perkonis

A new year seemed like a good time for an upgrade, new theme, and - wait for it - actual content. It’s been sparse around here for a while. Trust me, there’s been a good reason for that. Since that’s all over now, I’m going to try to post more regularly and try to have some semblence of focus.

I’m going to try to have more racing coverage throughout the year. Notice there’s a new page up top where I intend to post schedules of various series both major and minor. I know it’s blank right now - I just put it up 20 minutes ago - but check back as I keep adding to it. If there’s some series or special event that you think ought to go there, drop me a line and I’ll add it. That should be easy enough since I finally put a “Contact Me” page up there as well. Yeah, I finally entered the 90s. You’ll also find links up there to where I’m at on the net when I’m not here.

Overall, I think 2008 is going to be an interesting year to see where this blog heads. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm though.

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That’s not the reaction I was going for.

So here’s the Cliffs Notes version of the season for them so far…

In Monaco they were heavily criticized and investigated for allegedly using team orders to keep Hamilton behind Alonso. The stewards cleared them in this one, but the British press vilified them for compromising their golden boy, Hamilton.

Next, Ferrari fired Nigel Stepney and it was then discovered that he had passed some 780 pages of Ferrari technical documents to Mike Coughlan. Coughlan was, and still is I believe, an employee of McLaren. The FIA was gracious enough to invite all parties to a hearing of the World Motorsport Counsel. It was decided at that McLaren was guilty of being in possession of Ferrari intellectual property, but there was no evidence that they had used it. Therefore, there was no penalty issued to McLaren.

Oh, then there was the Hungaroring fiasco where Alonso sat in his pit box long enough to block Hamilton and prevent him from completing his last flying qualifying lap. The stewards again requested the company of the team and this time penalized Alonso by stripping him of his pole and placing him 6th on the grid. They also stripped McLaren of any Constructor points before they even lined up for the race. The team has an appeal scheduled for September 19.

McLaren decided to file an appeal to the WMSC counsel verdict that was to be heard on September 13. That changed yesterday when the FIA announced that they have new evidence in the case and once again requested the honor of the presence of the team. In the original hearing, the FIA stated that, should further evidence be found, they reserved the right to ban McLaren from the F1 championship for not only 2007, but 2008 as well. In that light, this latest invitation probably isn’t Max wanting to share high tea with Ron.

And just for good measure, the stewards of the Italian Grand Prix fined McLaren $50,000 for the use of an unapproved gearbox in the Hungarian Grand Prix. I guess they had run out of other ways to penalize them.

I really don’t think I would want to sit in on any kind of meeting at Paragon on Monday.

It’s time for that one last bit of practice prior to the 91st running of the Indianapolis 500 Mile International Sweepstakes. At the end of the day, what you’ve got is what you’ve got. The cars won’t hit the track again until Sunday morning when they line up the 11 rows of 3 on the front stretch. For the teams at the front of the grid, this one last bit of practice is just for fine tuning and a few systems checks. For the teams struggling at the back of the grid, it’s that one last gasp to eek that last bit of speed from their mount in their quest to get their driver’s likeness on that fabled Borg-Warner trophy.

The fast guys should have an easy day running few laps and just making absolutely sure that everything funcions as it should in race trim. The slow guys will be under a lot of pressure. It’s almost inevitable that the pressure will get to someone and thy will end up with their hopes dashed against the SAFER barrier, leaving the team with the monumental task of rebuilding the car by Sunday.

And once practice ends, it’s time for the pit crews to show their stuff. The pit crew competition is their chance at bragging rights after spending the entire month of May at The Track. The competition may not count toward anything on Sunday, but these guys want to show who’s the best of the best; the contest will be close, but at the end one team will get to claim themselves champions for a whole year.

Between practice and the pitstop competition there will also be the Freedom 100 for the Infiniti Pro Series and after the pitstops, Kid Rock will be in concert. All in all, it sounds like a tremendous day to be at the Brickyard, as it’s been every time I’ve had the luck to attend in the past.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to go to Carb Day this year; I’m on the Atkins plan.

Since the team cars in F1 have to be painted substantially same (or however they phrase that in the regs), the best way to tell drivers apart is by the color of the camera above the air box. Since I can’t remember which driver has which color, I go with method 2 which involves their helmets. They could go back to putting great big numbers on the cars, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.

If you’re looking for a good list of drivers’ helmets, look here. There’s even a page here for the test drivers. Laugh if you will, but I think Montagny’s helmet is pretty cool.

I read this story earlier and this nonsense irritates me to no end. Bridgestone has to mark their option tires so that they are “visibly distinguishable when the car is on the track.” Sounds easy enough, right? They do the same thing in Champ Car. Make the whole sidewall red so everyone can see who is on the soft option tire. This is the kind of decision that I would expect to take all of about five minutes. Maybe ten if they can sneak in a smoke break.

This being F1, of course, they managed to royally cock it up. The tires in Melbourne had a little bitty white dot that blended in with the white lettering when the tire rotated (which, as I understand, they are wont to do). Not sure who’s bright idea that was, but the rumor is that Bernie didn’t want to be perceived as stealing ideas from the lowly Champ Cars. Now they can’t decide what to do about it for Sepang. And even once they decide on a permanent solution, they can’t implement it before the Spanish Grand Prix. Yes, this is such a huuuuge ordeal that it will apparently take weeks to fix.

Should they paint a dot on the sidewall, or should they paint one of the grooves (which shouldn’t be there any way, but I digress) white? And there was testing involved too. Testing. For a dot on a tire. Yes, they actually decided to test a couple of ideas on “how to mark tires” on Wurz’s car today.

In case you missed that, Bridgestone was testing different kinds of markings on the tires. In fairness, Wurz was already testing so it’s not like they scheduled a test just for this. But still, they can’t decide on how to mark a tire without testing it. I’ve been following F1 for over thirty years and this kind of nonsense makes me want to quit this and watch lawnmower racing. Someone needs to get some attachments and tell everyone in the paddock how it’s going to be. “Hey, were going to paint the sidewalls neon pink and one of the grooves fluorescent green. Don’t like it? There’s the gate.”

I have a practical, if somewhat inelegant, solution: get me a pit pass, a flight to Malaysia, and a couple cans of Krylon in some color other than black, white, or grey. Something bright. Neon pink or fluorescent green will work. We can go with red if that’s too flamboyant. There you go. Problem fixed before Q1. This problem cannot possibly be as difficult as it’s being made out to be.

This week’s Nextel Cup race brings with it the much anticipated Car of Tomorrow. If you haven’t seen these things yet, they are about as boxy as that picture I drew over there.

OK, they aren’t that bad. They looked absolutely hideous in testing, but with paint on them and hauling around Bristol, they look much better. (The paint isn’t likely to last long at Bristol) The Camry’s actually look pretty good. The Fords are OK. The Chevys and Dodges, not so much.

If nothing else though, the new inspection process for these cars is pretty cool. I just saw that “claw” contraption on Speed (pic via Jayski). The idea is to put all the templates on the car at the same time to both speed up inspection and ensure the cars are all built the same way. The car either fits in the claw or it doesn’t. Before the templates were checked individually. A car could pass each tech station by itself and still be so out of square it wasn’t funny. At least Hendrick and Gibbs didn’t think it was funny when NASCAR took away their cars for doing just that.

So what should the COT be? Here you go. Front splitter? Check. Rear wing? Check. 4th grade art class body design? Eh, sorry but no. These things even have the luxury of this new fangled fuel injection thing. I look for that to replace carburetors one day.

OK, that’s enough rambling for one post. I’ll try to actually post something coherent later.

Qualifying took place for the Daytona 500 last Sunday. Actually that was qualifying for the qualifying races. So 66 cars set times so that they can race to get in the race.

Now, the top 2 cars in qualifying for the qualifying races are actually locked into the real race (not the qualifying race) leaving 41 positions up for grabs. That means there are 64 cars that will line up in the two qualifying races. Ergo 23 cars will go home after the qualifying races but before the real race. Presumably the drivers will go home too. This is not good news for them unless someone forgot to set their Tivo and really need to see House.

So far the system seems easy enough, but hold on. The teams that were in the top 35 in car owner points at the end of 2006 are guaranteed a stating spot. The driver could go out, weave like a drunken gibbon, hit everything but the lottery, and wind up in the infield upside down and on fire, and still be guaranteed a starting spot (in the real race). Since the two cars that qualified on the front row were in the top 35 last year, that leaves 31 cars (and presumably drivers) fighting for 8 spots.

To further complicate things, there is the past champions provisional. If there is a past champion who doesn’t otherwise qualify, they get to line up last. If more than one champion is vying for the coveted position of dead last, it goes to the most recent champion. This means that theoretically, Herb Thomas could start the Daytona 500. However, the various permutations required for his to happen are so many that a super computer is needed to figure it out. And the WOPR just asks if I want to play a game. Since Dale Jarrett is pretty well assured of this position, it leaves 30 teams vying for 7 positions. These are getting to be some really bad odds.

Out of those 7 spots, 4 will be filled by the top finishers (who weren’t in the top 35 in 06) in the qualifing races (not the actual qualifying). The other 3 will be filled by the fastest qualifiers (from qualifiying, not the qualifying races) who weren’t in the top 35 (from 2006 owners point, not 2006 drivers points, and not qualifying for the qualifying races).

Ok, now that the whole qualifying thing is clear I think I can use the qualifying data (from the qualifying races, or is it from qualifying?) to predict the winner of the Daytona 500. So if i crunch the numbers… let’s see, carry the one, cosine of the square root of the average speed of the non-qualifiers (from the qualifying races, not qualifying), and I get the winner of the Daytona 500 as Ray Haroun. Crystal clear.