It is the first day of 2020 but we will take one final peak back into 2019 and look back at what closed the decade in terms of headlines.
There were a few races but most of the headlines were just talk. Ideas, quotes, some news and changes in the landscape. As always, the motorsports community created enough to comment on.
Once again, this is just for fun. In case you are new, this is my gut reaction to headlines without reading the article. Of course, the gripes I have may be answered in the article.
We will start with Formula One and the most popular team in the series...
Ferrari wants to add female driver to F1 junior programme
Then add one. There are plenty of female drivers out there. Just add one.
Jamie Chadwick won the W Series championship. Just add her.
Simona de Silvestro was a Sauber reserve driver for one year. De Silvestro was basically sitting at Ferrari's doorstep and Ferrari didn't add her.
There are another two-dozen female drivers in W Series. Pick one.
There are how many teenage girls karting around the world and looking for their first opportunity in car racing. Go give one of them an opportunity.
If Ferrari wants a female driver so bad for its junior program then just add one. It is Ferrari. What female driver would say no to the Ferrari junior program?
There is nothing stopping Ferrari from adding a female driver. There is no limit to number of junior drivers a team can have. There is no rule preventing female drivers from being hired.
If Ferrari really wants a female driver it wouldn't be putting a headline out that it wants a female driver for its junior program. Ferrari would just hire one and do it without needing every eyeball watching. It would shatter the glass ceiling and let the falling glass catch everyone by surprise.
Russell: Outqualifying Kubica in every GP harder than it looks
I am going to agree with George Russell on this one. Think about sports for a second. Think about how hard it is to win every game.
In the NFL, there is only the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Think about how hard it is to lose every game. In the NFL, it has happened only three times since the merger in 1970. It is hard not to win any games. Even this year the Cincinnati Bengals won one game.
Liverpool currently has not lost a game this season and only twice in the history of English soccer has a top-flight team been "invincible," Preston North End in 1888-89 and Arsenal in 2003-04. How many times has a team not won a game in a top-flight English season? It has never happened. Every season of top-flight English soccer has had every team win at least one game. The fewest? Derby County won one game in 2007-08.
It is hard to be great. It is hard to be disastrously bad.
Think about it this way: It is really hard to have a perfect bracket for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Try picking all 32 games in the round of 64 incorrectly. You are bound to get at least four correct even if you didn't mean it.
We all know Robert Kubica is not the Robert Kubica of ten years ago. He was more physically limited than every other driver on the grid but he was still running competitive lap times and races all year wrong. He was not always the slowest car on the grid.
There were 21 races. There wasn't one where Russell couldn't get a clean lap and ended up two-tenths slower than Kubica. There wasn't one where Russell went off track on a hot lap, suffered some damage and ended his session before he would set a time in anger. There wasn't one where the red flag came out before Russell completed his flying lap while Kubica did and Kubica got to start ahead of him by default.
I will once again give credit to both Russell and Kubica because both drivers did not tear up equipment and ran as many laps as they could. Both drivers were smart and those smarts got Kubica a point in Germany. I think Kubica will take the point. Russell can have the 21 times qualifying ahead of him. One stands out a little brighter in the record books.
Hamilton still revisits texts from "great pillar" Lauda
I got to admit we do a lot of these headlines and most of them are comical or cynical takes but this is a headline that lifted my spirits.
I guess because it is relatable. I think we all have a person who is no longer with us and we go back and read letters, birthday cards, emails, and so on from them just to not forget how important that person was in our lives. It is why we look back at photos and home videos. We sometimes need a reminder of a good time in our lives, especially when we are down or need reassurance.
Sometimes we just miss people. Losing a friend sucks. We are never ready for it. It doesn't matter if we were given a timer and knew exactly when the end would come. We will always feel like we did not have enough time. There is always something that is going to go unsaid. It hurts, it should hurt but it will be ok.
We will move from one world championship to another and this one is a newly designated world championship...
Formula E receives FIA world championship status for 2020/21
1. Does it really change anything?
2. I know there are criteria for being a FIA-recognized world championship but does this make Formula E any more meaningful?
"World championship" is just a title. I can't see people becoming more interested in Formula E because it is now a "world championship." It doesn't really mean anything. The races aren't somehow more dramatic. There isn't any more urgency. But somehow this will be spun into a big deal.
I think what Formula E has going for it is it has been able to attract many different manufactures, something most series have been struggling to do in the last five years. I am still not certain the one-day shows in major cities around the world is going to last for the long term. Eventually, event turnover will catch up to the series. There are plenty of cities in the world but you could possibly run out of cities. I don't see "world championship" status somehow changing a city's decision on whether to host a race.
Look at Montreal for a second: It cost the city $35 million to host the event and the city decided that was too much. Formula E becoming a world championship isn't going to all of a sudden make $35 million a worthy cost for one of its events. The series could become a "galactic championship," but if the price is too high than cities are not going to sign a deal.
Let's head to the United States and we will start with NASCAR...
Could JJ score Most Popular Driver award?
Yes but Jimmie Johnson probably will not win Most Popular Driver.
I will admit I read this article because I actually thought it was an interesting question and it mentioned that the other two seven-time Cup champions, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, won the award.
Realize that Dale Earnhardt won the award in 2001. It took dying for Earnhardt to win the award and doing other research I read that Bill Elliott recused himself from being voted for that year.
It took dying and Bill Elliott withdrawing from the competition for Dale Earnhardt to win his one and only Most Popular Driver award!
Is there any NASCAR driver that is more popular than Dale Earnhardt?
For the longest time if you asked someone who knew nothing about NASCAR if they could name one driver they would name Dale Earnhardt.
How did he win Most Popular Driver only once? I feel like we have to retroactively take every Most Popular Driver from 1993-2000 away from Elliott and give them all to Earnhardt.
I got to admit I do not understand how Elliott won the award 16 times, especially when he raced against Earnhardt. I get he was likable and he won the Winston Million, the first driver to do so and he did win one championship, but from 1984, the first year Elliott won the award, through 2000, Earnhardt won six championships and 67 races, the most in both categories, while Elliott had one title and 39 victories.
There is a reason Dale Earnhardt has had a television movie and multiple documentaries made about him and his career. No one is clamoring for the Bill Elliott biopic and yet he was the most popular driver for 16 years. Common sense would tell anyone there is no way Elliott was the most popular driver despite all years he got the award.
I think after watching the last two decades, where Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won it every year from 2003 to 2017 and now Chase Elliott has won it twice, will it ever change? I guess Chase Elliott is the most popular driver today but if he has the same career Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had, will he win Most Popular Driver for 15 consecutive years? Will people get critical and will the fan base swarm to who is winning?
Kyle Busch was second in Most Popular Driver Award voting for 2019. I have no clue how far off he was of Elliott but if Busch wins the title in 2020 and maybe the Daytona 500, I think Busch could pull it out. NASCAR fans are looking for someone who is a representative vocally and that is Busch. He is ruthless and he is a winner. Elliott might have the genes but if he is not winning, if he is not expressing personality, if he is just another guy I think Busch could absolutely win it. I think people will come to appreciate Busch, something Johnson never got unfortunately.
Could I see a conceded effort for Johnson to win the award in 2020? Absolutely. That would be the pinnacle of meaningless actions from NASCAR, sucking up to the exiting party. I could see Chase Elliott recusing himself for Johnson in 2020. They are teammates after all. The award would then lose a lot of meaning and it would be a hollow gesture but unfortunately with a narrow-minded fan base that is what it takes in the NASCAR world.
On to IndyCar and it would only be right to end with a Fernando Alonso tie-in...
Alonso: Indy 500 is "the main priority" in 2020
But first he has to run the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia with Toyota.
I am interested to see what Alonso's 2020 looks like.
For starters, he is still on the book with McLaren but still in bed with Toyota but could run the Indianapolis 500 for Andretti Autosport though McLaren has a full-time IndyCar program now.
Does anything happen between Dakar and Indianapolis? What happens after Indianapolis?
Alonso is not going to Le Mans. I don't think Alonso is going to run more IndyCar races. I would like to see it. I would love Alonso to run Road America, Iowa, Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca. I don't think that is going to happen. I don't think Alonso is motivated enough to run an IndyCar race other than Indianapolis. Road America doesn't pay $2.9 million to win, nor is it winners held in racing immortality.
I would love it if Alonso ran a NASCAR race, preferably Watkins Glen. I would love it if Alonso started to prepare for a Daytona 500 effort in 2021. He could run Watkins Glen and weeks later go run the 400-mile race or the Grand National Series race now that Daytona's second date has moved to late August.
What else does Alonso want to do? He has made the Indianapolis 500 and the Triple Crown a mission. What else is out there? It doesn't seem like he wants to commit to anything full-time but you can only run so many one-offs.
Something deep inside me believes he is interested in getting back into Formula One in 2021. It likely will not be with McLaren and it might be crazy for any of Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari or Red Bull to hire him but I still feel Alonso has something to prove and someone will be tempted to hire the Spaniard.
Angels' decision ends threat to Long Beach GP
For now...
I think it is important to say for now because another threat is just around the corner.
Is Honda committed long-term with its title sponsorship?
Don't the Los Angeles Clippers want its own arena? Why wouldn't it look to Long Beach if necessary? The Long Beach Clippers has a nice ring to it. That team has Steve Ballmer as its own, the man who paid $2 billion for one of the least valuable franchises in the National Basketball Association. If Ballmer wants a new arena in Long Beach there is nothing stopping him. Money talks and Ballmer has more.
And who is to say Formula One is done with Long Beach? IndyCar won out this time around but five years down the road, ten years down the road, what is to say Formula One will not be back again looking for another venue in the United States?
The threat is never over. IndyCar should always be afraid. It is a street race after all. Not to forget mentioning that the race is an internal combustion engine series are we are in these electrifying times. There will likely be a Long Beach government in the next five to ten years that sees the race as an excessive use of resources and a pollutant and pull the plug on the event even if IndyCar has hybrid engines.
If you think the threat is over then I hope you are ok with getting hurt because you likely will be in the very near future.
We will end with Le Mans...
ACO rolls out new 'Hyperpole' qualifying format for LM24
Why does it have to be called "Hyperpole" qualifying? Why can't we just call it qualifying?
We are going to have round one and then we are going to have round two to decide who wins pole position. Why does it need an adjective forced in there?
I get why qualifying is changing for Le Mans. This session will now provide a chance for people to see the pole-deciding lap, something that would easily be missed when every car was out on circuit for one of three two-hour qualifying sessions over two days. This session now allows for cameras to focus on the few cars on track and catch the pole position on camera. It will be something for the ACO and FIA to promote. It will allow team reactions to be caught in real time. It is creating an event, a memorable moment to be shared for years to come.
If we are going to jam these adjectives in there I want "hyperpole" and "superpole" to mean something. If it is still just pole position then there is no use in giving the session a funky name. And I do not want it to be a bunch of points. I don't want "hyperpole" to pay ten points. That is excessive and qualifying should not carry that much weight.
But what if "hyperpole" got a 30-second head start or a one-minute head start? That would be a "hyperpole." It is Le Mans. It is a 24-hour race. Pole position doesn't really matter and a head start of 30 seconds or 60 seconds really will not matter but it would at least be more.
The same is true with "superpole" in World Superbike. Imagine if the pole-sitter got a five-second head start? That would be a "superpole."
If you are going to give something a gimmicky name you mind as well turn it into a gimmick. Otherwise, what was the point of the name if it isn't any different then what existed before?
And that is it for 2019. We are into a New Year, 2020 and there will be plenty of things in store. Supercross season starts this weekend, the Dakar Rally starts this weekend, the Roar Before the 24 test is this weekend, the Dubai 24 Hours is next weekend and not long after that will be the 24 Hours of Daytona. We slowly get into the motorsports season but it is here. We will have enough to keep us busy for the next 50 weeks.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
