & 14
Race of Portugal
Sunday, 3 June 2012

Rounds 15 & 16
Race of Brazil
Sunday, 22 July 2012

Catching up with the W.T.C.C. continues to be an excellent balm to the winter's lack of ongoing racing. (Thanks, Speed!) The most noteworthy happening in the last four races was a promotional stunt at the Race of Portugal. Alain Menu of the Chevrolet factory team impersonated French comic-book character Michel Vaillant all weekend, in a promotion of last summer's release of the latest Michel Vaillant album (graphic novel, in Yankee parlance). Menu's Chevrolet was repainted as a Vallante, the car's transporter was repainted in Vaillante team colors, his race engineer & several other team mambers wore Vaillante team kit, & Menu wore Vaillant's signature blue helmet (Bleu de France, of course), a firesuit identical to Vaillant's in the latest album, & even died his gray hair black to match M. Vallant's. Two names were listed in the windows, "A. Menu" & "M. Vaillant," the latter as part of the promotion & the former, I'd wager, because of F.I.A. rules. I've never read Michael Vaillant & cannot say it it's good or bad, but I wholeheartedly support any publicity stunt that is a thorough, as whole-hog as the Chevrolet/Vaillante shenanigans.

On track, the Chevrolet trio of Menu, defending triple World Champion Yvan Muller, 7 Rob Huff continued to be in a class of their own, winning all four of the races in Portugal & Brazil, two victories for Muller & one each for Menu (as Vaillant) & Huff.

British Touring Car Championship
Rounds 1-3
Brands Hatch, Indy Circuit
Sunday, 1 April 2012

Rounds 4-6
Donington Park, National Circuit
Sunday, 15 April 2012

Rounds 7-9
Thruxton Circuit
Sunday, 29 April 2012

Rounds 10-12
Oulton Park, Island Circuit
Sunday, 10 June 2012

Rounds 13-15
Croft Circuit
Sunday, 24 June 2012

Rounds 16-18
Snetterton, 300 Circuit
Sunday, 12 August 2012

Rounds 19-21
Knockhill Racing Circuit
Sunday, 26 August 2012

Rounds 22-24
Rockingham Motor Speedway, International Super Sports Car Circuit
Sunday, 23 September 2012

The first thing I noticed about the B.T.C.C. is that those boys play too roughly. The irritatingly bombastic I.T.V. announcers describe "bumping" as a natural part of touring-car racing, but to my mind ramming into the back of a competitor's car so that it turns sideways & slides off the track should not be a natural part of any motor racing. I accept that different sports have both different rules & different cultures—e.g., I have no issue with fighting in hockey, even as I hold firmly that any football player who throws a punch on the field should be banned for the remainder of the season—but in those first few rounds the B.T.C.C. looked like anarchy. Sanctions, such as drive-through penalties, seem not to be applied with any logic or consistency. This post address races broadcast over eight weekends, & raced over a greater span of time, & as the season has worn on things seemed to have calmed down. There is still more contact than I'd like, but the same is true of the Australian V8 Supercars (more about whom below), & there is at least now a greater seeming consistency in the enforcement of the rules.

Aside from some pretty decent racing, one of the charms of the B.T.C.C. has been to see a lot of British circuits I'd heard about in passing references to motor racing's past & read about in Jim Clark At the Wheel, tiny, tortuous tracks of the old school like Brands Hatch & Outlon Park. I do mean tiny: the Indy Circuit layout of Brands Hatch is only 1.2 miles long; the faster cars of the D.T.M. series lap the course in around forty seconds, leading me to wonder if the divers might actually get dizzy circling such a small area. The grand prize to this point (trios of races around Silverstone, though a different layout than is used for the F1 British Grand Prix, & the longer Brands hatch Grand Prix Circuit remain) goes to Scotland's Knockhill Circuit, as tiny & tortuous as any of the others, but with more elevation change per square yard than any other circuit I've ever seen. There is one corner that sees the cars come streaking down a steep incline only to make a more than ninety-degree corner & then immediately fight their way uphill again. It's diabolical! The least fortunate venue has been the most recently seen, Rockingham, a verdammt oval. (Yes, there are wretched American-style oval tracks in Europe.) The race was run on the "roval" layout, using part of the oval combined with an in-field road course. Rovals are awful. The only thing than can be said in rovals' defense is that they are better than ovals, even if only marginally. Fortunately, Rockingham is the only such abomination on the B.T.C.C. calendar.

The B.T.C.C. would be more entertaining if it wasn't for the aforementioned television commentators. Dick Vitale's basketball punditry seems sedate by comparison, & their histrionics are exceedingly light on insightful analysis. It's the triumph of style over substance, & adding insult to injury I don't even like the style.

Beyond Thunderdome
Before 1999, the V8 Supercars series was known as the Australian Touring Car Championship (A.T.C.C.), & unto the present day the V8 Supercars season champion is declared the Australian Touring Car Champion. Time & distance, though, have bred tremendous differences twixt the World & British Touring Cars & the Aussies. A V8 Supercar is a magnificently old-school beast, a rear-wheel-drive sports sedan with a 5.0 Liter naturally-aspirated, eight-cylinder engine, whereas W.T.C.C. cars can be eight front- or rear-wheel-drive & are typically powered by turbocharged 1.6 Liter four-cylinder engines. 5.0 Liter V8s roar, 1.6 Liter inline-fours buzz. On most tracks, abominable though American muscle-car enthusiasts might find this, the front-wheel-drive Chevrolets & S.E.A.T.s, et al., have a decided advantage over the rear-wheel-drive B.M.W.s. V8 Supercars are based on big sports sedans, the Holden Commodore & the Ford Falcon, to be jointed this year by the Nissan Altima & the Mercedes-Benz E-class; the dominant car in the W.T.C.C. is the Chevrolet Cruze while the Honda Civic the bully of the B.T.C.C. So, while an argument could be made for blogging about the V8 Supercars, the former A.T.C.C., under the "Tourists" title, due to the many differences cited above we here at The Secret Base will continue to call our V8 Supercars coverage "Beyond Thunderdome."

The madness returns at the end o' February/beginning of March, with the '13 season to include the V8 Supercars' inaugural race in these United States.

The Queue
The archaic language of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" was an absolute delight. I needs must make more regular use of such outstanding words as "quoth" & "ere."

Recently
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Fighting Man of Mars
Frank Miller, 300
Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" from The Arabian Nights

Currently
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill ***suspended***

Presently
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Swords of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Synthetic Men of Mars
Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Llana of Gathol
Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars
Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator, "Sinbad the Sailor" from The Arabian Nights
Richard Price, Clockers

My Macintosh's spell-checking software has many curious preferences. "Sinbad" is flagged as misspelt (as is "misspelt"), but "Sindbad" is A-O.K. "Habsburg" is flagged, but Hapsburg is fine.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Ivy, "Lucy Doesn't Love You" from Long Distance (T.L.A.M.)

Mittwoch, 23 Januar
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, "Tomorrow" from …Are a Drag (T.L.A.M.)