Well, I intended to be a little more artful in putting this blog into hibernation than simply stopping posting in it back in July. Apologies for anyone who might have been a regular reader and who was left high and dry by the sudden cessation of race reports. Stats suggest that there weren’t all that many of you, to be honest, which makes those who were incredible special to me – thank you for your support.
Truth is, those race reports have continued (for IndyCar, GP2 and NASCAR) ever since – I haven’t missed a single one – but instead of double posting them, I’ve just concentrated on having them in their primary source over at the motorsport website crash.net.
So, please do check out the IndyCar race reports section for all the races since July; and similarly, for the reainder of full season coverage in the equivalent GP2 race reports and NASCAR race reports sections.
The advantage of concentrating everything over at crash.net is that I’ve been able to produce many more articles as a result, both from an ongoing news sense and also the occasional feature, so there’s a whole lot more over there in the , GP2 and NASCAR sections than I was ever able to post here. I hope you’ll check it out sometime.
In particular, one of the articles I was most proud of – in spite of, and in many ways because of how difficult and painful it was to write – is the article I wrote two days after Dan Wheldon was killed at Las Vegas, explaining as best as I could the circumstances that had conspired to produce that dreadful day. I hope that the end piece it did a wonderful driver (and an even more special individual) some small amount of due justice and credit.
If he had not himself been involved, Dan would have been the first person to remind us all that life goes on, and that drivers do what they do for the love of the sport. As sad and as tragic as such events are, he would want nothing more than to see motor racing continue and grow stronger; and so we move on, look to 2012 for a new beginning, while not forgetting for a minute the past and the sometimes terrible costs of the sport that we all love.
So if I were ever to lose the crash.net gig, I’ll return here like a shot and continue jabbering away about my favourite subject. There really is no escape from me on that score, I’m afraid. But for the meantime, please check out my work over at crash.net and let this sleeping blog catch up on some much-needed hibernation time.
[Article originally written in July and posted here as a 'how wrong can you get' example, since the now-released actual news about Sky's F1 coverage has revealed an almost compete buy-out of the existing BBC F1 coverage personnel. There's a quick update review at the end.]
The deal is done, the papers are signed, and no matter how much weeping and wailing and rending of garments there is, pontificating further about the BBC/Sky deal over F1 coverage is rather pointless.
So let’s turn instead to the next phase of the fallout from the decision: what exactly will the coverage look like in 2012, specifically with regard to the presenting teams? There’s some interesting insider/background info to this on the blog of James Allen, who ironically knows all too well about this sort of thing having been the ITV lead commentator in 2008 when that channel walked away from the F1 contract and left him out of a job.
Allen’s insider info raises some interesting scenarios, specifically suggesting that the race commentary would be shared between both channels to ensure an overall consistency for fans and to stop it feeling jarringly “choppy” as races switch from BBC to Sky and back again. It will also make it easier to sign up the right people as there will be a full season to cover live and yet still with a BBC presence. Presumably this would constitute what till now has been referred to as the “world feed commentary”: whether it’s a BBC- or a Sky-produced affair is rather a distinction without a difference, although given that only Sky is proving all 20 races live I think it’s a given that it will formally fall under Sky’s auspices.
On the one hand that makes a lot of sense; on the other, you wonder what Sky gain out of it when for 100 minutes ten times a year they will be showing exactly the same sound and pictures as the BBC … and presumably getting totally hammered in the ratings. It’s not a great comparison they’re setting themselves up for, no matter how much it helps them pitch the other ten races they have exclusively live to potential subscribers. But still, if that’s the decision they’ve taken, it’s actually a good one for the fans I think.
And that leads us to the question of: who will form that commentary team? It’s a question with an obvious answer – of course they should sign up Martin Brundle and David Coulthard straight away, no brainer, and I suspect they will do just that. The only fly in the ointment is that from Brundle’s dry comments on the subject he doesn’t sound like he’s wild about what’s happening, and given that he was also reported to be disenchanted last year and close to walking away (until mollified with the departure of Jonathan Legard allowing him to step up to the lead role while also insisting on his mate DC taking up the shotgun seat) one wonders if he really has any desire to go through what would be for him the second media channel refugee migration in just three years. Perhaps he might just decide that doing this for 14 years is quite long enough and it’s time to move on, regardless of the inducements floated in his direction?
If Brundle does stay they he would almost certainly insist Coulthard stays as well as part of the deal; conversely, if he left, I’m not sure Coulthard has yet established himself well enough to be wanted by Sky and the BBC to stay without Brundle. That’s not to say DC has done a bad job – on the contrary, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how their pairing has worked out against my sceptical expectations. But they’re a job lot, both or neither.
If neither, then … who? Names from the past (James Allen and Jonathan Legard) can be discounted. The one exception to that ban – given his sparkling showing in a recent 5live Saturday practice session – is Murray Walker. If he was remotely feasible for the job then Sky would do literally anything to coax him back; but he isn’t, no matter the fond wishes of F1 fans, and we need to look elsewhere.
If this were a purely a Sky affair then it’s likely that they would be looking at the pairing of former F1 driver John Watson with Ben Edwards (the latter currently working on ITV4′s BTCC coverage and the nearest thing we have to a natural heir to Murray’s famous over-caffeinated style.) They provided coverage for the short-lived, ill-fated “enhanced” F1 Digital+ pay-per-view service from FOM in 2002, and were again paired up on Sky Sport’s coverage of the also short-lived wannabe F1 rival, the “A1GP World Cup of Motorsport”. They would be fine, and a reasonably safe and proven pair of hands. And personally, I’m a big fan of Edwards and reckon he deserves a shot at the biggest seat in motorsports commentary that there is.
A possible cost-saving tactic would be to simply use 5live’s David Croft and Anthony Davidson across both TV and radio outputs. They’ve demonstrated that they can make this simultaneous TV/radio commentary work impressively well with their years of providing coverage of the practice sessions that worked just as well on the red button visual coverage as well as on the radio. It’s not easy, but it would really help slash costs: the probable show-stopper is Davidson’s still very-active and successful racing career which means he is unavailable for all the season’s races, which is not a huge problem for 5live but might well be for the TV sporting jewel in the crown.
Outside the commentary team, however, what about the presenter? The Allen insider info suggests that BBC and Sky would each have their own, different presenting team (although interestingly they would share broadcast production facilities on-site.) Would this likely to be continue to be Jake Humphrey and Eddie Irvine?
I suspect not. It will be difficult to front a pared-down operation after the conspicuous success of the last three years without feeling like it’s a comedown, so I would expect Humphrey – far too much of a BBC man to want to move to Sky – to return into the heart of BBC Sport, his reputation greatly increased from his success on F1, to take a major, leading role in the corporation’s overall sports broadcasting and perhaps particularly in football which is still (one suspects) his true passion. Good luck to him, he’s earned it, and we certainly couldn’t begrudge it after the effort and enthusiasm he’s put into F1 since 2009.
Nor do I see Eddie Jordan staying – he’s just not the type to want to stick with a “day job” for too long. He probably took the slot with the BBC as a bit of fun in the first place and has stuck around because it’s a nice team – even though at teams he hasn’t seemed entirely uncomfortable with the joker role he’s been slotted into and expected to play. I doubt he anticipated still doing this job even beyond a single year. He’s certainly not main host material – he would surely hate that constriction – so I expect that he’ll take the opportunity to move on.
Which leaves the BBC with … Interestingly, Ted Kravitz, a man who is far too good as television presenter material to be stuck away in pit lane the whole time. That rather suggests than the optimum solution for the BBC would be to promote Kravitz to presenter of the cut-down BBC coverage while also acting as pit lane reporter in association with someone else like Lee Mackenzie or Jenny Gow, in much the same way that Matt Roberts now fronts the MotoGP coverage for the channel while also covering the pit lane alongside Azi Farni when Charlie Cox and Steve Parrish are doing the race commentary. Indeed, the very much pared-down MotoGP model might prove exactly the sort of thing the BBC are aiming for in their F1 coverage next year.
When it comes to the Sky presenting team, frankly anything goes – all bets are off. The channel has never had this sort of international series to cover before and it will be new ground for them. Usually their presence at overseas events consists of taking a home broadcasters’ feed and then having someone in the Sky Sports studios topping and tailing it with some studio guests, but it’s hard to see them getting away with that for F1 – or indeed wanting to. After the investment and opportunity that’s landed in their lap with this deal, they’ll want to be seen to conspicuously excel and at least match if not exceed the BBC coverage of recent years and the ITV coverage that preceded it.
So that means having a presenting team on the ground in whatever country the Grand Prix is from that week – and that’s a big commitment, from the channel (in terms of expense and production support services) and from the presenters. Normally Sky have Keith Huewen as their go-to guy for motorsports programmes, but having him jetting all over the world might (a) not be something he wants, and/or (b) would screw up all the other programmes he’s currently fronting for them.
Failing that it’s hard to know just where Sky will go for a presenter – anymore than we saw Jake Humphrey coming as the BBC’s main man in 2009. Sky Sports previously signed up Georgie Thompson as the anchor for their A1GP coverage, but she never really developed the gravitas or believability in the role. If having a female main host is important to Sky, then they would need to look to someone more credible – like ex-MotoGP host Suzi Perry, although her other filming commitments (for the Gadget Show on Channel 5 for example) would presumably be a problem with the international travel aspect.
Mark Blundell – tongue-in-cheek I rather suspect – put in a Twitter plea to be considered for the role of pundit in the new regime, picking up from his ITV days; Tony Jardine would be another obvious potential candidate, having popped up on Sky Sports in various programmes in such a capacity. Eddie Jordan would be an outside bet, but he would probably be rather expensive, definitely unpredictable, and most of all Sky will surely want to make their own mark on the team rather than take the BBC’s hand-me-downs as it might be unfairly seen.
Whatever team Sky decide upon and put together, it’s likely to be the best that money can by – but will nonetheless still find surprisingly stiff competition even from a radically slimmed down “Kravitz plus one” BBC presence, which many fans will stick to and show loyalty toward regardless of the merits of Sky’s offering.
It will be an interesting time in F1 coverage. Granted, it’s an “interest” that most of us could have done without and preferred not to have to contemplate, preferring instead the BBC status quo. But that’s not going to happen, and so we’re subject to the Chinese curse of living in interesting F1 times – for better or for worse.
Quick review – December 2011
So, did this piece get anything much right?
I probably underestimated Martin Brindle’s claim to be the ‘voice of F1′ – it’s clear that Sky really did see him as important to the package as ITV see Murray Walker back in the 90s. Brundle’s been getting a lot of flak for his ‘defection’, but fair play to him. I think his initially sour comments about the deal were more directed at the BBC keeping everyone in the dark and then dropping it on them during a race weekend were what really got to him, so in hindsight it’s less surprising to see him to Skywards after all.
I’m rather surprised that David Croft has gone too. I thought that Brundle would want the lead commentator spot (as he’s had this year on the BBC) but this development suggests that he hasn’t found it as much to his liking as he thought, and would prefer dropping back into his more familiar analyst role with Croft selected as the new straight man. I’m very sad to see Croft depart the BBC and I happen to really like him as a commentator – I frequently elected to listen to the Radio 5 Live commentary during the race for him and Anthony Davidson a the best pairing going – but I have to say this is a good move by Sky and that the Croft/Brundle line-up is a very good one.
And Davidson himself! More for the practice sessions – and I’ve always loved his rapport with Croft for those more laid-back broadcasts – leaving Brundle to step in for qualifying and the race, but that actually mirrors the way I’ve listened to the commentary in recent times anyway. It’s worrying how well tailored this commentary line-up proves to be for me.
I underestimated Sky’s determination to lure away Ted Kravitz as well – that’s a real loss to the BBC line-up, and I genuinely thought that they could have built up their on-site team around Kravitz but clearly the money didn’t work out. A shame, he’ll be missed, but he’s got himself a great gig including co-presenting a weekly magazine programme on the new Sky F1 channel.
Apparently the suggest to have the Radio 5 Live commentary feed work on TV as well as the radio was indeed considered, but ultimately discarded, which I feel is a lost opportunity to do something genuinely new while actually saving some money. And the joint commentary across BBC and Sky looks to have been a complete red herring (it always seemed to me a rather odd idea at the time, to be honest.)
The surprises on the BBC side are that Coulthard isn’t decamping with Brundle, and that Eddie Jordan is also sticking with the BBC. Are they bound by existing contracts or is this a genuine choice on their parts? Neither is cheap and you would have thought that the belt-tightening BBC would have wanted a change here, too. Maybe when the extent of the rest of the F1 talent raid by Sky became clear, they had to hold on to what they could of the old team.
It’s great that Jake Humphrey is staying on. He’s come a long way since his first days on the job, fresh out of Children’s BBC academy, trying to work out which way up F1 went. He’s now on top of his game and was clearly in Sky’s sights for the main presenting role, but I always figured he was too much of a BBC man (especially with the 2012 Olympics coverage coming up) to jump ship. The only doubt was whether a half share of F1 would be enough to satisfy him after the Bafta years, but I’m glad it is and that he’s not scarpering off for the halls of football coverage just yet.
Who will commentate for the BBC? I guess now they know who isn’t staying, they can get around to signing up a few people. I still would love to see Ben Edwards be the lead commentator for the channel, perhaps alongside Coulthard; and as for radio, it’ll probably go to the very likeable and extremely knowledgeable Maurice Hamilton, who would be fine if they can get him a good sidekick to spark some chemistry with. Jonathan Legard has also been mentioned as a possibility (it’s unclear whether for TV or radio, as he’s worked in both roles for the BBC in the past) but I would earnestly hope not, and given how he was bundled out at the end of 2010 I’d be surprised if he wanted to return into that fold quite so soon.
Will I be swapping to Sky? Well – if Virgin Media doesn’t have a massive falling out with Sky and not carry the new Sky F1 channel in the meantime, then yes, I probably will. But I’ll also watch the BBC coverage.
My first reaction when I heard the news this morning that the BBC had lost exclusive rights to F1 and would show only half of next year’s Grand Prix events live, while Sky would show the entire season, was one of dismay and outrage.
Certainly when it comes to timing, announcing a deal which hands one of the currently most loathed media companies (News Corp, which owns 39% of BSkyB) one of the sporting crown jewels was spectacularly inopportune.
Now, however, I’ve calmed down a bit. At my emotional core I’m still seething, but the logical side of my brain is asserting itself and starting to point out: this could have been even much, much worse. And sadly, probably will be down the line.
The warning signs have been there for some time, ever since the Sunday Times had a story suggesting that the BBC wanted out of the F1 contract as soon as possible. We rather dismissed it at the time as being News Corp mischief making, but it turns out that they were nearer to the truth than we gave them credit for. Hey, even a broken media organisation is right twice a day, it seems.
I think it’s clear now that the BBC did come very close indeed to just returning the keys to the F1 paddock to Bernie Ecclestone and walking away completely, much as ITV did at the end of the 2008 season. The reason is totally financial and down to the high license costs charged by Ecclestone’s media rights company for the coverage (I’ve heard various figures estimates from this, but they seem to be around £40 to £60m per annum.)
Given that the BBC is being squeezed (by the government cutting the license fee on advice from, among others, the Murdoch family and businesses – funny cycle that, isn’t it?) for cash and looking for savings anywhere it can find up to and including any cash lost down the back of the sofa, it’s no surprise that they should see such a whopping expenditure line on the accounts and quickly come to the decision that it simply has to go: it’s not unlike Ford Motor Company looking at its employee wages and seeing Eddie Irvine getting paid more than anyone else, and deciding: this F1 thing must stop.
I suspect that even someone as business- and monetarily-inclined as Ecclestone realised that losing the BBC’s backing and prestige for F1 would be a disaster for him and for the sport from which he makes his living, especially as there was no one else to turn to in the free-to-air market to fill the gap. ITV certainly weren’t interested in returning, Channel 4 have their own money problems, and Channel 5 – well, it’s possible given their tie-up with Richard Desmond, but it’s still really out of the channel’s financial reach and not even their target demographic. Even if they had bid for it, it would be a surprise if they lasted two years before walking away themselves under the heavy load that F1 coverage responsibility now confers.
But Ecclestone had already said he wanted the sport to remain on free-to-air (and the teams and the key sponsors definitely had an expectation of this being the case to maintain the sport’s the and sponsor’s visibility – there’s even a suggestion that the all-important Concorde Agreement requires it, otherwise Ecclestone is in breach of contract himself) and so just throwing it open to the Sky Sports premium satellite/cable subscription channel wasn’t open either.
When it comes down to it, this emergency compromise that has been reached is probably the best that could be done in the circumstances: free-to-air retains half the live Grand Prix events and ensures fans will still get to see extensive coverage of the rest through highlights packages and radio coverage on 5live; while Sky presumably carries most of the financial load by virtue of being able to claim to be the only place to see the whole F1 season from now on. Sky would probably rather not be sharing the coverage of half the races with the BBC but they’ll see it as a “free advert on the BBC” for their product for the other 10 races that people will have to sign up for. It’s not a bad product placement deal for Sky, all things considered.
This sort of split coverage of sport is not in fact unusual. The football rights are fragmented across multiple networks, while even the international rugby union rights were split with Sky Sports having all the England Six Nations matches while the BBC had the remainder. In the US this is even more common, with IndyCar coverage shared between the ABC broadcast network and the cable channel Versus (and interestingly, fans seem to deride the ABC races and lament that Versus can’t do them all!) while NASCAR splits the 36 races of the season into three lots of 12 between three different networks, and there’s talks about come of those being further offloaded onto a cable channel such as SPEED next season. Again, it’s all because the broadcast rights in each case are simply too expensive now for any one single network to sustain and justify them across the whole year.
Truth is, though, that this BBC/Sky compromise deal is a classic BBC attempt at a solution to please everyone and answer all the critics, which will instead do exactly the opposite – leave them under attack from all sides and satisfy precisely no one. The F1 fans will be outraged and outspoken and pour scorn and vitriol on the Corporation; while the anti-F1 brigade will remain incensed that the Beeb is still squandering any money at all on a rich man’s plaything. Eventually the BBC will give up and walk away from F1 completely. Until then, the BBC has neatly positioned itself in the middle of No Man’s Land where both sides have equal opportunity to shoot and shell it to pieces – a familiar story for the Corporation.
It’s amazing that this decision should be announced when it has been, shortly after the BBC F1 coverage won a Bafta (ironically, ITV’s final F1 race coverage also won a Bafta before they walked away in 2009 …) and the recent Canadian race came close to a 50 share at times (that is, half the total number of people watching the TV were watching the BBC – unheard of domination in this day and age of fractured media.) So much for dismissing F1 as a “niche sport” it seems, but that argument has simply been muscled aside.
Probably the most depressing thought it what the BBC coverage will look like from 2012 onwards. They will hardly be able to afford the sort of quality of broadcast line-up when they’ll only be covering ten races live; will Martin Brundle and David Coulthard want to be involved in a half-arsed season coverage? Will Jake Humphrey want to continue fronting a show that is now overshadowed by Sky and little more than a shop window for the satellite channel’s fare?
Indeed, the BBC will probably want to cut costs still further – cut the preshow, and grid walks, the interviews and just fly over a commentator to do the job, leave the fancy stuff to Sky. Think of the cost savings on top of the licensing money they’ll save by no longer having to have dedicated camera crews and multiple presenters. In fact, surely the commentary can be done from a studio in London … ? (Actually, if it comes to that level, I hope they have the good sense to have 5live’s commentators David Croft and Anthony Davidson simply take over, since the 5live coverage continues under the new deal and hopefully they will be broadly unchanged and unaffected.)
What about Brundle, Coulthard, Eddie Irvine, Ted Kravitz and even Jake Humphrey? They now found themselves in the same situation as Murray Walker in 1996 or James Allen (and indeed Brundle himself) in 2008 when the decisions of their networks cast their own professional futures into sudden doubt. In Murray Walker’s case, ITV commendably realised very quickly that he was essential to the success of their new investment: while Murray had immediately thought he was out of a job and on the scrapheap, instead he suddenly found he was perhaps the most important and sought-after man in sporting journalism.
Martin Brundle, despite having been associated with F1 coverage since 1997, has only just stepped up to the role of main commentator and has no similar Murray-esque claims to be the “voice of F1″ so he’s not going to have the same prospects of job security. Indeed he’s already tweeted that he’s out of contract at the end of 2011 and is “not impressed” by the news announced today so it seems he’s not keen either with the part-time season on the BBC or moving to Sky. But who knows – Sky may be as canny as ITV were 14 years ago and decide that some Brundle continuity is vital to securing the transition of the fans to the satellite broadcaster, and start to woo the former F1 driver with an offer he can’t refuse. Or maybe they’ll simply go with their in-house staff, some of whom are excellent (Keith Huewen for example has been outstanding hosting IndyCar and NASCAR on Sky Sport) but many of whom are really quite mediocre.
There’s no doubt that among the biggest losers in all this are the committed fans of Formula 1, or at least those who are unwilling or unable to take up Sky Sports subscriptions next season. But I fear the biggest loser of all is the sport of F1 itself, which has just crossed a rubicon of sorts that takes it on a one-way trip to the margins. In time, F1 fans will decrease, new generations of fans will not be exposed to the sport. It will weaken, and – driven by the costs of the sport – will then collapse under its own hubris, unable to fund its continuance as a minor niche interest on the sidelines.
Bernie Ecclestone may not be around by that time – not even he is immortal, we believe. But come that final Grand Prix, few will forget that it was his hand that set the stage and made the final demise of F1 possible and – indeed – inevitable.
Stewart-Haas blows away recent frustrations with a triumphant team one-two led by Ryan Newman, amid problems for Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Coming into this weekend’s Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the word most commonly used by everyone to describe Tony Stewart was “frustrated.”
“Yes, he is frustrated,” agreed Stewart’s team mate Ryan Newman on Friday. “For that matter, I’m ahead of him in points and I’m frustrated, too.”
“I am frustrated because I keep having to answer the question,” said a frankly surly Stewart in the routine round of pre-race interviews on Friday. “‘Are you happy when things aren’t going the way you like it to go? Makes you frustrated, doesn’t it?’ So yes, we’re frustrated.”
The weekend’s Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at Loudon was widely described as make-or-break for Stewart-Haas’s season and for any hopes either driver might still have of making the Chase. Partly that’s because New Hampshire has always been a strong venue for Stewart, who has won on the low-banked one mile “true” oval twice and only missed out in last year’s autumn race because of a mis-call on the fuel pit strategy.
As team owner, Stewart recently took action about Stewart-Haas’ malaise by shaking up personnel, axing one of the team’s senior stalwarts in director of competition Bobby Hutchens at the start of June. But it hadn’t seemed to do anything to improve the situation, with Stewart even starting to talk about not wanting to make the cut for the Chase at all if the team wasn’t in a position to win races and be genuinely competitive in the Cup championship play-offs.
“Ultimately, we want to be first or second in either order, so yeah, I’m sure he’s frustrated,” Newman said. “This is crunch time and this has usually been his time, but it hasn’t been this year.”
Against that background, Stewart-Haas’ front row lock-out in qualifying at Loudon on Friday afternoon raised a few eyebrows and came as rather a surprise, as both Newman and Stewart broke the old track record for the circuit in the process. Of course, claiming first and second place on the starting grid is a long way from genuine race success, but it was a leap in performance that got people wondering.
As the Stewart-Haas cars led the field to the green flag in the gorgeous Sunday afternoon sunshine and pleasant 70 degree Fahrenheit summer temperatures, there was still a very long way (301 laps to be precise) between a fleeting qualifying success and lasting race triumph. And history was not on Stewart-Haas’ side, as it had been over five years since the last time the top two cars in qualifying had taken the chequered flag in the race in the same order (Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch at Pocono in June 2006, since you’re wondering.)
Kurt Busch made an early attempt to break up the Stewart-Haas front row, but Tony Stewart saw him off and then took the lead from Newman and who would lead from there until the first caution of the race on lap 29 for debris just as Stewart was starting to put straggling backmarkers like Joe Nemechek and Michael McDowell a lap down.
Already we were seeing good progress for Jimmie Johnson (recovering from a poor qualifying position that saw him start from 28th), AJ Allmendinger, Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski who gained four spots in the ensuing pit stops under caution. Less happy were Juan Montoya and also Kevin Harvick, who seemed stuck going nowhere at the bottom of the top 20.
But without a doubt the man having the worst of things was Kyle Busch who had a scare with the wall and a narrow save on lap 9 and then took two visits in pit lane under the caution – once for major set-up changes, the second for four tyres – that put him to the back. “We made some big changes there on that pit stop,” he explained. “We came back and got four just to make sure we got all the changes we wanted to.”
Despite all that work he seemed no happier in the next green flag stint, and on lap 59 his right front tyre blew and the #18 slammed into the wall at turn 2 to bring out the second caution of the day. “Just blew a bead, I guess, transferring too much brake heat through the wheel,” he said, referring to the tyre edge.
He denied that the crash had been due to any contact with Dale Earnhardt Jr.: “Nice try at making up a story,” Busch replied. “There’s contact with everybody out there. It had nothing to do with anybody else … Nothing else besides that.” The repairs to the car took some 76 laps and meant that Busch would finish in 36th place, dropping from the lead of the Cup points standings to fifth some 20pts off the new leader as a result.
In the meantime, Jamie McMurray had briefly led the race before being ousted by Newman, but it was really Kurt Busch who took charge between the two yellows. After Busch’s crash it was Mark Martin who led the restart on lap 65, but once again Newman was quick to take charge again with Tony Stewart once more slotting into second place through to the third caution (for debris) on lap 100.
Jimmie Johnson opted to stay out of pit lane for temporary track position while those that did come in opted mainly for two tyres, which did not seem to suit the Stewart-Haas duo nearly as well at this point and they slipped back, allowing Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton and Kasey Kahne to take up the top three positions as Johnson started to fade on worn rubber and eventually come in for an off-sync green flag stop on lap 135.
Gordon’s lead was all the more impressive given that his #24 was having battery problems and was definitely the fastest car on the track during this midrace stage. “We knew we were losing the power to the engine from an alternator standpoint,” he said. “These new gauges have warning lights on them that the whole gauge lights up.” The problems meant he had to shut down the cooling system, including the cooling to the brakes.
Surprisingly Gordon opted not to switch out the twin batteries at the next round of stops that took place after Brad Keselowski cut a tyre in turn 3 on lap 144, a particularly useful caution for Jimmie Johnson as it gave him a much-needed wave around. Gordon would rue the decision to risk the batteries when he lost all power shortly after the restart on lap 154 and dropped to the back of the lead lap; he was saved when a rapid fifth caution materialised for debris on lap 161 allowing him to come in for the battery exchange under yellow.
Kurt Busch had taken the lead during the previous round of pit stops and kept it despite a strong challenge at the restart on lap 169 from Brian Vickers, but the race was quickly back under yellow with the sixth caution of the day after Denny Hamlin got helped into a spin by AJ Allmendinger. Again, the main beneficiary of the caution was Jeff Gordon, who got the lucky dog back onto the lead lap after his lengthy battery exchange pit stop.
Busch was still leading at the restart on lap 174 and this time the green flag racing lasted only ten laps before Mark Martin spun out of 14th position with a cut tyre in turn 2. Kurt continued to lead at the restart on lap 189, but Tony Stewart was now awake again and charging, passing Carl Edwards for second on lap 191 and then taking the lead from Busch down the inside on lap 194, his team mate Ryan Newman not far behind in fourth.
At this point teams were looking ahead to the end game and feverishly calculating fuel loads and possible tyre strategies: Dale Earnhardt Jr. had been religiously taking four new tyres at every pit stop so far while Juan Montoya’s #42 team were planning on two tyres only from here on, while Busch’s #22 team were planning fuel strategies to see off the #99 of Edwards, while Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon were now running 6th and 7th after their earlier problems although somewhat off-sync in terms of stops. But Tony Stewart was looking particularly strong, having found the best compromise between handling through the corner apex (albeit describing the #14 as a little tight) versus getting out of the corner cleanly and allowing him to put the power down early giving him maximum speed and chances for overtaking traffic.
A debris caution on lap 214 allowed everyone the opportunity to pit under yellow, with a wide variety of strategies emerging including Joey Logano opting to stay out altogether and assume the lead and Clint Bowyer gaining ten spots with a fuel-only approach. Jimmie Johnson must have wished he could have gone fuel-only too when his own pit stop ended up with a missing lugnut, an irritatingly frequent recurring theme for the #48 over the past year which meant he had to return to pit lane and fall to the back of the lead lap.
At the restart, Marcos Ambrose surged past Logano to lead lap 222 with Montoya looking strong behind them, but Brian Vickers’ strong day was about to come to a premature end when he spun on the front straight and hit the wall on lap 225. Vickers headed to the garage for lengthy repairs, Logano finally headed in for fuel, Mark Martin got the free pass and Clint Bowyer assumed the lead followed by Ryan Newman and Jeff Burton.
Bowyer’s old tyres were no match for Newman’s fresh ones and the polesitter duly reassumed the lead, with Greg Biffle moving past Bowyer into second place. At this point the critical factor was emerging as fuel, with Biffle being told he was eight laps short of going full distance and Kurt Busch similarly advised he was five laps shy of making it to the chequered flag.
If it was a caution they needed then Jimmie Johnson duly obliged by hitting the wall on turn 2 on lap 240 after getting hit by Juan Montoya, bringing out the tenth (and ultimately final) yellow of the afternoon. “We had some issues on pit road,” said Johnson, “And then the #42 – I don’t think of the three times he’s wrecked me it’s been intentional, but he’s out of mulligans and I’ve had enough of, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, and you’re spun out.’ It’s happened way to often.”
Greg Biffle decided there was no chance of being able to make it all the way to the end without a further stop and duly came in, as did Dale Earnhardt Jr. who had been suffering a suspected tyre rub on his left front; unfortunately he then picked up a tyre violation that put him to the back of the leap lap in 33rd. Earnhardt had already been unhappy with the change of tyre compounds this weekend, which Tony Stewart had earlier praised as being “grippier” and the key to his team’s qualifying success but which met with less success on the #88.
“We struggled all weekend,” admitted Earnhardt. “In practice we just didn’t really have the speed we had last year. We’ve just got to figure out why. What’s the difference in this tyre and try to figure it out. I mean, every damn week they change the tyre … I guess [NASCAR] is getting on ‘em about how they build them or something, and they had to bring a new one here. Some kind of new construction. I didn’t like it.”
Stewart-Haas had learned from last year’s autumn race at New Hampshire and knew that track position was crucial at this point of proceedings, so Newman stayed out in the lead ahead of Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin as the race resumed on lap 245 with 56 laps to go to the chequered. Busch was looking strong going into the corners, but critically Newman was faster out of them which allowed him to get the power down and pull away out of trouble to keep the lead.
The focus from this point was on the continuing surge of Jeff Gordon who was back up to fourth, and a strong recovery by Jimmie Johnson after the lugnut and spin problems. There was also the relentless rise of Tony Stewart, back into the top ten after the restart and passing Carl Edwards (who had dropped back to fifth) 20 laps later.
Most people however were having to run with one eye on the fuel gauge: a rare exception was Newman himself who didn’t seem to be sparing the horsepower as he pulled out a lead of nearly 2s over Kurt Busch before the #22 was forced to give up the chase and fell to fifth in extreme fuel conservation mode – he would eventually run dry on the last lap and finish in tenth. That allowed Tony Stewart up another place, then past Gordon on lap 286 and finally swooping on Denny Hamlin for second place on lap 294. In the remaining seven laps Stewart put his foot down and did everything he could to close on his team mate who was now encountering lapped traffic and worrying about his fuel load, which allowed the #14 to cut the lead back to under a second.
“I can promise you, I didn’t leave anything out there,” Stewart said. “That was as hard as I could run ’til the end. I couldn’t get the rest of the way. I couldn’t get any further than that.”
And indeed, Newman had just enough pace – and just enough fuel – to make it home in first place with Stewart in second, recreating that qualifying order performance and blasting Stewart-Haas to their first 1-2 finish in the team’s three season history.
“One hell of a day, boys. One hell of a day!” yelled a proud and no longer remotely frustrated team owner over the radio. Labelling it “a perfect weekend for Stewart-Haas Racing,” Stewart went on: “I’m so damn proud I can’t see straight. I’m proud of my buddy there standing on top of his car. He deserved it. He did an awesome job this weekend.”
“We backed up what everybody said we couldn’t back up, and that was our qualifying effort on Friday … We knew we were capable of it,” said an emotional Newman as he dedicated the win by the #39 – sponsored by the US Army – to military personnel and their friends and relatives. “We were so close so many times this year.”
Stewart wanted to give special thanks to his pit crew chief Darian Grubb who had been ailing this weekend. “They told him yesterday he’s got pneumonia,” Stewart said. “He’s battling through a weekend like this, never missed a beat on the box today.”
Denny Hamlin hung on to finish in third place, admitting that his own crew chief Mick Ford had been “screaming that we’ve got to back off. At that point, you have to think about the risk versus reward … As bad as I wanted to go up there and race those guys, I had to make the smart move and finish the race.”
Sadly there was one late-race casualty when Jeff Gordon’s fightback ended with a blown right front tyre on the final lap, which meant that he fell from fourth to 11th in the final seconds.
“What did not happen to us today?” said Gordon. “It was a pretty crazy day for us, but certainly a lot to smile about with how great our car was. My goodness, our car was so good … That long of a run on tyres, I should have been a little bit more conservative,” he suggested: “I saw Hamlin starting to check up trying to save fuel and we had a shot of getting to him, so I started charging the corner a little bit harder and we put too much temperature and that’s what blew the right front tyre.”
Gordon suggested that his earlier battery problems which had forced him to turn off the car’s cooling systems may well have played a part in the tyre failure at the end. “We had so many issues thrown at us today that I wasn’t really thinking a whole lot about what kind of temperature we were putting into the brakes when those blowers were off or when we had to turn them on and turn them off,” he said.
Instead, Joey Logano’s earlier off-sync pit strategy was rewarded with fourth place just ahead of the recovering Jimmie Johnson in the #48. “I’m arguing with myself whether I should be frustrated or proud,” said Johnson. “We finished awfully good with everything we went through today.”
Although he was understandably angry with Montoya – “It’s painful to get spun out on the race track” – Johnson’s main source of annoyance seemed to lie more with his team after yet another lugnut issue. “When it’s key times for stops, we have mistakes. I’ve been real patient all year trying to build. I’m running out of patience. I care for these guys deeply for going over the wall and I know they’re very talented guys, but we’re getting into my livelihood in a little bit when we get into this Chase and we’ve got to be right.”
Up front, Ryan Newman had richly deserved the win, leading the most laps of anyone – 119 of the race total of 301 compared with 66 for Kurt Busch and 48 for Tony Stewart. It’s his 15th Cup win in 351 starts, ending a 47-race winless streak, making him the 13th different winner in the 19 races so far in the 2011 season (there were only 13 different winners in the whole of 2010) and marks the first time that a team has claimed the top two spots in both qualifying and the race since Hendrick Motorsports managed it at the Daytona 500 all the way back in 1989 with Darrell Waltrip and Ken Schrader.
It’s not a magic wand for the team – as with Penske’s recent resurgence, the proof will only come if they can build on it and make this sort of strong showing a routine week-in, week-out occurrence on a range of circuits. Nor does it miraculously revive the Stewart and Newman’s Chase chances (Newman is provisionally in with eighth place and now has a win that may see him claim one of the wildcards if it comes to it, but Stewart is still on the outside looking in with 11th.)
But really, when it comes to sudden sightings of the light at the end of the tunnel, it doesn’t come any more blinding than this 1-2 for Tony Stewart and his race winning driver Ryan Newman. They’ll be hoping it gives them just the momentum they need going into one of the biggest Cup races of the year, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in two weeks time.
Race results
1. #39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 301 laps 03:06:08s (48/2 pts)
2. #14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 301 laps + 0.773s (43/1 pts)
3. #11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 301 laps + 3.488s (41/0 pts)
4. #20 Joey Logano Toyota 301 laps + 8.125s (41/1 pts)
5. #48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 301 laps + 8.481s (40/1 pts)
6. #4 Kasey Kahne Toyota 301 laps + 8.504s (39/1 pts)
7. #47 Bobby Labonte Toyota 301 laps + 12.211s (37/0 pts)
8. #56 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 301 laps + 12.486s (36/0 pts)
9. #9 Marcos Ambrose Ford 301 laps + 12.731s (36/1 pts)
10. #22 Kurt Busch Dodge 301 laps + 13.082s (35/1 pts)
11. #24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 301 laps + 14.325s (34/1 pts)
12. #43 A.J. Allmendinger Ford 301 laps + 16.529s (32/0 pts)
13. #99 Carl Edwards Ford 301 laps + 16.844s (32/1 pts)
14. #6 David Ragan Ford 301 laps + 17.943s (30/0 pts)
15. #88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 301 laps + 18.960s (29/0 pts)
16. #31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 301 laps + 21.169s (28/0 pts)
17. #33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 301 laps + 21.572s (28/1 pts)
18. #16 Greg Biffle Ford 301 laps + 21.871s (27/1 pts)
19. #00 David Reutimann Toyota 301 laps + 22.044s (25/0 pts)
20. #17 Matt Kenseth Ford 301 laps + 22.302s (24/0 pts)
21. #29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 301 laps + 22.506s (23/0 pts)
22. #5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 301 laps + 22.848s (23/1 pts)
23. #38 J.J. Yeley Ford 301 laps + 25.965s (21/0 pts)
24. #27 Paul Menard Chevrolet 301 laps + 26.420s (20/0 pts)
25. #34 David Gilliland Ford 301 laps + 26.916s (19/0 pts)
26. #51 Landon Cassill Chevrolet 300 laps + 1 Lap (0pts)
27. #7 Scott Wimmer Dodge 300 laps + 1 Lap (0pts)
28. #71 Andy Lally * Ford 300 laps + 1 Lap (17/1 pts)
29. #36 Dave Blaney Chevrolet 300 laps + 1 Lap (15/0 pts)
30. #42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 300 laps + 1 Lap (14/0 pts)
31. #1 Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 300 laps + 1 Lap (14/1 pts)
32. #32 Mike Bliss Ford 299 laps + 2 Laps (0pts)
33. #78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 298 laps + 3 Laps (11/0 pts)
34. #83 Brian Vickers Toyota 283 laps + 18 Laps (10/0 pts)
35. #2 Brad Keselowski Dodge 257 laps + 44 Laps (9/0 pts)
36. #18 Kyle Busch Toyota 224 laps + 77 Laps (8/0 pts)
37. #30 David Stremme Chevrolet 159 laps Engine (7/0 pts)
38. #13 Casey Mears Toyota 83 laps Brakes (6/0 pts)
39. #46 Erik Darnell Chevrolet 72 laps Brakes (5/0 pts)
40. #66 Michael McDowell Toyota 46 laps Brakes (4/0 pts)
41. #87 Joe Nemechek Toyota 37 laps Brakes (0pts)
42. #60 Mike Skinner Toyota 17 laps Electrical (0pts)
43. #55 Jeff Green Ford 11 laps Brakes (0pts)
* Denotes Rookie
Sprint Cup standings
PO CHG DRIVER PTS GAP ST P W T5 T10 1 +1 Carl Edwards 652 19 2 1 10 13 2 +3 Jimmie Johnson 645 -7 19 0 1 7 12 3 +1 Kurt Busch 641 -11 19 3 1 4 11 4 -1 Kevin Harvick 637 -15 19 0 3 6 10 5 -4 Kyle Busch 632 -20 19 0 3 10 11 6 -- Matt Kenseth 626 -26 19 1 2 6 10 7 -- Jeff Gordon 587 -65 19 1 2 6 8 8 +1 Ryan Newman 586 -66 19 1 1 6 9 9 -1 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 577 -75 19 1 0 3 8 10 -- Denny Hamlin 570 -82 19 0 1 4 7 11 -- Tony Stewart 570 -82 19 0 0 2 7 12 -- Clint Bowyer 542 -110 19 0 0 3 8 13 +2 David Ragan 524 -128 19 1 1 3 6 14 +3 Kasey Kahne 523 -129 19 1 0 3 7 15 -1 Greg Biffle 523 -129 19 0 0 1 5 16 +2 A.J. Allmendinger 515 -137 19 0 0 1 4 17 -4 Juan Montoya 511 -141 19 2 0 2 6 18 +2 Joey Logano 510 -142 19 1 0 3 5 19 -3 Paul Menard 506 -146 19 0 0 3 5 20 -1 Mark Martin 500 -152 19 1 0 1 5 21 +1 Marcos Ambrose 495 -157 19 0 0 3 6 22 +1 Martin Truex Jr. 485 -167 19 0 0 0 6 23 -2 Brad Keselowski 475 -177 19 1 1 2 4 24 -- David Reutimann 448 -204 19 0 0 1 2 25 -- Jeff Burton 445 -207 19 0 0 0 0 26 -- Brian Vickers 415 -237 19 0 0 1 5 27 -- Regan Smith 410 -242 19 0 1 1 3 28 +1 Bobby Labonte 400 -252 19 0 0 1 2 29 -1 Jamie McMurray 400 -252 19 1 0 0 2 30 -- David Gilliland 347 -305 19 0 0 1 2 31 +1 Dave Blaney 275 -377 19 0 0 0 0 32 -1 Casey Mears 267 -385 18 0 0 0 0 33 -- Andy Lally* 215 -437 16 0 0 0 0 34 -- Robby Gordon 193 -459 14 0 0 0 0 35 -- Tony Raines 123 -529 11 0 0 0 0 36 -- Bill Elliott 100 -552 5 0 0 0 0 37 +3 J.J. Yeley 77 -575 16 0 0 0 0 38 -1 Ken Schrader 73 -579 5 0 0 0 0 39 -1 Terry Labonte 68 -584 4 0 0 0 0 40 -1 Michael McDowell 68 -584 17 0 0 0 0 41 -- David Stremme 34 -618 7 0 0 0 0 42 -- Michael Waltrip 20 -632 2 0 0 0 0 43 -- Andy Pilgrim 18 -634 1 0 0 0 0 44 -- Chris Cook 17 -635 1 0 0 0 0 45 -- Boris Said 16 -636 1 0 0 0 0 46 -- Brian Simo 11 -641 1 0 0 0 0 47 -- Geoffrey Bodine 6 -646 1 0 0 0 0 48 -- T.J. Bell* 5 -647 2 0 0 0 0 49 -- Erik Darnell 5 -647 1 0 0 0 0 50 -1 Brian Keselowski* 3 -649 1 0 0 0 0 51 -1 Steve Park 2 -650 1 0 0 0 0
The action on track on the streets of Toronto during Sunday afternoon was spectacular and fierce enough, but it paled next to the verbal fall-out that followed.
Safe to say that Will Power is not a happy man this morning.
The normally laid-back Australian was incandescent after his hopes of a good race in the Honda Indy Toronto ended with two collisions – one with his main title rival Dario Franchitti that punted him into a spin through turn 3 that all but wrecked his hopes of a win, and the second with Alex Tagliani that put paid to hopes of any sort of finish whatsoever.
It was Dario to whom he directed most of his anger, however.
“I’ve always raced him clean and he always races me dirty,” Power told TV reporters the minute he was out of the car. “He did the same at St. Pete: he drove me into the wall and I didn’t say anything. He did it again today.
“Does anyone ever penalise this guy? He’s as dirty as you like,” he went on. “It was such a dirty move … He’s the guy that mouths off about everyone and whines about everyone, and he’s the guy racing dirty who never gets a penalty from IndyCar. It’s just not right.
“I’m not surprised he didn’t get a penalty, he never gets a penalty,” he vented. “IndyCar won’t penalize them because Chip Ganassi goes up there and gives it to them. It’s just wrong.”
For his part, Chip Ganassi – the car owner of Franchitti’s #10 – denied that he’d known about any penalty, made any protests or taken any action to have one overturned.
Rumour and misinformation about the penalty-that-never-was was the fuel to the fire raging in pit lane. With TV broadcasts and IndyCar’s official Twitter feed both reporting that Franchitti had been handed a stop-go penalty for spinning Power on lap 57, the news that he hadn’t gave the impression that the team had successfully appealed to have it reversed – which would have been all-but unprecedented if it had been the case.
Trouble is, it was based on a misapprehension. There was no penalty and never had been, and the media sources had jumped the gun when they had heard that the stewards (who included driving legend Al Unser Jr and IndyCar official Tony Cotman) were simply reviewing the incident – after which they duly concluded that no penalty was needed for what they deemed a racing incident.
“Between Franchitti and Power, there was never a penalised issue to either driver,” Unser pointed out. “Franchitti was underneath Will, and there was no penalty assessed to him based on what we saw.”
Franchitti had obviously been briefed over the ream radio about the raging controversy as he made his way to victory lane, and was immediately conciliatory: “Obviously, there was contact with Will. If he’s p*ssed off, he’s quite right to be p*ssed off,” he said in typically robust language. “I’ll take more than 50% … But he has to take at least 50% of the blame. He left me a lane and then he came down,” he said, adding: “It was like he opened the door for me to pass and then closed it – too late.
“I braked as late as I could, and he went a little bit deeper but as a result of that he went wide,” he explained. “Will started to crowd me, and unfortunately the wall came out, I couldn’t get further to the right because there was a wall there … I tried to get out of it but I couldn’t.” He added: “I have to say if I was him I’d have been steamed too, but hopefully when he watches the replay he’ll see it was a racing incident.”
It didn’t seem likely. “Hey princess thanks for that nice tap today–appreciate it,” Power posted sarcastically to Franchitti on Twitter in the evening. “I did watch it and could not have raced you any cleaner —- P*SSED!”
Defending his decision to look down the inside of Power into turn 3 in the first place, Franchitti insisted that it’s part and parcel of being a racing driver. “If you’re not going to make any moves at all, you’re going to sit in whatever position you started in. But, yeah, crazy day here in Toronto!”
Despite the diplomacy, the idea that he was a “dirty racer” clearly stung Franchitti. “I believe if you ask anyone in the paddock, they will tell you that is not how I race … I think I’m known in the paddock as not someone who drives dirty, so I’m not really sure what he’s talking about,” he said. “I understand he’s upset, but hopefully when he cools down he’ll reassess that … If he doesn’t, I have no control over what he thinks. I’m going to continue to race the same way I’ve raced since I’ve been in North America.”
For this part, Power shot back: “I don’t know if it will change the way I race him, I’m just disappointed in the guy … If that’s how he wants to win a championship, good on him – he can have it.”
A few laps after his clash with Franchitti, Power was out altogether after being hit through turn 5 while overtaking Alex Tagliani.
“Pretty typical of him, Tagliani’s just a w*nker, he’s always been a w*nker,” said a disgruntled Power once he’d stopped venting at Dario. “We were just trying to get the best result possible before Tag hit me from behind. It’s very tough to have two DNFs in a row. All I can say is we’ll keep working hard and hopefully come back strong at Edmonton.”
“I am sure Will is pretty upset … The contact with Will was also a shame,” said Tagliani in response. “I tried to pass him a couple of times in turn three. He was blocking a bit, and then I made a move on the inside [and] it got tight.”
Tagliani himself ended up out of the race shortly afterwards when contact with Danica Patrick – who was avoiding a spinning James Jakes – sent him into a roll where the car was only prevented from completely overturning by the way it went vertical against the wall and bounced back right-side-up.
“I felt a big knock on the right rear, and we were up in the air,” said the local favourite. “It’s disappointing.”
Danica was already fuming over an early run-in with Takuma Sato who ploughed into the back of her car shortly after she had overtaken him, which wrecked both their afternoons. As she left pit lane, she directed an ironic thumbs-up at Sato who was still getting repairs, and on the radio called him an “idiot … that was a hard hit!”
Tony Kanaan was also fuming after being the victim of the race’s first of eight full course cautions when he was spun in turn 3 by Ryan Briscoe, and he had some unequivocal gestures for the Penske driver when the field circulated past the scene of the accident. “It was so stupid, he had plenty of room, I don’t know what he did,” said Kanaan. “I guess when your team mate is winning a lot and you’re not, you’re feeling the pressure,” referring to Briscoe’s disappointing form compared with that of Will Power in the same hardware.
Then there was Graham Rahal, who looked set to claim an impressive third place late in the race until he was spun out by Ryan Hunter-Reay. “I just got hit,” said Rahal afterwards. “I’m really ticked and I’m trying to control my emotions. That’s not like Hunter-Reay, but I guess some people strap on their helmets and lose their brain.”
“Graham got way out into the marbles there, and then he started coming across, and there was more than enough room for two cars, and I got up in there, I already had my momentum, I was coming to the corner,” said Hunter-Reay in response. “And he just came straight across. He had to know I was there.”
Rahal in turn had been the subject of anger from Hunter-Reay’s team in pit lane when it appeared he together with his Ganassi stable team mates Franchitti and Scott Dixon were “throwing” the double file line-up formation in order to extend the caution period – which was critical to Rahal’s chances of making it full distance on fuel.
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense,” said team owner Michael Andretti of the aborted restarts that prolonged the cautions. “They’re obviously doing it on purpose so that he gets it on fuel. One time is okay, twice you [should be] in the back … It’s unfair.”
“There was nothing bad going on there,” insisted Franchitti who was trying to line up alongside Rahal for the restart. “He couldn’t run the outside of [turn] 10 in the marbles, so he was taking my lane, and I couldn’t get on the outside of 11, so I couldn’t get alongside him. I tried it once and almost smacked the fence down. We were doing our best, the restarts were tough just because of the marbles on them.”
Chip Ganassi denied any conspiracy and said that he’d had to go over to Rahal’s crew to explain the problem to them, after which the restart proceeded normally.
But relations even seemed strained within the extended Ganassi family, with Dixon not taking too kindly to the upstart Rahal getting in the way of the serious business, calling the young American driver “a pain in the ass” and adding that Rahal “got his just desserts” when Hunter-Reay spun him out.
“I was alongside [Rahal] going down the back straight and then the kink comes and he just comes right across,” said Dixon of an earlier incident that had aggrieved him. “If I didn’t brake, it would have been a massive crash.”
“I am not going to make it easy for people to get by me … I raced them hard, and I raced them clean,” said Rahal of his run at the front with Franchitti and Dixon late in the race. “I’m on Chip Ganassi’s team for a reason, and I want to win races,” he pointed out, adding: “These guys are supposed to be teammates … I find it shocking that they continue to make comments about me.”
And the recriminations just reverberated on and on: there was some Canadian-on-Canadian action between veteran legend Paul Tracy and young rookie James Hinchcliffe who banged wheels midrace in an incident that saw Tracy save a dramatic spin and avert yet another full course caution.
“I am not going to back down if I think it’s my corner,” Hinchcliffe insisted afterwards, showing he was made from the same tough stuff as the hard-headed Tracy. “We all know what Paul is like, but I have to make sure everyone knows I am going to hold my ground. It was a racing incident, but if I were in his position, which I was later in the race, I made it out.”
Later on, Marco Andretti tried an ill-advised lunge down the inside of turn 1 during the penultimate restart and ended up spinning Oriol Servia, which caught up multiple cars including Hinchcliffe and briefly blocked the track entirely: “Marco is an aggressive driver, but he’s always raced me clean,” Servia said. “But today, I think he just had a bad sleep or something.”
Marco did receive a penalty for avoidable contact, as did Tagliani for the hit on Power and Danica Patrick for the accident involving Tagliani and Jakes. Mike Conway was also penalised for steaming into the back of Ryan Briscoe during a midrace restart. “I have to apologize to Ryan for ruining his race; completely a brain fade on my part,” Conway said afterwards.
Which brings us back to the question of why there was no penalty for Dario Franchitti for the accident that gives him – intentionally or not – a vital upper hand in the IndyCar championship battle at a crucial moment, which he now leads by 55pts. Is Power right that IndyCar regards Franchitti as “untouchable” and too big to penalise?
Simmering in the background was a lot of ill feeling left over from Milwaukee, when Dario Franchitti clipped a tyre laid out on the edge of Will Power’s pit box and sent it flying despite a mechanic having a foot on it to keep it in place. With Takuma Sato getting a penalty earlier on for hitting pit lane equipment many pundits had expected Franchitti to get the same, which would have put paid to what proved to be his eventual win.
On the night, IndyCar decided there were mitigating factors and enough “reasonable doubt” to make a penalty inappropriate: Power’s crew had laid out the tyres prematurely and to the very limits of the pit box, seemingly intending to squeeze Franchitti’s entry more than previous pit stops; the Penske team should arguably also have been penalised for the mechanic illegally standing on pit lane equipment in the first place; and at the end of the day no harm was done to either personnel or to Power’s own race. Where these good reasons not to award a penalty – or excuses after the fact?
The Power/Franchitti clash seems to have fallen into the same category of “some blame on both sides” as far as IndyCar is concerned, with Power’s initial move opening a gap sufficient to give Franchitti reason to go for it – and the fact that he then thought better of it and tried to pull out of the overtake would also have been considered.
But it’s likely to leave a lot of people fuming in pit lane, in what’s already been a notably ill-tempered IndyCar season to date. Surprisingly it’s the normally affable Franchitti who has been at the centre of most of it, with his outspoken heated criticism of the way that the blind lottery for the grid of the second Firestone Twin 275k race at Texas Motor Speedway was a “joke”, to angry accusations that Helio Castroneves was up to his “usual blocking crap” at the Milwaukee Mile.
Inevitably the whole idea of double file restarts – which has been a running sore ever since IndyCar insisted on their introduction at the season opener at St Petersburg, Florida – is also in the frame as a prime target.
“The double-file starts were nuts,” Hunter-Reay said. “It was like a free-for all. You had that tight first turn that’s really as slick as glass on a restart, so everybody is sliding through trying not to hit. Then you get through turn two and your rear end steps out. Then you have a long, six-gear straight where everybody gets a draft on each other, then you’ve got to shut it down to first gear [in three.]“
So is this season simply getting very bad tempered and too aggressive? Are the double file restarts to blame? Is the quality of driving in the series just not up to par this season? Or is it just a case that all publicity is good publicity and races like Toronto help IndyCar muscle into the headlines usually dominated by NASCAR (in the US) and F1 (everywhere else)?
“You know, I don’t know why,” admitted Franchitti when asked in post-race interviews at Toronto. “I think maybe one reason – and I’m just spit-balling – is that it’s just so close right now, to get that advantage is so difficult that maybe people are taking bigger risks.”
It would be nice to finish with an optimistic note that at least the next IndyCar outing will be a calmer, saner affair. Unfortunately it’s the second leg of the series’ Canadian mini-series at Edmonton City Center Airport, and the one thing that it’s not particularly known for is calm, peaceful, uneventful racing. In fact, compared to Edmonton, it’s Toronto that can often be relatively quiet …
The on-track action and post-race fall-out from the Honda Indy Toronto seemed to work wonders for the television ratings, with much-needed strong ratings for the event.
The on-track incidents during the Honda Indy Toronto may have brought scathing comments from drivers and experts about double file restarts, the street course, the officiating and the standard of others’ driving abilities, but it all proved a hit with television viewers all the same.
The US cable channel Versus reported a 0.5 rating for the race, which made it the second-most watched IZOD IndyCar Series race ever shown on the network after the June Firestone Twin 275s that were held in prime time on Saturday night.
In all, Versus says that there has been a 21 per cent increase in ratings so far this season compared with the 2010 season average.
The race was also extremely popular in Canada, where Canadian sports cable channel TSN carried the Versus coverage and reported that the race had received the biggest audience for any IndyCar race on the station with more than 1.2 million unique viewers over the course of the race, peaking at 735,000 during the closing laps of the race.
It was the largest audience recorded for the Honda Indy Toronto since 1997.
Versus have certainly been putting a lot of work into their coverage in recent works, with their signing up of Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon for three races as an expert contributor/commentator being hailed as a particular master stroke.
During the Toronto race, fellow racer Tomas Scheckter tweeted that “I can’t stop thinking how much sense and how good its to have [Dan Wheldon] calling the race. He [is] as good a driver as commentator,” adding that Wheldon’s contributions in the booth were “the most impressive performance of the race” while attaching the hash tag #newmurraywalker.
Wheldon’s contribution certainly seemed to bring something of a British F1-style feel to the American coverage, echoing the expert ‘colour’ approach of the likes of James Hunt and Martin Brundle pioneered on the BBC when they partnered Walker for Grand Prix coverage in the 80s and 90s. Wheldon was also key to the staging of the channel’s first “F1-style gridwalk” prior to the Iowa Speedway race in June.
However, Versus’ attempt to launch a weekly IndyCar TV magazine show faltered after the Indy 500 on cost grounds, and Versus have also been forced to pull live streaming of races for website subscribers.
Versus’ efforts come as TV rights for IndyCar are coming up for renewal, with the series keen to not only get the best financial terms but also to negotiate a deal that gets the best cross-network publicity and promotion for IndyCar as a whole as the series attempts to rebuild its popularity to the levels it enjoyed before the highly damaging ChampCar/IRL split in the 1990s.
The series appointed PR and marketing specialist Randy Bernard as chief executive officer 18 months ago with a brief to raise the profile of the sport, which has led to various high profile initiatives to raise the sport’s appeal including the introduction of twin-header events and the controversial double file restarts.
Currently – under a contract imposed during the series’ darkest split-hit days under former CEO Tony George – broadcasting rights in the US are divided between the major ABC network which carries five races during the season including the main attraction, May’s Indianapolis 500, while Versus carries the remaining 12 races of the season. Each contract brings in between $4 and $6 million to IndyCar, according to sources.
ABC has carried the Indy 500 for 47 consecutive years and will do so again in 2012, and many of the series’ old hands would be aghast if the race were to move from its television “spiritual home” after that. But IndyCar organisers are disappointed with ABC’s sports news coverage of other series races outside the Indy 500, which is almost non-existent as ABC is unwilling to promote events held on Versus that is now owned by its network rival NBC.
IndyCar is currently in the middle of contract negotiations for all races, although ABC’s rights to the Indy 500 have one more year to run. An integrated deal that puts all IndyCar coverage within the NBC family of channels would arguably get more cross-promotion between races, but at the expense of any coverage of the sport on the highly influential daily sports news show SportsCenter which airs on the ABC-owned EPSN cable network that has far greater penetration into homes than Versus. It would also put IndyCar in uncharted territory with regard to NBC’s level and quality of support for its most important races previously in ABC’s “safe hands”.
Once ABC’s contractual period as “preferred bidder” status expires, other potential players in the negotiations could include third US broadcast network CBS and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation that owns Fox Broadcasting and motor racing specialist Speed Channel on cable.
Another factor at work is that Randy Bernard also wants to expand the number of races on the IndyCar calendar and has said he would go to 22 races as soon as possible if he could, but that the main delay is in ensuring that the television coverage would be in place for any increase in the number of events during the year.
The importance of the television ratings to the sport can’t be understated, with estimates that the series lost in the region of $22 million in 2009 and $15 million in 2010 and desperately needs an upturn in fortunes and popularity soon. Last year’s IndyCar Series finale at Homestead-Miami got a miserable 0.3 rating on Versus, and this year’s reformatting of the race as the world championship at Las Vegas with its $5 million challenge prize will this year be shown instead on ABC.
Bernard had nailed his colours and his very job firmly to the mast: “If we do a 0.3 rating on this, I’ll quit,” he said. “Right there on the spot. I’ll literally quit on the spot. If we do a 0.8 rating, I will quit. On the spot.”
Stakes in the casino town are high indeed, not just for Bernard but for the future of IndyCar itself.
Grand Marshal caught speeding to the race
One off-screen glitch in the weekend’s Honda Indy Toronto occurred when actor Dan Aykroyd was pulled over by police for speeding on his way to the event, where he was serving as the race grand marshal.
“You know when you see these races, you want to get into your vehicles and drive home and you do it trying to imitate the driver. That won’t be me this afternoon,” he said, adding that he’d been let off with a warning by the officer after explaining that he was “racing to the race.”
As there was no official ticket, there’s no record as to exactly how fast the Canadian-born comedian, musician and actor was doing when police pulled him over, but Aykroyd said that the officer “pulled me over for 20 over in a 50 … and let me off with a warning.”
“They let him on his way; no ticket was given because he promised not to speed on his way home,” Constable Hugh Smith of the city’s Traffic Services department said. “He didn’t promise never to speed again, he just said he wouldn’t do it on his way home!”
59-year-old Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers star Aykroyd gave the command “Drivers, start your engines” at the start, and presented race winner Dario Franchitti with the trophy following the chequered flag.
A crash-filled street race in Toronto saw angry words flying almost as often as bodywork and debris, as Dario Franchitti claimed a controversial win after he spun Will Power mid-race.
Dario Franchitti won the Hondy Indy Toronto on the streets of downtown Toronto, but it will surely be one of the most controversial wins of his motor racing career, with angry words flying from his title rival IndyCar rival Will Power after the two made mid-race contact.
The start of the race was relatively benign despite the double file start, with Will Power taking up the lead from pole position ahead of Scott Dixon and Mike Conway getting the better of Dario Franchitti for third. It certainly didn’t hint at the chaos and storms that were to follow, and it wasn’t until lap 3 that we saw the first full course caution of the day.
That was sparked when Tony Kanaan took a wide line into turn 3, which Ryan Briscoe took as an invitation to try a move down the inside line. He wasn’t able to hold it close enough to the apex however, and when Kanaan turned into the corner there was contact that spun Kanaan around and sent him into the outside wall rear-first. The suspension damage terminated the #82′s involvement in the race, but Briscoe escaped with merely a precautionary visit to pit lane for a new nose.
Kanaan said he was ‘Very, very disappointed,” adding: “It was so stupid, he had plenty of room, I don’t know what he did … I guess when your team mate is winning a lot and you’re not, you’re feeling the pressure.”
Racing resumed on lap 6, and there was another incident on track two laps later when Takuma Sato – having been overtaken for 20th position by Danica Patrick down the start/finish straight – then misjudged his braking into turn 3 and ploughed straight into the back of the GoDaddy.com #7, punted them both off into the run-off area. Fortunately the run-off allowed track marshals to work under waved local yellows rather than a full course caution, and both Danica and Sato were eventually able to get back underway and limp back to the pits for repairs. Danica was out first and directed an ironic thumbs-up at the KV Racing pit box where the team were still working on Sato, while over the radio she made her feelings known to her own team: “Idiot … that was a hard hit!”
The race settled down after this, with Dario getting past Conway at the restart to retake third place. The next significant development was Oriol Servia coming into the pits early for his first stop of the day on lap 14 in a bid to move to an off-sync strategy from the leaders. This was on the very edge of being able to complete the 85 laps with only one further pit stop for fuel, and Servia was clearly hoping for a timely caution to assist his campaign.
The same tactic was soon picked up by others, with Marco Andretti in next time around, and Ryan Briscoe – already circulating near the back after his clash with Tagliani and with nothing to lose – followed suit next time around, and then Paul Tracy on lap 19 and Ryan Hunter-Reay on lap 22. What had started as a minor sideshow distraction was now starting to become potentially a major problem for the leaders, as a full course caution at this point would see them all dive into the pits – and come out behind these early stoppers who were beginning to add up.
The worry grew when potential front-runners Justin Wilson and Alex Tagliani came in on laps 23 and 24 respectively: if they were gifted the lead by a timely yellow then it would be very difficult to dislodge them again. Finally on lap 27 it was Dario Franchitti who blinked among the leaders and headed into pit lane. It seemed an especially canny move by the Scot given that Power and Dixon were now coming up on the back of James Jakes to lap the Dale Coyne car and were being held up.
And then just as Dario was back up to full speed, the caution that the leaders who had yet to pit feared came out on lap 31: Tagliani was into the tyre wall at turn 3, after Helio Castroneves misjudged his braking into the corner and locked up, running into the side of the #77 that was trying to make the turn. Both cars were recovered and made it back to pit lane for lengthy repairs by their respective teams.
Power had reason not to be happy with his Penske team mate, who not for the first time this season had caused a highly unhelpful caution. Power and Dixon were among those who were obliged to pit at this point, while Dario Franchitti stayed out and assumed the race lead for the first time that afternoon.
As the race resumed on lap 37 with a lot of jostling and minor collisions but no major crashes: Franchitti fended off an assertive Oriol Servia followed by Justin Wilson, Ryan Hunter-Reay and local boy James Hinchcliffe; Power led those who had just stopped, but was now mired down in 11th place just ahead of Dixon and Conway, with the likes of Briscoe, Vitor Meira, Paul Tracy, Marco Andretti and JR Hildebrand in the way ahead.
The first green lap saw Dixon make contact with Hildebrand as he forced his way past, the rookie just able to keep it off the tyre wall in turn 3; a lap later and Canadians Paul Tracy and James Hinchcliffe found themselves going into turn 5 side-by-side. Tracy is not known as a driver who backs off from any fight, and young rookie Hinchliffe is apparently made of similar stuff so neither driver would give up, the cars banging wheels and Tracy coming out of it the worse with a spin that he was just able to save although damage to the front wing from the initial contact would send him into pit lane but without the need for yellow flags.
Instead the next caution was for James Jakes who had spun and stalled in turn 9. That allowed Graham Rahal to head for the pits for new tyres after apparently sustaining a right rear puncture on the sharp edge of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s front wing; surprisingly Hunter-Reay opted not to pit at the same time despite clear damage to that front wing, preferring instead to hold on to the track position that he had gained from his early pit stop strategy.
And initially it seemed to be the right move, with Hunter-Reay able to follow Justin Wilson through when the Englishman made a lovely move on Oriol Servia for second place, forcing Servia off the racing line so that he then lost pace on the marbles which were seriously building up by this stage. But a few laps later and the wing’s condition had worsened, Hunter-Reay had fallen down to seventh place and finally he conceded defeat and pitted on lap 47. It looked as though the Andretti team had made a horrible mistake with the gambit.
Or – maybe not. The very next lap saw a major multiple-car accident in the increasingly notorious turn 3. It was sparked by Paul Tracy – possibly still with some damage after his earlier contact with Hinchcliffe – locking up and running into Vitor Meira on the straight leading down into the corner; Sebastian Bourdais was immediately behind them on the road and had no where to go but into the side of Tracy as he spun, while Charlie Kimball tired to avoid the accident and ran into the barrier on the other side, leaving only a car’s-width gap in the middle of the track for the rest of the cars to make their way through. Fortunately all cars were able to get back underway, although Tracy needed a lengthy visit to the pits for repairs.
With 36 laps to go till the end, it was a no-brainer that everyone now had to come in for their final pit stops – which potentially fell beautifully for those who had just been into the pits such as Graham Rahal, who assumed the lead, and Hunter-Reay who now found himself in 5th place after that suddenly-fortuitous fluke stop for a wing change at just the right moment. Dario Franchitti resumed in sixth place ahead of Justin Wilson, Will Power and Scott Dixon, Power having had a flying pit stop thanks to having less fuel to take on board after his more recent stop than Franchitti and Wilson.
Franchitti had a poor restart and was passed by Justin Wilson, and that broke Dario’s momentum just enough for Will to pounce and get past him as well. The two were still running together when Mike Conway ran into the back of Ryan Briscoe and shunted them both off into a run-off area.
“I have to apologize to Ryan for ruining his race; completely a brain fade on my part,” confessed Conway. “Going into the turn, I tried to take my time and get to the inside, but it seemed to choke up a bit. There was nowhere to go. It was kind of a slow incident but it broke the left side suspension. End of a tough day for the team.”
Like the earlier Sato/Patrick accident in the same spot, this was dealt with under local waved yellows; but the next caution was out on lap 57 anyway. And the reason for it was a clash between the two main title contenders, Dario Franchitti and Will Power.
From Dario’s point of view, Power seemed to run wide into turn 3 and leave a gap down the inside which was just too tempting to pass up. By the time Franchitti realised that he’d misjudged the opportunity and tried to back out of it, it was too late and Will turned into the apex and made contact with Dario on the inside: the Penske came off worse and was thrown into a spin.
He got the engine going again and rejoined once all the cars had gone past, but it was a bitter blow for Power’s title chances. And given that it had been Dario that had done the deed – seemingly deliberately in Will’s eyes – he was spitting fire. “We were working our way back toward the front and we got past Franchitti. We went into the corner and I gave him room and then he just drove into me.”
Word came down that the incident was being referred to the track stewards for a possible penalty for the championship leader, and for several minutes confusion reigned. The race restarted and Dario started moving his way back up the running order again, and everyone waited for him to come in and serve the stop-go penalty.
Except – there was no penalty. There never had been. When the race stewards (who included Al Unser Jr and IndyCar’s Tony Cotman) reviewed the collision they determined that it was a racing accident and deemed no penalty applied after all. “I understood he was going to get penalized but then there was no call – I just don’t understand that,” said Power in the confused aftermath of the race.
“I’m not surprised he didn’t get a penalty, he never gets a penalty,” Power said in the heat of the moment. “It was such a dirty move … I’m really disappointed in Dario, I always race him clean, he always races dirty. The guy that mouths off and whinges about everyone, he’s the one who’s dirty.”
Unser was unmoved by Power’s fury and accusations of IndyCar favouritism toward Dario, who many deemed should have been penalised at last month’s Milwaukee race after hitting pit lane equipment (a front tyre laid out in Power’s pit box).
“Between Franchitti and Power, there was never a penalised issue to either driver,” Unser pointed out. “Franchitti was underneath Will, and there was no penalty assessed to him based on what we saw.”
Drivers always say that the one thing they want from officials is consistency, and in this case if Franchitti had been penalised for this move then why not Briscoe for the first turn 3 incident that put Kanaan out, or the accident that saw Castroneves hit Tagliani? Having taken no action on those or any of the other collisions so far, it would have been harsh and deeply inconsistent to suddenly serve one to Franchitti for an even more marginal call. But the incident did certainly leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouths, and tempers were suddenly boiling over up and down pit lane.
For his part, Dario was apologetic the minute he stepped out of the car at the end of the race. “Obviously, there was contact with Will. If he’s p*ssed off, he’s quite right to be p*ssed off,” he said in typically robust language, accepting that when it came to assigning blame “I’ll take more than 50%” but that Power was not exactly blame-free in the accident either, having opened the door initially.
“I braked as late as I could, and he went a little bit deeper but as a result of that he went wide,” he explained. “Will started to crowd me, and unfortunately the wall came out, I couldn’t get further to the right because there was a wall there … I tried to get out of it but I couldn’t.
“I have to say if I was him I’d have been steamed too, but hopefully when he watches the replay he’ll see it was a racing incident.” Adding that he “”didn’t want to win that way”, Franchitti said that “I see it as a racing incident” and pointed out that “IF you’re not going to make any moves at all, you’re going to sit in whatever position you started in. But, yeah, crazy day here in Toronto!”
Worse was to come for Power. Racing resumed on lap 61 but less than five laps later it was back under full course caution again – and Power was once more at the centre of things. He was passing Alex Tagliani through turn 5 when he clipped the front of the #77, which threw Power’s car up into the air at an angle before sending it into the wall and tyre barrier on the outside. This time Power’s #12 Verizon car was too badly damaged to continue in.
“Pretty typical of him, Tagliani’s just a w*nker, he’s always been a w*nker,” said a disgruntled Power once he’d stopped venting at Dario. “We were just trying to get the best result possible before Tag hit me from behind. It’s very tough to have two DNFs in a row. All I can say is we’ll keep working hard and hopefully come back strong at Edmonton.”
“The contact with Will was also a shame,” said Tagliani in response. “I tried to pass him a couple of times in turn three. He was blocking a bit, and then I made a move on the inside [and] it got tight.”
Of the final 20 laps, 12 of them were run under cautions – which was just as well for some of the drivers like Rahal and Hunter-Reay who had come in for their final pit stops. In fact tempers were now running so high – with much of it directed at Dario and his team – that some were accusing Chip Ganassi of conspiracy by getting his three drivers at the front (Franchitti, Dixon and Rahal) to deliberate failing to line up out of the final corner in order to extend the yellow.
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense,” said Michael Andretti of the aborted restarts that prolonged the cautions. “They’re obviously doing it on purpose so that [Rahal] gets it on fuel. One time is okay, twice you [should be] in the back … It’s unfair.”
Chip Ganassi denied any such dark arts and said that he’d had to walk over to Rahal’s pit crew and explain to them that the #38′s line was forcing Franchitti onto the dangerous bumps and marbles off the racing line and that they needed to make more allowance to play fair.
“I don’t think Graham was doing anything crazy,” insisted Dario. “There as nothing bad going on there, but he couldn’t run the outside of [turn] 10 in the marbles, so he was taking my lane, and I couldn’t get on the outside of 11, so I couldn’t get alongside him. I tried it once and almost smacked the fence down. We were doing our best, the restarts were tough just because of the marbles on them.”
Next time around was more successful and the race duly went green at last. And then it went yellow seconds later: Danica Patrick tapped the back of James Jakes into turn 3 and spun him; she reacted quickly and manoeuvred around him but in doing so managed to clip the back wheel of Alex Tagliani who was passing the scene of the accident on the outside line. The wheel-on-wheel contact shot Tagliani’s right hand side up into the air, and the car even went over the 90 degree vertical and would have overturned if had not then made contact with the wall and safety fence which propped it up and bounced it back right-side-up onto the track again. Tagliani was out but Jakes was sent on his way and Danica made it back to pit lane as well where she needed a spare front wing from Marco Andretti’s stock of spare parts in order to rejoin the race.
“I felt a big knock on the right rear, and we were up in the air. It’s disappointing,” he said. “First, I got knocked out with Helio and then at the end by Danica.”
“It piles up so bad at the hairpin there, and everybody is just running the inside,” said Patrick of the initial contact with Jakes that set off the accident. “Unfortunately, the line is so much further to the inside with the bumps nowadays that it’s causing pileups.”
There was one more accident still waiting to happen at the next restart on lap 76: Marco Andretti tried cutting down the inside of turn 1 only to run into the back of Oriol Servia, sending the #2 spinning into Justin Wilson who was minding his own business on the outside. Hildebrand, Hinchcliffe and Kimball also arrived at the scene in the immediate aftermath, and the mess blocked the track so completely that the field had to take to the run-off service road to bypass turn 1 when they came through behind the safety car.
In what green flag racing there was, it was a simple matter for Franchitti and Dixon to get past the slower cars that were having to think fuel-first, and Rahal was spun out by late contact in turn 3 during the final restart with Hunter-Reay which put an end to Chip Ganassi’s hopes of a team 1-2-3. For a few laps the remaining Ganassi duo made a race of it, Dixon looking particularly feisty and willing to go aggressive on his team mate in the final six lap green flag stint in order to get the win, but ultimately he backed off – either accepting that it wasn’t going to happen, or perhaps the pit crew had been on the radio with a quiet word that absolutely not not include the phrase “team orders”.
Even so, is there just a hint that the fractious atmosphere of Toronto was seeping into the Ganassi camp? “It’s frustrating because these street races are part luck, you know. Will and I were one and two, then [the caution came out] and the #10 car gets it everytime. I’ll call back on the radio and say, ‘Let me guess who’s leading: the 10 car’,” he said with a slight edge to his light-hearted tone. “Good on him, they make good strategy.”
It had been his plan to make the early pit stop rather than Dario, and he seemed confused if not outright irritated at what had changed once the race got underway. “For us we knew what the window was, we discussed it in the morning, we were going to pit early. But obviously they split the strategy with Dario and he pitted early, and left me out to put some pressure on Will, which that didn’t work.”
Franchitti was in maximum diplomacy mode, and after making peace overtures to Power over their on-track clash he then sent out olive branches to his team mate as well. “You see how good Scott’s been all weekend, Scott’s was dynamite all weekend,” he said, talking up the ongoing battle for the IndyCar championship between the three of them. “Will was very strong, we know that, I don’t take anything for granted. That lead could go down in one week, so we’ll just keep pushing.”
Despite Dario’s caution about the title battle, it’s been a very good few weeks for him in the championship. Today’s mayhem meant a second successive “did not finish” for Power after he crashed at Iowa two weeks ago, and the two races leave him 55pts adrift of Franchitti. Meanwhile, the rows and controversies sparked off by this race will doubtless reverberate down the next few weeks – including the inevitable question about how much the controversial double-file restarts contributed to the mayhem we saw.
It’ll be interesting to see who is still speaking to whom going into the second Canadian race at Edmonton in two weeks time.
Race results
1. #10 Dario Franchitti 85 laps 01:56:32.1501s
2. #9 Scott Dixon 85 laps + 0.7345s
3. #28 Ryan Hunter-Reay 85 laps + 6.0144s
4. #26 Marco Andretti 85 laps + 7.5671s
5. #14 Vitor Meira 85 laps + 9.0117s
6. #19 Sebastien Bourdais 85 laps + 9.3114s
7. #6 Ryan Briscoe 85 laps + 9.8735s
8. #4 JR Hildebrand 85 laps + 14.1750s
9. #59 EJ Viso 85 laps + 14.7843s
10. #78 Simona de Silvestro 85 laps + 15.7603s
11. #24 Ana Beatriz 85 laps + 16.8992s
12. #2 Oriol Servia 85 laps + 19.8736s
13. #38 Graham Rahal 85 laps + 21.3123s
14. #06 James Hinchcliffe 84 laps + 1 laps
15. #22 Justin Wilson 83 laps + 2 laps
16. #8 Paul Tracy 82 laps + 3 laps
17. #3 Helio Castroneves 81 laps + 4 laps
18. #18 James Jakes 81 laps + 4 laps
19. #7 Danica Patrick 79 laps + 6 laps
20. #5 Takuma Sato 79 laps + 6 laps
Retirements
21. #83 Charlie Kimball after 77 laps Contact
22. #27 Mike Conway after 76 laps Contact
23. #77 Alex Tagliani after 71 laps Contact
24. #12 Will Power after 66 laps Contact
25. #34 Sebastian Saavedra after 43 laps Contact
26. #82 Tony Kanaan after 2 laps Contact
You know that a race hasn’t been the most exciting of affairs when all the next-day headlines are about the traffic getting to Kentucky Speedway rather than the cars going 175 mph on it in the Quaker State 400 race itself.
It was the inaugural Cup race at the venue, and in order to win the contract to add a Cup race to its existing Truck and Nationwide Series line-up the facility had needed to expand from its previous 66,000 capacity to something more in the region of 107,000 – and it achieved this rather magnificently, it has to be said.
Unfortunately what no one seemed to have thought through was the impact on the surrounding infrastructure in the city of Sparta where the Speedway is located, and the traffic backlogs started hours before the Saturday night race was scheduled to start. Not only was a normal 30-60 minute drive taking the better part of five hours, some fans never made it at all – and many who did arrived too late for the start, only to be told there was no parking left anywhere in the area after the track organised some 33,000 parking spots that proved to be woefully inadequate. One of the fans who was caught out was the president of the state senate, who said afterwards that he would convene an official enquiry into what had happened; the fact that he’s rumoured to be lined up to run for state governor is surely purely coincidental.
The whole debacle was a serious embarrassment for all concerned, with both the track management and NASCAR itself moved to apologise to fans. “While NASCAR was thrilled by the incredible response to our inaugural NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Kentucky, we also are extremely disappointed by the traffic problems and inconveniences endured by fans who wanted to be part of our races,” said NASCAR chairman Brian France on Monday. “This situation cannot happen again.”
The controversy even caught up the Cup drivers themselves, with Ryan Newman hoping that fans would give them a chance to put things right next year and Denny Hamlin finding himself gridlocked on the way in with everyone else: “Bad news is I’m prolly not going to make the drivers meeting in 3 hours because I’m in this traffic with everyone else,” he tweeted from his stationary car. “Good news, I’m starting in the back anyway [because of an engine change.]“
The fact that the traffic situation hogged all the headlines after the race does rather confirm that the race itself was the closest thing you’ll see to a “routine dull day at the office” as you’ll get in motorsport. The drivers all worked hard, but there was little to show for it at the end of the night.
Going into the race all the talk had been about the track condition. The track management’s focus up till then had been on expanding capacity, but now raceday loomed it was clear that the Speedway surface itself was in a less than optimal situation with the drivers worried about all the bumps in the surface: Jeff Gordon spoke of tracks that “just absolutely have to be repaved – this one would be one of them. It is very rough here.” And sure enough, the track management have said that they will look into a complete repaving of the circuit in the next year or so.
Drivers didn’t think that the bumps would have a great effect for the Cup race itself, but were worried about the impact on qualifying – so it was rather ironic that the qualifying session was aborted midway through because of rain showers and we never got to see that play out, or else we might have got a more interesting mixed up grid for the Quaker State 400 than we did.
Kyle Busch inherited pole position as a result based on earlier practice session times. Busch had Nationwide and Truck experience at Kentucky and so wasn’t phased at all by the prospect of the first new Cup venue on the calendar in ten years, and indeed most of the big names like Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson were similarly familiar with the Speedway in some car or other. Carl Edwards had even taken his first national-level carrer victory here in Trucks, while Joey Logano was particularly expected to build on recent momentum given that he had been the winner of the last three years of Nationwide races – although he could finish only tenth this year in a race won by Brad Keselowski.
In the Cup race, Kyle took the green flag in the late day sunshine alongside Juan Montoya, but it was his brother Kurt who got the best drive off the final corner to break through and run alongside the #18 , finally getting a nose in front to officially lead the first lap, the two running side-by-side and exchanging the lead through a lap for the next several minutes before Kurt finally got past and put some clean air in between him and Kyle, the two of them pulling out a comfortable lead over the rest of the field.
Because of the recent rain, NASCAR had already announced a competition caution for lap 30 for the teams to check over how the cars were faring, and Kasey Kahne led at the restart only to get trounced by Kyle Busch who was once again the king of the restarts, with Kurt soon up to second but over 2s behind Kyle as the field embarked on a green flag stint that would last 111 laps and which would see over half the 43-car field go a lap down.
There was little change in the top six which saw Kahne, Johnson, Edwards and Keselowski playing back up roles to the Busch brothers in the top six. Green flag pit stops started around lap 80 (save for Marcos Ambrose who needed to pit earlier after a miscommunication with his team in the earlier stop) and Kyle Busch cycled back to the front once they were complete. Brian Vickers got a speeding drive-thru penalty, Dave Penalty needed to come back in for a missing lugnut, Kahne was complaining of a mystery vibration that the team couldn’t trace and told him simply to deal with it, and Jimmie Johnson was back to his perennial chronic problem of slow stops.
With little to report on track other than David Reutimann cracking the top five and Denny Hamlin impressing by getting within sight of the top ten having started from the rear because of that overnight engine change, it was almost a relief when green flag pit stops loomed once more, starting on lap 120 with Kasey Kahne but not seeing leader Kyle Busch hit pit road for another nine laps, after which he resumed in the lead with nearly 9s lead over Carl Edwards now in second.
With the darkness now well set in and track conditions changing fast, the second yellow of the night – and the first “proper” caution – came out on lap 139 for debris. While most cars took the chance to come into pit lane, Brad Keselowski and Tony Stewart opted to stay out and assumed first and second position for the restart ahead of Kyle and Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne in fifth.
This green flag lasted only six laps before another caution, this time for oil on the track after David Ragan was seen skidding at a very wild angle and lucky to save the #6 from a wreck. A few cars opted to take the latest opportunity to pit, including Kahne who still needed that vibration taking care of, but the leaders as a whole stayed out on track and in the restart on lap 158 there was a three-wide battle between Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski for the lead before Keselowski finally stamped his authority on the matter.
Not that it was all going so well for Keselowski: he was suffering from radio problems, receiving nothing from pit lanes and only intermittently able to talk with his spotter, forcing him to rely on using old school hand signals to relay information to his pit chief Paul Wolfe about whether the car needed adjustments for understeer of oversteer at the next pit stop. Keselowski was also forced to keep track of fuel mileage and make his own call on when he needed to come into the pits, and to his credit pulled this all off with aplomb.
Having gone off-sync in their previous pit stops, Stewart was in on lap 180 and Keselowski on lap 187, while Kyle Busch was able to stay out with the main field until lap 193. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Denny Hamlin had just come into the pits – handing the lead temporarily to David Ragan – when Jamie McMurray’s #1 car suddenly suffered an engine failure on lap 200 and expired in a trail of smoke, triggering the fourth yellow of the evening which allowed Ragan to come in for a more leisurely yellow flag stop, rejoining in tenth place.
Keselowski resumed in the lead ahead of Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart when the green flag came out again on lap 210, but all the leaders would have to pit for one last splash and dash before the end of the race.
Still off-sync, Stewart was the first of those to take to pit road under green on lap 233, surprising many by opting to elongate his stop by taking four tyres where others were set to gamble on taking only two. It was a callback to the traditional approach of using the fresh rubber to stream back up through the field to recover any places lost because of the longer stop, but the changes to cars and tyres this year have repeatedly demonstrated that this tactic no longer works on medium-length “cookie-cutter” ovals such as this and that track position is far more evaluable than fresh tyres – and it was no different here at Kentucky. Stewart would pay for that call by crew chief Darian Grubb and would finish in 12th place, although Stewart himself put the blame down to the #14′s pace at restarts: “We just couldn’t get going on the restarts,” he said. “Beyond frustrating.”
Keselowski was still in the lead by Kyle Busch was not slashing the gap between them and looked set to make a jump, when instead he dived for pit lane on lap 239 and the #18 crew put in their predictably phenomenal job in turning their man around and getting him back out on track. Keselowski came in next time around and had a less speedy stop, which – while by no means bad – meant that after coming in a second ahead of Busch, he returned to the track three seconds behind.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was among the last of those to pit, and as he exited pit lane the left front tyre – which hadn’t been changed during the flying stop – suddenly exploded on him, taking an awful lot of bodywork with it as the rubber flailed around, depositing debris on the track that forced the fifth caution of the evening.
Earnhardt Jr. denied that it has been a case of worn tyres that they should have spotted and changed in the pit stop just seconds earlier. “No, I slid the left front tyre real bad coming on to pit road. It was all my fault.”
It hadn’t been the best of nights for the fan favourite in any case. “We didn’t ride the bumps good. The car didn’t cut the corner good. We could change the balance but it wouldn’t make us go faster; when we were too loose and we would tighten it up, we wouldn’t find any speed in that,” he said afterwards. “So we just didn’t have a good set-up in there for whatever reason. And we would have finished well if we could have gotten some track position … We were just so slow all night we could never take any chances on track position and stuff like that. We were just too slow.”
It’s the latest blow to Earnhardt’s Chase hopes. After a strong run of performances earlier in the season that saw him up to third place in the points standings, a recent string of poor finishes has wiped out all that good work and slumped him down to eighth and at risk of not making the cut; and without a race win this season (or indeed for an uncomfortably long time of over three years despite coming agonisingly close several times in 2011 only to be pipped at the post, twice by Kevin Harvick.)
David Reutimann had been in the lead when the caution came out, but he needed to hand that lead back to Kyle Busch in order to come into pit lane, returning to take the restart on lap 259 in third place behind Busch and Matt Kenseth and just ahead of Jimmie Johnson.
The green flag lasted only three laps before another caution: Clint Bowyer spun the #33 after losing a tyre, hitting the wall with his rear and then struggling to get the car pointing the right way and get going again on the steep Kentucky Speedway banking. It was surprisingly almost the only impact that any of the Richard Childress Racing drivers had made on the race all evening, RCR looking oddly anonymous here with even their standard bearer Kevin Harvick only managing a mediocre 16th.
That set up a two-lap shootout for the race win with Kyle Busch ahead of Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, David Reutimann and Brad Keselowski. Unusually for Kyle – who typically dominates restarts – this time he struggled with a touch of wheel spin and Johnson was able to stay right alongside him through the first turns and threatened to take the lead, which would have been the race decider.
“Did Jimmie and them come get tires on that one restart?” asked Kyle at the post-race press conference. “I knew he had fresher rubber than I did for a restart. I tried to do the best I could … but I overshot my acceleration just by a little bit and spun my tyres a fuzz. That allowed him to get a little bit of momentum on me. He got a good start. We had to race down into turn 1 side-by-side rather than me getting a jump on him.
“I was just hoping that the outside lane would prevail, I could get a run through there, carry my momentum and clear him down the backstretch, race him into turn three. It was certainly a tense moment there for a second. But after I took the white, I saw the #00 coming on the #48 and getting there to make a move on him. I was like, ‘C’mon, Reuty!’”
Once the #18 proved to have the edge and managed to pull ahead, Johnson faltered and fell back into the clutches of Reutimann who looked particularly strong in these final minutes. With the #48 and the #00 locked in battle for second place it gave Busch all the time he needed to pull out a safe gap at the front and cruise to a comfortable win in the end having led 125 of the 267 race laps.
“I was able to hang with the #18 inside of turns 1 and 2, and he just cleared me going down the back,” said Johnson said. “If I could have stayed inside of him, it would have been one heck of a finish at the end … but it didn’t happen that way, and then he cleared me and went on, and then I had my hands full with the #00. David was probably the best car at the end, and if he had cleared me sooner, I think he would have been up there with the #18 racing for the win.”
“It was hit or miss the first part of the race,” said Reutimann. “We would make it better, then make it worse. Every time we put four tires on, we couldn’t go anywhere, too tight.” But as the race had gone on, the set-up changes started to kick in and suit the cooling night time conditions: “We unfortunately have a bit of a history of being fast when it doesn’t really matter. Tonight worked out where we were fast at the end of the race, which is evidently what you got to do!”
Reutimann pipped Johnson for second while a late dive to the inside line rewarded Ryan Newman with fourth ahead of Edwards and Kenseth. Meanwhile, having led for 79 laps, Brad Keselowski couldn’t hide his frustration at finishing seventh which was poor reward for all that work. “Disappointed in the results. It’s just a product of double-file restarts,” he said. “At the end, the restarts are just a crapshoot … There’s a reason why the leader takes the high lane on the restart,” he went on. “If you get the bottom lane, you’re going backwards. I kept getting in an odd position and just kept getting on the bottom lane. Every restart just kept playing against us.”
No such problems for the only man to lead more laps than the rejuvenated #2 Penske, race winner Kyle Busch.
“It was certainly a fun night for us. Couldn’t be happier to be here in victory lane. This one ranks right up there with the best of them,” said Busch, who is not traditionally all that strong on the 1.5 mile ‘cookie cutter’ ovals and who is yet to win one of the ‘major’ NASCAR flagpole events despite all his series success. “I haven’t won any of the big races, unfortunately, yet. But, you know, it ranks right up there with Las Vegas being another of my prestigious wins that I feel like I’ve accomplished so far.”
Kyle gave a lot of the credit for the night’s win to his crew chief Dave Rogers, who has been uncomfortably in the spotlight himself recently with fines for a ride height violation and an unapproved oil pan on the #18 during a financially costly June.
“I was telling him the car is good, but he would still make a change knowing what the track is going to do,” said Kyle. “That’s just experience. Knowing this racetrack pretty well, for us it worked well. We kept up with it. We stayed up front all the night, made it seem easy, but certainly it wasn’t. There at the end there was a couple tense moments, but we prevailed.”
The victory put Kyle Busch in the record books, and it’s an entry that unlike all the other “greatest” and “fastest” stats in the record books will never be overturned – there will only be one first-ever winner of the Cup race at Kentucky, and for now and all time that will be Kyle Busch.
Not that Busch thinks in terms of records or making history, he’s too busy looking ahead to the next race – in this case, despite having driven three complete NASCAR races with all the attendant practice and qualifying sessions on top, he was off to compete in a fourth race of the weekend on Sunday night: the Miller Lite Nationals Super Late Model event on the 0.2 mile Slinger Super Speedway in Wisconsin. When asked what the most important aspect of Saturday’s win was, he replied without hesitation: “That I won on the way to Slinger … I’m going to stay here tonight, chill out and get a good night’s sleep, get out of here in the morning and head up there and, hopefully, win a Late Model race.”
Of course, Kyle being Kyle, he did indeed win when he passed Dave Feiler after a restart with 26 laps to go to take the win by 2.171s; Matt Kenseth’s son Ross Kenseth finished sixth, and Nationwide Series driver Kelly Bires was seventh.
And Kyle being Kyle, he was as thrilled by that minor league win as he had been about his 22nd career Sprint Cup win in 240 starts, his third of 2011 and his 99th national series career victory at Kentucky that had given him the lead of the Cup points standings.
Actually, come to think of it, that minor league win was probably a lot more fun to race in and to watch than the inaugural Quaker State 400 proved to be …
Race results
1. #18 Kyle Busch Toyota 267 laps 2:56:30.000s (48/2 pts)
2. #00 David Reutimann Toyota 267 laps + 0.179s (43/1 pts)
3. #48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 267 laps + 0.233s (41/0 pts)
4. #39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 267 laps + 0.887s (40/0 pts)
5. #99 Carl Edwards Ford 267 laps + 1.158s (39/0 pts)
6. #17 Matt Kenseth Ford 267 laps + 1.398s (38/0 pts)
7. #2 Brad Keselowski Dodge 267 laps + 1.506s (38/1 pts)
8. #6 David Ragan Ford 267 laps + 1.544s (37/1 pts)
9. #22 Kurt Busch Dodge 267 laps + 1.576s (36/1 pts)
10. #24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 267 laps + 1.971s (34/0 pts)
11. #11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 267 laps + 1.972s (34/1 pts)
12. #14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 267 laps + 2.270s (33/1 pts)
13. #4 Kasey Kahne Toyota 267 laps + 2.374s (32/1 pts)
14. #20 Joey Logano Toyota 267 laps + 2.702s (30/0 pts)
15. #42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 267 laps + 2.737s (29/0 pts)
16. #29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 267 laps + 2.852s (28/0 pts)
17. #78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 267 laps + 3.069s (27/0 pts)
18. #56 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 267 laps + 3.380s (27/1 pts)
19. #31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 267 laps + 3.496s (25/0 pts)
20. #9 Marcos Ambrose Ford 267 laps + 3.544s (24/0 pts)
21. #16 Greg Biffle Ford 267 laps + 3.682s (23/0 pts)
22. #5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 267 laps + 3.962s (22/0 pts)
23. #51 Landon Cassill Chevrolet 267 laps + 6.157s (0pts)
24. #27 Paul Menard Chevrolet 266 laps + 1 lap (20/0 pts)
25. #13 Casey Mears Toyota 266 laps + 1 lap (19/0 pts)
26. #47 Bobby Labonte Toyota 266 laps + 1 lap (18/0 pts)
27. #83 Brian Vickers Toyota 265 laps + 2 laps (17/0 pts)
28. #43 A.J. Allmendinger Ford 265 laps + 2 laps (16/0 pts)
29. #38 Travis Kvapil Ford 265 laps + 2 laps (0pts)
30. #88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 265 laps + 2 laps (14/0 pts)
31. #34 David Gilliland Ford 264 laps + 3 laps (13/0 pts)
32. #71 Andy Lally * Ford 264 laps + 3 laps (12/0 pts)
33. #36 Dave Blaney Chevrolet 264 laps + 3 laps (11/0 pts)
34. #32 Mike Bliss Ford 264 laps + 3 laps (0pts)
35. #33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 259 laps Accident (9/0 pts)
36. #1 Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 198 laps Engine (8/0 pts)
37. #7 Scott Wimmer Dodge 90 laps Electrical (0pts)
38. #37 Tony Raines Ford 38 laps Vibration (6/0 pts)
39. #87 Joe Nemechek Toyota 37 laps Brakes (0pts)
40. #46 J.J. Yeley Chevrolet 35 laps Transmission (5/1 pts)
41. #66 Michael McDowell Toyota 32 laps Electrical (3/0 pts)
42. #181 Scott Riggs Chevrolet 28 laps Brakes (0pts)
43. #60 Mike Skinner Toyota 17 laps Electrical (0pts)
Race report: how David Ragan made the most of drafting strategy and survived some huge multi-car wrecks to claim a long-overdue maiden win in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.
Just a little over four months ago, David Ragan left Daytona International Speedway in a state of despair, after his much-sought maiden Cup series victory evaporated before his eyes after he was penalised for changing lanes too soon while in the lead at the penultimate restart of February’s Daytona 500.
Trevor Bayne went on to win that race, becoming the youngest winner in the illustrious event’s history and an overnight star in the process; Ragan, on the other hand, was left to slip anonymously away wondering what might have been.
The Coke Zero 400 might not be up there in prestige with the Daytona 500, but when it comes to setting the record straight, proving a point and moreover opening his ‘race wins’ account in Sprint Cup racing at a key time with regards to future job security, it will do very nicely indeed.
Ragan had already qualified a very strong fifth place on Friday evening, and headed to the start line for the green flag behind a front row consisting of Mark Martin and Trevor Bayne, and a second of Clint Bowyer and Jeff Gordon. Ragan himself had Dale Earnhardt Jr. alongside him, and more crucially rookie Andy Lally immediately behind – as two-car drafting was already clearly going to be the order of the day, and Ragan needed someone to partner with pretty quickly or risk haemorrhaging early track positions.
Ahead, experienced campaigners Martin and Gordon teamed up to make a good getaway while Bayne and Bowyer attempted to hook up on the inside; but for Bowyer it was a purely casual fling and he quickly dropped Bayne to check in with his Richard Childress Racing team mate Jeff Burton as soon as possible, leaving Bayne casting around for assistance as he started to drop back. He thought he’d found it with Brad Keselowski and the two managed to hook up as they headed down the frontstretch into lap 5, but they hadn’t got the rhythm right and disaster for Bayne ensued.
“I was kind of falling through the field, we found the #2 car,” explained Bayne. “He got to us and was pushing us down the frontstretch. I was still kind of lifting a little bit, letting him get to my bumper, and then I got back to the gas wide-open … I don’t know if I turned down more getting in or if he kind of came up across our bumper, but, either way, our bumpers caught wrong and it sent us spinning. You know that can happen here. It happens all the time, but it’s tough that it was our car.”
Bayne’s #21 went nose-first into the wall at turn 1 and was out of the race with extensive front-end damage, classified in 41st position – the worst finish for a driver who had won the same year’s Daytona 500 since Cale Yarborough in 1983, which is at least prestigious company for the 20-year-old current Nationwide regular only recently back to active duty after his six-week medical hiatus.
Clint Bowyer, Bobby Labonte and Jamie McMurray were among those with some damage and who came in to pit road for a check-over during the ensuing caution. The leaders stayed out, but pretty much everyone from Jeff Burton (in 18th) on down took the opportunity to come in. Brad Keselowski escaped significant damage, but his reputation was temporarily affected and he found himself with few takers for drafting alliances and by lap 22 he was running a lonely last on the track before finally going a lap down, such is the consequence for unintentionally wrecking someone on such a teamwork-reliant circuit.
Mark Martin led Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and David Ragan to the restart on lap 8, but Johnson and Earnhardt had poor restarts and briefly fell back, and instead it was Ragan who was in hot pursuit of the two leaders now that he himself had connected with Matt Kenseth for drafting services. Alongside them, Carl Edwards had hooked up with Greg Biffle while further back the drafting pairs forming included Tony Stewart and David Gilliland in 13th/ 14th, and Kurt Busch with Regan Smith.
Johnson and Earnhardt had also got their act sorted, and the #48 propelled Earnhardt past Martin for the lead on lap 16, but then they got disconnected and became easy prey for Kurt Busch and Regan Smith to steam past, and then a couple of laps later it was Carl Edwards’ turn to lead. But on lap 23, it all went horribly wrong for Edwards: he and Biffle moved to the outside to avoid contact with Busch/Smith, and Edwards rubbed across the front of Biffle’s bumper and the contact sent him spinning into the inside wall out of turn 4.
“It was just the timing of everything. I was being aggressive and kind of having a little bit of fun, but that’s what we decided we were gonna try to do,” he said afterwards. “We were gonna go out there and race a little harder this time. We had the points lead and not a lot to lose.”
The damage was extensive, the right-side crush panels broken and the damaged exhaust venting carbon monoxide into the car and sending temperatures in the #99 soaring. Edwards kept on circulating but fell further and further off the lead lap as the team continually brought him into the pits for running repairs to try and prevent their driver either suffocating or parboiling to death.
In the end he would finish in 37th place, 26 laps off the lead, and as a result, Edwards lost the Cup series points lead despite coming into Daytona with a 25pt advantage over Kevin Harvick – a major hit in anyone’s book.
“It’s no big deal. It is what it is,” he insisted. “We just have to make sure we do well in the Chase.” And making the Chase is still in no doubt whatsoever – not only is it highly unlikely he’ll fail to finish in the top ten, he also has a race win that should assure him of the two wildcard entries to the post-season shoot-out stage if it were really necessary.
With Edwards out of the picture, Kevin Harvick won the race off pit road to lead at the restart on lap 26 with drafting assistance from Paul Menard, quickly joined at the front by Ragan and Kenseth and also by Martin Truex Jr. who led the race for the first time on lap 31 after hooking up with David Reutimann.
Brad Keselowski was also back at the front, after having got the lucky dog free pass under the second caution and then hooking up with his Red Bull team mate Brian Vickers, before then getting separated and ending up forming an alliance with the only other driver to have accidentally spun his drafting partner out of the race – Greg Biffle. It was a marriage made of slightly unfortunate convenience.
When the third caution of the afternoon came out on lap 48 – when Dave Blaney hit the wall in turn 2 – the top 18 had string out to single file and it happened to be Matt Kenseth’s turn in the lead when the yellow flag came out. After pit stops, Truex Jr. soon picked up the lead with Reutimann, then Smith and Busch, then Kenseth with Ragan, and then Kasey Kahne who had now been able to relocate his team mate Brian Vickers. No one was able to hold on to the lead for long though, and having to swap a drafting pair’s running order to stop the pushing car from overheating quickly resulted in a drop in position for everyone.
Other drivers and teams were opting for a different strategy: looking unlikely to run at the front at this stage, they decided instead to seek refuge at the back of the lead lap and aim to stay out of trouble. Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton and the Richard Petty Motorsports duo of AJ Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose were among those to take this approach.
Tony Stewart and David Gilliland had been resolutely mid-pack for the first third of the race but suddenly turned the power up and took the lead for the first time on lap 70; others starting to find their rhythm included Travis Kvapil and Joe Nemechek who cracked the top ten at around the same stage of the evening, and Joe Gibbs Racing pair Kyle Busch and Joey Logano who had made it into the top five by lap 80, having had very poor qualifying positions after foregoing qualifying speed set-ups in practice to focus instead on drafting tactics. Terry Labonte and Andy Lally were another interesting pairing in the top ten at this stage, while further back the bigger names and more experienced drivers seemed to be biding their time – Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson in the mid-teens and former leaders Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin opting to lurk just outside the top 20 close to Juan Montoya and Jamie McMurray.
On lap 91 the Red Bull duo of Vickers and Kahne were the first of the leaders to pit under green for tyres and fuel, and the rest of the field followed suit without incident over the next ten laps, after which Kahne and Vickers took fright and decided to head for the rear of the lead lap for safety for a while.
With 40 laps to go there was a definite change in the feel of the race. Newman/Hamlin and Montoya/McMurray all took this as a sign to go to the front, while all four Richard Childress Racing cars looked ominously hooked up and ready to pounce. The lengthy green flag spell had inevitably had its casualties and a number of cars had been dropped off the lead pack and were struggling some 10 seconds down, among them Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Marcos Ambrose, AJ Allmendinger, Brad Keselowski and Greg Biffle, but there were still 22 cars in the lead pack as of lap 127.
More green flag pit stops kicked off as the laps reached 130 with 30 to go: afterwards, the leaders consisted of the pairings of Harvick/Menard, Newman/Hamlin and Kyle Busch with Joey Logano, despite the JGR team’s concerns that Logano’s radiator fan might have actually melted.
With 10 laps to go of the scheduled 160 laps, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon had managed to recover their position during the pit stops and make it back into the top ten, leaving Tony Stewart, David Gilliland, Keselowski, Biffle, Joe Nemechek and Travis Kvapil over 20 seconds back and urgently needing a caution if they were to have any hope of featuring at the end, while Ambrose, Allmendinger, Andy Lally and Terry Labonte had all slipped a lap down. Surely there had to be a caution soon, after more than a hundred laps of green flag running?
Jeff Gordon obliged on lap 157 just three laps shy of the scheduled race distance. He went for a huge 45-degree sideways slide after contact from Kahne and somehow managed the save of the day to keep the #24 off the wall.
“Everybody was just really getting anxious and it was time to go and somebody got outside of me and Mark coming off of two which made it three wide and had the #83 and #4 on the inside,” said Gordon. “Went into three and I don’t know somebody got in the back of the #4 and pushed him up into me and I had nowhere to go. Then the car came around and luckily I straightened it out somehow and came back and fixed it and got four tires.
“I felt it start to catch and lose momentum and it started to straighten out. The [31-degree] banking pretty much did most of the work, maybe a little side force in the car, too. We were just lucky we didn’t get hit, I straightened it up and away we went. That was pretty cool and pretty lucky all at the same time.”
“Jeff Gordon did an awesome job of working with me and I thought we were doing really, really good and he just got run into,” lamented his team mate and drafting partner Mark Martin.
Behind Gordon, it triggered the usual knock-on collisions as the closely-packed field stood on the brakes and made evasive manoeuvres, with Kyle Busch damaging the #18 when he ran up into the wall. Gordon and Kyle Busch both had to head for the pits for lengthy repairs before the race got set for its first green-white-chequered finish. This meant they were disconnected from the long-time drafting partners and had little recourse other than to hook up with each other if they wanted to achieve anything.
“I just got with the #24 who was behind me and he never lifted, I don’t think, the last two laps. So, we just dug a hole through the bottom side and made it up there,” said Kyle later, of a successful scratch pairing that propelled them both in the top six by the end. However, Kyle was sorry that he hadn’t been able to see the race through with his JGR team mate: “I wish I could’ve worked with Joey and him or I could’ve won this thing, but still it was a good day.”
Gordon, on the other hand, would have reason to be thankful to be apart up from his Hendrick Motorsports team mate Mark Martin for the final laps, because things were about to get very interesting up at the front centring around the #5.
The restart on lap 162 saw Newman in front with Hamlin, then Ragan and Kenseth followed by the Red Bull duo of Vickers and Kahne newly restored from the back of the pack. But Joey Logano tried squeezing through a gap between Mark Martin and Brian Vickers and almost immediately sent Martin into a serious hit against the wall in turn 2.
“It was on the restart. I was shooting on the centre, and Mark was trying to come down in front of me,” said Logano afterwards. “In the race I was wide open, I didn’t care. And he was coming down across me. We were going to try to team up there if we were able to do that, but I was going to go in there guns blazing and see what the heck happened on the other side and try to find a partner once I got over there.”
“It was going to come to this at the end, but it was a blast ’til the end,” said Martin, who is well known as being no fan of restrictor plate racing. “He got up against me and I got a little loose and I could’ve saved it, but there was just too many cars. There were cars everywhere and they all started clacking together and so the wreck was on.”
With the pack still so closely bunched together, the fall-out from this was inevitable, immediate and extensive. As well as Martin, Logano and Kahne, another ten cars were caught up in the wreck: Martin Truex Jr., Clint Bowyer, Landon Cassill, Brian Vickers, Regan Smith, Kurt Busch, Joe Nemechek, Casey Mears, Tony Stewart, David Reutimann were all involved in the mayhem.
So much for the first of up to three green-white-chequered attempts at finishing. It had left David Ragan at the front of the field for the next attempt on lap 168 with his Ryan Newman alongside him, and their respective drafting partners Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin in perfect position to do the business right behind them. In contrast, Kevin Harvick found himself starting alongside his drafting partner Paul Menard on the third row of the grid, which meant they would have to orchestrate falling into line before they could think of charging for the lead – which not only put them at a disadvantage but also meant it was unlikely that anyone further back would be able to make a go of it from the green flag either.
So it seemed to have come down to a four-car shoot-out, and when the green flew it was Kenseth who brilliantly powered his Roush Fenway Racing team mate David Ragan into the lead, comprehensively out-gunning Newman and Hamlin from the get-go as they got disconnected and fell backwards. The win was Ragan and Kenseth’s for the taking, assuming that this green-white-chequered counted and wasn’t aborted for any more wrecks.
There was a wreck – but not until seconds after the white flag came out making the running order the official race result. Ragan had indeed won, putting to rights that agonising near-miss at the Daytona 500 at the start of the season. Moreover, it finally gave Ragan his first Cup series win after the painfully long 163 race wait since his NASCAR series championship début.
“It would have been tough to lose another one. I thought about that, actually, under that last caution. I said, ‘Man, if we don’t win this thing, I’m not going to talk to anyone afterward!’”, he said. “This is a great race. It does ease the pain [of February], and so we’ll think about this one a lot more than we’ll think about the Daytona 500.”
Ragan follows Bayne and Regan Smith as the third first-time winner in 2011, a year that’s seen 12 different winners in 17 races. It also means that all three restrictor plate races have had different winners (Bayne at Daytona, Johnson at Talladega, and now Ragan) and that there have been eight different winners in the last eight Daytona races.
Joey Logano emerged in third place when the final caution flag came out signalling the end of the race, after the #20 hooked up with Kasey Kahne running in fourth place; the Kyle Busch/Jeff Gordon scratch pairing had squeaked through the last two wrecks to claim fifth and sixth after restarting at the back of the top 30, while Harvick and Menard had managed to hold on to seventh and eighth.
“I’m just amazed that we were able to come back to sixth,” said Gordon. “We were what, 30th, 31st on that second-to-last restart?”
Among those caught up in the chaos on the penultimate lap – which had involved 15 cars in two separate incidents – were Newman and Hamlin. Jamie McMurray had made contact with Earnhardt Jr. and ended up hitting his Earnhardt Ganassi team mate Juan Montoya, also catching up AJ Allmendinger, Jeff Burton and Jimmie Johnson in the wreck. The #42 was just about able to stagger to the finish line in ninth with Allmendinger following in tenth.
Earnhardt claimed that McMurray “just drove into the side of me and turned me onto the apron,” adding: “I had it saved, and then he came on and got him another shot … Brought the KO punch the second time and spun us around.” Earnhardt’s cause hadn’t been helped by being separated from his drafting partner Jimmie Johnson in the pits: “I’m driving my car, do what I’m told,” a heated Earnhardt said. “They decided to do something different. I can’t run the whole damn thing from the seat of the damn race car.”
Junior Nation fans were blaming the #48 for abandoning their idol. “I didn’t leave Jr hanging, you people are crazy,” Johnson responded on Twitter. “When my crew tells me to pit, I pit. Steve [Letarte, Earnhardt's crew chief] and Chad Knaus, Johnson’s crew chief] sort out the details.”
But really, Earnhardt was incandescent about the whole draft-style racing and the need for pairing up in the first place, and made his feelings well and truly known: “You guys need to get your own frickin’ opinions and write what y’all think about it,” he said. “Because I think they’re pretty damn close to mine. So stop putting my damn foot in my mouth with y’all and getting my ass in trouble. Y’all write what y’all think, man. C’mon. Y’all are good. Y’all got an opinion about it; I read y’all’s shit.”
The other incident that occurred on that final lap was at the back of the pack and involved Marcos Ambrose, David Reutimann, Landon Cassill, Brian Vickers and Tony Stewart, who commented: “That last wreck we were caught about eight back behind where it all started trying to dodge all the guys that got wrecked.”
But as the dust settled from the final lap carnage, the day belonged emphatically to first time winner David Ragan who was clearly in seventh heaven:
“There’s no better place to win your first race than Daytona, it couldn’t be any better … There’s not a better night to win. This is awesome!” he said. “I probably won’t go to sleep tonight. I’m going to get back and watch some of the race – and just stare at that trophy, maybe, for a little while.”
Quite right, too.
Race results
1. #6 David Ragan Ford 170 laps 2:39:53.000s (47/4 pts)
2. #17 Matt Kenseth Ford 170 laps + 0.059s (43/1 pts)
3. #20 Joey Logano Toyota 170 laps + 0.150s (41/0 pts)
4. #4 Kasey Kahne Toyota 170 laps + 0.208s (41/1 pts)
5. #18 Kyle Busch Toyota 170 laps + 1.090s (40/1 pts)
6. #24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 170 laps + 1.276s (39/1 pts)
7. #29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 170 laps + 1.533s (38/1 pts)
8. #27 Paul Menard Chevrolet 170 laps + 1.634s (37/1 pts)
9. #42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 170 laps + 3.611s (36/1 pts)
10. #43 A.J. Allmendinger Ford 170 laps + 5.096s (34/0 pts)
11. #14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 170 laps + 6.317s (34/1 pts)
12. #83 Brian Vickers Toyota 170 laps + 6.465s (32/0 pts)
13. #11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 170 laps + 6.466s (32/1 pts)
14. #22 Kurt Busch Dodge 170 laps + 9.419s (31/1 pts)
15. #2 Brad Keselowski Dodge 170 laps + 9.420s (30/1 pts)
16. #34 David Gilliland Ford 170 laps + 11.347s (28/0 pts)
17. #9 Marcos Ambrose Ford 170 laps + 12.467s (27/0 pts)
18. #16 Greg Biffle Ford 170 laps + 13.843s (27/1 pts)
19. #88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 170 laps + 13.844s (26/1 pts)
20. #48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 170 laps + 17.109s (24/0 pts)
21. #31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 170 laps + 28.508s (24/1 pts)
22. #1 Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 170 laps + 29.140s (23/1 pts)
23. #39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 170 laps + 34.364s (23/2 pts)
24. #78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 170 laps + 39.819s (21/1 pts)
25. #00 David Reutimann Toyota 170 laps + 41.937s (19/0 pts)
26. #51 Landon Cassill Chevrolet 169 laps + 1 lap (0pts)
27. #71 Andy Lally * Ford 169 laps + 1 lap (17/0 pts)
28. #32 Terry Labonte Ford 169 laps + 1 lap (16/0 pts)
29. #38 Travis Kvapil Ford 169 laps + 1 lap (0pts)
30. #87 Joe Nemechek Toyota 169 laps + 1 lap (0pts)
31. #47 Bobby Labonte Toyota 168 laps + 2 laps (13/0 pts)
32. #13 Casey Mears Toyota 164 laps + 6 laps (13/1 pts)
33. #5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 164 laps + 6 laps (12/1 pts)
34. #7 Robby Gordon Dodge 163 laps + 7 laps (10/0 pts)
35. #56 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 162 laps Accident (10/1 pts)
36. #33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 162 laps Accident (9/1 pts)
37. #99 Carl Edwards Ford 144 laps Resumed running (8/1 pts)
38. #135 Geoff Bodine Chevrolet 143 laps Wheel Bearings (6/0 pts)
39. #36 Dave Blaney Chevrolet 47 laps Accident (5/0 pts)
40. #60 Mike Skinner Toyota 5 laps Wheel Bearings (0pts)
41. #21 Trevor Bayne Ford 4 laps Accident (0pts)
42. #66 Michael McDowell Toyota 2 laps Electrical (2/0 pts)
43. #97 Kevin Conway Toyota 1 laps Rear Gear (0pts)
* Denotes Rookie
It looked as though we knew how this was going to go even before the lights went out to start the race. But it turned out that some people – mainly Jorge Lorenzo – hadn’t been reading the script.
It wasn’t the best of qualifying sessions for the reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo. He could only manage fifth place in the rain-interrupted qualifying session on Saturday, which demoted him to the second row behind Casey Stoner, Ben Spies and Marco Simoncelli, and with Andrea Dovizioso next to him in fourth place. Given how resoundingly the Hondas had been beating the Yamahas in recent races – Spies surprise win last time out at Assen not withstanding – Lorenzo clearly wasn’t going to get much of a look in here.
The only question was whether Stoner would romp away with it, or whether Simoncelli would stay on the bike long enough without crashing into someone to pose a real challenge. Unless maybe Spies could pull off an upset again?
As the lights went out, Stoner duly swept off into the lead followed by Spies; it was less successful for Simoncelli, though, who stuttered at the getaway after having had trouble with his Gresini Honda at the start of the warm-up lap too. That gave Lorenzo a little room to work with, and he quickly passed Simoncelli on the run down to turn 1. By the time they got to the corner he’d managed to overpower Spies for second, and through the apex of the right hander he was even alongside Stoner for the lead – but on the outside line, and had to drop back.
By the end of the first lap, Stoner was pulling away from Lorenzo in second, with Dovizioso having overtaken Spies for third, followed by Simoncelli and Nicky Hayden, who promptly overcooked it on lap 2 and went off into the gravel. He was able to rejoin, but had to start all over again from dead last.
Lorenzo lost second place at the start of lap 8 after running too deep into turn 1 allowing Dovizioso an easy tighter line on the inside; that gave Honda a 1-2 and the result seemed a lock for the remaining 15 laps. But Lorenzo wasn’t giving up, and he was still right on Dovizioso’s tail, lunging at the slightest sign of an opening.
Midway through the move, Lorenzo lined up a lovely move on Dovizioso and passed him through Casanova, a move that Dovizioso just didn’t have an answer for. But Nor could Lorenzo pull away from him, while meanwhile the race leader Stoner was some three seconds down the road. The die really did look cast now.
But Lorenzo first started to nibble away at Stoner’s lead, and then tear huge chunks out of it: Stoner’s pace seemed to be falling off the proverbial cliff just as Lorenzo was breaking the lap record and pulling Dovizioso along with him: Stoner’s advantage was gone with six laps to go and Lorenzo then smartly repeated his move through Casanova and took the lead, leaving Stoner to deal with his own team mate Dovizioso – unsuccessfully, as it turned out, with the Italian not hampered by team sentiment in taking second spot off the Aussie seeing how it was Andrea’s home Grand Prix. He did it with a great move at the start of the final lap, where it seemed that Dovizioso had outbraked himself into turn 1 only to make the corner and neatly block Stoner and force him wide instead, making a counter-attack out of the question.
Afterwards at the press conference, a clearly dejected Casey Stoner sat in marked contrast to the beaming Jorge Lorenzo next to him. “I’m a bit disappointed with this race,” he admitted. “The potential of myself and the bike was a lot higher in my opinion.” The problem was the way that the tyres had heated up and then promptly lost grip, and with cool, showery conditions on Saturday the team hadn’t had enough time or data to react when Sunday proved sunny and blisteringly hot.
“As soon as I got not even halfway through the race, my grip just disappeared. As soon as the temperatures got up, the contact patch got smaller, I started losing the front. I couldn’t have any corner speed – as soon as I opened the gas, the rear started wanting to come round,” he said, describing the race from that point on as “pretty much damage limitation.”
Stoner and Dovizioso were at least comfortably assured of second and third, with Lorenzo’s team mate Spies embroiled in a prolonged battle swapping fourth place between them. Given Marco’s recent reputation, it’s a relief that there was no crash as they did so, and in the end Spies won the position and Simoncelli had to settle for a relatively subdued fifth place.
Valentino Rossi did his level best to wrestle something out of the 2011/2012 hybrid Ducati and did impressively well to fight his way up from twelfth place on the grid to sixth by the end in a series of eye=catching and thrilling overtakes through the field – the end result of sixth place still lowly by Rossi’s standards, but above and beyond the bike’s current pace if truth be told.
“I think the problem is quite clear and we have to work – on improving the setting of this bike, but also on making something else to make a bigger step,” said Rossi.
He was rewarded with a hero’s welcome as the track flooded post-race with Rossi disciples, but it was interesting just how many Simoncelli fans were starting to sprout up here at Rossi’s home race strong hold: the King still leaves, but it appears that the subjects are preparing for the inevitable future nonetheless.
Dani Pedrosa – back from six weeks off with a problematic collarbone break following his clash with Simoncelli at Le Mans – qualified a disappointing eighth and then – in the inverse of his normal trademark flying starts – then dropped five places on the first lap before finally finishing the race where he started, showing that his injury is still a huge problem.
The only retirement was Cal Crutchlow who was worried about tyre wear for the second successive race after failing to find a good enough set-up during the rain-affected practice sessions, and didn’t want to take the risk of crashing out and exacerbating his recent collarbone injury.
Alvaro Bautista was having an excellent race and climbed as high as sixth in one of his best showings in MotoGP, only to lose the front end and have the bike go into neutral which dumped him down to 13th by the end.
But the day belonged to Lorenzo, who was doing his best Cheshire cat impression after the race at this unexpected reversal of fortunes. He hadn’t been expecting any sort of a win – there were none of the usual “Lorenzoland” elaborate celebrations planned. As a result this came over as Lorenzo’s most assured, most mature and most confident race win since he became world champion.
Has Yamaha turned a corner, after two consecutive race wins? Or is this just a stumble for Honda that will be corrected at the next MotoGP?
That’s two weeks away, before the next race at Sachsenring in Germany on July 17. It’s been confirmed that Loris Capirossi will still be absent after suffering rib and shoulder injuries at Assen; he will be replaced on the Pramac by Sylvain Guintoli.
Race results
Pos Rider Team/Bike Time/Gap 1. Jorge Lorenzo Yamaha 41:50.089s 2. Andrea Dovizioso Honda + 0.997s 3. Casey Stoner Honda + 1.143s 4. Ben Spies Yamaha + 8.980s 5. Marco Simoncelli Gresini Honda + 9.076s 6. Valentino Rossi Ducati + 26.450s 7. Hector Barbera Aspar Ducati + 28.745s 8. Dani Pedrosa Honda + 32.043s 9. Colin Edwards Tech 3 Yamaha + 33.421s 10. Nicky Hayden Ducati + 34.724s 11. Hiroshi Aoyama Gresini Honda + 37.359s 12. Karel Abraham Cardion Ducati + 43.964s 13. Alvaro Bautista Suzuki + 47.654s 14. Randy de Puniet Pramac Ducati + 48.840s 15. Toni Elias LCR Honda + 1:15.199s Retirements: Cal Crutchlow Tech 3 Yamaha 6 laps
Championship standings after race 8 of 18
Pos Driver Pts Pos Constructor Pts 1. Casey Stoner 152 1. Honda 185 2. Jorge Lorenzo 133 2. Yamaha 164 3. Andrea Dovizioso 119 3. Ducati 99 4. Valentino Rossi 91 4. Suzuki 36 5. Nicky Hayden 77 6. Ben Spies 74 7. Daniel Pedrosa 69 8. Hiroshi Aoyama 56 9. Colin Edwards 53 10. Marco Simoncelli 50 11. Hector Barbera 44 12. Karel Abraham 37 13. Toni Elias 35 14. Cal Crutchlow 32 15. Alvaro Bautista 30 16. Loris Capirossi 22 17. Randy de Puniet 12 18. John Hopkins 6 19. Kousuke Akiyoshi 3
Autosport.com Formula 1 Newsfeed- Lotus names 2012 F1 challenger
- Roberto Mieres dies aged 87
- Bianchi joins Force India as reserve
- Marussia will not run KERS in 2012
- Mercedes says test plan will pay off
- Petrov welcomes more aggressive tyres
- Spain seeks new broadcaster for F1
- Caterham eyes another step forward
- Q and A with Pedro de la Rosa
- De la Rosa fired up for racing return
- Crash.net Formula 1 Newsfeed
- McLaren pair 'raring to go' with new car
- Ferrari extends Rigon agreement
- Your sexiest grid girl of 2011 revealed!
- Raikkonen ready for midfield fight
- Bianchi secures Force India role
- Berger: With Newey, Red Bull will keep winning
- Glock positive despite Marussia delays
- Heidfeld set for sportscar switch
- Barrichello to test KV IndyCar
- Fernandes 'proud to be first' with Caterham launch
- Autosport.com NASCAR Newsfeed
- RCR adds fourth Cup car part-time
- Ford unveils 2013 Sprint Cup car
- Busch says he needs new attitude
- Buschs to share Nationwide car
- Edwards to focus solely on Cup
- Ragan signs for Front Row
- NASCAR bans car-to-car radio
- Busch 'refreshed' by Phoenix move
- NASCAR optimistic over rule tweaks
- NASCAR prepares to test new rules
- Crash.net NASCAR Newsfeed
- Hornish gets full 2012 Nationwide season at Penske
- JJ Yeley wins place with new Cup team
- Series calls time on secret fines
- Bayne reveals illness diagnosis
- Kurt Busch 'owes new chance to Sabates'
- Ganassi admits EGR must do better in 2012
- Ford unveils 2013 Sprint Cup car
- 'I have to change', says Kyle Busch
- 'I have to change', admits Kyle
- No Indy 500 for Danica in 2012
- Autosport.com IndyCar Newsfeed
- Coyne confirms Wilson's return
- Barrichello to test with KV Racing
- Patrick rules out 2012 Indy 500
- Servia confident in Lotus engine
- Legge expected easier US return
- Lotus pleased with engine progress
- IndyCar sure of DW12's oval pace
- Servia moves to Dreyer and Reinbold
- Webb: Franchitti key to US switch
- Bourdais returns with Dragon Racing
- Crash.net IndyCar Newsfeed
- Hospitalised AJ Foyt to miss Daytona 24h
- Stars shine in Daytona Rolex 24h qualifying
- Justin Wilson confirms move to Dale Coyne
- Rubens Barrichello set to test IndyCar?
- Report: Rubens Barrichello to test IndyCar?
- Kanaan, Hunter-Reay, Viso out of Rolex 24
- Legge 'underestimated difficulty of return'
- Drivers get to grips with DW12 at Sebring
- Oriol Servia moves to Dreyer & Reinbold
- Lotus hits the track for Sebring tests
- Autosport.com MotoGP Newsfeed
- West loses Speed Master MotoGP seat
- Stoner: Honda switch vindicated ability
- Rossi is not fading yet, insists Lorenzo
- Lorenzo: CRT right future for MotoGP
- Stoner: MotoGP needs quick Ducati
- Sepang MotoGP test open to public
- Ducati's GP12 makes track debut
- Ezpeleta wants CRT bikes on the pace
- MotoGP reveals 2012 entry list
- Preziosi promises flexible Ducati
- Crash.net MotoGP Newsfeed
- Your hottest paddock babe of 2011 revealed!
- Anthony West priced out of MotoGP
- Anthony West says MotoGP
- Mattia Pasini 'signs' for Moto2
- Recap: Sepang 2011 MotoGP tests
- Moto3: Injury blow for Spaniard Rins
- Right idea, wrong time
- Rossi 'belittling' title win, says Stoner
- Rossi 'belitting' title win, says Stoner
- Chile announces plans for MotoGP track
- Autosport.com GP2 Newsfeed
- Cecotto switches to Addax
- Valsecchi joins DAMS for 2012
- Palmer aims for big step in 2012
- Trummer steps up to GP2 with Arden
- ART rebrands as Lotus GP
- Coloni signs Coletti and Onidi
- Grosjean 'proved' DAMS quality
- Rapax: Young driver line-up cost us
- Palmer switches to iSport for 2012
- Leal joins Trident for 2012 GP2 season
- Crash.net GP2 Newsfeed
- Pirelli prize to help GP3 champ into GP2
- GP3 confirms Monaco event will go ahead
- Cecotto Jr. to race with Barwa Addax in 2012
- Valsecchi gets DAMS chance in 2012
- Coloni celebrates 30 years in motor sport
- Trummer signs up with Arden for 2012
- Lotus ART to rebrand as Lotus GP
- Coloni unveils 2012 line-up
- Dates for your diary: GP2 2012 calendar
- GP2 Driver of the Year vote: Full results
- Autosport.com WRC Newsfeed
- Timing and tracking return for Sweden
- Q and A: Mini boss on Monte podium
- Brynildsen joins Ostberg for Sweden
- Latvala puts Monte crash behind him
- Ford team boss praises Solberg
- Monaco base discussed for 'Monte'
- Solberg gets suspended ban
- Loeb claims Monte Carlo victory
- Loeb on cusp of Monte Carlo win
- Loeb leads, podium fight closes up
- Crash.net WRC Newsfeed
- Brynildsen gets Fiesta WRC for Sweden
- Andersson: Rallying can be a cruel sport
- MINI impressed as Campana scores
- Citroen pleased with Hirvonen 'professionalism'
- Solberg: I couldn't have asked for anything more
- Sordo: Runners-up spot great for me and MINI
- Loeb: Tyre choices key to Monte success
- Loeb: Tyre choices key to Monte victory
- Petter Solberg given suspended ban for speeding
- Rallye Monte Carlo WRC: Result
