Unstoppable Audi no more

Fans may make light of the Audi R10s trouncing on the streets of Long Beach but the fact remains the TDI diesel is one of the most advanced and competitive racing machines ever built. I won't rehash the technical mumbo-jumbo about why the R10 is such a beast of a competitor but instead I'll remind you why the Goliath of ALMS LMP1 went down so easily. The ALMS sought to partner with another racing series for whatever reason other than further promotion of the show. Champ Car was a natural match since the series races exclusively road courses albeit approximately 1/4 of them are temporary street circuits or airport runways.

As open wheel commentator Robin Miller has observed, street courses are most often "crash fests" where there is little to no passing and the guy that wins probably ran out front the entire day. However Champ Car loves to race on temporary courses because it's exciting for the fans and it allows promoters to turn a few downtown city blocks into party central. So what does this have to do with the Audi? For starters the R10 was designed for competition on the long, fairly level straightaways of Le Mans. The TDI has a power band of a few thousand RPMs and despite all of it's low end torque does not accelerate from a dead stop well and it's very touchy about maintaining traction at the rear wheels. That added to the fact that it's other major advantage of aerodynamics is partially neutered on the street courses means that the heavier R10 is at a serious disadvantage against a smaller, lighter LMP2 prototypes.

That being said the LMP2 prototypes should enjoy this victory because the next time the R10 hits a permanent road course it will be game over for the second rate class. With the exception of Detroit, Audi already has notes for all the remaining events this season. They also have the advantage of longer races that will benefit the R10's unstoppable endurance design over the quick but breaky P2 capabilities. But after all isn't tight competition what we want in American sports car racing? Sure we can't have ten cars in P1 so why not pit the two classes against one another? You know I'll be watching.

Lewis Hamilton: No Let Down

Folks that don't follow Formula One have probably never heard of Lewis Hamilton unless of course you've heard someone call him the "Tiger Woods of F1". True racers are a breed apart and over the last few events Hamilton has proven that he not only lives up the hype but rightly deserves to be called more than the first black F1 driver. McLaren boss Ron Dennis saw enough in this kid at the ripe old age of 10 that he made sure that Hamilton remained with the team and ultimate became one of his drivers. Hamilton won several karting championships, a precursor to European open wheel racing, but perhaps his greatest achievement was to be compared to the late Gilles Villeneuve by competitor Keke Rosberg who called him "totally fearless".

And fearless is what it takes in F1. So far Hamilton has netted three podiums in his first three starts, which sets a record for the World Championship. Sure he's made some mistakes along the way but nothing that doesn't cause one to reminisce about a young Michael Schumacher. It's very likely that Hamilton could win his first Grand Prix this season and even more likely that he'll win at least one F1 World Championship. The question is how far can he go and how quickly will he get there. For those of us that have seen him race the answer is pretty damn quickly.

Everybody hates Tony Stewart

I've heard Dave Despain call racers the whiniest bunch of people he's ever known. He of course caveats that by saying that when they aren't talking about racing they are the nicest bunch of guys he's ever met. He's obviously been hanging around with Tony Stewart lately. After his unfortunate bump up at Texas this past week Stewart remarked that he was tired of getting booed and that this sort of thing "doesn't make it fun anymore". Do you think that the Intimidator ever got tired of being booed? Who knows, but I do know that he didn't make quips on camera like that one. Suck it up man! It's not like they aren't paying you a million-billion dollars to go out there and cause a 10 car pile-up. Who cares! Your rich! Go out a buy an island or something and lay down the law that no NASCAR fans are allowed on it. Hey on second thought does anyone know how much a ticket is to Tony Stewart Island?