Today marks an anniversary and one you may be surprised to hear:
Ten years ago today, Dale Coyne Racing got its first IndyCar victory at Watkins Glen with Justin Wilson the driver responsible for the triumph.
A decade is not a long time but it is long enough to look back and at least have perspective on life and how things have changed and how the present is not really all that different.
In 2009, things were tense in IndyCar. The series had finished its first season of reunification, which was good, but people were ready for more change. A new car was not really in the picture, but it was on everyone's mind, and Honda was the sole engine manufacture, which was disappointing.
IndyCar had a new television deal with five races on ABC, including the Indianapolis 500, and the remainder of the season was on Versus, a cable sports network rebranded from the Outdoor Life Network, that had gained attention in recent years for picking up the National Hockey League after it came back from its lockout and had the Tour de France off the heels of Lance Armstrong's success.
The recession was settling in. Tony George was ousted from power at Hulman & Co. and the next step for IndyCar was not clear.
On the racetrack, Team Penske or Chip Ganassi Racing had won nine consecutive races entering Watkins Glen, ten if you count the non-championship race at Surfers Paradise at the end of 2008. Those two teams had gained a stranglehold on IndyCar since Dallara and Honda became the only providers in town. While Andretti Green Racing had won the championship in 2007, AGR had taken a step back.
There were many players we were hoping could step up and take the fight to Penske and Ganassi. Newman/Haas Racing had won two races the year before but Paul Newman died in September 2008 and Carl Haas was getting older. Dan Wheldon was with Panther Racing, a team that had recently won championships and had National Guard sponsorship but the team couldn't seem to piece it together on the road and street courses, which was an increasing portion of the schedule.
Far from the minds of everyone as a possible contender was Dale Coyne Racing.
Dale Coyne Racing was celebrating its 25th year on the grid but longevity was really all there was to celebrate. The team had yet to win a race and the team had never had a driver finish better than seventh in the championship.
Dale Coyne Racing's first podium came at the U.S. 500 in 1996, the team's 142nd race, with Roberto Moreno finishing third, albeit one lap down, almost 12 years after the team's first race. It would be another eight years before the team picked up anymore silverware. In the team's 260th race at Laguna Seca in 2004, Oriol Servià was the third place finisher.
A spell of great success occurred for DCR with Bruno Junqueira in 2007 in Champ Car's lone season with the Panoz DP01 chassis. The team got its first runner-up finish in the team's 301st race at Zolder with Junqueira finishing second to Sébastien Bourdais. Junqueira followed that result up with a pair of third-place finishes at Assen and Surfers Paradise.
In 2009, Justin Wilson joined the team after spending the first year of reunification with Newman/Haas Racing and Wilson picked up a victory at Belle Isle.
Wilson had finished third in the season opener at St. Petersburg and he led the most laps that day after jumping to the lead at the start. Cautions and pit strategy cycled him down the order to third with Ryan Briscoe taking the victory. Despite the strong opening race, Wilson entered Watkins Glen with his best finish in the previous seven races being 14th with three retirements in that span and he had not finished on the lead lap since the season opener.
Wilson qualified second at Watkins Glen, next to Briscoe, and it matched his best qualifying effort of the season, which came at St. Petersburg.
Briscoe held the lead at the start and Wilson slotted into second. Wilson pressured Briscoe into the bus stop on each of the first two laps. On lap four, Wilson was able to make his move for the lead into the bus stop.
Most of the opening stint saw Briscoe remain within a second of Wilson but the only time Briscoe made a look for the lead was when Wilson got caught behind Marco Andretti after Andretti had returned to the track after making pit stop for a cut tire. Wilson successfully held off Briscoe and once he put Andretti a lap down into the boot his lead was secure.
The top two pulled away from the rest of the field with Mario Moraes over 9.5 seconds behind those two in third when Wilson made his first pit stop on lap 19. Later that lap, Richard Antinucci would stop on course and bring out a caution, catching out Briscoe. Wilson would inherit the lead after the remaining cars made their first pit stops and Briscoe shuffled back to 11th.
This wasn't a race where Wilson had to make a daring move with three laps to go to take the lead. Wilson qualified at the front, took the lead early and pulled away for the most part in this race. He stayed at the front. Outside of the opening stint with Briscoe, Wilson did not face much of a challenge in this race.
The day got interesting when Hideki Mutoh had an accident with eight laps to go. The final restart came with six laps to go and Wilson got the jump on Briscoe and he quickly reestablished the gap he had prior to the restart. He had a 3.5-second lead with four laps to go.
From there it was near certainty Wilson was going to win the bar barring an error or a mechanical let down. With the team on the pit wall, Wilson crossed the finish line 4.99 seconds ahead of Briscoe.
It was Dale Coyne Racing's 330th IndyCar race. It had been 25 years of being the back marker, taking a spot on the grid with drivers most people had no clue about before and most of those drivers would leave IndyCar without anyone even realizing they were there.
When you are in something for 25 years you are bound to have a glorious day in the sun. Life is a numbers game, the more attempts you take, the more spins of the wheel, the more lottery tickets you buy the greater the chance you are going to hit the jackpot.
Dale Coyne Racing had their day on July 5, 2009 with Justin Wilson but it wasn't luck and it wasn't one thing that led to the victory.
It was a combination of everything: The driver, the crew, the starting position, the strategy, the track.
It was 25 years of waiting for Dale Coyne.
It was Justin Wilson's brief stint in Formula One leading to a trip across the United States and joining Champ Car. It was reunification happening when it did and Newman/Haas Racing moving on when it did.
It was Team Penske picking Will Power over Wilson when Hélio Castroneves had his tax evasion trial and countless of other things in this world that have been forgotten that put Wilson in the car for Coyne on that day and led to a watershed moment for that team and IndyCar.
I remember after that 2009 season everyone was pointing out the disparity in IndyCar with Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing having won 16 of 17 races. Of course, the one outlier from that season was Dale Coyne Racing won a race and it showed with the right pieces any team could win in IndyCar. There were still things that had to be fixed: A new chassis was needed, more engine manufactures, a formal ladder system was non-existent at that time and that television deal in 2009 was far from a home run for the series.
Looking back on the numbers from that season, it doesn't paint a dire situation many suggested and it doesn't seem as uncompetitive as it once did.
Penske and Ganassi won 16 of 17 races but the championship lead was never greater than 25 points. The championship lead was ten points or fewer after 14 of 17 races. The championship lead changed after 14 of 17 races. Dario Franchitti won the title but never led the championship after consecutive races. Franchitti only led the championship after five races and the greatest his championship lead ever was in 2009 was ten points after the final race. As much as we didn't like having two teams winning 94.117% of the races, how many other seasons will match what 2009 produced? I think we might have to revisit that season finale come October.
I wanted this to be a celebration of what I feel many would consider the bright spot of the 2009 season. I think this is also a good time to look at what Dale Coyne Racing has become in the last ten years.
Dale Coyne Racing is still the minnow on the grid. Coyne's team hasn't grown into a power house. It isn't fielding three cars with loads of sponsorship. The team isn't employing 200 people. Coyne doesn't have a wind tunnel and his team isn't developing the latest dampers. The team hasn't won the championship or the Indianapolis 500 but Dale Coyne Racing is a threat at every race.
There have been ups and downs in the decade since Dale Coyne Racing's first victory. It has had to chase the money and bring in less heralded drivers but it has also brought in top-tier talent that took the team to the top.
Wilson left after 2009 but returned in 2012 and won at Texas that year, though his car did have an unapproved body part on his car. The following year, Wilson finished sixth in the championship and had four podium finishes. While Wilson didn't win in 2013, Mike Conway did with the team in his first start for the organization. The year after that, Carlos Huertas won at Houston, albeit it in a time-shortened street race where the final restart was nixed because Graham Rahal ran into the back of Tony Kanaan before the field ever took the green flag and Huertas had a fuel cell that was larger than IndyCar regulations, but it still counts as a victory in the record book.
The last three seasons have seen Sébastien Bourdais be the rock for Dale Coyne Racing. In the process a handful of promising drivers have come into the team from Ed Jones to Pietro Fittipaldi to Santino Ferrucci. All three had solid results; Jones went on to drive for Ganassi and is now with Ed Carpenter Racing. Fittipaldi is a Haas F1 reserve driver and is racing for Audi in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters. Only time will tell what Ferrucci's next move will be.
A championship is just too far out of grasp for Dale Coyne Racing but the team is no longer filling the grid. In the near future the team may have to revert to its old practices of finding a driver who was below average in Formula Two and running him for two years because he keeps the lights on but in a similar way we have seen tanking be a necessary evil in other North American sports, Coyne's driver selection may be the team's long-term way of staying successful. Coyne can trade one or two years in the dumps for four or five years of overachieving.
A lot of teams have come and gone in the last decade of IndyCar, let alone in the 35 years Dale Coyne Racing has been entering races. It might be surprising to some that Dale Coyne Racing has been able to hold on this long but the constant presence of Dale Coyne Racing shows the possibilities in IndyCar. Done the right way a team can survive for multiple decades without ever having a flashy sponsor and that same team can become victorious and a contender at every race.
We close with Justin Wilson. He isn't here today to celebrate this anniversary but I am sure he is in the hearts and minds of countless people and he has been for sometime. Wilson never got that big break at the right time but we saw that even with second-tier equipment he could find a way to come out on top.
Seven victories does not seem like a lot to celebrate but Wilson took RuSport, an Atlantics team and made it a championship contender in Champ Car behind Newman/Haas Racing. Wilson won with Newman/Haas Racing in the 2008 year, the transition year for the Champ Car teams and the only other driver to win for a transitioning team that year was his teammate Graham Rahal. Wilson won twice for Coyne and for a brief moment had the team on the cusp of being a championship challenger.
Justin Wilson put Dale Coyne Racing on the map. Without Wilson, who knows how we would view Dale Coyne Racing? Who knows if Sébastien Bourdais would be there? It is fitting that Wilson is the most experienced driver in the history of the team having made 69 starts with the organization. Bourdais may surpass that mark; he has the third most starts at 44 after Road America and shout out to Michel Jourdain, Jr., who is second on 56 starts.
Bourdais may beat Wilson's 69 starts, he needs just one more victory to break their tie for most victories in Dale Coyne Racing history but the first great driver in the history of the team will always be Wilson. Wilson laid the foundation for Bourdais' current success and for any future success at the organization.
I hate talking about what might have been because we can never know for certain. The only thing I feel certain about is Justin Wilson would still be a popular face in IndyCar circles. He would bring that beaming smile to the track and brighten the day for every fan, official, reporter and crew member.
It doesn't feel that long ago but a lot has changed in IndyCar, some for worse but some for better. Watkins Glen went away and came back and went away again. Road America returned and Richmond disappeared. Franchitti retired and Dixon is reigning champion.
I think we are happier than we were when it comes to IndyCar. I think things are better. It feels better. It kind of crazy how far you can go in the blink of an eye.
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Showing posts with label 1000 Words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1000 Words. Show all posts
Friday, July 5, 2019
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
1000 Words: The 1967 USAC Championship Battle
IndyCar no longer races into autumn but this November marks the 50th anniversary of one greatest championship battles between the two of the greatest race car drivers to ever walk this Earth.
A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti ended up in a championship battle that went to the wire. The 1967 USAC National Championship season featured 21 races including one 500-mile race, the Pikes Peak International Climb, the shortest race circuit race in IndyCar history, four dirt ovals, two doubleheaders and a championship decider that will never be seen again.
Andretti found himself in a hole early in the season. He won the second race of the year at Trenton but practice accidents kept him from starting the season opener at Phoenix and the fourth round of the season at Milwaukee and his day in the Indianapolis 500 ended just after 50 laps. Foyt won the Indianapolis 500 after Parnelli Jones' famed turbine failed while dominating the race. However, neither driver would win another race before the Fourth of July. Foyt led the championship with 1,370 points, 215 points ahead of Al Unser and Andretti found himself tenth, 910 points behind Foyt.
Through the first eight races, Andretti had only scored points in three races while Foyt scored in five of the first eight races; one of the races he didn't score in was Pike Peak, which Foyt did not enter.
However, Andretti would go on a tear by winning four consecutive races, including sweeping the doubleheader at Mont-Tremblant. Foyt continued to lead the championship with 1,780 points and Al Unser remained second, 185 points back but Andretti had moved up to third and trailed by 220 points.
Foyt responded with a victory at Springfield but the next day Andretti won at Milwaukee but Milwaukee was 200 miles and paid 400 points for victory while Springfield was half the distance and 200 points were awarded to the winner. That difference brought Andretti within 60 points of Foyt heading into the final two races of the summer.
Foyt and Andretti traded victories again with Foyt winning at DuQuoin with Andretti in second and Andretti winning the Hooiser Hundred with Foyt finishing second. Foyt retook the championship lead with a victory at Trenton after Andretti had an accident with Lloyd Ruby and Foyt extended his championship lead to 500 points over Andretti with a victory at Sacramento and Andretti finishing second. After Foyt and Andretti combined to win ten consecutive races, Gordon Johncock won at Hanford while Foyt finished fourth and Andretti got caught up in another accident, this time with Al Unser.
Foyt could have clinched the championship at Phoenix but a suspension failure forced him to retire after nine consecutive finishes in the points. Andretti passed Bobby Unser with 20 laps to go and won the race, narrowing the gap to Foyt to 240 points with 600 points available at the season finale at Riverside. Johncock also had a slim shot at the title with him trailing Foyt by 580 points and needing to win at Riverside to have any shot at the title.
The season finale was a 300-mile affair at Riverside International Raceway held on November 26, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Dan Gurney returned for his first start since Indianapolis and he won pole position at what his home racetrack. Gurney pulled away from the start while Andretti ran in third ahead of Foyt.
The championship was thrown into disarray when Foyt hit the spinning Al Miller ending his race. Foyt ran back to the pits to get into Jim Hurtubise's car because USAC rules allowed relief drivers to score points based on the percentage of the race that relief driver completed. Unfortunately for Foyt, Hurtubise's car had to be retired because of an oil leak the lap prior to Foyt's accident.
Roger McCluskey took the lead from Gurney during the pit stop cycle but McCluskey was one of three possible cars Foyt could have taken over for because they were both Goodyear drivers. The other two options were Bobby Unser and Jerry Grant. Foyt returned to the pit lane after running from the scene of the accident and McCluskey was signaled into the pits for a driver swap. Foyt got in the car with 53 laps to go and he exited in fifth position and on the lead lap. However, he had to pit immediately after getting into the car because the fuel cap had not been closed on the initial pit stop.
Dan Gurney led and Andretti got ahead of Bobby Unser for second during the pit cycle. Just 12 laps after a caution for an accident by Joe Leonard, Gurney was forced to stop because of a right rear tire puncture. This allowed Andretti to take the lead and in turn provisionally putting him in position to win his third consecutive championship as Foyt remained in fifth and Foyt would only get a fraction of the 300 points awarded for a fifth place finish.
When it appeared the title had been lost for Foyt, another twist came as Andretti was forced to pit from the lead with six laps to go for fuel. Unser took the lead with Gurney closing on him. Andretti returned to the track in third but with Foyt a lap down in fifth Andretti would not win the championship after surrendering 180 points by dropping to third.
Gurney passed Unser on the inside of the final corner coming to the white flag and he would complete the comeback, taking the checkered flag the next time by comfortably ahead of Unser. Andretti rounded out the podium ahead of Lloyd Ruby and Foyt finishing fifth in his relief drive was enough to take the championship by 80 points over Andretti.
After the race, Foyt said McCluskey told him before the race that Foyt could use his car if Foyt needed it. McCluskey was commended for what Chris Economaki called a great sporting gesture and there was no ill will toward Foyt for what occurred.
If this were to happen today people would lose their minds. Team orders cause enough people to have their blood boil over into a state of rage but this wasn't team orders. This was sponsorship orders. Imagine if Sébastien Bourdais was told to get out of his car because he and Scott Dixon were both sponsored by the same wrist watch company and Dixon had a shot at the championship but his car broke down and Bourdais was in the top five. There is still a group of people that are upset Ed Jones won the Indy Lights championship in 2016 because he needed to make up one position on the racetrack and Carlin teammate Félix Serrallés moved out of the way. This makes what Serrallés did look tame.
It goes to show team orders have always been around and the golden era when sex was safe and racing was dangerous is no different from the modern era. Sponsorship talks and the one with the most backing get preferential treatment.
Of course, the series has changed. Points cannot be split. Heck, in race driver changes have been banned in the rulebook. This scenario will not play out in 2018 or any time in the near future.
I will have to say this is probably one of the most forgotten races in IndyCar history and it is a doozy of a race. You had three drivers enter with a shot at the championship. The championship leader, Foyt, was taken out prior to halfway but he got a second bite at the apple by getting into the car that belonged to a competitor. Then you had the race leader, Gurney, who clearly had the best car be forced to pit for a punctured tire and that gave the lead of the race and potentially the championship to the driver who entered second in the championship, Andretti. Just when everything appeared to be settled, Andretti had to pit for fuel with six laps to go and loses the lead and in turn the championship. Meanwhile, Gurney was in sight of Bobby Unser and he made a lunge up the inside of a hairpin to take the lead and ultimately the victory with a little over a lap to go. Sonoma could not produce a championship decider half as good as the one that occurred on November 26, 1967.
The 1967 season finale was not only a race that featured one of the quirkier championship finishes in IndyCar history but it featured a few notable differences from modern motorsports. The Formula One season had ended a month earlier in Mexico City and two Brits found themselves on the grid at Riverside.
The 1964 World Drivers' Champion John Surtees made his one and only IndyCar start. He started fourth and retired after 31 laps due to a mechanical failure. Surtees wasn't the only Formula One regular in the field. Jim Clark returned for his second start of the season after he made his fifth Indianapolis 500 start earlier that year. Clark started next to Gurney on the front row driving a year old car but a broken value ended his race after 25 laps, just after he took the lead from Gurney. It would be Clark's ninth and final IndyCar race and his final competitive race in the United States. He would lose his life in a fatal accident during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim over four months later.
This was IndyCar's first trip to Riverside and I have to say I am surprised IndyCar was not a regular visitor to the famed Southern California road course. While NASCAR went to the track for over 30 seasons with many years featuring two races, some as long as 500 miles, IndyCar would only return to the track five more times and there would be a 12-year hiatus between appearances in 1969 and 1981. While the 1968 and 1969 races were in December, the final three races held there from 1981 to 1983 all took place the final weekend of August.
It would be Foyt's fifth championship in eight seasons. In the three years he didn't win the championship he finished second, second and 15th. Andretti would go on his own stellar run of form. He would finished second to Bobby Unser in the championship the following year but he would take his third title in five years in 1969. It was the second and final time Foyt and Andretti finished first and second in the championship after Andretti beat Foyt for the title in 1965 despite Andretti only winning one race to Foyt's five victories that season.
As much as we talk about motorsports rivalries, very few are head-to-head year after year and few go to the wire. Foyt-Andretti was no different. The 1965 and 1967 seasons were the only two years they both finished in the top five of the championship and Andretti clinched the 1965 championship with two races to spare. The only time the two drivers finished in the top five in the same Indianapolis 500 was in 1989 when Andretti finished fourth and Foyt finished fifth and both drivers finished seven laps down.
Alain Prost-Ayrton Senna may have been the only head-to-head rivalry that lasted for an extended period. They each finished in the top five in the championship for seven consecutive seasons and in eight of nine seasons because of Prost's sabbatical in 1992. They were 1-2 in the champion for four out of five seasons in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have both been in Formula One for 11 seasons and despite both drivers having four world championships and 62 and 47 victories respectively this will be the first time they finished 1-2 in the championship. This is only the second time the two drivers have both finished in the top three of the championship.
The seasons where two all-time greats go head-to-head only come around so often. Fifty years have passed and IndyCar might not see another championship battle between the caliber of drivers of Foyt and Andretti in the next 50 years.
A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti ended up in a championship battle that went to the wire. The 1967 USAC National Championship season featured 21 races including one 500-mile race, the Pikes Peak International Climb, the shortest race circuit race in IndyCar history, four dirt ovals, two doubleheaders and a championship decider that will never be seen again.
Andretti found himself in a hole early in the season. He won the second race of the year at Trenton but practice accidents kept him from starting the season opener at Phoenix and the fourth round of the season at Milwaukee and his day in the Indianapolis 500 ended just after 50 laps. Foyt won the Indianapolis 500 after Parnelli Jones' famed turbine failed while dominating the race. However, neither driver would win another race before the Fourth of July. Foyt led the championship with 1,370 points, 215 points ahead of Al Unser and Andretti found himself tenth, 910 points behind Foyt.
Through the first eight races, Andretti had only scored points in three races while Foyt scored in five of the first eight races; one of the races he didn't score in was Pike Peak, which Foyt did not enter.
However, Andretti would go on a tear by winning four consecutive races, including sweeping the doubleheader at Mont-Tremblant. Foyt continued to lead the championship with 1,780 points and Al Unser remained second, 185 points back but Andretti had moved up to third and trailed by 220 points.
Foyt responded with a victory at Springfield but the next day Andretti won at Milwaukee but Milwaukee was 200 miles and paid 400 points for victory while Springfield was half the distance and 200 points were awarded to the winner. That difference brought Andretti within 60 points of Foyt heading into the final two races of the summer.
Foyt and Andretti traded victories again with Foyt winning at DuQuoin with Andretti in second and Andretti winning the Hooiser Hundred with Foyt finishing second. Foyt retook the championship lead with a victory at Trenton after Andretti had an accident with Lloyd Ruby and Foyt extended his championship lead to 500 points over Andretti with a victory at Sacramento and Andretti finishing second. After Foyt and Andretti combined to win ten consecutive races, Gordon Johncock won at Hanford while Foyt finished fourth and Andretti got caught up in another accident, this time with Al Unser.
Foyt could have clinched the championship at Phoenix but a suspension failure forced him to retire after nine consecutive finishes in the points. Andretti passed Bobby Unser with 20 laps to go and won the race, narrowing the gap to Foyt to 240 points with 600 points available at the season finale at Riverside. Johncock also had a slim shot at the title with him trailing Foyt by 580 points and needing to win at Riverside to have any shot at the title.
The season finale was a 300-mile affair at Riverside International Raceway held on November 26, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Dan Gurney returned for his first start since Indianapolis and he won pole position at what his home racetrack. Gurney pulled away from the start while Andretti ran in third ahead of Foyt.
The championship was thrown into disarray when Foyt hit the spinning Al Miller ending his race. Foyt ran back to the pits to get into Jim Hurtubise's car because USAC rules allowed relief drivers to score points based on the percentage of the race that relief driver completed. Unfortunately for Foyt, Hurtubise's car had to be retired because of an oil leak the lap prior to Foyt's accident.
Roger McCluskey took the lead from Gurney during the pit stop cycle but McCluskey was one of three possible cars Foyt could have taken over for because they were both Goodyear drivers. The other two options were Bobby Unser and Jerry Grant. Foyt returned to the pit lane after running from the scene of the accident and McCluskey was signaled into the pits for a driver swap. Foyt got in the car with 53 laps to go and he exited in fifth position and on the lead lap. However, he had to pit immediately after getting into the car because the fuel cap had not been closed on the initial pit stop.
Dan Gurney led and Andretti got ahead of Bobby Unser for second during the pit cycle. Just 12 laps after a caution for an accident by Joe Leonard, Gurney was forced to stop because of a right rear tire puncture. This allowed Andretti to take the lead and in turn provisionally putting him in position to win his third consecutive championship as Foyt remained in fifth and Foyt would only get a fraction of the 300 points awarded for a fifth place finish.
When it appeared the title had been lost for Foyt, another twist came as Andretti was forced to pit from the lead with six laps to go for fuel. Unser took the lead with Gurney closing on him. Andretti returned to the track in third but with Foyt a lap down in fifth Andretti would not win the championship after surrendering 180 points by dropping to third.
Gurney passed Unser on the inside of the final corner coming to the white flag and he would complete the comeback, taking the checkered flag the next time by comfortably ahead of Unser. Andretti rounded out the podium ahead of Lloyd Ruby and Foyt finishing fifth in his relief drive was enough to take the championship by 80 points over Andretti.
After the race, Foyt said McCluskey told him before the race that Foyt could use his car if Foyt needed it. McCluskey was commended for what Chris Economaki called a great sporting gesture and there was no ill will toward Foyt for what occurred.
If this were to happen today people would lose their minds. Team orders cause enough people to have their blood boil over into a state of rage but this wasn't team orders. This was sponsorship orders. Imagine if Sébastien Bourdais was told to get out of his car because he and Scott Dixon were both sponsored by the same wrist watch company and Dixon had a shot at the championship but his car broke down and Bourdais was in the top five. There is still a group of people that are upset Ed Jones won the Indy Lights championship in 2016 because he needed to make up one position on the racetrack and Carlin teammate Félix Serrallés moved out of the way. This makes what Serrallés did look tame.
It goes to show team orders have always been around and the golden era when sex was safe and racing was dangerous is no different from the modern era. Sponsorship talks and the one with the most backing get preferential treatment.
Of course, the series has changed. Points cannot be split. Heck, in race driver changes have been banned in the rulebook. This scenario will not play out in 2018 or any time in the near future.
I will have to say this is probably one of the most forgotten races in IndyCar history and it is a doozy of a race. You had three drivers enter with a shot at the championship. The championship leader, Foyt, was taken out prior to halfway but he got a second bite at the apple by getting into the car that belonged to a competitor. Then you had the race leader, Gurney, who clearly had the best car be forced to pit for a punctured tire and that gave the lead of the race and potentially the championship to the driver who entered second in the championship, Andretti. Just when everything appeared to be settled, Andretti had to pit for fuel with six laps to go and loses the lead and in turn the championship. Meanwhile, Gurney was in sight of Bobby Unser and he made a lunge up the inside of a hairpin to take the lead and ultimately the victory with a little over a lap to go. Sonoma could not produce a championship decider half as good as the one that occurred on November 26, 1967.
The 1967 season finale was not only a race that featured one of the quirkier championship finishes in IndyCar history but it featured a few notable differences from modern motorsports. The Formula One season had ended a month earlier in Mexico City and two Brits found themselves on the grid at Riverside.
The 1964 World Drivers' Champion John Surtees made his one and only IndyCar start. He started fourth and retired after 31 laps due to a mechanical failure. Surtees wasn't the only Formula One regular in the field. Jim Clark returned for his second start of the season after he made his fifth Indianapolis 500 start earlier that year. Clark started next to Gurney on the front row driving a year old car but a broken value ended his race after 25 laps, just after he took the lead from Gurney. It would be Clark's ninth and final IndyCar race and his final competitive race in the United States. He would lose his life in a fatal accident during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim over four months later.
This was IndyCar's first trip to Riverside and I have to say I am surprised IndyCar was not a regular visitor to the famed Southern California road course. While NASCAR went to the track for over 30 seasons with many years featuring two races, some as long as 500 miles, IndyCar would only return to the track five more times and there would be a 12-year hiatus between appearances in 1969 and 1981. While the 1968 and 1969 races were in December, the final three races held there from 1981 to 1983 all took place the final weekend of August.
It would be Foyt's fifth championship in eight seasons. In the three years he didn't win the championship he finished second, second and 15th. Andretti would go on his own stellar run of form. He would finished second to Bobby Unser in the championship the following year but he would take his third title in five years in 1969. It was the second and final time Foyt and Andretti finished first and second in the championship after Andretti beat Foyt for the title in 1965 despite Andretti only winning one race to Foyt's five victories that season.
As much as we talk about motorsports rivalries, very few are head-to-head year after year and few go to the wire. Foyt-Andretti was no different. The 1965 and 1967 seasons were the only two years they both finished in the top five of the championship and Andretti clinched the 1965 championship with two races to spare. The only time the two drivers finished in the top five in the same Indianapolis 500 was in 1989 when Andretti finished fourth and Foyt finished fifth and both drivers finished seven laps down.
Alain Prost-Ayrton Senna may have been the only head-to-head rivalry that lasted for an extended period. They each finished in the top five in the championship for seven consecutive seasons and in eight of nine seasons because of Prost's sabbatical in 1992. They were 1-2 in the champion for four out of five seasons in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have both been in Formula One for 11 seasons and despite both drivers having four world championships and 62 and 47 victories respectively this will be the first time they finished 1-2 in the championship. This is only the second time the two drivers have both finished in the top three of the championship.
The seasons where two all-time greats go head-to-head only come around so often. Fifty years have passed and IndyCar might not see another championship battle between the caliber of drivers of Foyt and Andretti in the next 50 years.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
1000 Words: 2007 IndyCar Series Season Finale
Saturday marks the tenth anniversary of a three-way title fight for the Indy Racing League championship. The title fight marked a pivotal time for IndyCar though most of us didn't know what was going to transpire in the coming offseason.
Dario Franchitti had controlled the championship ever since he won the rain-shortened Indianapolis 500 in May. He closed the first half of the season with a pair of victories, the inaugural Iowa race and at Richmond. He had eight top five finishes from the first nine races and six of those finishes were on the podium. However, the tide turned when the calendar switched over to July. Scott Dixon went on a tear, winning three consecutive races at Watkins Glen, Nashville and Mid-Ohio. However, Franchitti kept finding a spot on the podium. While Dixon clawed his way back into the championship fight, Franchitti was preventing Dixon from taking control of the title race.
The gap between the two drivers was 24 points entering Michigan, a race we went over a month ago. Franchitti leading the most laps in that race prevented Dixon from gaining any ground but the next race at Kentucky saw Dixon take a chunk out of the Scotsman's lead. Franchitti had to make an extended pit stop to replace a damaged front wing after hitting a cone entering the pit lane after going side-by-side into the pit lane with his teammate Danica Patrick, dropping him from contention. Tony Kanaan went on to win the race with Dixon finishing second and A.J. Foyt IV finishing third. Franchitti took the checkered flag but as the last car on the lead lap in eighth and not challenging for seventh but Franchitti had not realized he took the checkered flag. By the time he realized the race was over, he ran over the back of Kosuke Matsuura and flipped. Both drivers walked away and Franchitti's lead was down to eight points.
Sonoma appeared to be a chance for Franchitti to extend his championship lead. He led 57 of the first 63 laps. It appeared he would cycle back to the lead during the final pit cycle but a collision with teammate Marco Andretti at the top of the hill in turn two after the American's pit stop put Andretti in the tires and caused significant damage to Franchitti's front wing with Dixon set to be second for the restart. He was a sitting duck and Dixon took the lead with eight laps to go before another caution. Fortunately for Franchitti, he had his teammate Kanaan run block and keep the Scotsman in third. Dixon won the race and took a three-points lead in the championship over Franchitti.
The penultimate round at Belle Isle saw Franchitti once again running better of the two title contenders and he took the lead just before the first caution. However, a flurry cautions shook up the field and Franchitti found himself behind Dixon as the race came to a close. Kanaan led Buddy Rice, who was stretching fuel, Dixon and Franchitti. The frequency of cautions caused the race to become a timed race. Dixon was itching to get by Rice and pick up a few more points on Franchitti. On the penultimate lap, Dixon made a move on Rice in the penultimate corner and slight contact put him into the tire barrier while Dixon spun exiting the corner and momentum caused him to back into Franchitti. However, Franchitti was able to be re-fired and take the checkered flag and Dixon was out of his car. Franchitti would finish ahead Dixon and Rice would be classified ahead of Dixon. Add the bonus points for most laps led and Franchitti had a seven-point lead entering the season finale at Chicagoland over Dixon and Kanaan was mathematically still alive for the championship, 39 points behind his teammate.
Franchitti started on pole position but the Team Penske cars of Sam Hornish, Jr. and Hélio Castroneves went by early and Dan Wheldon and Dixon would be up to third and fourth within 20 laps. One point separated Franchitti and Dixon at that point in the race. Marco Andretti had an accident in turn four bring out the first caution on lap 34. Dixon jumped to second on that round of pit stops while Franchitti remained in fifth. Dixon took the championship lead, seven points over Franchitti.
The race had a really good pace. After the first caution the next 93 laps were run under green flag conditions. Most of the race saw the Team Penske cars leading Dixon, Wheldon and Franchitti in lockstep. It is quite noticeable how processional these races were by the time the IRL reached 2007. This wasn't pack racing at all. Everyone was spaced out. The top five were gone from the rest of the field. They were covered by less than a second but sixth on back were nowhere to been seen well before the halfway point of the race.
Vitor Meira had an accident during the third round of pit stops with 63 laps to go. The Team Penske drivers had already stopped as had Wheldon while Dixon was on the pit lane as the caution was thrown. Franchitti had stayed out and was the leader until he made his pit stop. Dixon had exited the pit lane before Franchitti passed him meaning he remained on the lead lap and inherited the lead when Franchitti came in. The lengthy yellow put drivers into position to try and stretch it on fuel if they decided to top off for fuel. Both Dixon and Franchitti topped off with 52 laps to go and both drivers remained first and second respectively.
Within ten laps after the restart Hornish, Jr. retook the lead while Franchitti lost positions to Danica Patrick, Wheldon and Castroneves. Franchitti would get back by Patrick but was still fifth while Dixon ran second and held a seven-point championship lead. With 17 laps to go Hornish, Jr. made a pit stop, handing the lead to Dixon while Franchitti moved up to third after he passed Castroneves later that lap but Dixon took a 12-points advantage over Franchitti.
Franchitti was concerned that he was not going to be able to make it with out another caution while Dixon was trying to conserve fuel while in the lead before he let Wheldon by and settled into second position but cutting his championship advantage to two points as Franchitti ran in third. Wheldon ran out of fuel entering turn one with seven laps to go and later that lap Patrick spun entering pit lane causing a caution with six laps to go. The events of those ten laps left Dixon and Franchitti as the only two cars on the lead lap when the race restarted with two laps to go.
Dixon held the lead while Franchitti ran on the high line for the majority of the penultimate lap. On the final lap, Franchitti settled behind Dixon on the back straightaway and caught a draft into turn three only to have Dixon run out of fuel and forced Franchitti to make a quick move to the outside to take the lead and win the race and the championship. Dixon coasted to second.
It is interesting to see how the last ten years have gone. I don't think anyone thought after that race that Franchitti would go on to win two more Indianapolis 500s and three more championship. After that race it seemed the consensus was Franchitti was on his way to the Acura sports car program with then-Andretti Green Racing and then came the surprise NASCAR deal with Ganassi. Of course, the NASCAR stint didn't go as planned and by the end of 2008 he and Dixon would be teammates.
Ten years later, Scott Dixon heads to another IndyCar season finale sitting second in the championship by a handful of points. He has since added another three championships and another 30 victories, including an Indianapolis 500 and a half-dozen fuel mileage races that went his way. He will go down as one of the all-time greats in IndyCar history and he could have the second-most IndyCar championship in a week in a half (depending on how you look at the history books and if you consider Rick Mears a six-time champion because he won the Indianapolis 500 two years when it was the only round of the USAC Gold Crown Championship).
Sam Hornish, Jr. would also be heading to NASCAR after the 2007 season and he has not raced in IndyCar since. I am not sure anyone expected Hornish, Jr. to stay in NASCAR for as long as he has. I don't think Hornish, Jr. gets enough credit for how respectable of a NASCAR driver he has become. It took sometime but he did become a competitive driver and he had a championship slip out of his hands in the then-Nationwide Series. He has gone on to win five races in NASCAR's second division and he has become somewhat of a super one-off driver. It is kind of a shame that he moved on completely from IndyCar and hasn't come back to do the Indianapolis 500 as a regular one-off. Hornish, Jr. left before reunification. I wish we got to see him compete against this current quality of a grid.
That Chicagoland race was the debut for Hideki Mutoh, who would finish eighth. His IndyCar career was respectable but not overwhelming successful. I doubt Mutoh thought that day at Chicagoland ten years later he would be teammates with Jenson Button. While this race would be the debut for Mutoh and the farewell for Hornish, Jr., it would also be a farewell to P.J. Chesson, who drove for Roth Racing in this race.
The 2007 season finale had 22 cars; pretty similar to the grid size we will see at Sonoma this season. It is hard to argue that the quality of the grid hasn't gotten better. Gone are Marty Roth and Milka Duno. We don't have any drivers we scratch our heads over. Everyone has had success and has raced well in a junior series. There isn't a driver on the grid that you can pencil in as being the slowest and be a second off the second-slowest car on the timesheet. IndyCar has come a long way, even if it doesn't feel like it. Reunification helped.
While not being the greatest oval race ever, even at an average Chicagoland race there is a clear difference in feelings and nerves when ending a season on an oval to a road course. At an oval, there is more of a chance of the deck being shuffled up or a car coming from the back and at the start of the race a driver could be looking good only to have a pit cycle or two see them slide down the running order and find themselves losing the championship. At a road course, the variance isn't there. Cars don't jump from the back to the front as often and most of the time it only happens when a caution comes during the middle of a pit cycle to shuffle everything up.
This was the last season where Team Penske didn't have a driver in championship contention entering the season finale. That is a pretty good record but when you consider in the last ten seasons that team has only won two championships, it makes you scratch your head.
On second viewing of this race, it wasn't as good as I remembered it. Before watching it I had thought it was one of the more underrated race in IndyCar history, a hidden gem because of the split. The racing itself wasn't that great and I think at the time the championship battle and the fact that the two drivers going for the championship were running first and second with two laps to go and were the only cars on the lead lap is what made me believe it was a great race. Don't get me wrong, the climax couldn't have been scripted any better and for those final 50 laps my heart was firmly placed in my throat and even second time watching I felt my heart rate go up but when you consider what happened on the race track, it is hard to say anything happened. The top five ran away from the field and remained pretty much in that order. There might have been great racing going on from sixth to last but ABC didn't show any of it. If that was the case, it felt like the director at that time really mailed it in and decided just to stay on the front five.
There is something I miss about those days even though they were segmented, spec and sub-optimal. If you didn't pick a side, the split was kind of fun. You got to enjoy 31 American open-wheel races in a year. That is never going to happen again but this is where you take quality over quantity. They might not be our favorite days in IndyCar history but this is all we have to look back on and for some this is what they grew up with and they didn't know about the politics and loved it because it is all they had. It might not have been pretty but it was fun nonetheless.
Dario Franchitti had controlled the championship ever since he won the rain-shortened Indianapolis 500 in May. He closed the first half of the season with a pair of victories, the inaugural Iowa race and at Richmond. He had eight top five finishes from the first nine races and six of those finishes were on the podium. However, the tide turned when the calendar switched over to July. Scott Dixon went on a tear, winning three consecutive races at Watkins Glen, Nashville and Mid-Ohio. However, Franchitti kept finding a spot on the podium. While Dixon clawed his way back into the championship fight, Franchitti was preventing Dixon from taking control of the title race.
The gap between the two drivers was 24 points entering Michigan, a race we went over a month ago. Franchitti leading the most laps in that race prevented Dixon from gaining any ground but the next race at Kentucky saw Dixon take a chunk out of the Scotsman's lead. Franchitti had to make an extended pit stop to replace a damaged front wing after hitting a cone entering the pit lane after going side-by-side into the pit lane with his teammate Danica Patrick, dropping him from contention. Tony Kanaan went on to win the race with Dixon finishing second and A.J. Foyt IV finishing third. Franchitti took the checkered flag but as the last car on the lead lap in eighth and not challenging for seventh but Franchitti had not realized he took the checkered flag. By the time he realized the race was over, he ran over the back of Kosuke Matsuura and flipped. Both drivers walked away and Franchitti's lead was down to eight points.
Sonoma appeared to be a chance for Franchitti to extend his championship lead. He led 57 of the first 63 laps. It appeared he would cycle back to the lead during the final pit cycle but a collision with teammate Marco Andretti at the top of the hill in turn two after the American's pit stop put Andretti in the tires and caused significant damage to Franchitti's front wing with Dixon set to be second for the restart. He was a sitting duck and Dixon took the lead with eight laps to go before another caution. Fortunately for Franchitti, he had his teammate Kanaan run block and keep the Scotsman in third. Dixon won the race and took a three-points lead in the championship over Franchitti.
The penultimate round at Belle Isle saw Franchitti once again running better of the two title contenders and he took the lead just before the first caution. However, a flurry cautions shook up the field and Franchitti found himself behind Dixon as the race came to a close. Kanaan led Buddy Rice, who was stretching fuel, Dixon and Franchitti. The frequency of cautions caused the race to become a timed race. Dixon was itching to get by Rice and pick up a few more points on Franchitti. On the penultimate lap, Dixon made a move on Rice in the penultimate corner and slight contact put him into the tire barrier while Dixon spun exiting the corner and momentum caused him to back into Franchitti. However, Franchitti was able to be re-fired and take the checkered flag and Dixon was out of his car. Franchitti would finish ahead Dixon and Rice would be classified ahead of Dixon. Add the bonus points for most laps led and Franchitti had a seven-point lead entering the season finale at Chicagoland over Dixon and Kanaan was mathematically still alive for the championship, 39 points behind his teammate.
Franchitti started on pole position but the Team Penske cars of Sam Hornish, Jr. and Hélio Castroneves went by early and Dan Wheldon and Dixon would be up to third and fourth within 20 laps. One point separated Franchitti and Dixon at that point in the race. Marco Andretti had an accident in turn four bring out the first caution on lap 34. Dixon jumped to second on that round of pit stops while Franchitti remained in fifth. Dixon took the championship lead, seven points over Franchitti.
The race had a really good pace. After the first caution the next 93 laps were run under green flag conditions. Most of the race saw the Team Penske cars leading Dixon, Wheldon and Franchitti in lockstep. It is quite noticeable how processional these races were by the time the IRL reached 2007. This wasn't pack racing at all. Everyone was spaced out. The top five were gone from the rest of the field. They were covered by less than a second but sixth on back were nowhere to been seen well before the halfway point of the race.
Vitor Meira had an accident during the third round of pit stops with 63 laps to go. The Team Penske drivers had already stopped as had Wheldon while Dixon was on the pit lane as the caution was thrown. Franchitti had stayed out and was the leader until he made his pit stop. Dixon had exited the pit lane before Franchitti passed him meaning he remained on the lead lap and inherited the lead when Franchitti came in. The lengthy yellow put drivers into position to try and stretch it on fuel if they decided to top off for fuel. Both Dixon and Franchitti topped off with 52 laps to go and both drivers remained first and second respectively.
Within ten laps after the restart Hornish, Jr. retook the lead while Franchitti lost positions to Danica Patrick, Wheldon and Castroneves. Franchitti would get back by Patrick but was still fifth while Dixon ran second and held a seven-point championship lead. With 17 laps to go Hornish, Jr. made a pit stop, handing the lead to Dixon while Franchitti moved up to third after he passed Castroneves later that lap but Dixon took a 12-points advantage over Franchitti.
Franchitti was concerned that he was not going to be able to make it with out another caution while Dixon was trying to conserve fuel while in the lead before he let Wheldon by and settled into second position but cutting his championship advantage to two points as Franchitti ran in third. Wheldon ran out of fuel entering turn one with seven laps to go and later that lap Patrick spun entering pit lane causing a caution with six laps to go. The events of those ten laps left Dixon and Franchitti as the only two cars on the lead lap when the race restarted with two laps to go.
Dixon held the lead while Franchitti ran on the high line for the majority of the penultimate lap. On the final lap, Franchitti settled behind Dixon on the back straightaway and caught a draft into turn three only to have Dixon run out of fuel and forced Franchitti to make a quick move to the outside to take the lead and win the race and the championship. Dixon coasted to second.
It is interesting to see how the last ten years have gone. I don't think anyone thought after that race that Franchitti would go on to win two more Indianapolis 500s and three more championship. After that race it seemed the consensus was Franchitti was on his way to the Acura sports car program with then-Andretti Green Racing and then came the surprise NASCAR deal with Ganassi. Of course, the NASCAR stint didn't go as planned and by the end of 2008 he and Dixon would be teammates.
Ten years later, Scott Dixon heads to another IndyCar season finale sitting second in the championship by a handful of points. He has since added another three championships and another 30 victories, including an Indianapolis 500 and a half-dozen fuel mileage races that went his way. He will go down as one of the all-time greats in IndyCar history and he could have the second-most IndyCar championship in a week in a half (depending on how you look at the history books and if you consider Rick Mears a six-time champion because he won the Indianapolis 500 two years when it was the only round of the USAC Gold Crown Championship).
Sam Hornish, Jr. would also be heading to NASCAR after the 2007 season and he has not raced in IndyCar since. I am not sure anyone expected Hornish, Jr. to stay in NASCAR for as long as he has. I don't think Hornish, Jr. gets enough credit for how respectable of a NASCAR driver he has become. It took sometime but he did become a competitive driver and he had a championship slip out of his hands in the then-Nationwide Series. He has gone on to win five races in NASCAR's second division and he has become somewhat of a super one-off driver. It is kind of a shame that he moved on completely from IndyCar and hasn't come back to do the Indianapolis 500 as a regular one-off. Hornish, Jr. left before reunification. I wish we got to see him compete against this current quality of a grid.
That Chicagoland race was the debut for Hideki Mutoh, who would finish eighth. His IndyCar career was respectable but not overwhelming successful. I doubt Mutoh thought that day at Chicagoland ten years later he would be teammates with Jenson Button. While this race would be the debut for Mutoh and the farewell for Hornish, Jr., it would also be a farewell to P.J. Chesson, who drove for Roth Racing in this race.
The 2007 season finale had 22 cars; pretty similar to the grid size we will see at Sonoma this season. It is hard to argue that the quality of the grid hasn't gotten better. Gone are Marty Roth and Milka Duno. We don't have any drivers we scratch our heads over. Everyone has had success and has raced well in a junior series. There isn't a driver on the grid that you can pencil in as being the slowest and be a second off the second-slowest car on the timesheet. IndyCar has come a long way, even if it doesn't feel like it. Reunification helped.
While not being the greatest oval race ever, even at an average Chicagoland race there is a clear difference in feelings and nerves when ending a season on an oval to a road course. At an oval, there is more of a chance of the deck being shuffled up or a car coming from the back and at the start of the race a driver could be looking good only to have a pit cycle or two see them slide down the running order and find themselves losing the championship. At a road course, the variance isn't there. Cars don't jump from the back to the front as often and most of the time it only happens when a caution comes during the middle of a pit cycle to shuffle everything up.
This was the last season where Team Penske didn't have a driver in championship contention entering the season finale. That is a pretty good record but when you consider in the last ten seasons that team has only won two championships, it makes you scratch your head.
On second viewing of this race, it wasn't as good as I remembered it. Before watching it I had thought it was one of the more underrated race in IndyCar history, a hidden gem because of the split. The racing itself wasn't that great and I think at the time the championship battle and the fact that the two drivers going for the championship were running first and second with two laps to go and were the only cars on the lead lap is what made me believe it was a great race. Don't get me wrong, the climax couldn't have been scripted any better and for those final 50 laps my heart was firmly placed in my throat and even second time watching I felt my heart rate go up but when you consider what happened on the race track, it is hard to say anything happened. The top five ran away from the field and remained pretty much in that order. There might have been great racing going on from sixth to last but ABC didn't show any of it. If that was the case, it felt like the director at that time really mailed it in and decided just to stay on the front five.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
1000 Words: Irish Hills of Yesteryear
We have reached August and another IndyCar season is nearing its end. We are in the middle of a two-week summer break for the series and only four races remain. The season flies by and the next round is a 500-miler at Pocono. Just over a month ago I wrote about how it had been ten years since the final Grand Prix of Cleveland and Saturday marks another ten-year anniversary for the most recent time IndyCar went to a famed track. This one was known for its 500-mile shows. It is Michigan International Speedway.
Michigan got caught up in the CART/IRL War and it was one of the tracks that jumped sides as teams and manufactures started flipping sides. It started out with CART and is remembered for the infamous U.S. 500 held the same day as the 1996 Indianapolis 500 to rival the event and prove the driver and team line-up of CART could succeed without having to be at the Indianapolis 500 and Indianapolis Motor Speedway come the month of May. Within a decade, despite great races by CART, the series would leave the track and the IRL would step in. The 500-mile race was shortened to 400 miles.
While being a point of contention during the gruesome decade that was the 1990s into the 2000s, Michigan's history with IndyCar went much further back than that. The first race was held on October 13, 1968. Ronnie Bucknum took the victory, the only victory of his IndyCar career, by a lap over Mario Andretti in a 250-mile event.
After a year off, IndyCar returned on July 4, 1970, Roger Penske purchased the track in 1972 and by 1973 the track would host IndyCar twice a year with a second race weekend added in mid-September. The first 12 Michigan races were won by 12 different winners and after Bucknum won the inaugural race the next six winners were Gary Bettenhausen, Mark Donohue, Joe Leonard, Roger McCluskey, Billy Vukovich II and Johnny Rutherford. For Donohue and Leonard, it would be the penultimate victories of their careers respectively. It was McCluskey's final victory and Vukovich II's only victory. It was Rutherford's third career victory and earlier that season Rutherford had picked up his second career victory at Ontario in one of the heats for the California 500, his first victory in over eight years.
While consistently hosting two races (and some years three because of Twin 125s), Michigan's first 500-mile race wasn't until 1981. Of the twenty-two 500-mile races run at Michigan, only two drivers won the Michigan 500 more than once. Michael Andretti won it in 1987 and 1989 and Scott Goodyear in 1992 and 1994.
It was a site of unpredictable results, as the track's high speeds were known for creating high attrition races with countless engine failures, transmissions seizing and clutches burning up with the occasional driver running a tank dry and coasting back to the pit lane shaking up a race. A grand total of 12 drivers picked up their first career victory at Michigan. Beside Bucknum and Vukovich II; Tom Sneva, Danny Ongais, Pancho Carter, John Paul, Jr. Emerson Fittipaldi, Scott Goodyear, Scott Pruett, Tony Kanaan, Patrick Carpentier and Tomas Scheckter all had their maiden trip to victory lane at Michigan.
Eight different drivers from seven different teams won the last eight Michigan races. I know those races span both CART and the IRL but Michigan became a place where nobody knew what was going to happen even as the final lap began. The 1998 race saw the lead change each of the last five laps with Greg Moore coming out on top and Jimmy Vasser nipping his teammate Alex Zanardi for second as the Italian drove the final three laps with whisks of smoke trailing his car as his engine was letting go. Max Papis seemed to have had his first career victory locked up when he took the white flag with a three-second lead in 1999 but the Italian ran out of fuel entering turn three and Tony Kanaan flew by with Juan Pablo Montoya get a massive draft off the Brazilian. Kanaan held on to get his first career victory by 0.032 seconds. Montoya would come out on top the following year but not before a twenty-lap battle and a drag race to the line with Michael Andretti. The final CART and 500-mile race featured Dario Franchitti, Michel Jourdain, Jr. and Patrick Carpentier dicing for the lead with Carpentier benefitting from the presences of his lapped teammate Alex Tagliani in the lead group to allow him to pass both Franchitti and Jourdain, Jr. on the outside in turn three and then draft off his teammate to pull away and seal the victory for the Canadian.
Even those that hated the IRL probably watched the 400-mile races from 2002-07 and had to think they were pretty good. Tomas Scheckter and Buddy Rice, who was making his debut, worked their way from the back half of the top ten to a 1-2 finish for Team Cheever in the final 30 laps during what was a contentious time between Scheckter and the team. Alex Barron spun and clipped the infield grass with less than 40 laps to go in 2003 after battling for the lead with Sam Hornish, Jr. and Scheckter. Barron escaped any damage and he was able to keep the car running. He was able to get back into contention within ten laps of that spin and he was stuck to Hornish, Jr.'s gearbox for the final five laps before he made his move on the outside into turn three and he would beat Hornish, Jr. by 0.0121 seconds, the 11th-closest finish in IndyCar history.
IndyCar's time at Michigan did not end on a good note. The final two races were delayed by rain. It was a two-hour delay in 2006 and a four-hour delay in 2007. The latter race got bumped from ESPN2 to ESPN Classic. Though the racing wasn't bad, the draw wasn't there. The 2007 race had a pretty good battle between Franchitti and Dan Wheldon. Then there was the infamous accident that turned Franchitti's car into a kite and took out four of the top five cars. Once that accident was cleaned up the race did end with a five-car, 30-lap fight for the victory between Kanaan, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick, Scott Sharp and Kosuka Matsuura. Patrick's shot at victory was dashed when she had to pit for a tire puncture. Kanaan proved to have the best car of those five and led the final 27 laps and he held off Andretti at the line by 0.0595 seconds.
After going back and watching pieces of those Michigan races, part of me feels like going to Michigan would benefit IndyCar. I have said before the current IndyCar schedule is at a good place with its arrangement of road courses, street courses and ovals but the speed and spectacle of big ovals is what gets the attention of people. The Indianapolis 500 has been great in the DW12-era and Fontana put on really great races every year it hosted a race in the DW12-era. The 2015 Fontana race might be one of the ten greatest IndyCar races of all-time. Why wouldn't IndyCar want to have two or three 220 MPH chess matches over 500 miles instead of just one at the end of May? Some might want to keep the Indianapolis 500 sacred but having a few breathtaking races a season wouldn't be a bad thing. It isn't realistic to have eight or ten or 12 races like that every season in IndyCar but three wouldn't be asking for much.
There isn't really a place for Michigan on the current IndyCar schedule. The series is in the midst of a two-week summer break but NASCAR is heading to the track in ten days and it wouldn't make sense to host IndyCar one week and NASCAR the next. July is already packed for IndyCar and the first NASCAR race at Michigan is Father's Day weekend. After the summer break IndyCar runs three consecutive weeks before ending the season on the third Sunday in September at Sonoma. I am not sure the series could go to Michigan for the season finale on the final weekend of September or in early October and draw a crowd. It is hard to compete during football season. Tracks struggle to get people through the turnstiles and the networks struggle to get people to tune into a race when football is in action.
Next year, Michigan International Speedway celebrates its 50th anniversary and it doesn't appear IndyCar will be on the guest list for the celebration but that doesn't mean IndyCar will never return. I am more optimistic about IndyCar one day returning to Michigan than I am Cleveland. For starters, Michigan is a permanent track and has two NASCAR dates keeping the doors open. Chevrolet is invested in the doubleheader at Belle Isle, which seems to suggest that it wouldn't want a race at Michigan but maybe IndyCar continues to grow a bit and the manufacture decides it is worth it to support a second outing down the road at the two-mile oval along with the street course event. Until that day comes, if it ever does, we at least have plenty of videos of slingshot passes aided by the Hanford device to keep us satisfied.
Michigan got caught up in the CART/IRL War and it was one of the tracks that jumped sides as teams and manufactures started flipping sides. It started out with CART and is remembered for the infamous U.S. 500 held the same day as the 1996 Indianapolis 500 to rival the event and prove the driver and team line-up of CART could succeed without having to be at the Indianapolis 500 and Indianapolis Motor Speedway come the month of May. Within a decade, despite great races by CART, the series would leave the track and the IRL would step in. The 500-mile race was shortened to 400 miles.
While being a point of contention during the gruesome decade that was the 1990s into the 2000s, Michigan's history with IndyCar went much further back than that. The first race was held on October 13, 1968. Ronnie Bucknum took the victory, the only victory of his IndyCar career, by a lap over Mario Andretti in a 250-mile event.
After a year off, IndyCar returned on July 4, 1970, Roger Penske purchased the track in 1972 and by 1973 the track would host IndyCar twice a year with a second race weekend added in mid-September. The first 12 Michigan races were won by 12 different winners and after Bucknum won the inaugural race the next six winners were Gary Bettenhausen, Mark Donohue, Joe Leonard, Roger McCluskey, Billy Vukovich II and Johnny Rutherford. For Donohue and Leonard, it would be the penultimate victories of their careers respectively. It was McCluskey's final victory and Vukovich II's only victory. It was Rutherford's third career victory and earlier that season Rutherford had picked up his second career victory at Ontario in one of the heats for the California 500, his first victory in over eight years.
While consistently hosting two races (and some years three because of Twin 125s), Michigan's first 500-mile race wasn't until 1981. Of the twenty-two 500-mile races run at Michigan, only two drivers won the Michigan 500 more than once. Michael Andretti won it in 1987 and 1989 and Scott Goodyear in 1992 and 1994.
It was a site of unpredictable results, as the track's high speeds were known for creating high attrition races with countless engine failures, transmissions seizing and clutches burning up with the occasional driver running a tank dry and coasting back to the pit lane shaking up a race. A grand total of 12 drivers picked up their first career victory at Michigan. Beside Bucknum and Vukovich II; Tom Sneva, Danny Ongais, Pancho Carter, John Paul, Jr. Emerson Fittipaldi, Scott Goodyear, Scott Pruett, Tony Kanaan, Patrick Carpentier and Tomas Scheckter all had their maiden trip to victory lane at Michigan.
Eight different drivers from seven different teams won the last eight Michigan races. I know those races span both CART and the IRL but Michigan became a place where nobody knew what was going to happen even as the final lap began. The 1998 race saw the lead change each of the last five laps with Greg Moore coming out on top and Jimmy Vasser nipping his teammate Alex Zanardi for second as the Italian drove the final three laps with whisks of smoke trailing his car as his engine was letting go. Max Papis seemed to have had his first career victory locked up when he took the white flag with a three-second lead in 1999 but the Italian ran out of fuel entering turn three and Tony Kanaan flew by with Juan Pablo Montoya get a massive draft off the Brazilian. Kanaan held on to get his first career victory by 0.032 seconds. Montoya would come out on top the following year but not before a twenty-lap battle and a drag race to the line with Michael Andretti. The final CART and 500-mile race featured Dario Franchitti, Michel Jourdain, Jr. and Patrick Carpentier dicing for the lead with Carpentier benefitting from the presences of his lapped teammate Alex Tagliani in the lead group to allow him to pass both Franchitti and Jourdain, Jr. on the outside in turn three and then draft off his teammate to pull away and seal the victory for the Canadian.
Even those that hated the IRL probably watched the 400-mile races from 2002-07 and had to think they were pretty good. Tomas Scheckter and Buddy Rice, who was making his debut, worked their way from the back half of the top ten to a 1-2 finish for Team Cheever in the final 30 laps during what was a contentious time between Scheckter and the team. Alex Barron spun and clipped the infield grass with less than 40 laps to go in 2003 after battling for the lead with Sam Hornish, Jr. and Scheckter. Barron escaped any damage and he was able to keep the car running. He was able to get back into contention within ten laps of that spin and he was stuck to Hornish, Jr.'s gearbox for the final five laps before he made his move on the outside into turn three and he would beat Hornish, Jr. by 0.0121 seconds, the 11th-closest finish in IndyCar history.
IndyCar's time at Michigan did not end on a good note. The final two races were delayed by rain. It was a two-hour delay in 2006 and a four-hour delay in 2007. The latter race got bumped from ESPN2 to ESPN Classic. Though the racing wasn't bad, the draw wasn't there. The 2007 race had a pretty good battle between Franchitti and Dan Wheldon. Then there was the infamous accident that turned Franchitti's car into a kite and took out four of the top five cars. Once that accident was cleaned up the race did end with a five-car, 30-lap fight for the victory between Kanaan, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick, Scott Sharp and Kosuka Matsuura. Patrick's shot at victory was dashed when she had to pit for a tire puncture. Kanaan proved to have the best car of those five and led the final 27 laps and he held off Andretti at the line by 0.0595 seconds.
After going back and watching pieces of those Michigan races, part of me feels like going to Michigan would benefit IndyCar. I have said before the current IndyCar schedule is at a good place with its arrangement of road courses, street courses and ovals but the speed and spectacle of big ovals is what gets the attention of people. The Indianapolis 500 has been great in the DW12-era and Fontana put on really great races every year it hosted a race in the DW12-era. The 2015 Fontana race might be one of the ten greatest IndyCar races of all-time. Why wouldn't IndyCar want to have two or three 220 MPH chess matches over 500 miles instead of just one at the end of May? Some might want to keep the Indianapolis 500 sacred but having a few breathtaking races a season wouldn't be a bad thing. It isn't realistic to have eight or ten or 12 races like that every season in IndyCar but three wouldn't be asking for much.
There isn't really a place for Michigan on the current IndyCar schedule. The series is in the midst of a two-week summer break but NASCAR is heading to the track in ten days and it wouldn't make sense to host IndyCar one week and NASCAR the next. July is already packed for IndyCar and the first NASCAR race at Michigan is Father's Day weekend. After the summer break IndyCar runs three consecutive weeks before ending the season on the third Sunday in September at Sonoma. I am not sure the series could go to Michigan for the season finale on the final weekend of September or in early October and draw a crowd. It is hard to compete during football season. Tracks struggle to get people through the turnstiles and the networks struggle to get people to tune into a race when football is in action.
Next year, Michigan International Speedway celebrates its 50th anniversary and it doesn't appear IndyCar will be on the guest list for the celebration but that doesn't mean IndyCar will never return. I am more optimistic about IndyCar one day returning to Michigan than I am Cleveland. For starters, Michigan is a permanent track and has two NASCAR dates keeping the doors open. Chevrolet is invested in the doubleheader at Belle Isle, which seems to suggest that it wouldn't want a race at Michigan but maybe IndyCar continues to grow a bit and the manufacture decides it is worth it to support a second outing down the road at the two-mile oval along with the street course event. Until that day comes, if it ever does, we at least have plenty of videos of slingshot passes aided by the Hanford device to keep us satisfied.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
1000 Words: No Longer By The Lake
A milestone was reached this weekend though most didn't notice it because IndyCar was busy at Road America. While IndyCar celebrated its second year back at the famed road course and Scott Dixon's picked up his 41st IndyCar victory, Saturday marked a decade since a driver turn analyst reached a certain milestone at a track no longer on the schedule. It was the tenth anniversary of Paul Tracy's 31st and final victory, which came in the final Grand Prix of Cleveland.
It is kind of fitting that IndyCar was at Road America this past weekend while it marked a decade since Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport hosted an IndyCar race. Road America was just like Cleveland, a casualty of reunification, another long held wish for the fans, drivers and speed junkies and a part of IndyCar's identity that was missing. When IndyCar returned to Elkhart Lake last year, I wrote that the positivity after the event and the crowd size wouldn't have been there had IndyCar returned in 2009. Nine years made us appreciate what Road America was for IndyCar. If we had gotten it immediately we would have been spoiled brats, likely wasted it and the race would have fallen off the schedule after a few seasons because of a reason that would only make fans mad even if it made sense to those with skin in the game.
I went back and watched a few clips of previous Cleveland races and the entire 2007 race. It was better than I ever realized. Flat but fast, the Burke Lakefront Airport layout was unlike anything else in racing. Turn one was a bitch. It seemed like every race had someone running into the back of somebody else and a half-dozen cars facing the wrong direction after completing all off 500 feet of a 200-mile race. In 2000, CART tried to lay down cones on the inside line prior to turn one for the opening lap just to prevent drivers from diving up the inside. Sure, enough seven cars spun in turn one. Despite the inevitable sight of 20-someodd of the "best drivers in the world" failing to get through the first corner without somebody running over another car, we still loved Cleveland.
The beauty of the Cleveland circuit was each corner set up the corner that followed. It wasn't a race track that cut in and out on itself nor did it have five corners in the span of a half-mile just to have corners, which seems to be a theme of not only modern street courses but also the permanent courses that have been built in recent years. If you got through turn one at Cleveland with your nose still intact, you were flat on exit through turn two and had a 150-foot wide straightaway to dive up the inside of another car in turn three. However, get into the right-handed turn three a little too hot and the car you thought you had passed will get back by you in the left-hander that immediately followed. However, if a car got turn four wrong, it was a sitting duck on the straightaway down to turns five and six, a left-right section that mirror turns three and four. Turns seven and eight, two right-handers, prepared the cars for the long penultimate straightaway and turns nine and ten, another right-left section before the main straightaway and the start of another lap of the madness.
It is a simple layout really and why the Hermann Tilkes and Tony Cotmans of the world haven't copied it for every track they design from now until the day they die is unfathomable. Long straightaways to build up speed and wide enough for five-wide racing, quick corners in succession that punishes the slightest mistakes but reward the gutsiest and smoothest of the daredevils with one hard braking zone is the recipe for a perfect race track. And we haven't even the mentioned the twist of a pit exit where it was advantageous to be exiting the pit lane instead of on the race track. Because of how long the pit lane was cars would go past turn one into a right-handed bend and when a car was lined back up to the race track the driver could slam on the throttle and start gaining speed a couple hundred feet before cars exiting turn one could get back on the gas. When it appeared a car had leapfrogged another during a pit cycle the car exiting the pit lane would retake the position before the fast right-handed turn two.
I am resigned in the fact that Cleveland will never return to the IndyCar schedule. I will admit the one time I had to make a connection in Cleveland, I got way too excited to fly by Burke Lakefront Airport and that was five years ago. You have to hold out some hope because Road America did return but Road America remained operational in the interim between IndyCar races. It kept sports cars and it added a NASCAR date. The track was making money. Cleveland has been dormant for ten years now. Mike Lanigan, who promoted the Cleveland race, revived Houston instead in 2013. How did that work out? Nothing against Lanigan and Houston but it is difficult to run any race successfully in 2017 let alone revive a race back to the lofty level it once held. IndyCar has found a way to move on without Cleveland and that is painful to admit. The schedule is solid as it is and the summer is already booked. We are approaching fourth of July weekend, a traditional date for the Grand Prix of Cleveland and if it were to return to the holiday weekend it would become the second race in a four consecutive week stretch of racing. Teams just had a stretch of five consecutive weeks at a race track from May into June. There are two free weekends in August but Mid-Ohio precedes those off weekends and I am not sure Mid-Ohio or Cleveland would be happy being on consecutive weekends or being two weeks apart.
By the way, the Grand Prix of Cleveland website is still up and I must say, damn! Look at those prices for the 2008 race. A three-day grandstand ticket cost $85. A three-day pit pass cost $35 for an adult and $20 for a child. Three-day infield parking cost $25. I can't find what is included in the three-day super ticket but it is only $100. A grandstand ticket for Sunday only costs $35. Those are amazing deals. No wonder why this race was able to be successful ever after the split. No race on the schedule today is nearly that fan-friendly with prices.
Cleveland's return to the IndyCar schedule seems unlikely but you never know what tomorrow may bring and if it brings back Cleveland and with those 2008 prices I think it would make the return to Road America look like a family picnic in terms of crowd size.
It is kind of fitting that IndyCar was at Road America this past weekend while it marked a decade since Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport hosted an IndyCar race. Road America was just like Cleveland, a casualty of reunification, another long held wish for the fans, drivers and speed junkies and a part of IndyCar's identity that was missing. When IndyCar returned to Elkhart Lake last year, I wrote that the positivity after the event and the crowd size wouldn't have been there had IndyCar returned in 2009. Nine years made us appreciate what Road America was for IndyCar. If we had gotten it immediately we would have been spoiled brats, likely wasted it and the race would have fallen off the schedule after a few seasons because of a reason that would only make fans mad even if it made sense to those with skin in the game.
I went back and watched a few clips of previous Cleveland races and the entire 2007 race. It was better than I ever realized. Flat but fast, the Burke Lakefront Airport layout was unlike anything else in racing. Turn one was a bitch. It seemed like every race had someone running into the back of somebody else and a half-dozen cars facing the wrong direction after completing all off 500 feet of a 200-mile race. In 2000, CART tried to lay down cones on the inside line prior to turn one for the opening lap just to prevent drivers from diving up the inside. Sure, enough seven cars spun in turn one. Despite the inevitable sight of 20-someodd of the "best drivers in the world" failing to get through the first corner without somebody running over another car, we still loved Cleveland.
The beauty of the Cleveland circuit was each corner set up the corner that followed. It wasn't a race track that cut in and out on itself nor did it have five corners in the span of a half-mile just to have corners, which seems to be a theme of not only modern street courses but also the permanent courses that have been built in recent years. If you got through turn one at Cleveland with your nose still intact, you were flat on exit through turn two and had a 150-foot wide straightaway to dive up the inside of another car in turn three. However, get into the right-handed turn three a little too hot and the car you thought you had passed will get back by you in the left-hander that immediately followed. However, if a car got turn four wrong, it was a sitting duck on the straightaway down to turns five and six, a left-right section that mirror turns three and four. Turns seven and eight, two right-handers, prepared the cars for the long penultimate straightaway and turns nine and ten, another right-left section before the main straightaway and the start of another lap of the madness.
It is a simple layout really and why the Hermann Tilkes and Tony Cotmans of the world haven't copied it for every track they design from now until the day they die is unfathomable. Long straightaways to build up speed and wide enough for five-wide racing, quick corners in succession that punishes the slightest mistakes but reward the gutsiest and smoothest of the daredevils with one hard braking zone is the recipe for a perfect race track. And we haven't even the mentioned the twist of a pit exit where it was advantageous to be exiting the pit lane instead of on the race track. Because of how long the pit lane was cars would go past turn one into a right-handed bend and when a car was lined back up to the race track the driver could slam on the throttle and start gaining speed a couple hundred feet before cars exiting turn one could get back on the gas. When it appeared a car had leapfrogged another during a pit cycle the car exiting the pit lane would retake the position before the fast right-handed turn two.
I am resigned in the fact that Cleveland will never return to the IndyCar schedule. I will admit the one time I had to make a connection in Cleveland, I got way too excited to fly by Burke Lakefront Airport and that was five years ago. You have to hold out some hope because Road America did return but Road America remained operational in the interim between IndyCar races. It kept sports cars and it added a NASCAR date. The track was making money. Cleveland has been dormant for ten years now. Mike Lanigan, who promoted the Cleveland race, revived Houston instead in 2013. How did that work out? Nothing against Lanigan and Houston but it is difficult to run any race successfully in 2017 let alone revive a race back to the lofty level it once held. IndyCar has found a way to move on without Cleveland and that is painful to admit. The schedule is solid as it is and the summer is already booked. We are approaching fourth of July weekend, a traditional date for the Grand Prix of Cleveland and if it were to return to the holiday weekend it would become the second race in a four consecutive week stretch of racing. Teams just had a stretch of five consecutive weeks at a race track from May into June. There are two free weekends in August but Mid-Ohio precedes those off weekends and I am not sure Mid-Ohio or Cleveland would be happy being on consecutive weekends or being two weeks apart.
By the way, the Grand Prix of Cleveland website is still up and I must say, damn! Look at those prices for the 2008 race. A three-day grandstand ticket cost $85. A three-day pit pass cost $35 for an adult and $20 for a child. Three-day infield parking cost $25. I can't find what is included in the three-day super ticket but it is only $100. A grandstand ticket for Sunday only costs $35. Those are amazing deals. No wonder why this race was able to be successful ever after the split. No race on the schedule today is nearly that fan-friendly with prices.
Cleveland's return to the IndyCar schedule seems unlikely but you never know what tomorrow may bring and if it brings back Cleveland and with those 2008 prices I think it would make the return to Road America look like a family picnic in terms of crowd size.
Friday, March 24, 2017
1000 Words: 2007 Formula One Season
The 2007 season was exactly what Formula One needed. After the departure of Michael Schumacher, Formula One needed something to fill the void of the seven-time champion and that came in the form of a titanic title fight, the emergence of not one but two great young drivers, a case of espionage, inter-team turmoil, an unusually placed gravel trap and one glitch that opened the door for a Flying Finn.
Fernando Alonso was fresh off his second World Drivers' Championship and had finally joined McLaren after announcing his intention to join the team on December 19, 2005. Kimi Räikkönen made way for Alonso at McLaren and the Finn filled the vacant seat left by the retiring Schumacher where Felipe Massa would be his teammate. Alonso entered as the championship favorite and slotting in beside the Spaniard was the defending GP2 champion and McLaren prodigy Lewis Hamilton.
Alonso's story had been laid out for the world over the two prior seasons but Hamilton's presences stole many eyeballs from the glorious champion. Hamilton was the first black driver in Formula One history. He didn't come from a wealthy family. His parents were divorced; his father burned the candle at both ends to provide a career for his son. Hamilton was the confident kid who told Ron Dennis during the end of the Ayrton Senna-era he would one day driver for McLaren and eventually Dennis signed Hamilton to McLaren's driver development program. It was a feel good story that had not been seen in Formula One for some time.
The season started in Australia and started with Räikkönen and Alonso going toe-to-toe with the Finn taking pole position in qualifying with Alonso in second. Räikkönen was able to hold off Alonso at the start while Alonso dropped to fourth behind the BMW Sauber of Nick Heidfeld and Hamilton. Räikkönen would win the race handily on his Ferrari debut while Hamilton and Alonso were both able to get on the podium with Alonso shuffling up to second with Hamilton in third through pit stops.
Massa started on pole position at the second round of the season at Sepang but Alonso and Hamilton were able to jump to 1-2 at the start. Alonso pulled away from the field and Räikkönen challenged Hamilton for second but the Briton held off the Finn. Massa started on pole position again at Bahrain and would win the race ahead of Hamilton and Räikkönen with Alonso finishing in fifth. This result left Alonso, Räikkönen and Hamilton tied on 22 points after three races with the series heading back to Europe.
Massa won his third consecutive pole position at Barcelona with Alonso starting second in his home race with Räikkönen and Hamilton on row two. Alonso made a challenge for the lead into turn one off the start but ran wide through the gravel and fell to fourth. Alonso would move up to third after Räikkönen retired with an electrical problem after nine laps. Massa took his second consecutive victory with Hamilton moving into sole possession of the championship lead with another second-place finish with Alonso two points behind his teammate after finishing third.
At Monaco, Alonso flexed his muscle by winning pole position and handling winning the famed race over four seconds ahead of Hamilton and lapping up to fourth-place. Massa finished third, over a minute and nine seconds behind the Spaniard. Räikkönen started 16th after hitting the barrier in qualifying but climbed up to eighth, scoring a valuable point. From Monaco, Formula One crossed the Atlantic for its North American tour with Alonso and Hamilton tied for the championship lead on 38 points but Hamilton yet to stand on the top step of the podium.
Hamilton started the Montreal weekend winning his first career pole position handily over Alonso with Räikkönen and Massa starting fourth and fifth behind Heidfeld's BMW Sauber. Alonso ran wide in turn one and dropped to third. Alonso would run wide in turn one three more times during the race and adding insult to injury Alonso was caught out by a safety car for an accident involving Adrian Sutil and he had to stop when the pit lane was closed for fuel, handing Alonso a ten-second stop-and-go penalty.
Shortly after the restart, Robert Kubica had his infamous accident heading to the hairpin. Kubica's BMW Sauber clipped the grass, slamming head first into a concrete barrier, ricocheting his car back toward the racetrack, somersaulting once before the car slid into the outside barrier and ending with Kubica on his side. Kubica escaped with a concussion and a sprained ankle.
The race restarted and Hamilton comfortably won the race ahead of Heidfeld and Alexander Wurz, who started 19th and used a one-stop strategy to get to the front. Heikki Kovalainen and Räikkönen rounded out the top five. The 2007 Canadian Grand Prix not only will be remembered for Hamilton's first victory but the greatest day for Super Aguri-Honda as Takuma Sato ran most of the day in the points and passed Alonso on track for sixth. It was the best finish for the team and Sato's final time in the points. Even Anthony Davidson appeared to headed for a points-paying finish until he hit a groundhog and had a poor pit stop, leaving him to finish 11th.
Hamilton doubled up the week later by winning the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He started on pole position again despite being behind Alonso in the first two rounds of qualifying. He held off Alonso while neither Ferrari had anything for McLaren with Massa and Räikkönen finishing third and fourth. While Hamilton was on top again, BMW Sauber had a new driver. Kubica was not deemed fit for the United States Grand Prix and in came a German named Sebastian Vettel. He started seventh and finished eighth, scoring one point and becoming the youngest driver to score a point at 19 years and 349 days old.
Hamilton headed back to Europe with 58 points, ten clear of his teammate, 19 points ahead of Massa and 26 points ahead of Räikkönen. Just when it appeared this dream start to a Formula One career was turning into a historic season, everything hit the fan off the race track.
In the days following the United States Grand Prix, Ferrari filed a formal complaint, which launched a criminal investigation by the Modena district attorney into Nigel Stepney, head of the team's performance development. The complaint and later investigation stemmed from a white residue that was found in the fuel cell of the two cars at Monaco, leading to a suspicion that the team was sabotaged at Monaco.
While the investigation took place, Formula One returned to competition at Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours. McLaren had won three consecutive races and three consecutive pole positions and appeared on track for a fourth consecutive pole position as Hamilton was fastest through the first two rounds of qualifying with Alonso right behind him. However, it all started to unravel on McLaren in round three. Alonso had a gearbox problem, keeping him from turning a lap and forcing him to start tenth and Massa beat Hamilton for pole position by 0.070 seconds. In the race, Massa kept the lead into turn one but Räikkönen got by Hamilton into the first turn. Räikkönen would leapfrog to the lead during a pit cycle and score his first victory since the season opener ahead of Massa and Hamilton with Alonso only managing a seventh-place finish.
Two days after the 1-2 finish in France, Ferrari fired Nigel Stepney and a legal case was filed against Stepney and a McLaren employee over the alleged theft of technical information from Ferrari. The McLaren employee was Mike Coughlan and in a police raid on Coughlan's house Ferrari documents were discovered. McLaren suspended Coughlan.
Three days after the dismissal of Stepney, Formula One was back on track for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. On Saturday, Alonso was on top through the first two rounds of qualifying, ahead of Räikkönen and Massa. Hamilton stole pole position on the final lap of qualifying while Räikkönen jumped to second, knocking Alonso to third on the grid. A botched first pit stop cost Hamilton the lead as he fell behind Alonso and Räikkönen. Alonso was short-fueled on the first pit stop but it would cost him on the second set of stops as Räikkönen was able to get ahead of the Spaniard and not look back as he took his second consecutive victory ahead of Alonso and Hamilton.
Two days after Räikkönen's victory at Silverstone, Coughlan's case went to the London High Court and he is accused of being in possession of stolen confidential documents. The next day, Coughlan reached an agreement with Ferrari for the Italian manufacture to drop its High Court case in exchange for Coughlan's for full disclosure and cooperation. The day after that, the FIA announced that the World Motorsports Council would have an extraordinary meeting with McLaren on July 26th in Paris over charges of breaching Article 151c of the International Sporting Code.
Four days prior to the meeting was the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Hamilton entered with 70 points, leading Alonso by 12, Räikkönen by 18 and Massa by 19. Hamilton had started the year with nine podium finishes in nine races. He had yet to start worse than row two. A wheel failure sent Hamilton into tire barriers during the final round of qualifying, forcing him to start tenth in the race as Räikkönen took pole position ahead of Alonso and Massa.
As the cars rolled on the formation lap, rain clouds hung over the Nürburgring and while the start was dry, those conditions would be completely different by the end of lap one. The heavens opened and cars slid off track, cutting corners and drivers were just trying to survive to get back to the pit lane. Conditions were so horrendous Räikkönen hydroplaned passed the pit lane and had to do another lap on slick tires. While 21 cars scattered, one rolled the dice and switched to wet tires after the formation lap in anticipating for the rain. Spyker's Markus Winkelhock took the lead on lap two.
Almost the entire field switched to intermediate tires, which proved not to be good enough for the conditions. Many were caught out by the running water across turn one. Jenson Button spun into the barriers and within a half a minute Sutil, Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Scott Speed, who would be making his final Formula One start, as he would be replaced by Sebastian Vettel midseason at Toro Rosso, and Vitantonio Liuzzi all joined Button in the gravel trap, leading to the race being red-flagged.
Winkelhock restarted in the lead on wet tires but most of the teams switched to intermediate tires during the red flag period. Winkelhock lost the lead almost immediately and he would retired after only 13 laps due to an hydraulics failure. It was his only Formula One start.
Massa would dominate most of the race as the track dried. Räikkönen was forced to retire just after halfway. Another shower hit the circuit in the final ten laps; forcing everyone back to intermediate tires and created a battle between Massa and Alonso for the victory. Alonso passed Massa with four laps to go after slight contact with the Brazilian. Alonso ran away from Massa, winning the race by over eight seconds. Massa voiced his displeasure to Alonso prior to the podium ceremony in a memorable shot that was caught by the television cameras. Hamilton failed to score points for the first time in his career and Alonso left Germany trailing him by two points.
At the FIA World Motorsports Council meeting in Paris, McLaren was found guilty of possession of confidential Ferrari information but received no penalty, as there was insufficient evidence that this possession affected the championship. The FIA reserved the right to reconvene should more evidence become public. Ferrari was understandable furious that McLaren received no penalty despite being found guilty and the FIA International Court of Appeals announced it would hear the case in August.
With the Paris meeting in the past, Formula One headed to Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix and just when it appeared McLaren could regroup, the fight between Hamilton and Alonso boiled over. Hamilton was quicker than Alonso through the first two rounds of qualifying and was in position to take another pole position until a cycle in the pit lane. Alonso was first in for fresh rubber and when his crew finished his stop, he sat idle in the pit box for almost 30 seconds with Hamilton behind him in the pit lane, waiting for his scheduled tire change. Once Alonso left, there was not enough time for Hamilton to complete another lap in qualifying, handing Alonso the pole position.
Ron Dennis was visibly upset at Alonso's pit lane balk, throwing his headset in disguise. The stewards reviewed the incident and handed Alonso a five-spot grid penalty, dropping him to sixth and elevating Hamilton to pole position, Heidfeld to the front row and Räikkönen to third. The FIA also decided that McLaren would not be awarded constructors' points for the Hungarian Grand Prix and not be allowed to accept a trophy should the team win at Budapest. Things had become so sour within the McLaren camp that on the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix Alonso allegedly threatened Dennis that he would give the FIA emails between himself and McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa that would incriminate Dennis in the FIA investigation.
Hamilton led every lap in the race but was hounded by Räikkönen throughout, holding off the Finn by 0.715 seconds at the finish line. Heidfeld rounded out the podium with Alonso in fourth. Hamilton left Hungary and entered the summer break with 80 points, seven clear of Alonso and twenty clear of Räikkönen.
At Turkey, Massa started on pole position with Hamilton on row one but Räikkönen would get by Hamilton into turn one. Hamilton's challenge for second was cut short by a tire puncture, which allowed Alonso to take the final podium spot and dropped Hamilton to a fifth-place finish, cutting his lead over his teammate to five points with Massa and Räikkönen 15 and 16 points behind respectively.
On September 5th, two days prior to the first practice for the Italian Grand Prix, the FIA announced a second hearing in the espionage case would be held on September 13th, the day before the start of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend. McLaren dominated the Italian Grand Prix. Alonso won pole position and never looked back, leading 48 of 53 laps with Hamilton rounding out the McLaren 1-2 in Ferrari's backyard. Massa retired from third position after a suspension failure. Räikkönen was able to get on the podium but finished over 27 seconds behind the Spaniard. Hamilton's lead was down to three points over Alonso but he was 18 points clear of Räikkönen and 23 points clear of Massa with McLaren leading Ferrari in the constructors' championship 166-143.
At the second hearing, the FIA threw the book at McLaren, fining the manufacture $100 million, excluding it from the 2007 constructors' championship and required a submission of its 2008 car design by December 2007 and possibly excluding McLaren from 2008 if it contained any Ferrari intellectual property. The next day it was revealed Alonso and de la Rosa did receive confidential Ferrari information from Coughlan.
With McLaren already covered in egg before the Belgian Grand Prix even took place, it didn't help ease the pain that Räikkönen and Massa would start 1-2 and finish that way with Alonso in third and Hamilton in fourth. With three races remaining in the season, four drivers were alive for the world drivers' championship with Hamilton on 97 points; two ahead of Alonso, 13 ahead of Räikkönen and 20 clear of Massa. Ferrari's 1-2 finish at Spa-Francorchamps would clinch the manufacture the constructors' championship.
Two weeks after Belgium, Formula One headed to Japan but for the first time since 1977, the Japanese Grand Prix was held at Fuji Speedway instead of the familiar home of Suzuka. Rain dominated the weekend but on a drying track Hamilton won pole position with Alonso in second ahead of Räikkönen and Massa. On race day, the torrential rain forced the race to start behind the safety car for the first 19 laps. The Ferraris had to make pit stops before the race ever went green due to being on the standard wet tires and not the extreme wet tires. Hamilton led until a pit stop cycle saw Sebastian Vettel lead his first laps of his career and become the youngest lap leader in Formula One history.
Hamilton would retake the lead on lap 41 and later that lap Alonso suffered a severe accident heading to the hairpin due to hydroplaning. It was the first retirement of the season for a McLaren. Hamilton would comfortably win at Fuji with Heikki Kovalainen scoring his first career podium finish in second and Räikkönen finishing third. Hamilton left Japan with a 12-points lead over Alonso and a 17-point lead over Räikkönen and a second-place finish for Hamilton at the Chinese Grand Prix would clinch him the world championship.
Like Japan, China started with wet conditions. Hamilton was on pole position ahead of Räikkönen and Massa with Alonso in fourth. Teams started on the intermediate tires and as the track dried out, it became more of a race for survival and finding each wet patch of asphalt available to extend the life of the tires. Hamilton lost the lead to Räikkönen prior to his first pit stop but Hamilton was still positioned to finish second and clinch the world championship.
When entering the pit lane for his stop, Hamilton slid off and into a gravel trap positioned on the outside of the entrance road to the pit lane. With his car beached, Hamilton tried to get out and marshals tried to push the McLaren free but it was of no use and for the first time in his career, Hamilton had retired from a race.
Räikkönen would retake the lead on lap 34 after Kubica retired due to a hydraulics failure and he would win by over nine seconds from Alonso with Massa in third. Hamilton's championship lead was cut to four points over Alonso and seven points over Räikkönen heading to the season finale at Interlagos.
At the season finale, Massa won pole position in front of his home crowd with Hamilton qualifying second and Räikkönen and Alonso on row two. Massa held on to the lead at the start with Räikkönen jumping up to second ahead of Hamilton and Alonso. Alonso made a move on Hamilton into turn three and forced Hamilton to lock up his tires and fall to eighth. At the end of lap one, Alonso was in position to be world champion with 109 points, a point ahead of both Räikkönen and Hamilton.
Hamilton passed Jarno Trulli on the next lap and by lap six was up to sixth but suffered a gearbox issue exiting turn three. Hamilton stopped on track as he reset the car and was finally to get back going but not before dropping to 18th.
Massa and Räikkönen pulled away from Alonso and Räikkönen tried to jump his teammate during the first pit cycle but was still over three seconds behind Massa after his first stop. Kubica passed Alonso for third on lap 34, as he was lower on fuel and running a three-stop strategy. Massa came in from the lead on lap 50 while Räikkönen set consecutive fastest laps. The Finn came in on lap 53 and exited leading his teammate. Alonso was in fourth until Kubica stopped from third and Hamilton was only up to eighth. Hamilton would make up one more position after Trulli made his final pit stop but it was not enough to take the title as Räikkönen won the Brazilian Grand Prix and the World Drivers' Championship by one point over Hamilton and Alonso.
It is hard to believe ten years have passed from the 2007 season. When it ended, I don't think anyone thought Fernando Alonso could ever have become a sympathetic figure let alone become a McLaren driver again. Not only has Alonso become both but he was in talks to becoming Lewis Hamilton's teammate at Mercedes! How after everything that happened in 2007 could that nearly have happened? I completely forgot about the emails. Imagine if WikiLeaks was around then.
In a way, Alonso is living through a curse of that 2007 season. After being the cut throat, selfish driver he was at McLaren, the last ten seasons of his career have been turning over the hearts of Formula One fans as a great driver who has failed to make it back to the pinnacle because of underperforming car after underperforming car and it seems only fitting the worse of all has come at the team where he scorched the earth.
It is hard to imagine what Formula One would have looked like if Hamilton didn't beach it entering pit lane at Shanghai. A rookie world champion. Would he have doubled up immediately the next year or would he suffer a hard sophomore slump? Would Räikkönen have ever won a title? Entering 2007, I think we all expected Räikkönen would win a title with Ferrari. He had shown he had world championship talent at McLaren. Something happened after he won the title in 2007. I don't want to say something shut off but something changed in the Finn in 2008. He trailed Hamilton by five points after the 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix, then failed to score points in four consecutive races and handed Felipe Massa first in line at Maranello. The Ferrari F60 was a dud in 2009 and soon Räikkönen was gone from Formula One.
Räikkönen returned after two years out of the series but he has never been in the thick of it and has for more or less played a supporting role as Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Webber and Rosberg continued to be the main cast while Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen are the next wave of stars drawing attention on stage.
I think the 2007 season was the greatest season in Formula One history. It had everything but a murder and a love triangle. Räikkönen won the World Drivers' Championship despite entering the finale third in the championship. The only other previous occurrence of a driver going from third to first in the championship in the final race was Giuseppe Farina in 1950, the first season of Formula One. The 2007 season made everyone forget about Michael Schumacher and two of arguably the greatest drivers in Formula One history made their debuts in Hamilton and Vettel. Besides those two, the only leftovers from 2007 are Alonso, Massa and Räikkönen. Of the 11 teams on the 2007 grid, nine of them have roots that extend to the present. Renault became Lotus and then became Renault again. Honda became Brawn, which became Mercedes. BMW Sauber reverted back to Sauber. Spyker became Force India the following season. Super Aguri closed up shopped during the 2008 season and Toyota left Formula One after 2009.
There should be a documentary about this season and the completely unfathomable idea that a one team member intentionally gave a rival confidential information. The United States couldn't stop talking about the air pressures in footballs for two years. How aren't we still talking about the year espionage hung over the Formula One world? Seriously! Hell, Stepney was even sentenced to one year and eight months in jail by Italian authorities, none of which he served. By the way, Mike Coughlan now works for Richard Childress Racing in NASCAR. Who knew?
Tragically, if a documentary would be made of this great season, the man at the center of it all wouldn't get to tell his side of the story. Stepney was killed on May 2, 2014 after being hit by a truck. He will never get a chance to tell the world what he was thinking, what led him to do it and if he had any regrets. Maybe that adds to the legend of all this. Part of it will never be known. It is a secret that never can be leaked.
Fernando Alonso was fresh off his second World Drivers' Championship and had finally joined McLaren after announcing his intention to join the team on December 19, 2005. Kimi Räikkönen made way for Alonso at McLaren and the Finn filled the vacant seat left by the retiring Schumacher where Felipe Massa would be his teammate. Alonso entered as the championship favorite and slotting in beside the Spaniard was the defending GP2 champion and McLaren prodigy Lewis Hamilton.
Alonso's story had been laid out for the world over the two prior seasons but Hamilton's presences stole many eyeballs from the glorious champion. Hamilton was the first black driver in Formula One history. He didn't come from a wealthy family. His parents were divorced; his father burned the candle at both ends to provide a career for his son. Hamilton was the confident kid who told Ron Dennis during the end of the Ayrton Senna-era he would one day driver for McLaren and eventually Dennis signed Hamilton to McLaren's driver development program. It was a feel good story that had not been seen in Formula One for some time.
The season started in Australia and started with Räikkönen and Alonso going toe-to-toe with the Finn taking pole position in qualifying with Alonso in second. Räikkönen was able to hold off Alonso at the start while Alonso dropped to fourth behind the BMW Sauber of Nick Heidfeld and Hamilton. Räikkönen would win the race handily on his Ferrari debut while Hamilton and Alonso were both able to get on the podium with Alonso shuffling up to second with Hamilton in third through pit stops.
Massa started on pole position at the second round of the season at Sepang but Alonso and Hamilton were able to jump to 1-2 at the start. Alonso pulled away from the field and Räikkönen challenged Hamilton for second but the Briton held off the Finn. Massa started on pole position again at Bahrain and would win the race ahead of Hamilton and Räikkönen with Alonso finishing in fifth. This result left Alonso, Räikkönen and Hamilton tied on 22 points after three races with the series heading back to Europe.
Massa won his third consecutive pole position at Barcelona with Alonso starting second in his home race with Räikkönen and Hamilton on row two. Alonso made a challenge for the lead into turn one off the start but ran wide through the gravel and fell to fourth. Alonso would move up to third after Räikkönen retired with an electrical problem after nine laps. Massa took his second consecutive victory with Hamilton moving into sole possession of the championship lead with another second-place finish with Alonso two points behind his teammate after finishing third.
At Monaco, Alonso flexed his muscle by winning pole position and handling winning the famed race over four seconds ahead of Hamilton and lapping up to fourth-place. Massa finished third, over a minute and nine seconds behind the Spaniard. Räikkönen started 16th after hitting the barrier in qualifying but climbed up to eighth, scoring a valuable point. From Monaco, Formula One crossed the Atlantic for its North American tour with Alonso and Hamilton tied for the championship lead on 38 points but Hamilton yet to stand on the top step of the podium.
Hamilton started the Montreal weekend winning his first career pole position handily over Alonso with Räikkönen and Massa starting fourth and fifth behind Heidfeld's BMW Sauber. Alonso ran wide in turn one and dropped to third. Alonso would run wide in turn one three more times during the race and adding insult to injury Alonso was caught out by a safety car for an accident involving Adrian Sutil and he had to stop when the pit lane was closed for fuel, handing Alonso a ten-second stop-and-go penalty.
Shortly after the restart, Robert Kubica had his infamous accident heading to the hairpin. Kubica's BMW Sauber clipped the grass, slamming head first into a concrete barrier, ricocheting his car back toward the racetrack, somersaulting once before the car slid into the outside barrier and ending with Kubica on his side. Kubica escaped with a concussion and a sprained ankle.
The race restarted and Hamilton comfortably won the race ahead of Heidfeld and Alexander Wurz, who started 19th and used a one-stop strategy to get to the front. Heikki Kovalainen and Räikkönen rounded out the top five. The 2007 Canadian Grand Prix not only will be remembered for Hamilton's first victory but the greatest day for Super Aguri-Honda as Takuma Sato ran most of the day in the points and passed Alonso on track for sixth. It was the best finish for the team and Sato's final time in the points. Even Anthony Davidson appeared to headed for a points-paying finish until he hit a groundhog and had a poor pit stop, leaving him to finish 11th.
Hamilton doubled up the week later by winning the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He started on pole position again despite being behind Alonso in the first two rounds of qualifying. He held off Alonso while neither Ferrari had anything for McLaren with Massa and Räikkönen finishing third and fourth. While Hamilton was on top again, BMW Sauber had a new driver. Kubica was not deemed fit for the United States Grand Prix and in came a German named Sebastian Vettel. He started seventh and finished eighth, scoring one point and becoming the youngest driver to score a point at 19 years and 349 days old.
Hamilton headed back to Europe with 58 points, ten clear of his teammate, 19 points ahead of Massa and 26 points ahead of Räikkönen. Just when it appeared this dream start to a Formula One career was turning into a historic season, everything hit the fan off the race track.
In the days following the United States Grand Prix, Ferrari filed a formal complaint, which launched a criminal investigation by the Modena district attorney into Nigel Stepney, head of the team's performance development. The complaint and later investigation stemmed from a white residue that was found in the fuel cell of the two cars at Monaco, leading to a suspicion that the team was sabotaged at Monaco.
While the investigation took place, Formula One returned to competition at Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours. McLaren had won three consecutive races and three consecutive pole positions and appeared on track for a fourth consecutive pole position as Hamilton was fastest through the first two rounds of qualifying with Alonso right behind him. However, it all started to unravel on McLaren in round three. Alonso had a gearbox problem, keeping him from turning a lap and forcing him to start tenth and Massa beat Hamilton for pole position by 0.070 seconds. In the race, Massa kept the lead into turn one but Räikkönen got by Hamilton into the first turn. Räikkönen would leapfrog to the lead during a pit cycle and score his first victory since the season opener ahead of Massa and Hamilton with Alonso only managing a seventh-place finish.
Two days after the 1-2 finish in France, Ferrari fired Nigel Stepney and a legal case was filed against Stepney and a McLaren employee over the alleged theft of technical information from Ferrari. The McLaren employee was Mike Coughlan and in a police raid on Coughlan's house Ferrari documents were discovered. McLaren suspended Coughlan.
Three days after the dismissal of Stepney, Formula One was back on track for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. On Saturday, Alonso was on top through the first two rounds of qualifying, ahead of Räikkönen and Massa. Hamilton stole pole position on the final lap of qualifying while Räikkönen jumped to second, knocking Alonso to third on the grid. A botched first pit stop cost Hamilton the lead as he fell behind Alonso and Räikkönen. Alonso was short-fueled on the first pit stop but it would cost him on the second set of stops as Räikkönen was able to get ahead of the Spaniard and not look back as he took his second consecutive victory ahead of Alonso and Hamilton.
Two days after Räikkönen's victory at Silverstone, Coughlan's case went to the London High Court and he is accused of being in possession of stolen confidential documents. The next day, Coughlan reached an agreement with Ferrari for the Italian manufacture to drop its High Court case in exchange for Coughlan's for full disclosure and cooperation. The day after that, the FIA announced that the World Motorsports Council would have an extraordinary meeting with McLaren on July 26th in Paris over charges of breaching Article 151c of the International Sporting Code.
Four days prior to the meeting was the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Hamilton entered with 70 points, leading Alonso by 12, Räikkönen by 18 and Massa by 19. Hamilton had started the year with nine podium finishes in nine races. He had yet to start worse than row two. A wheel failure sent Hamilton into tire barriers during the final round of qualifying, forcing him to start tenth in the race as Räikkönen took pole position ahead of Alonso and Massa.
As the cars rolled on the formation lap, rain clouds hung over the Nürburgring and while the start was dry, those conditions would be completely different by the end of lap one. The heavens opened and cars slid off track, cutting corners and drivers were just trying to survive to get back to the pit lane. Conditions were so horrendous Räikkönen hydroplaned passed the pit lane and had to do another lap on slick tires. While 21 cars scattered, one rolled the dice and switched to wet tires after the formation lap in anticipating for the rain. Spyker's Markus Winkelhock took the lead on lap two.
Almost the entire field switched to intermediate tires, which proved not to be good enough for the conditions. Many were caught out by the running water across turn one. Jenson Button spun into the barriers and within a half a minute Sutil, Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Scott Speed, who would be making his final Formula One start, as he would be replaced by Sebastian Vettel midseason at Toro Rosso, and Vitantonio Liuzzi all joined Button in the gravel trap, leading to the race being red-flagged.
Winkelhock restarted in the lead on wet tires but most of the teams switched to intermediate tires during the red flag period. Winkelhock lost the lead almost immediately and he would retired after only 13 laps due to an hydraulics failure. It was his only Formula One start.
Massa would dominate most of the race as the track dried. Räikkönen was forced to retire just after halfway. Another shower hit the circuit in the final ten laps; forcing everyone back to intermediate tires and created a battle between Massa and Alonso for the victory. Alonso passed Massa with four laps to go after slight contact with the Brazilian. Alonso ran away from Massa, winning the race by over eight seconds. Massa voiced his displeasure to Alonso prior to the podium ceremony in a memorable shot that was caught by the television cameras. Hamilton failed to score points for the first time in his career and Alonso left Germany trailing him by two points.
At the FIA World Motorsports Council meeting in Paris, McLaren was found guilty of possession of confidential Ferrari information but received no penalty, as there was insufficient evidence that this possession affected the championship. The FIA reserved the right to reconvene should more evidence become public. Ferrari was understandable furious that McLaren received no penalty despite being found guilty and the FIA International Court of Appeals announced it would hear the case in August.
With the Paris meeting in the past, Formula One headed to Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix and just when it appeared McLaren could regroup, the fight between Hamilton and Alonso boiled over. Hamilton was quicker than Alonso through the first two rounds of qualifying and was in position to take another pole position until a cycle in the pit lane. Alonso was first in for fresh rubber and when his crew finished his stop, he sat idle in the pit box for almost 30 seconds with Hamilton behind him in the pit lane, waiting for his scheduled tire change. Once Alonso left, there was not enough time for Hamilton to complete another lap in qualifying, handing Alonso the pole position.
Ron Dennis was visibly upset at Alonso's pit lane balk, throwing his headset in disguise. The stewards reviewed the incident and handed Alonso a five-spot grid penalty, dropping him to sixth and elevating Hamilton to pole position, Heidfeld to the front row and Räikkönen to third. The FIA also decided that McLaren would not be awarded constructors' points for the Hungarian Grand Prix and not be allowed to accept a trophy should the team win at Budapest. Things had become so sour within the McLaren camp that on the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix Alonso allegedly threatened Dennis that he would give the FIA emails between himself and McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa that would incriminate Dennis in the FIA investigation.
Hamilton led every lap in the race but was hounded by Räikkönen throughout, holding off the Finn by 0.715 seconds at the finish line. Heidfeld rounded out the podium with Alonso in fourth. Hamilton left Hungary and entered the summer break with 80 points, seven clear of Alonso and twenty clear of Räikkönen.
At Turkey, Massa started on pole position with Hamilton on row one but Räikkönen would get by Hamilton into turn one. Hamilton's challenge for second was cut short by a tire puncture, which allowed Alonso to take the final podium spot and dropped Hamilton to a fifth-place finish, cutting his lead over his teammate to five points with Massa and Räikkönen 15 and 16 points behind respectively.
On September 5th, two days prior to the first practice for the Italian Grand Prix, the FIA announced a second hearing in the espionage case would be held on September 13th, the day before the start of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend. McLaren dominated the Italian Grand Prix. Alonso won pole position and never looked back, leading 48 of 53 laps with Hamilton rounding out the McLaren 1-2 in Ferrari's backyard. Massa retired from third position after a suspension failure. Räikkönen was able to get on the podium but finished over 27 seconds behind the Spaniard. Hamilton's lead was down to three points over Alonso but he was 18 points clear of Räikkönen and 23 points clear of Massa with McLaren leading Ferrari in the constructors' championship 166-143.
At the second hearing, the FIA threw the book at McLaren, fining the manufacture $100 million, excluding it from the 2007 constructors' championship and required a submission of its 2008 car design by December 2007 and possibly excluding McLaren from 2008 if it contained any Ferrari intellectual property. The next day it was revealed Alonso and de la Rosa did receive confidential Ferrari information from Coughlan.
With McLaren already covered in egg before the Belgian Grand Prix even took place, it didn't help ease the pain that Räikkönen and Massa would start 1-2 and finish that way with Alonso in third and Hamilton in fourth. With three races remaining in the season, four drivers were alive for the world drivers' championship with Hamilton on 97 points; two ahead of Alonso, 13 ahead of Räikkönen and 20 clear of Massa. Ferrari's 1-2 finish at Spa-Francorchamps would clinch the manufacture the constructors' championship.
Two weeks after Belgium, Formula One headed to Japan but for the first time since 1977, the Japanese Grand Prix was held at Fuji Speedway instead of the familiar home of Suzuka. Rain dominated the weekend but on a drying track Hamilton won pole position with Alonso in second ahead of Räikkönen and Massa. On race day, the torrential rain forced the race to start behind the safety car for the first 19 laps. The Ferraris had to make pit stops before the race ever went green due to being on the standard wet tires and not the extreme wet tires. Hamilton led until a pit stop cycle saw Sebastian Vettel lead his first laps of his career and become the youngest lap leader in Formula One history.
Hamilton would retake the lead on lap 41 and later that lap Alonso suffered a severe accident heading to the hairpin due to hydroplaning. It was the first retirement of the season for a McLaren. Hamilton would comfortably win at Fuji with Heikki Kovalainen scoring his first career podium finish in second and Räikkönen finishing third. Hamilton left Japan with a 12-points lead over Alonso and a 17-point lead over Räikkönen and a second-place finish for Hamilton at the Chinese Grand Prix would clinch him the world championship.
Like Japan, China started with wet conditions. Hamilton was on pole position ahead of Räikkönen and Massa with Alonso in fourth. Teams started on the intermediate tires and as the track dried out, it became more of a race for survival and finding each wet patch of asphalt available to extend the life of the tires. Hamilton lost the lead to Räikkönen prior to his first pit stop but Hamilton was still positioned to finish second and clinch the world championship.
When entering the pit lane for his stop, Hamilton slid off and into a gravel trap positioned on the outside of the entrance road to the pit lane. With his car beached, Hamilton tried to get out and marshals tried to push the McLaren free but it was of no use and for the first time in his career, Hamilton had retired from a race.
Räikkönen would retake the lead on lap 34 after Kubica retired due to a hydraulics failure and he would win by over nine seconds from Alonso with Massa in third. Hamilton's championship lead was cut to four points over Alonso and seven points over Räikkönen heading to the season finale at Interlagos.
At the season finale, Massa won pole position in front of his home crowd with Hamilton qualifying second and Räikkönen and Alonso on row two. Massa held on to the lead at the start with Räikkönen jumping up to second ahead of Hamilton and Alonso. Alonso made a move on Hamilton into turn three and forced Hamilton to lock up his tires and fall to eighth. At the end of lap one, Alonso was in position to be world champion with 109 points, a point ahead of both Räikkönen and Hamilton.
Hamilton passed Jarno Trulli on the next lap and by lap six was up to sixth but suffered a gearbox issue exiting turn three. Hamilton stopped on track as he reset the car and was finally to get back going but not before dropping to 18th.
Massa and Räikkönen pulled away from Alonso and Räikkönen tried to jump his teammate during the first pit cycle but was still over three seconds behind Massa after his first stop. Kubica passed Alonso for third on lap 34, as he was lower on fuel and running a three-stop strategy. Massa came in from the lead on lap 50 while Räikkönen set consecutive fastest laps. The Finn came in on lap 53 and exited leading his teammate. Alonso was in fourth until Kubica stopped from third and Hamilton was only up to eighth. Hamilton would make up one more position after Trulli made his final pit stop but it was not enough to take the title as Räikkönen won the Brazilian Grand Prix and the World Drivers' Championship by one point over Hamilton and Alonso.
It is hard to believe ten years have passed from the 2007 season. When it ended, I don't think anyone thought Fernando Alonso could ever have become a sympathetic figure let alone become a McLaren driver again. Not only has Alonso become both but he was in talks to becoming Lewis Hamilton's teammate at Mercedes! How after everything that happened in 2007 could that nearly have happened? I completely forgot about the emails. Imagine if WikiLeaks was around then.
In a way, Alonso is living through a curse of that 2007 season. After being the cut throat, selfish driver he was at McLaren, the last ten seasons of his career have been turning over the hearts of Formula One fans as a great driver who has failed to make it back to the pinnacle because of underperforming car after underperforming car and it seems only fitting the worse of all has come at the team where he scorched the earth.
It is hard to imagine what Formula One would have looked like if Hamilton didn't beach it entering pit lane at Shanghai. A rookie world champion. Would he have doubled up immediately the next year or would he suffer a hard sophomore slump? Would Räikkönen have ever won a title? Entering 2007, I think we all expected Räikkönen would win a title with Ferrari. He had shown he had world championship talent at McLaren. Something happened after he won the title in 2007. I don't want to say something shut off but something changed in the Finn in 2008. He trailed Hamilton by five points after the 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix, then failed to score points in four consecutive races and handed Felipe Massa first in line at Maranello. The Ferrari F60 was a dud in 2009 and soon Räikkönen was gone from Formula One.
Räikkönen returned after two years out of the series but he has never been in the thick of it and has for more or less played a supporting role as Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Webber and Rosberg continued to be the main cast while Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen are the next wave of stars drawing attention on stage.
I think the 2007 season was the greatest season in Formula One history. It had everything but a murder and a love triangle. Räikkönen won the World Drivers' Championship despite entering the finale third in the championship. The only other previous occurrence of a driver going from third to first in the championship in the final race was Giuseppe Farina in 1950, the first season of Formula One. The 2007 season made everyone forget about Michael Schumacher and two of arguably the greatest drivers in Formula One history made their debuts in Hamilton and Vettel. Besides those two, the only leftovers from 2007 are Alonso, Massa and Räikkönen. Of the 11 teams on the 2007 grid, nine of them have roots that extend to the present. Renault became Lotus and then became Renault again. Honda became Brawn, which became Mercedes. BMW Sauber reverted back to Sauber. Spyker became Force India the following season. Super Aguri closed up shopped during the 2008 season and Toyota left Formula One after 2009.
There should be a documentary about this season and the completely unfathomable idea that a one team member intentionally gave a rival confidential information. The United States couldn't stop talking about the air pressures in footballs for two years. How aren't we still talking about the year espionage hung over the Formula One world? Seriously! Hell, Stepney was even sentenced to one year and eight months in jail by Italian authorities, none of which he served. By the way, Mike Coughlan now works for Richard Childress Racing in NASCAR. Who knew?
Tragically, if a documentary would be made of this great season, the man at the center of it all wouldn't get to tell his side of the story. Stepney was killed on May 2, 2014 after being hit by a truck. He will never get a chance to tell the world what he was thinking, what led him to do it and if he had any regrets. Maybe that adds to the legend of all this. Part of it will never be known. It is a secret that never can be leaked.
Friday, March 17, 2017
1000 Words: Mark Donohue
I finished Mark Donohue's legendary book The Unfair Advantage last week and tomorrow would have been his 80th birthday. Now is as good a time as any to write about the man critical to the history of Team Penske and a visionary way ahead of his time.
Mark Donohue couldn't exist in the modern motorsports landscape and that has nothing to do with the guy bouncing from an IndyCar to Can-Am to NASCAR and another three series in one year. He bought a Corvette at the age of 20 and his first race was a hill climb at the age of 21. Today, most drivers are at a crossroad at the age of 21, whether it is deciding between open-wheel and sports cars or having already finished three seasons in Formula One and without a ride and no one willing to take a flyer on someone with only a few million dollars in funding.
After joining the SCCA and becoming one of the top amateur drivers in the United States, Donohue ended up in the Ford GT program in 1966. Think about the line-up Ford brought to Le Mans last year. All those drivers had years of professional experience. Some had already been factory drivers elsewhere, two were IndyCar champions and the least known driver on the team had been a Ford factory/affiliated driver for almost a decade. Donohue got the job on the word of Walt Hansgen. He would have been vilified if Ford hired him with that résumé in the present.
After Ford came Team Penske and without Donohue, who knows if Team Penske would be celebrating its 51st anniversary this year or maybe the team wouldn't be as successful or as celebrated or as diverse as it is without Donohue. The man wasn't just Roger Penske's driver; he was Roger Penske's right-hand man. A Tim Cindric before Cindric was even born. They bounced decisions off one another and Penske gave Donohue the slack he needed when it came deciding what car to drive or how a car should be set up.
Throughout the book I was astounded at the level of doubt Donohue had within himself. Most of the time he was winging it, he was making adjustments mostly through trail and error, even though he had an engineering degree from Brown University. Donahue was before shaker rigs and wind tunnels revolutionized car development. The only way to make a car better was on the track or, in many cases for Donohue, the skid pad where Donohue was ahead of the game when it came to suspension development and the importance of having speed in the corners as well as in a straight line.
Donohue's doubt wasn't just around early in his career when he was with Ford and at the start of his time at Team Penske, it carried throughout his career, even after winning the 24 Hours of Daytona and multiple Trans-Am championships. He talks about his frustration in preparations for the 1970 Indianapolis 500, his second year at the Speedway. He describes his qualifying effort as disappointing. He started fifth. He finished second.
The man can only be described as a perfectionist. It continued after another year at Indianapolis, finishing third on his Formula One debut in the 1971 Canadian Grand Prix and winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1972. When developing the Can-Am killer or better known as the Porsche 917-30, it wasn't good enough to be just a second and a half faster than the rest of the field. In some ways, the unreachable goal and determination to wring every tenth of a second out of car is what made Donohue one of the greatest. He was never satisfied and once he reached a state of satisfaction he stopped driving... for a year.
Through each chapter from the McLaren MB16 to the Eagle-Offy to the Porsche 917-10 and 917-30 and Porsche Carrera I felt I was reading Donohue go mad. He reached a point of constant observation and every little vibration and movement in the race car that most drivers would never notice he could feel and he wondered what the car was doing. He wanted every answer about the car. Take Donohue's own obsession to have complete knowledge of car and add that on top of the pressure to not just win but dominate, especially when driving for Porsche. I am surprised Donohue didn't have a mental breakdown or a heart attack before the age of 35.
After his Can-Am title in 1973 in the Porsche 917-30, Donohue couldn't have done anymore than that. You only get so many opportunities to go out with a car that was two seconds faster than everyone else in the field and having won six consecutive races to end a championship season. Winning the inaugural International Race of Champions, beating contemporaries such as A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, David Pearson, Richard Petty and Formula One invitee Emerson Fittipaldi was just the cherry on top of his retirement sundae.
I can't help but feel Mark Donohue had to die in a race car for him to have ultimate satisfaction in his life. That sounds morbid but he couldn't stay away. He retired because he said most drivers don't go out on top and that is true. Even today, drivers hang on about three to five years too long when they have become shells of their former selves. But Donohue returned to driving when Penske entered Formula One. He admitted he needed the money but I bet Donohue was like many others who retire from much less glamorous positions than race car driver and feel worthless. He was the President of Team Penske but even that could not make up for the void of running hundreds of miles of testing in the middle of the week at Road Atlanta. He needed to be in a car and having found success at every level in the United States he had to take on the world.
I wonder what Donohue would think of motorsports today. In the final chapter of his book he laments that he is retiring at what he believes is the end of the greatest era of motorsports. He writes:
We will probably never see unlimited 1200-horsepower motors, exotic aerodynamics, engineering freedom, giant leaps in racing technology, and continually higher speeds and lower lap times. The individual driver's performance and safety are rightfully becoming more important, but I'm glad I didn't miss all the rest.
While I am sure there is a generation who agrees with Donohue's quote, he was right but he was also wrong. The eras changed and innovation persistent. Donohue probably would have been ecstatic over ground effect and active suspension in Formula One. He would have been at the forefront of Penske's PC-23 500I project. I think he would have loved the turbo-diesel behemoths from Audi. He probably would be disappointed about the current state of IndyCar and the Daytona Prototypes-era but there would be plenty he would have loved and he might be surprised how much lap times have fallen all around the world. Maybe Donohue would be leading the charge for hydrogen-powered automobiles and be working on a rival to Formula E and a car that could go two hours on a charge with battery swaps taking five-seconds to complete.
The man would have turned 80 years old tomorrow. I can't help but think the motorsports world would be further down the line in development if he were preparing to blow out some candles.
Friday, January 27, 2017
1000 Words: Race of Champions
It was only a week ago some of motorsports best gathered in a baseball stadium and drove around a makeshift course to decide who is the best in the world. Well, I guess figuratively decide who is the best in the world. I am not sure if that could ever literally be decided.
I love the Race of Champions but I am cautious to express my excitement for the event. It is an exhibition after all. Most people don't get excited for other all-star competitions. People look at you as if you are a child if you express any emotion above apathy for the Pro Bowl, MLB All-Star Game, NHL All-Star Game and NBA All-Star Game. I think NASCAR's All-Star Race is now met with only disgust. Despite this, I still enjoy the event and look forward to it even if most go through life without even knowing it is taking place.
Race of Champions isn't a be-all-end-all referendum on the motorsports world. Most aren't watching it and will believe if drivers from a certain series struggle means that series is inferior to another. If Scott Speed had dominated the competition, it wouldn't have resurrected his career and leave his phone buzzing with phone calls from Formula One teams looking to give his career a second chance. No driver is going to make his career at this event but the level playing field of cars does allow some to shine above what is previously thought of them.
The history of the event is full of underdogs taking the title from the more prominent names. Heikki Kovalainen won the first ROC held in a stadium in 2004. He defeated local hero Sébastien Loeb in the final at Stade de France and on his way to the final the defending World Series by Nissan champion defeated McLaren driver David Coulthard, former Formula One and then-DTM driver Jean Alesi and defending World Drivers' Champion Michael Schumacher.
Mattias Ekström won back-to-back ROCs in 2006-07 where he defeated Loeb and Schumacher in the respective finals and he then defeated Schumacher again in 2009. In 2010, before becoming an Audi-factory driver Filipe Albuquerque was coming off second in the Italian GT Championship and won ROC after defeating Sebastian Vettel, fresh off his first World Drivers' Championship, in the group stage and the semifinals before knocking off Loeb in the final.
This year provided a surprise that wasn't necessarily a surprise. As someone who has followed NASCAR, IndyCar and American sports car racing for the last decade, it was no surprise Juan Pablo Montoya came out on top but if Montoya had vanished from your radar after he walked away from McLaren in the middle of 2006, it probably stunned you that the Colombian not only won the competition but beat Pascal Wehrlein and Felipe Massa in the process.
The United States hosted the competition for the first time and I was not surprised when Marlins Park looked more like a ghost town than other recent ROCs. It is not a great sight when about 2/3rds of the seat are empty but it is a tough sell and Miami isn't the greatest sports town in the United States let alone for motorsports. However, ROC promoter Fredrik Johnsson has said he wants to keep the event in the USA for three years and reportedly he met with other venues. Outside of Charlotte and Indianapolis, there aren't many markets that could host Race of Champions and draw a respectable crowd. Maybe Los Angeles but even that isn't a slam dunk. Plus, the afternoon time slot when this year's competition was held worked well for European viewers.
I would like to see ROC stay in the United States and I wouldn't mind if it stayed in Miami. Maybe ROC could work more with IndyCar and bring NASCAR in to increase promotion. After all, two months prior to ROC, NASCAR's season ended at Homestead-Miami Speedway and provided at least 65-75,000 spectators the event could have been promoted to. Should ROC decide to stay in the United States, it should announce the venue and date sooner rather than later.
One thing other series could learn from Race of Champions is how to provide non-stop action for spectators. While each heat may only feature two drivers and last just over 30 seconds, once one ends the next begins and it is like that for two and half hours. Outside of the occasional intermission for a stunt driver or rider to showcase their skills or to fix the barriers, the event always has your attention. You leave the room and you could miss an entire round. Go to use the restroom and all of a sudden you have no clue how Sebastian Vettel is in a must-win race to advance from the group stage or how Travis Pastrana made the semifinals.
An issue with the non-stop action as it currently stands is it doesn't allow any room at all for commercial breaks. Unless the total time of the event was extended to four hours, races would have to be missed or the broadcast would have to show the races after the fact but in the age of two-screen viewing, that is not friendly as people would likely find out the results on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or whatever social media device before seeing it on the television screen. Maybe it could become the first event to embrace the two-screen experience and encourage fans to log in online to see a race or two that will be taking place during the commercial break and then comeback to the coverage with the viewers still up to date as the races were available while the network was away.
Race of Champions has been racing in stadiums for just over a decade now and perhaps this one-off event could be the future of motorsports. Instead of heading to race tracks or closing city streets, setting up a course inside a stadium and have 16 to 24 drivers compete in a round robin followed by a knockout competition may be the direction we are heading. In 2009, ROC ran a provisional event in Porto, Portugal that was used as a qualifier for the actual event in China. I am surprise we haven't seen the event take off with a half-dozen events around the globe.
Maybe the day is coming where ROC finds a way to pay drivers and forms partnerships with four or five manufactures and a handful of TV partners and 20 drivers go around the world competing in a dozen events a year from Beijing to Berlin, Miami to Melbourne and Cape Town to Cardiff. It could be the next motorsports revolution and it has already existed for nearly 30 years.
I love the Race of Champions but I am cautious to express my excitement for the event. It is an exhibition after all. Most people don't get excited for other all-star competitions. People look at you as if you are a child if you express any emotion above apathy for the Pro Bowl, MLB All-Star Game, NHL All-Star Game and NBA All-Star Game. I think NASCAR's All-Star Race is now met with only disgust. Despite this, I still enjoy the event and look forward to it even if most go through life without even knowing it is taking place.
Race of Champions isn't a be-all-end-all referendum on the motorsports world. Most aren't watching it and will believe if drivers from a certain series struggle means that series is inferior to another. If Scott Speed had dominated the competition, it wouldn't have resurrected his career and leave his phone buzzing with phone calls from Formula One teams looking to give his career a second chance. No driver is going to make his career at this event but the level playing field of cars does allow some to shine above what is previously thought of them.
The history of the event is full of underdogs taking the title from the more prominent names. Heikki Kovalainen won the first ROC held in a stadium in 2004. He defeated local hero Sébastien Loeb in the final at Stade de France and on his way to the final the defending World Series by Nissan champion defeated McLaren driver David Coulthard, former Formula One and then-DTM driver Jean Alesi and defending World Drivers' Champion Michael Schumacher.
Mattias Ekström won back-to-back ROCs in 2006-07 where he defeated Loeb and Schumacher in the respective finals and he then defeated Schumacher again in 2009. In 2010, before becoming an Audi-factory driver Filipe Albuquerque was coming off second in the Italian GT Championship and won ROC after defeating Sebastian Vettel, fresh off his first World Drivers' Championship, in the group stage and the semifinals before knocking off Loeb in the final.
This year provided a surprise that wasn't necessarily a surprise. As someone who has followed NASCAR, IndyCar and American sports car racing for the last decade, it was no surprise Juan Pablo Montoya came out on top but if Montoya had vanished from your radar after he walked away from McLaren in the middle of 2006, it probably stunned you that the Colombian not only won the competition but beat Pascal Wehrlein and Felipe Massa in the process.
The United States hosted the competition for the first time and I was not surprised when Marlins Park looked more like a ghost town than other recent ROCs. It is not a great sight when about 2/3rds of the seat are empty but it is a tough sell and Miami isn't the greatest sports town in the United States let alone for motorsports. However, ROC promoter Fredrik Johnsson has said he wants to keep the event in the USA for three years and reportedly he met with other venues. Outside of Charlotte and Indianapolis, there aren't many markets that could host Race of Champions and draw a respectable crowd. Maybe Los Angeles but even that isn't a slam dunk. Plus, the afternoon time slot when this year's competition was held worked well for European viewers.
I would like to see ROC stay in the United States and I wouldn't mind if it stayed in Miami. Maybe ROC could work more with IndyCar and bring NASCAR in to increase promotion. After all, two months prior to ROC, NASCAR's season ended at Homestead-Miami Speedway and provided at least 65-75,000 spectators the event could have been promoted to. Should ROC decide to stay in the United States, it should announce the venue and date sooner rather than later.
One thing other series could learn from Race of Champions is how to provide non-stop action for spectators. While each heat may only feature two drivers and last just over 30 seconds, once one ends the next begins and it is like that for two and half hours. Outside of the occasional intermission for a stunt driver or rider to showcase their skills or to fix the barriers, the event always has your attention. You leave the room and you could miss an entire round. Go to use the restroom and all of a sudden you have no clue how Sebastian Vettel is in a must-win race to advance from the group stage or how Travis Pastrana made the semifinals.
An issue with the non-stop action as it currently stands is it doesn't allow any room at all for commercial breaks. Unless the total time of the event was extended to four hours, races would have to be missed or the broadcast would have to show the races after the fact but in the age of two-screen viewing, that is not friendly as people would likely find out the results on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or whatever social media device before seeing it on the television screen. Maybe it could become the first event to embrace the two-screen experience and encourage fans to log in online to see a race or two that will be taking place during the commercial break and then comeback to the coverage with the viewers still up to date as the races were available while the network was away.
Race of Champions has been racing in stadiums for just over a decade now and perhaps this one-off event could be the future of motorsports. Instead of heading to race tracks or closing city streets, setting up a course inside a stadium and have 16 to 24 drivers compete in a round robin followed by a knockout competition may be the direction we are heading. In 2009, ROC ran a provisional event in Porto, Portugal that was used as a qualifier for the actual event in China. I am surprise we haven't seen the event take off with a half-dozen events around the globe.
Maybe the day is coming where ROC finds a way to pay drivers and forms partnerships with four or five manufactures and a handful of TV partners and 20 drivers go around the world competing in a dozen events a year from Beijing to Berlin, Miami to Melbourne and Cape Town to Cardiff. It could be the next motorsports revolution and it has already existed for nearly 30 years.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
1000 Words: Grand Prix
Fifty years ago today, Formula One blasted before the eyes of people unlike ever before. Onboard shots, cameras hanging inches above the streets of Monaco, views of the interwork of the car as if someone peeled away the skin on a human and watched a heartbeat or digestive system turn breakfast into fuel. Grand Prix still grabs people today but what must it have been like to get an early Christmas present and to see this film on opening night.
It was a different era. If you were an American Formula One fan and I have to imagine there were very few in 1966, this film must have been heart stopping. You had an image of what a race looked like after possibly only having description of a race written in National Speed Sport News or some other publication. Television was still young and motorsports wasn't on every weekend like it is today. Most people were probably seeing cars thunder up Eau Rouge or brake into the hairpin at Monaco or fly on the banking of Monza for the first time. The legends of Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, Phil Hill, Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier came to life. You got to see the red Ferraris, the British Racing Green Team Lotus entries, the tartan helmet of Jackie Stewart and the throngs of people who showed up to spend the Sunday on a hillside watching race cars zoom by.
What gets me is how much we don't see in Grand Prix. It feels like the film was going to be six hours long as only three of nine races had been covered by the time we reach the intermission. After that it is a brief visit to Zandvoort, blowing over the Nürburgring (we will touch on that in a moment), Watkins Glen and Mexico and then the film picks up with Brands Hatch and Monza.
Nürburgring film existed. The 27 reels of Nürburgring footage had to be turned over by director John Frankenheimer to Steve McQueen and director John Sturges (famous for directing The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape) who had their own project for a grand prix film, Day of the Champion. The McQueen/Sturges project never got off the ground and I still want to know what happened to those 27 reels of film. Were they destroyed? Are they somewhere in a Hollywood archive? Have they already been released and I have just missed them? I want to know if there is extra film of Watkins Glen and Mexico as well but there is something about the Nürburgring and the 14-plus miles that is mesmerizing.
As much as Grand Prix is a fictionalized version of the 1966 Formula One season, it is a time capsule of the most dangerous era of racing. Hay bales separated the drivers from the harbor at Monaco. Spa-Francorchamps was an endless straightaway with farms as run off. Brands Hatch... well... Brands Hatch hasn't changed much. At least it doesn't appear it has. And then there is Monza, the incredibly fast track with the addition of a 2.6-mile high-banked oval. The actually 1966 season didn't run that layout but it had been used five years early. Many of the drivers with cameos wouldn't make it to the 10th anniversary of the film. John Taylor died on September 8, 1966 after injuries suffered at the Nürburgring. Lorenzo Baldini was killed at Monaco in 1967. Bob Anderson finished sixth in the 1966 Italian Grand Prix and died after a testing accident at Silverstone in August of 1967. The year 1968 saw Jim Clark, Mike Spence and Ludovico Scarfiotti all fatally injured in accidents. Bruce McLaren died in June 1970 and Jochen Rindt perished in September of that year. Jo Siffert lost his life in 1971 at Brands Hatch. Jo Bonnier died at Le Mans in 1972. For perspective of the era, twenty drivers scored points in the 1966 season and all ten of those drivers scored at least a point in the 1966 season.
While Taylor died during the filming of Grand Prix, he succumbed a month after the accident. What would have happened if the film had been made a year later? Would the project have survived beyond Monaco had it been the year Baldini was killed?
Beyond the racing scenes, the backstory features people looking for comfort in such a stressful and uncertain environment and most of the time the comfort came in the arms of someone other than their current lover. Pete Aron (played by James Garner) plays the calm American who only wants to race. He loses his ride and is immediately looking for a way back in even if it is with Izo Yamura's (played by Toshiro Mifune) team, a fairly new and unproven entity on the grid. Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) chased his deceased brother's success and that urgency nearly killed him and cost him his marriage to his wife Pat (Jessica Walter) for a brief period. The Frenchman Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) is toward the end of his career but still at the top, however he no longer fancies the series that has given him all his riches and posh lifestyle. As an escape and the start of his transition away from his racing life, Sarti falls for an American journalist Louise Frederickson (Eve Maria Saint) whose knowledge of the sport is zilch. Then there is the up-and-coming Italian Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabàto) on the verge of success at a very young age who has turned the woman he met in a club after Monaco, Lisa (Françoise Hardy) into a girlfriend only to lose her on the eve of his home grand prix with a world championship in his grasp.
The film asks us motorsports enthusiasts the hard questions; the ones we don't prepare answers for but know exist. As Pat leaves Hotel de Paris a crowd of people flock from overlooking the race track to something arriving screen right. At the proposed thought that there has been an accident, unbeknownst to her that it is her husband, she responds to no one in particular as a few hotel guests in the entrance gather around her, "that's what they come for: See someone get killed." Was that true? Is it true today or has enough danger been sucked out of the sport that it isn't worth the time?
In the final scenes of the film, after Sarti's accident left him tangled in the trees at Monza, Louise rushes to the ambulance to see her dying lover only to be kept from the ambulance as Sarti's wife rides with her husband and shares with him his final moments on Earth. Hysterically crying only to be consoled by one of the thousand of strangers who surrounded the ambulance to get one final view of the dying champion, she holds her blood covered hands up to the crowd and cameras yelling "is this what you want?" three times before collapsing in a despondent state. I wonder how the audience absorbed that scene in 1966. Did it turn people off from motorsports all together?
In the final scenes of the film, after Sarti's accident left him tangled in the trees at Monza, Louise rushes to the ambulance to see her dying lover only to be kept from the ambulance as Sarti's wife rides with her husband and shares with him his final moments on Earth. Hysterically crying only to be consoled by one of the thousand of strangers who surrounded the ambulance to get one final view of the dying champion, she holds her blood covered hands up to the crowd and cameras yelling "is this what you want?" three times before collapsing in a despondent state. I wonder how the audience absorbed that scene in 1966. Did it turn people off from motorsports all together?
The film leaves me with a couple of questions even if it seems ridiculous to ponder about a film after the screen goes black. After all, it is fiction. None of it happened. Once the screen goes black, the story ends and the characters vanish. Louise doesn't have to try to live on after the passing of the man he fell in love with. There is no point of wondering if the other families in the paddock console even though she was only Sarti's mistress. Does she resume her life of independence and dive back into her work?
What does Lisa do? She doesn't dance, she doesn't drink and she doesn't smoke. What does she do? Maybe it is obvious to everyone else but I still can't figure out.
How long do Aron and Stoddart continue racing after the 1966 season? Neither were spring chickens like Barlini. Aron could have retired right there among the sea of tifosi at Monza as world champion. Stoddart could have done the same as vice-champion. Stoddart at the end of the film appeared to reach the level of consciousness Nico Rosberg reached this year but perhaps Stoddart made it to a level higher as he seemed content even if he didn't win the world title while Rosberg says he would have continued into 2017 had he not won the title. What would Aron's life look like in retirement? The words of Pat rings true. All we know about him is he drive cars. Does he find love? Can he find something beyond racing to infatuate his life? Broadcasting clearly wasn't suited for him.
It is a film that couldn't be made today but not because of red tape and contractual conflicts and budget but because we have enough Formula One as it is. We have 21 races, multiple onboard cameras each race, half hour pre-race shows, podium interviews done by Elton John and Gerard Butler and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat to follow drivers off the track. Besides, what would a fictionalized version of the 2016 Formula One season look like especially when the reality is so well known? How could we create a storyline to convince people that Mercedes had a tight title fight with Ferrari or Red Bull or McLaren or Williams? Could we even convince people that an American was on the grid?
Fifty years on and Grand Prix is the best racing film. Le Mans is also great. Winning is good. Rush holds its own against Grand Prix and Le Mans. The reason Grand Prix stands above the rest is because it is sophisticated enough for Formula One fans and yet explains the nuance of it for the general public without seeming elementary. It is a film for all aspiring directors of racing films to shoot for. You got to have something to shoot for.
What does Lisa do? She doesn't dance, she doesn't drink and she doesn't smoke. What does she do? Maybe it is obvious to everyone else but I still can't figure out.
How long do Aron and Stoddart continue racing after the 1966 season? Neither were spring chickens like Barlini. Aron could have retired right there among the sea of tifosi at Monza as world champion. Stoddart could have done the same as vice-champion. Stoddart at the end of the film appeared to reach the level of consciousness Nico Rosberg reached this year but perhaps Stoddart made it to a level higher as he seemed content even if he didn't win the world title while Rosberg says he would have continued into 2017 had he not won the title. What would Aron's life look like in retirement? The words of Pat rings true. All we know about him is he drive cars. Does he find love? Can he find something beyond racing to infatuate his life? Broadcasting clearly wasn't suited for him.
It is a film that couldn't be made today but not because of red tape and contractual conflicts and budget but because we have enough Formula One as it is. We have 21 races, multiple onboard cameras each race, half hour pre-race shows, podium interviews done by Elton John and Gerard Butler and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat to follow drivers off the track. Besides, what would a fictionalized version of the 2016 Formula One season look like especially when the reality is so well known? How could we create a storyline to convince people that Mercedes had a tight title fight with Ferrari or Red Bull or McLaren or Williams? Could we even convince people that an American was on the grid?
Fifty years on and Grand Prix is the best racing film. Le Mans is also great. Winning is good. Rush holds its own against Grand Prix and Le Mans. The reason Grand Prix stands above the rest is because it is sophisticated enough for Formula One fans and yet explains the nuance of it for the general public without seeming elementary. It is a film for all aspiring directors of racing films to shoot for. You got to have something to shoot for.
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