This Week in Motorsport

Formula Fun!
Formula One World Championship
Round 3
Chinese Grand Prix
Sunday, 12 April 2015

The Chinese Grand Prix had a bit of Noah's Ark to it, two by two by two: The top six finishers were, in order, reigning double World Champion Lewis Hamilton ('08 & '14) & Nico Rosberg of Mercedes, quadruple World Champion Sebastian Vettel ('10, '11, '12, & '13) & '07 World Champion Kimi Räikkönen of Ferrari, & Felipe Massa & Valtteri Bottas of Williams (Mercedes). The "Silver Arrows" from the Mercedes factory & the rosso corsa Ferraris raced as a foursome, comfortably ahead of the largely white Williamses, who in turn were comfortably ahead of the rest of the field, headed by Romain Grosjean of Lotus (Mercedes), who finished seventh.

'Twas another bad day for the Renault-powered, Red Bull-owned teams. Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull finished ninth while Carlos Sainz Jr. of Toro Rosso finished thirteenth, out of the points. Daniil Kvyat of Red Bull suffered catastrophic engine failure on lap fifteen while Max Verstappen of Toro Rosso suffered catastrophic gearbox failure on lap fifty-two, three laps from the end, when he would have finished in eight place. At the season-opener in Australia, the roles were reversed: Kvyat was knocked out with gearbox troubles & Verstappen by an engine blow-up. The newly Honda-powered McLarens continue to make progress, becoming steadily less woeful. Double World Champion Fernando Alonso ('05 & '06) finished twelfth, just ahead of Sainz, while '09 World Champion Jenson Button finished fourteenth, just behind.

Through three grands prix, Hamilton, Rosberg, & Vettel have started from the first three positions in every race & been the only men to stand on all three podiums. The only constant is that Rosberg is right behind Hamilton.

1st Place: Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
2nd Place: Nico Rosberg, Mercedes
3rd Place: Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari

Next: The Bahrain Grand Prix, this coming weekend. The junior GP2 Series will make its 2015 debut at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Indy Rock
IndyCar Series
Round 2
Grand Prix of Louisiana
Sunday, 12 April 2015

The inaugural Grand Prix of Louisiana at NOLA Motorsports Park was a shambles. ("NOLA": New Orleans, Louisiana; N.O., LA or La.; 'tis ridiculous to write the acronym in all capitals without punctuation, yet with punctuation it's awkward as can be: N.O.LA or N.O.La. Therefore, I will grudgingly indulge the ridiculous: NOLA.) 'Twas a stormy weekend, which happens & is no one's fault, falling under Acts of God, but the nature of the circuit compounded the rain's disruptive effects. The race was started early to take advantaged of a window between severe thunderstorms & from the drop of the green flag was going to be a shortened, timed race—run under a timed deadline, rather than to a set number of laps. From the start, things got worse & worse. Only forty-seven laps were run, instead of an initially planned seventy-plus, & of those only twenty-one were green-flag racing laps; the majority, twenty-six laps, were yellow-flag caution laps, usually run behind the safety car.

There is a saying in motorsports, that yellows breed yellows, & the grisly logic behind the phrase was on display at NOLA. The green-flag restart after a yellow-flag caution period is one of the best times for the aggressive racing driver to make up places on his competitors, because the field is bunched up after running behind the safety car & a well-timed restart yields a considerable speed advantage over cars more tardy in their acceleration. Yellows breed yellows, though, because the field is bunched up; because aggressive moves are not always wise moves, & every driver tries either to pass those cars ahead of him or to defend his position against those cars behind him; & because tires cool while the cars run slowly behind the safety car, & colder tires yield less grip than warmer tires.

This happened time & time again, exacerbated by a river of water running across the track near the start/finish line, at almost precisely the place on the track where the field started to accelerated in anticipation of the restart. Car after car spun out or crashed in the same spot, restart after restart. It was not raining during the majority of the race, yet that river continued to run across the track; the water was clearly draining from elsewhere right across the racing surface, a cardinal sin in circuit design. NOLA is a converted club track, a playground for the wealthy amateur racing & sports car enthusiasts; the Grand Prix of Louisiana was its first time hosting as prominent a professional racing series as IndyCar, & the rain revealed the facility to be not yet ready for primetime. Despite my personal antipathy toward the Big Easy, I have no objection to an IndyCar race in or around the Crescent City, on a proper racing circuit. It will be interesting to see what improvements are made to NOLA to make it more of a proper racing circuit. In the meantime, I will agree with journo Robin Miller (hyperlink) that it is a shame that IndyCar does not utilize such classic, proper racing circuits Road America, Road Atlanta, & Mosport, & the new-but-instantly-classic C.O.T.A.

James "Hinch" Hinchcliffe of Schmidt Peterson (Honda), the social media impresario known as the "Mayor of Hinchtown," made only one pit stop & ran out fuel on his way to "victory lane." One more lap of green-flag running or even yellow-flag running & he would have been stranded on the track or been forced to pit for a splash of fuel. I do not begrudge him the victory, but I do not think that full championship points should be awarded; we fans were treated to half a race, at best; the drivers should only be awarded half points.

1st Place: James Hinchcliffe, Schmidt Peterson (Honda)
2nd Place: Hélio Castroneves, Penske (Chevrolet)
3rd Place: James Jakes, Schmidt Peterson (Honda)

Next: The Grand Prix of Long Beach, a storied race on far & away IndyCar's best temporary street circuit, & America's closest equivalent to F1's Monaco Grand Prix, coming up this weekend. The Indy Lights juniors were not at NOLA, mercifully, but will be part of the show at Long Beach.

Autobahn
Earlier, I espied a Mazda MX-5 Miata sporting the vanity license plate FN2DRV2. I am uncertain if this is meant to be read "Fun to drive to," as in a destination, or "Fun to Drive Two," as in the second vehicle named the Fun to Drive. An additional consideration: There was a golf-themed border around the license plate, so "drive" could be a double-barreled reference to both driving the motorcar & driving a golf ball. "Fun to drive" on Hole 2? Nicely done, MX-5 owner, nicely done.

I've also recently spotted a pair of straightforward but interesting vanity plates: ROBERT & DEPART. I'm going to presume the owner's name is "Robert," the only question being either given name or surname, but DEPART? That could be fun in any number of ways with any number of meanings.