Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

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Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

Late to the party, I realise, but with the Rolex 24 and the Monte already behind us, the Daytona 500 this weekend and Fernando Alonso in a Swiss hospital with bones that are simultaneously fine and fractured depending on who you ask, shall we get started?

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/fern ... n=widget-1

Elsewhere, on the IMS website, one of our number has gone big with his Daytona 500 pick:

https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.c ... tona-picks
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

GB_Simo wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 4:38 pm
Elsewhere, on the IMS website, one of our number has gone big with his Daytona 500 pick:

https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.c ... tona-picks
Ha! Daytona is such an aerodynamic lottery that almost anyone in the field can win.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by DChaps »

Paul Kelly: Man, don’t you two know that Daytona is an aerodynamic lottery? You’re sticking way too close to the form book for my taste. Just look at the list of past winners. Alongside the Petty’s, Earnhardt’s, Johnson’s, Gordon’s and Yarborough’s, you also have Derrike Cope, Ward Burton, Michael Waltrip and Trevor Bayne. This is anyone’s race because playing the drafting game and timing are so important. So, knowing that, my pick is Ricky Stenhouse Jr. And I don’t think he would be nearly as shocking of a winner as Cope in 1990 or Bayne in 2011. Stenhouse is one of the most underrated “big track” drivers in NASCAR when he keeps his aggression in check. He has a win in the July race at Daytona and two career top-fives and three top-10s at the track. It’s been 10 years since we had an upstart winner at Daytona, Bayne in 2011. It’s time for another this Sunday, and it will be Stenhouse.
You definitely had it right that it wasn't going to be one of the big names. Like Paul mentioned about Stenhouse Jr., McDowell has had six top-10 finishes and two top-5s, previously at Daytona with sub-par teams. Tough for Hamlin as he completely dominated most of the race until the last pit stop strategy back fired on them, but Daytona's never about that. Scary crash as usual, glad everyone was ok. Who do you think was at fault there or just the normal negatives of restrictor plate racing?

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/02/dayton ... -lap-crash
You probably wouldn’t have picked Michael McDowell to win the 2021 Daytona 500 after he didn’t claim victory in any of his 357 NASCAR Cup Series starts.

But there he was in the pack racing for the checkered flag, near the front, when Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano — teammates with Team Penske — were involved in a wreck that brought out the caution flag, as Keselowski tried to pass him.

And it was McDowell who was right there, avoiding the crash and pushing ahead, giving the longtime vet the win.

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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

Well, Don, even blind squirrels sometimes find a nut. :)

As for the cause of the last-lap "Big One," no blame assigned. McDowell gave Logano a HUGE push on the back straight, which is expected on the final lap of the Daytona 500. McDowell and Logano hugged it out after the race, and Logano said he was happy McDowell won.

Bummer. Cale vs. Donnie 2.0 would have been better. :)
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by Dave »

I just want to take a moment to sh*t on the Haas F1 team. I've found their disposition to be generally off-putting for years. Comments like these from the (admittedly entertaining) Guenther Steiner in 2018 certainly didn't help.
"Just having an American driver who maybe cannot compete at a certain level is maybe not good for the sport," Steiner told Autosport International. "(Signing an American driver) would be an ambition, but at the moment, there is nobody ready for F1 in the United States in my opinion."
I get that last year was all about survival and that this year is basically a reset for them. The new car isn't going to be developed any further, they didn't use any development tokens, so there's a good chance we'll have a decent battle between the two Haas cars and Latifi's Williams for the last running position on the track.

But man, seeing the American F1's team looking like a f*cking Russian flag out there after hiring such a big A-hole because of his money is just icing on the cake for me to not care at all about the team.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

Yes. Fancy ending your explanation of why the car is suddenly bedecked in the Russian flag, in a year during which its Russian driver can't race under the flag himself and his Dad is keeping the team afloat, with, "The team is an American team."

They've become a very easy team to care very little about, though my perspective is probably a bit different as a non-American. In saying that, I'm probably only marginally less American than the Haas F1 effort.


For the Haas launch to coincide with IndyCar content day is terrible, rotten luck for Conor Daly's hairdresser, who presumably won whatever bet they had with him.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

Odd, I've never thought of Haas F1 as an American team. It's based in England, with a satellite office in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's run by an Austrian. It's fielded one (sort of) American driver, for two races -- Pietro Fittipaldi.

Do we consider Manchester United an American team because it's owned by the Glazer's? Same with Liverpool and John Henry and Fenway Sports Group? I don't think so.

Sorry, but American race fans don't have anywhere the depth of feeling for Haas as a national team the way Italians do about Ferrari, Frenchmen do about Renault, er, Alpine, or perhaps the Swiss did about Sauber.

Haas is just another team to me.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by Dave »

The new Williams car is startlingly blank.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

Dave wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:36 am
The new Williams car is startlingly blank.
Hmm.

I'm open to being corrected on this, having spent much of the day stunned by the "F1 2020 My Team mode" vibes of the livery, but I think every sponsor except Acronis is tied in to the Latifi family. There's a lot of talk of spending the year partnering with brands that "share our vision for a resurgent Williams brand", which all sounds lovely but won't tie in all that well with a blank car pottering around somewhere near the back.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

GB_Simo wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:34 pm
Dave wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:36 am
The new Williams car is startlingly blank.
Hmm.

I'm open to being corrected on this, having spent much of the day stunned by the "F1 2020 My Team mode" vibes of the livery, but I think every sponsor except Acronis is tied in to the Latifi family. There's a lot of talk of spending the year partnering with brands that "share our vision for a resurgent Williams brand", which all sounds lovely but won't tie in all that well with a blank car pottering around somewhere near the back.
The love that the British F1 press showers upon Williams is shambolic. I read through a bunch of stories from UK-based pubs saying the car's design looked very good and that the team was poised for a renaissance, etc.

Bullsh*t. Frank Williams, Patrick Head, Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill aren't coming through the factory door any time soon. This team still is a backmarker propped up by the largesse of one man and his desire to keep his son on the F1 grid as a driver.

I suppose that's no different than Haas or Aston Martin right now. But Haas never has been that good, so there's no renaissance possible. And Force India got recent results, including a race win.

I love Williams. The British fans and media love Williams. But the team is a mess. No rose-colored spectacles from the British motorsport press can disguise that. It will only get worse once Williams loses Russell, who is the team's only true asset.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

My earliest memory of motor racing - one of my earliest memories of anything, in fact - is of sitting in front of my Granda's television one sweltering Saturday in 1990. I'd just turned 5 years old and I was mesmerised by a red car being thrown around Silverstone at some astonishing speed. What really got me, more than anything else, was the soundtrack.

It was the first race of 1991 before I laid eyes on those cars again. The driver of the red car had swapped his Ferrari engine for a Renault but I was delighted to discover that the soundtrack remained unchanged, because what I remember of those races and of every race thereafter is that the entire event was powered by one man's voice.

Murray Walker was the reason I became a fan. How could I have resisted? There's nothing in the world more engaging than someone with a passion for their topic and, as he would have doubtless put it, Murray had passion literally pouring out of him, to put it very mildly indeed. If Murray had been commentating on the National Dog Show that July afternoon, I'm absolutely convinced I'd be a labrador breeder instead.

The wonderful Clive James once said that, "Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire." Brilliant, and not altogether wrong, but there was more to him as a broadcaster than that. His pace and pitch was never less than perfectly suited to the unfolding events, whether going off the register as a drama unfolded before his eyes or finding ways to enliven races that didn't necessarily deserve it. It's often said of gifted speakers that you'd listen to them reading the phone book. Having already listened to Murray fill in time during a qualifying delay at Monaco by telling me what time it was in the various countries taking the ITV broadcast, I know for a fact that I would.

Telling me, I said. I did not know Murray at all but I feel this evening as though I've lost a friend. Every commentary felt like it was being delivered to me personally by someone who adored the sport just the way I did, every snippet of paddock gossip being delivered like a secret being shared between mates, never less than consummately professional but without any of the distance that word implies. Murray was just like me, or you, or whoever else was watching, and you knew it.

I imagine this doesn't transfer quite so well to the USA but over here, if I watch a clip from an old race with someone else's commentary, or no commentary at all, I still hear it with Murray. Not just the words, but the exact delivery. "AAAAAAND LOOK AT THAT! OUT, tha - and colossally...THAT'S MANSELL! THAT IS NIGEL MANSELL!"

Murray leaves behind an incredible body of work, not just in F1 but across all kinds of series, including the huge role he played in making the BTCC what it became in the late 80s and through the 90s (pop here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3xj5b7hVco - for an absolute gem from the 1992 finale). All of that without even starting on his wartime tank command, or the advertising campaigns he crafted for Dunlop, General Motors and Mars.

Rest in peace, Murray. Thanks for everything.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by DChaps »

So well said Adam. Trying to follow F1 in the 80s/early 90s in the US was not always easy (imported VHS tapes with conversions, Super 8 reels, fan made newsletters etc.), but I loved anything with Murray Walker doing the commentary. I was so excited to hear his voice on one of the early F1 Playstation games. Just made it feel right! I have the same kind of experience with hearing the voice of Tom Carnegie or Paul Paige with regards to Indycars. Brings me back to being a little kid and falling in love with the sport. Murray Walker is certainly a legend. RIP

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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

Very well said, Adam and Don. One of the true highlights of my professional life was meeting and chatting with Murray during the 2001 USGP at Indy, his last race before retirement.

What a gem of a man.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by Rodster »

It's too soon to tell but this year may give F1 fans some optimism that it could be a lot closer than last year. The top six in FP2 was damn tight with Merc, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in the top 6 timesheet.

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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

Rodster wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 1:54 pm
It's too soon to tell but this year may give F1 fans some optimism that it could be a lot closer than last year. The top six in FP2 was damn tight with Merc, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in the top 6 timesheet.
Usual early season disclaimers apply - we haven't even had a race yet, this is only one track and so on - but a couple of initial thoughts:

- Verstappen has himself quite a gap at the front. It's possibly exaggerated a bit by Hamilton not quite sorting out his final run in Q3 but at the very least, this isn't a Mercedes benefit.

- Or at least, the drivers' championship isn't. You would imagine Perez will get a bit closer to the ultimate pace as time goes on but his first effort had more than a touch of the Albon about it. Red Bull will need Sergio to get on with things reasonably quickly, because there's no doubt that the new rules are badly compromising those with low rake aero concepts (Mercedes, Aston Martin) and little doubt that Merc will come up with a workaround in fairly short order. Best to strike while the iron is hot.

- The McLaren seems to be reasonably quick without being all that well sorted. I suspect there's a bit more to come there.

- Old dog, new tricks. Having spent the entire weekend consistently a few tenths behind his team mate, Fernando was well up the road in Q1 even before the yellow flags spoiled Ocon's evening. Even by his standards, spending the entirety of practice trolling the bloke in the other car is quite a way to reintroduce yourself.

- After a winter of controversy, it wouldn't have hurt Nikita Mazepin to ease his way into F1 gently. Two acts of pantomime villainy in 18 minutes, one on his own team mate and one on about half the field, are perhaps a less gentle introduction than I would have had in mind.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

I'd take another 22 races of that, personally.

Mercedes, with a slower car and a theoretically slower strategy, beat Red Bull today because they employ Lewis Hamilton.

Had Max kept his head when he had to cede position to Lewis, either by picking a better place to do it or by not lobbing his car off the road three corners later, then things might have been different. He didn't, so they weren't, and it wouldn't hurt him to work on appreciating that. There was a little bit of mental immaturity about his reaction to losing the lead and at the start of his seventh season in F1, there shouldn't be much of an excuse for that any more.

I think we're going to enjoy watching Yuki Tsunoda this year. Lando Norris probably enjoyed a very tidy afternoon's work, as did Alex Albon, last seen sloping out of the Red Bull garage wielding a pair of wire cutters as Perez chugged to a halt on the formation lap. Sebastian Vettel, on the other hand...hoo boy.

Still, could have been worse:
GB_Simo wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:47 pm
- After a winter of controversy, it wouldn't have hurt Nikita Mazepin to ease his way into F1 gently. Two acts of pantomime villainy in 18 minutes, one on his own team mate and one on about half the field, are perhaps a less gentle introduction than I would have had in mind.
Yes, well, never mind.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

That was a very interesting race with a cracking finish. It was not a GREAT race because, frankly, there wasn't a lot of meaningful racing until the last 10 laps between Lewis and Max.

Sure, Vettel, Norris and Sainz had a fun joust just before the midway point. But this was a race that pleased mathematicians and strategists more than racing fans until the last 10 laps.

Still, I had to laugh this afternoon reading Twitter after I watched the race. You would have thought we had witnessed Arnoux vs. Gilles or Alonso vs. Schumacher at Imola 2005 based on the Twitterverse's comical hyperventilation.

Like Adam, I'll take 22 more of those. But I'm greedy: I'll also take more wheel-to-wheel racing, especially between Lewis and Max.

Still, today once again proves that anyone who claims Hamilton's success is primarily due to the car or the team either has a cranium stuffed with feces or needs to piss in a cup. Lewis is one of the Mount Rushmore drivers of F1 -- easily one of the four best of all time. He flat-out drove that team and car to victory today, not the other way around.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by dbdynsty25 »

I randomly tuned it last night to the replay of the race, and being my first F1 race I've actually watched, it was damn interesting. I've got a good friend that's been hyping it for years and it was cool to be able to actually talk to him about it and ask him questions and the stuff I had no idea about. And damn you're definitely right about Hamilton...what a drive. Inferior car on inferior tires for 10 laps and still wins. Incredible. Guess I'm a fan of F1 now. ;)

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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

dbdynsty25 wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:50 am
I randomly tuned it last night to the replay of the race, and being my first F1 race I've actually watched, it was damn interesting. I've got a good friend that's been hyping it for years and it was cool to be able to actually talk to him about it and ask him questions and the stuff I had no idea about. And damn you're definitely right about Hamilton...what a drive. Inferior car on inferior tires for 10 laps and still wins. Incredible. Guess I'm a fan of F1 now. ;)
Excellent! Another animal for the F1 zoo ... :)

What makes Max and Lewis' duel even more compelling is that they both were at 11/10ths, and these cars are VERY, VERY difficult to drive on a knife edge. Master craftsmen.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

On the off-chance that any of you are trying to kill some time between now and the Imola/Barber weekend, here's a link to the hardest racing quiz I've ever tripped over:

https://www.sporcle.com/games/michaelbu ... ng-drivers

You're given the driver's nationality, their best F3000 result and their best US open wheel result, then have to name them. There are 89 to get, I can't get past 59 even after 3 tries and some of the ones I'm missing are bugging the life out of me.

If you have a go, note that it wants you to type 'Ferran' instead of 'de Ferran', and I've just realised I would have scored 60 were it not for another similarly-named chap whose name I entered in the wrong format.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

Much respect at that score, Adam. I'd be lucky to get 15.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

pk500 wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:13 pm
Much respect at that score, Adam. I'd be lucky to get 15.
While I think you'd do a lot better than 15, reading that and remembering how pleased I was to have typed "Claude Bourbonnais" earlier is making me wonder how badly I wasted my youth.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by Dave »

An interesting start to the weekend for F1.

Aston Martin: The FIA rule changes are unfair to low-rake cars and we demand changes

Mercedes: Runs 1-2 with low-rake cars

And LOL @ Nikita Mazepin, another great day at office.

SUPER excited about IndyCar's season finally starting up this weekend. This has to be the most experienced, accomplished, oldest rookie class in top-level motorsports. It still doesn't seem real that Jimmie Johnson is an IndyCar driver.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by GB_Simo »

Dave wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:48 am
An interesting start to the weekend for F1.

Aston Martin: The FIA rule changes are unfair to low-rake cars and we demand changes

Mercedes: Runs 1-2 with low-rake cars
Aston's argument seems to boil down to there being a need to change the rules urgently because their car isn't going as quickly as they'd like it to. Hardly the first time a team has gone down that avenue, but they'd normally at least try to put a bit of disguise on it. I will concede to not knowing quite what that disguise should be in this instance, and in Otmar's defence, I suppose he's going to have some difficulty blaming the drivers...
SUPER excited about IndyCar's season finally starting up this weekend. This has to be the most experienced, accomplished, oldest rookie class in top-level motorsports. It still doesn't seem real that Jimmie Johnson is an IndyCar driver.
I'm full of respect for the bloke for even trying it. Really looking forward to seeing how he progresses through the year, how Scotty settles in, how far up the field Bourdais can take AJ and a hundred other things I could list.
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Re: Racing Season 2021 (Spoiler Alert)

Post by pk500 »

Blockbuster racing weekend, including the season debut of the series for which I work, INDYCAR. Mega, all around.

But the biggest story of this petrol-powered weekend, with ease, is the return of Marc Marquez to Repsol Honda after nearly a year off from MotoGP due to a serious arm injury. No one expected Marquez to be back this soon after multiple surgeries to repair the injury and the subsequent problems and infections he suffered by trying to return too quickly.

The subplots are salivating. Will Marquez still have the same otherworldly speed? Will MotoGP's amazing crop of young assassins -- on multiple manufacturers, no less -- have the speed to hold off Marquez? Just how much speed has Marquez lost during his hiatus?

And the biggest, which I mention only after taking a deep breath: What happens if Marquez crashes on that arm again? It seems, at least in these early days, that he is one more crash away from ending a career that only has been matched by gods Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi in the 72-year history of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. He's only 28, so a career-ending spill at this age would be a Shakespearian motor racing tragedy.

I work in and love INDYCAR. I love F1. But there's no question in my mind that MotoGP is the most exciting, competitive major racing series on Earth. If you're not watching on NBCSN here in the States, you're missing out, big time.
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