This Week in Motorsport

Rally Monkey
European Rally Championship
Round 1
Internationale Jänner Rallye
3-5 January 2014

I discovered late last year that the European Rally Championship (E.R.C.) was broadcast on the Velocity channel, part of the Discovery Communications galaxy of network. (Velocity carried programing that originated on France's Eurosport, now majority owned by Discovery.) The 2013 rallies were aired late in the year, often months after they were initially run; I hope that this year's rallies will be broadcast throughout the year, mere weeks after each rally, but I have no information about Velocity's plans. My scouring of the television listing has yet to turn up any coverage of this year's Jänner Rallye, but hope springs eternal.

Dakar Rally
35th Running
5-18 January 2014

The Dakar Rally (Wayback Machine 1 & Wayback Machine 2) is one of the world's truly great sporting events, a proof of the words long attributed to Ernest Hemingway: "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor-racing, & mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." A pall was cast over this year's Dakar, though not by the demise of a competitors & a pair of journos, because it is these men's willingness to risk all, &, yes, to lose all, in pursuit of the achievement that is the Dakar that proves the endeavor's worth. (Watch for the forthcoming post, "Last Year in Motorsport," a discourse of mortality in motorsport.) No, the pall was cast by unsporting behavior by the X-Raid team, whose Mini Countrymen swept the podium in the "car" class. The Minis were the class of this year's Dakar, of that there is no doubt: in addition to occupying all three spots on the podium, Minis were seven of the top ten finishers. The problem is that in the last few stages, they ordered their drivers to hold station, not to pass one another, not to compete, but simply to drive slowly & carefully to the end in the order they were in at that moment. This lead to the embarrassing spectacle of one Mini, driven by Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel, pulling off to the side of the road & remaining stationary for over seven minutes until passed by the Mini of Spaniard Nani Roma. Boo! Boo! Dirty pool! X-Raid & Mini have earned my enduring enmity. I will forever root against any Mini in any competition anywhere.

Glorious sport prevailed over underhanded team orders in the truck, "bike," & "quad" classes. This was only my second Dakar, but as with my initial encounters with the 24 Heures du mans & Formula One, I know that I have stumbled onto a long-term passion.

World Rally Championship
Round 1
Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo
16-18 January 2014

Last year, the World Rally Championship (W.R.C.) was broadcast on American television on the Mav.T.V. network (stylized as MAVTV, which is just nonsense, & pronounced "Mav-Tee-Vee;" I have determined the placement of the punctuation marks by the channel's original name, Maverick Television). The rallies were always broadcast a few weeks after they were run, so we shall see if that pattern holds true this year. In the meanwhile, I can follow the action via videos on the W.R.C. website (www.wrc.com), though television is of course preferred.

By Endurance We Conquer
United SportsCar Championship
Round 1
(sponsor) 24 at Daytona (A.K.A. the "24 Hours of Daytona")
25-26 January 2014 ***upcoming***

The American Le Mans Series (A.L.M.S.) is now owned by N.A.S.C.A.R & has been merged with N.A.S.C.A.R.'s own Grand-Am (sponsor) Sports Car Series to form a new, united, North American endurance racing championship, the uninspiringly named United Sports Car Championship (U.S.C.C.). The new series's mantra has been, "Getting it right,the first time;" this is poppycock, as the first announced name for the new series was the even more lame United SportsCar Racing, which lead to all sorts of awkwardness as commentators referred to the "new United SportsCar Racing... series." Those arrogant morons at N.A.S.C.A.R. didn't get it right the first time, & got it only slightly less wrong the second time, with the U.S.C.C. name. Also, that brood of vipers is apparently so inbred that it thinks "sports car" is one word, SportsCar.

My cup overfloweth with hatred for N.A.S.C.A.R., but I am trying to keep an open mind. The new series does take the endurance aspect of endurance racing seriously, at least, with four races comprising the "North American Endurance Championship": the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Six Hours of the Glen (Watkins Glen), & the ten-hour Petit Le Mans. If the enterprise is to prosper, there will surely be bumps on the road, especially as they try to strike the right balance between the brilliant, high-tech hares of the old A.L.M.S. & the brutish, low-tech tortoises of the old Grand-Am. This weekend's Daytona 24 won't tell us much, because it is only the first race & because Daytona is a staggeringly uninteresting racing venue; the shape of things to come will became more clear at March's 12 Hours of Sebring.

I am deeply conflicted, because my heart wants to new series to succeed, but my brain doubts that it will, doubts that it can. The old Grand-Am series had only a fraction of the popularity of the A.L.M.S., even with all the supposed marketing acumen behind it. I attribute this to the technological primitiveness of the cars & the capriciousness of the officiating by the Grand-Am Road Racing Association (a wholly-owned subsidiary of N.A.S.C.A.R.). The new U.S.C.C. has already taken some steps to emulate the technological retardation of Grand-Am, a worrisome sign. I've been wrong before, & I'm hoping I'll be proved wrong this time.