Grand Prix Rejects

East Londoner wrote:James Hinchcliffe just failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

Pippa Mann will be joining him on the sidelines as she couldn't get enough speed out of her Coyne ride. Meanwhile the Rahal cars look in all kinds of trouble and all three Ed Carpenter Racing entries are into the Fast Nine tomorrow. Which means, you guessed it, Danica Patrick has a legit shot at pole.

Bump Day certainly has delivered the goods.

Devastated for Pippa. Incredible comments on Twitter, suggesting that Pippa should have known she wouldn't make it into the field, and ought to have sacrificed her final run to allow Hinchcliffe a chance to make the field. Everyone knew the rules, and she got to the front of lane 2 before Hinchcliffe. This is what Bump Day is all about.

Some very strange, random crashes in the Indy 500, including for Danica Patrick and Sebastian Bourdais. I presume it was due to the aero package? Loved the final 8 laps of so, I was hoping for just one more yellow, so there would have been two underdog Brita in the top-two positions.

Top notch stuff from the pace car there

RonDenisDeletraz wrote:Top notch stuff from the pace car there

Turns out it was a General Motors manager behind the wheel.

WTCC driver Franz Engstler has seen even worse stuff from the pace car some years back when he was leading at Pau.

It should be noted on here that fairly recently, Charlie Kimball took one of the cars from the new Carlin Racing IndyCar team to a P5 finish on the streets of Toronto's Exhibition Place.
That's quite an impressive result for a 1st year team.

The Race in Mid Ohio was absolutely awesome, lots of passing, much of it on the outside, especially by Seabass. I can't stand the F1 attitude of pushing the car on the outside off track, here the drivers give each other room (but not 1 cm more than they have to) and the result is exicting racing.

Here is a 30 Minute summary for all who missed it:
https://youtu.be/-A5itlFhUPE

The Big One just happened at Pocono. Robert Wickens tapped RHR into a spin and then got launched into the fence in a scarily similar way to Mike Conway's huge crash from 2010.

Race understandably suspended under red flags while they extricate Wickens. Can't see this race being restarted, there's so much damage to the fence, but that isn't important right now.

Certainly a very nasty incident indeed. Wickens has injuries to his back, right arm and legs, and will require a bit of spinal surgery. Out for the rest of the season, but I am relieved the result wasn't even worse to be honest

Marco wrote: I can't stand the F1 attitude of pushing the car on the outside off track, here the drivers give each other room (but not 1 cm more than they have to) and the result is exicting racing.

Agreed . There's a bit too much of that "he's entitled to take his line" (even when they are just forcing the driver off ) . I accept you cant just stick your nose alongside and have the driver ahead give way to you, but F1 has gone too far in the other direction with this deliberate 'run out of road' tactic.

Qualifying cancelled so the two main title contenders are on the front row, should be interesting...
And in other news, Pietro Fittipaldi in P3 in final practice, hopefully that pace translates to the race (starting P21 due to quali being cancelled though....)

This is all looking rather grim

Get well soon, Robert

So, in the UK, IndyCar is no longer being shown on BT Sports/ESPN. Rather, instead, as I thought should have happened some time ago, IndyCar is now being shown on the Sky Sports F1 channel instead! This means that Sky Sports F1 is now showing F1, F2, F3 and IndyCar.

I think this is a reasonable move. It gives more value for money for those people forking out for the channel. Thoughts?

So long as it doesnt get in the way of the F1/F2/F3...I'm happy .
And will they manage to lose the terrible US commentators? ( Tom Gaymor did a great job , but was repeatedly interrupted by the US 'team' for long stretches of inane stating-the-obvious and ignoring-anything-not-on-screen)

yannicksamlad wrote:So long as it doesnt get in the way of the F1/F2/F3...I'm happy .
And will they manage to lose the terrible US commentators? ( Tom Gaymor did a great job , but was repeatedly interrupted by the US 'team' for long stretches of inane stating-the-obvious and ignoring-anything-not-on-screen)

Not sure on that at the moment, but it won't be long until we have confirmation one way or the other.

Not a classic race in St Petersburg today but a well deserved win for Josef Newgarden on a different strategy

Felix Rosenqvist had a great debut for Ganassi in 4th looking more dynamic in that car in one race than Ed Jones was all season last year.

My god though NBC had a mare with technical problems disrupting the Sky F1 broadcast of the race. That said Sky aren’t completely blameless with some awkward positioning of the ad breaks. Hopefully that’ll improve as the season goes on

Watched the race on Sky. Ignoring the blacked-out periods ( and it's been a while since I've seen that kind of complete extended broadcast failure ..what happened?) , and I have to say that I really have trouble with US-style presentation of a race.
OK - so there are advert breaks, and if I'm not paying top dollar to watch then I accept this will happen. But there's no catch-up for what happened on a break . And whilst the race is on they cut away to show a driver at a hockey game, or to look at and talk to 2 pundits sitting trackside facing a camera whilst the race continues behind them (and they're talking about what a good view they've got!). It's as if they dont much care for watching racing cars.

And there's very little tech analysis of lap times up and down the field, not much interest in the fighting further back, and not much 'insight' at all.
They miss overtakes down the field ( and seeing as there wasnt much critical overtaking action at the front , that seemed a shame ) , and multiple stops seemed to mean everyone tried to overtake in the pits.

I'm sure the race was more interesting than they made it seem... I know Crofty gets a bit loud and shouty, but the US style seems a bit like going through the motions

THERE'S ONLY ONE COLTON HERTA.

Third race in the series and he's already a winner, how the hell did no-one in F1 pick this chap up? He was legit top three all day today and when the yellow for the Rosenqvist/Hinch crash screwed over Power, Rossi and Dixon, he didn't crack under pressure. That's my 2019 made already

These youngers like Colton Herta and Patricio O'Ward really do look like the future of IndyCar for the next decade or so. The best thing about Herta's performance is that it wasn't a lucky break result that came from nowhere like others I've seen in the past. Ok he fell away from Power and Rossi before the yellow and they didn't pit but he was still in a wholly merited 3rd place before that and the way he left Newgarden behind after the restart was amazing

Did Simon Pagenaud have a problem or damage elsewhere because there were points in that race where he was running 21st with an apparently healthy car. I found it amusing that his bad day was completed with that clash with Rossi given there's rumours that Rossi could be a Penske driver in the near future and with Pagenaud comfortably being the weakest since the new car was introduced that wasn't what he needed at all

East Londoner wrote:
Third race in the series and he's already a winner, how the hell did no-one in F1 pick this chap up?

https://www.motorsport.com/euroformula-open/news/why-colton-herta-isnt-aiming-for-f1-it-just-bores-me-851424/851424/ Seems he wasnt interested .. he had quite a good Euroformula Open season in 2016, without beating Pulcini and Habsburg, but only really suffered from a slightly slow start which is understandable .
And then went to Indy Lights ..where the field can be pretty small , making it hard to demonstrate to F1 teams exactly what your potential is...

Apart from the stupid failure to police track limits, I quite enjoyed the race at COTA - it is a good track , and the drivers really had a challenge. And Sky did keep showing the action while the US viewers had to watch adverts (they seem to miss a lot of race action ) which was good .
If Herta wins a couple of titles, maybe F1 will seem more interesting as an alternative, but he was certainly impressive on Sunday

yannicksamlad wrote:Apart from the stupid failure to police track limits

It wasn't exactly a failure on race control's part: they deliberately allowed the cars to run wide at turn 19. It was the same story in the support races, and when IMSA used to visit Austin. It's just the way they do things over there.

There's a reason why this is still one of the most celebrated moments in Indycar history. I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy, but then again if everybody's doing it, who's gaining an advantage?

To me its a failure by race control if they decide to run an undefined track layout...
I do remember watching that Montoya pass, and its impressive. He left the track . He probably had an advantage by doing so - although there was a lot of dirt on his tyres and he had to rejoin at a tight angle . But what the COTA race looked like - for all the Mazdas and Indycars etc- was that it was Playstation Mario Kart time. Can you straight-line the esses if you want? Is there a short version of the track ?
Looked a bit stupid to me

yannicksamlad wrote:To me its a failure by race control if they decide to run an undefined track layout...
I do remember watching that Montoya pass, and its impressive. He left the track . He probably had an advantage by doing so - although there was a lot of dirt on his tyres and he had to rejoin at a tight angle . But what the COTA race looked like - for all the Mazdas and Indycars etc- was that it was Playstation Mario Kart time. Can you straight-line the esses if you want? Is there a short version of the track ?
Looked a bit stupid to me

Well, judging by the fact that nobody short-cutted the esses, no, they weren't able to straight-line them if they wanted. The only places where drivers ran off course with intent was the exit of turn 19, and occasionally turn 1. And frankly, I far prefer that state of affairs than a week full of everyone whinging about 'track limits' (the most boring argument imaginable), which is what happens every time, without fail, that F1 turns up at COTA. It's hardly an ideal situation, but short of re-configuring turn 19 entirely, I think it's the best one.

Also for the record, Zanardi made that pass, not Montoya.

Thanks for correcting me - I'm not quite sure why I though it was Montoya ( obviously I don't remember watching it as well as I thought . I did watch a lot of Indycar around that time ..and they were both Target Ganassi ... and it looks a bit of a Pablo manoeuvre)
I think we'll continue to differ on whether going off track was the right way to race COTA ..

Regarding the track limits discussion: IndyCar's decision to let their drivers use all the space they needed, gave me a distinct vibe of Cleveland which I liked a lot when I saw the 1st victory of a Harding Steinbrenner Racing car.
The best moment of the race was seeing the celebration of the winner's crew. Great job, guys. And Colton Herta has definitely arrived: he won the Freedom 100 last year, and now this!

Yesterday, everyone's favourite former Super Aguri driver Takuma Sato has qualified on the pole for today's IndyCar Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park, and his teammate Graham Rahal sits beside him on the front row in 2nd. Team Penske hit a rare blunder leading up to this race and none of their 3 cars qualified in the Top 6.

This lineup looks like it's going to be a very exciting race to watch. Maybe some of you can enjoy it live. The re-run on the world's most popular streaming site will have to do for me, though, because I need to get up for work rather early tomorrow morning, but I guess that's what weekend commute can do to somebody.

Yannick wrote:everyone's favourite former Super Aguri driver Takuma Sato

Yuji Ide was definitely Super Aguri's most rejectful driver, Franck Montagny was the most controversial. Anthony Davidson was my actual favourite, with Takuma Sato a close second. Oh, and how did I forget he of the allegedly weak neck, Sakon Yamamoto?

But yeah, looking forward to Sato starting from pole.

And Sato wins! Nice to see. And he looked pretty much the fastest thing there; didn't win just because of full-course yellows or fuel saving etc. And Ericsson - nice performance, looked quick .
TV coverage is still pretty rubbish ..

Simon Pagenaud just put in one of the best wet-weather drives I've seen in years. He was about two seconds a lap quicker than the entire field by the end of the Indy GP, and even managed to pressure Scott Dixon of all people into a mistake before making the race-winning pass. What a way to end his victory drought.

Even better, Jack Harvey ran up front all day and brought home a maiden podium for a part-time team, Matheus Leist got his first ever top-five finish with 4th (and indeed the first top-five for Foyt since Gateway 2017!), and Ed Carpenter Racing took 5th and 6th. Take note, Mercedes and Motorsport Network, these are the true underdogs of motorsport.

ROTR has to go to the entire Andretti squad. Rossi ended up in a wreck before the race even went green, RHR got spun by Hinch at a restart, while Marco and Veach were complete non-entities.

We might want to cut the Baku marshals some slack:

Fernando Alonso joins Max Chilton and Pato O'Ward in not qualifying for this years Indy 500

Good. McLaren have officially solidified their place as motorsports' professional lolcow. What an absolute joke and a complete disgrace to Bruce McLaren and Ron Dennis' groundwork.

Thank you, McLaren for wasting all of our time. Now please leave and don't come back. This crappy, condescending attitude and sheer arrogance of thinking you can show up and be competitive right away is just one reason I don't want to see a papaya orange here again. In fact, I'm glad Karam and Kaiser showed you fools how it's done. Maybe you'll come back one year with some actual respect for the bricks.

Don't forget to think about all the folks who flew from Europe just to watch you clowns bathplug it all up. There should be reimbursement lined up for these poor folks, so that maybe, just maybe, they'll think about coming back. No thanks to McLaren, of course.

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Actually, no, don't just leave Indy. Instead, leave all of motorsport. This organization post-Hamilton has done nothing except bring disappointment, waste the talent and time of one of the generation's best drivers, and defecate on multiple decades of success.

Yes, wishing for such a thing is asinine and unnecessary, but I've had enough. Watching motorsport becomes a chore whenever I see McLaren on the track.

Marco wrote:Fernando Alonso joins Max Chilton and Pato O'Ward in not qualifying for this years Indy 500

With the reliability problems and the crash in the first car, plus the never-resolved setup issues of the second car, I'm not surprised. McLaren have a long way to go before they can challenge the Penskes, Andrettis etc; hopefully they realise that.

But let's not forget the real tragedy here.

Simtek wrote:But let's not forget the real tragedy here.

Blame Carlin. Their "throw crap at the wall and hope it sticks" approach to car setups did him (and the other two bathtubs) in.

Is this the first time Alonso DNQed ever in any series?

The fact that his fellow Carlin drivers Chilton and O'Ward also DNQed suggests that something may be fundamentally wrong with the Carlin cars, or its just seriously bad luck.

I would be surprised if Alonso decided to try Indy with Mclaren again next time, assuming he doesn't take this year's failures as reason to retire from driving and go manage his racing team.

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/m ... 748427002/

I wouldn't blame Carlin for this. Not 100% anyway. Mclaren was properly rejectful. No back-up car because it isn't the right paint color? No steering wheel for testing? Come on man.

Six laps into the Indy 500 and we've already lost Colton Herta, dude has had no luck since his COTA win.

Goddamn I love this bathplug race. Epic finish. Who would have thought both members of Team Australia in ChampCar back in 2007 would be Indy 500 winners 12 years later?

To think with a bit of luck Takuma Sato could be a three-time winner of the Indy 500. You wouldn't get this in F1.

East Londoner wrote:Goddamn I love this bathplug race. Epic finish. Who would have thought both members of Team Australia in ChampCar back in 2007 would be Indy 500 winners 12 years later?

To think with a bit of luck Takuma Sato could be a three-time winner of the Indy 500. You wouldn't get this in F1.

AND Pippa Mann finished in the top half of the results table, in 16th! Top British driver too. (Although I find this a bit sad, the fact that there was no Brit in the top 10...)

It was a great race, the last laps were intense! I was so hoping for Sato to put more pressure on Rossi & Pagenaud (or Pakonoo as the Finnish commentator pronounced his name ) but I don't complain seeing Pagenaud win the race.

Herta and Kaiser were two other drivers I was rooting to do well but it's a shame both had to retire early. Especially Kaiser after that wonderful qualifying run.