You were hopefully away from your laptop and tablet and the wonderful worlds of the internet and Twitter most of Thanksgiving and spending time with family and friends. Some have probably been away from the internet longer than other depending on travel schedules. In case you have, here is a run down of what you missed.
A lot of Formula One news but we will start with FIA World Endurance Championship and USAC.
In Bahrain, the #7 Toyota TS030 Hybrid of Alexander Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima won pole position for the second consecutive WEC event and Toyota's third of the season. In doing so they picked up an extra championship point. The pole sitters of the other three classes were the #49 PeCom Racing Oreca-Nissan of Luíz Pérez Companc, Pierre Kaffer and Nicolas Minassian in LMP2; Porsche drivers Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz won pole in GTE Pro and the #95 Astson Martin all-Danish team of Christoffer Nygaard, Kristian Poulsen and Nicki Thiim took pole in GTE Am.
As of two hours and fifteen minutes into the WEC season finale, the #8 Toyota of Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Stéphane Sarrazin lead the #1 and #2 Audis respectively. The #7 Toyota is 11 laps down, 17th overall.
In LMP2, the #49 PeCom Racing entry leads the the #24 OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan and #26 G-Drive Racing Oreca-Nissan. The LMP2 point leaders, the #35 OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan of Bertrand Baguette, Martin Plowman and Ricardo González is sixth in class, ninth overall.
In GTE Pro, the #51 Ferrari of Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander lead class over GT championship leaders, Aston Martin drivers Stefan Mücke and Darren Turner. Porsche drivers Patrick Pilet and Jörg Bergmeister are third. The pole sitters of Lieb and Lietz are sixth in class are contact early in the race with one of the LMP2 Lotus entries.
In GTE Am, the #95 Aston Martin leads over the American entry, #81 8 Star Motorsports Ferrari of Enzo Potolicchio, Rui Águas and Davide Rigon. The #76 Porsche of Jean-Karl Vernay, Raymond Narac and Markus Palttala are third and, if the results hold, would win the GTE Am drivers championship by a point over the 8 Star drivers Potolicchio and Águas and Aston Martin drivers Jaime Campbell-Walter and Stuart Hall who sit seventh in class.
From Bahrain to California and the dirt of Perris Auto Speedway where Dave Darland won the 47th Turkey Night Grand Prix. It is Darland's second win of the Thanksgiving classic and in doing so Darland became the third driver to win the race on both pavement and dirt joining Mel Kenyon and Stan Fox as the only drivers to accomplish such a feat. Brad Sweet finished second with Caleb Armstrong rounding out the podium.
In the final standings for the 2013 USAC National Midget Dirt Championship, rookie Christopher Bell defeated Bryan Clauson by 117 points with Darren Hagen in third. Tracy Hines and Rico Abreu rounded out the top five.
Now on to Formula One. It was reported during the FIA WEC coverage of the Bahrain race that 70 light poles have been installed at the Bahrain International Circuit and that this weekend's event will be used as preparation for the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix being a night race, the third such race on the Formula One schedule.
The FIA has suggested creating a trophy for the driver who wins the most pole positions during a season. It has also been suggested a championship point be award toward the fastest qualifier. An award is already given to a driver who sets the most fastest laps during a season and is sponsored by DHL. Sebastian Vettel won the DHL Fastest Lap Award for the second consecutive season and third time in his Formula One career after having seven fastest laps in 2013. Kimi Räikkönen won the first two editions of the award in 2007 and 2008. Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber have each won the award previously.
A proposal has been made to introduce two mandatory pit stops to each Formula One race. Starting in 2014, each team would not be allowed to use the primary tire for more than fifty percent of a race while a team could not use the option for more than thirty percent of the race. The teams will vote on whether or not to accept the rule next month.
There have been talks of teams allowing drivers to start using permanent numbers in 2014. Three questions about the proposal are how will numbers be allocated? Will drivers been allowed to choose the numbers? Should the number be specified on a drivers' super license? The drivers would only change their number if they were to win the world championship. There has been a request for larger numbers and drivers names to be displayed on the cars.
Permanent numbers are not new to Formula One except they were previously tied to teams and not drivers. For example, when not using the numbers 1 and 2, Ferrari used the numbers 27 and 28 from 1981-1995 and prior to that used 11 and 12. Tyrell used 3 and 4. Lotus used 5 and 6 before going to 11 and 12 in 1980. McLaren used 7 and 8.
Pastor Maldonado will be joining Romain Grosjean at Lotus in 2014. Maldonado scored one point in 2013 when he finished tenth in the Hungarian Grand Prix. Unofficially there remains five open seats for the 2014 season. Two at Force India though Adrian Sutil and Nico Hülkenberg were reportedly close to deals with the team, one at Caterham, one at Marussia and one at Sauber. Sauber has Russian driver Sergey Sirotkin signed for 2014 but he has yet to receive an FIA Super License. If he were not to be awarded one than both seats at Sauber would be open.
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