Oh dear, now I read that the FIA governing body has had the audacity to chrage the seven teams who did not take part, stating “they committed acts prejudicial to the interests of a competition by failing to ensure they had suitable tyres and refusing to allow cars to compete.”

What? It was the supplier’s fault, and the track’s fault. Not the teams’ fault. So the FIA wanted them to go out and kill themselves?

Oh, and to those people above saying there are no Americans involved, have you not heard of BAR? That stands for British American Racing – does that not count? And even if there are no Americans, does there need to be? It is still a fantastic sport without having to have a ‘home-team’ allegiance. There are no Kiwi drivers and have not been in F1 for years, and even Mclaren, the New Zealand team, calls itself British now, but we still support and love the sport here without any NZ connections.

I much prefer it to CART/Champcars/Indy/Superbikes etc where we do have Kiwi drivers to support, simply because F1 is the world class pinacle of all motorsport.

And Dave wins the ‘warm feeling’ for the day.

Thanks James, I needed that, it is bleedin cold here right now!

Wow, I actually won a quiz! And earlier this evening I completed the TV Guide crossword in one sitting. I’m on a roll…

Now, the thing I want to know most is, was the Arado 96 they lost also disguised I wonder?

As we are disgussing interesting enemy floatplanes that raided NZ waters, some may be interested in this on our RNZAF forum if you’ve not already seen it.
http://rnzaf.proboards43.com/index.cgi?board=Wartime&action=display&thread=1109409341

Grey Area – CART Racing is now known as Champcar Racing:

From here http://www.answers.com/topic/champcars where there is more details…

The Champ Car World Series (CCWS)
As of 2005, Champ Car is the official name of the racing series being promoted as the Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford since early 2003.

Champ Car, as a corporate entity, replaced CART, Championship Auto Racing Teams Inc, a company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. CART was founded in November 1978 by Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, Dan Gurney and several other team owners who had been participating in USAC events involving cars known as Champ Cars and IndyCars. They oversaw the day-to-day business and sanctioning of Champ Car racing at locations that today include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Korea and Australia. The Champ Car organization runs the Champ Car World Series and the Toyota Atlantic Championship. Champ Car also operates the Trans-Am Series in a cooperative agreement with SCCA Pro Racing.

Also see…
http://www.cart-racing.com/

From what I have been able to deduce, CART racing is like Indy racing, round and round in a circle with over-excited shouting commentators, till everyone either crashes or the set number of laps end. It travels from track to track like an in-house US F1 circuit kind of. Lots of Indy and F1 drivers are involved in this circuit, even women drivers now too.

It is nowhere near as interesting as F1 on the wider scale IMHO but usually has lots of crashes which the Americans seem to relish. We see a fair bit of it here on TV because New Zealander Scott Dixon races in the series, and was Rookie of the Year when he first started about two years ago. He was tipped as the next Kiwi F1 driver but it fizzled out when he CART racing waned a little in results. He did test for BMW last year though.

I don’t follow CART really so am no expert, but that’s the basics as I know it.

Montoya came to F1 from the CART series I believe, which is probably why he loves to crash so much. I think it was CART racers that feature in the dreadful Sly Stallone film “Driven”, in which Montoya appears as an “actor”.

As for this morning’s race, as much as I can see that Michelin is at fault for not doing it’s homework on the new track surface as well as Bridgestone/Firestone did (and the latter was only aware of problems because CART had the same problem a month ago on the surface and acted accordingly to change tyre design), I also see some fault in the track owners themselves for not notifying the tyre manufacturers that they’d altered the surface so drastically. According to Martin Brundle and James Allen, if you looked at the track with the naked eye it looked like little sharpened diamonds in the matrix of the surface and it felt sharp to the touch. Strange surface by all accounts.

Today’s race was a bit of a travesty but F1 will recover soon enough. This year’s Formula 1 season has been the best in years, it has been so great without the boring dominance of Ferrari and Schumacher. Several races have been really fantastic, including last week’s Canadian GP, and several teams are doing well.

I have nothing against Ferrari or Schu himself, he’s a great bloke and I admire him, but the sport had grown very stale till this year. We have a real competition on our hands this year, today was a minor hiccup in that, and it does irk to see the under-competitive teams handed points on a plate today due to a mistake that was out of the hands of the other teams.

Frankly I wouldn’t be all that bothered if the USA loses the GP – it’s never much of a race there anyway in my opinion, compared with some of the European tracks and some of the newer places like Bahrain and Sepang. I dare say the media will have a fielday over this but in no way will it deter me from watching the sport. It is things like this that keep it interesting and different every time.

All the different rules and controversies this year has made this an exciting sport once again. Today showed the bad side of it, but lets not forget all the good racing.

Formula One is better than ever in my opinon, never a dull moment, no longer the repetative drone of Schumacher winning ad nauseum.

PS – if anything needs changing in Formula 1 it is Montoya who should be fired and banned! They guy is a complete menace. McLaren must be ruing the day they signed him up.

Duxfordhawk, I too have been following the thread. I am very pleased to read the good news of your sister’s progress. I know something of how it feels to have been in your position, not knowing what might happen – my Dad has been in hospital since before Easter with cancer of the bowel and bladder, plus several resulting complications and medical catch 22’s, and it has been quite a trial knowing which way things are going to go.

Sadly for Dad and us, he got the bad roll of the dice – we were told this week there is nothing more they can do for him because it has spread to his liver and he’s too far gone to operate. As Moggy says, we all know life must end sometime, but actually being given news like this, it really is quite gut wrenching.

So I’m really glad to read your own family’s news is much more positive. Good luck to her continuing recovery.

Steve Fossett may not be a celebrity (ie he hasn’t been on a gameshow or Big Brother in England!!) but he is a legend and quite a historical figure. The aircraft too has some celebrity status. And the feat is a very dicey one, with lots of chance for the whole lot to go pear-shaped. You’d think the media would love this…

I can’t say for certain, but perhaps the UK media has not “chosen to ignore this”, they may be simply unaware it is happening. After all, if they’ve not said anythign in the press, how do you know they are even aware of it at the big newspapers and BBC, etc? The news may never have reached them. World media usually goes to great lengths to cover Steve Fossetts other aerial attempts. This lack of coverage in the UK could be down to the organisers themselves, perhaps not approaching UK media companies? Just a thought.