Non-F1 Motorsport thread 2009

[Panda]

The absurdly-named Jolyon Palmer is the son of Jonathan Palmer, former F1 driver and commentator and now boss of the F2 series.

[Paul]

Soucek fastest in F2 practice this morning

[paulgilb]

Grid for tomorrow's Valencia race:

1 Wickens
2 Hegewald
3 Soucek
4 Iaconelli
5 Aleshin
6 Jousse
7 Piscopo
8 Pavlovic
9 Vasiliauskas
10 Surtees
11 Eng
12 Bortolotti
13 Palmer
14 Gachnang
15 Hohenthal
16 Brundle
17 Clarke
18 de Marco
19 Sanchez
20 Ebrahim
21 Karjalainen
22 Hoing
23 Gladdis
24 Gandolfi
25 Moore

Pole time was 1:27.775. Top 15 were all within 1 second of pole. Slowest time was 1:31.661, qualification time was 1:33.919 (107% of pole).

[-Big Dan-]

DTM has also become property of Setanta.

[Paul]

May 29, 2009 22:51:00 GMT 1 -Big Dan- said:

DTM has also become property of Setanta.

It won't be when Setanta go bust sooner or later

Good job from Wickens in qualifying. And Hegewald too - he came from nowhere to go well here!! No points for pole is there?

[paulgilb]

Result of 1st Valencia race:

1 Wickens
2 Iaconelli
3 Vasiliauskas
4 Aleshin
5 Jousse
6 Bortolotti
7 Surtees
8 Brundle
9 de Marco
10 Hohenthal
11 Gachnang
12 Eng
13 Clarke
14 Sanchez
15 Ebrahim
16 Moore
17 Karjalainen
18 Hoing
19 Gladdis
20 Gandolfi
21 Palmer

DNF: Soucek, Hegewald, Pavlovic, Piscopo

Grid for Race 2:

1 Wickens
2 Soucek
3 Bortolotti
4 de Marco
5 Eng
6 Aleshin
7 Iaconelli
8 Vasiliauskas
9 Jousse
10 Surtees
11 Piscopo
12 Hegewald
13 Hohenthal
14 Gachnang
15 Sanchez
16 Gladdis
17 Brundle
18 Clarke
19 Karjalainen
20 Ebrahim
21 Moore
22 Hoing
23 Palmer
24 Gandolfi
DNQ Pavlovic

[Panda]

Ominous start for Wickens...

There doesn't seem to be much between the rest. Gachnang's quicker than I thought she would be.

[Paul]

May 30, 2009 21:06:24 GMT 1 Panda said:

Ominous start for Wickens...

There doesn't seem to be much between the rest. Gachnang's quicker than I thought she would be.

I'm not sure that Wickens will walk this championship at all. Soucek took the fight to him all weekend and there's plenty of good drivers, and some with not much experience (e.g. Bortolotti) that will get better as the season goes on.

It has to be said that the first race was rather dull actually. But they are nice cars and they can follow very closely behind another car without losing much performance, so there should be plenty of overtaking on circuits where you can overtake

[Paddy]

Velencia if it is the new "street circuit" that they raced on has no passing potential at all.

Give them some proper tracks and they should overtake nicely.

[Paul]

May 30, 2009 21:29:26 GMT 1 Paddy said:

Velencia if it is the new "street circuit" that they raced on has no passing potential at all.

Give them some proper tracks and they should overtake nicely.

It's the Ricardo Tormo circuit, which has one vaguely potential overtaking opportunity (turn 2) and that's it

Paddy, we've had this debate on the Valencia Street circuit before - I think it's unfair to judge it on one dull F1 race, but it certainly has more passing potential.

In fact the majority of the circuits they are racing on this year in F2 aren't fantastic for overtaking - Imola, Catalunya, Brands, Oschersleben

[Paddy]

Euh, no wonder I'd taken no notice of F2 then.

Brands GP or Indy? Also owned by the owner of this series!

Imola they have changed, Catalunya has 1 big chance, is Oschersleben; eurospeedway in Germany?

[Panda]

May 30, 2009 22:38:31 GMT 1 Paddy said:

is Oschersleben; eurospeedway in Germany?

No, that's Lausitz.

[Paul]

May 30, 2009 22:38:31 GMT 1 Paddy said:

Euh, no wonder I'd taken no notice of F2 then.

Brands GP or Indy? Also owned by the owner of this series!

Imola they have changed, Catalunya has 1 big chance, is Oschersleben; eurospeedway in Germany?

It's Brands GP

And they actually haven't changed the layout of Imola that much. I think they have reprofiled the final chicane slightly but there won't be any overtaking there.

[Paul]

2nd F2 race was a bit more exciting today, but still the circuit prevented any real action.

A few things I'm confused about though - I thought there was supposed to be a pitstop in race 2?

Also Martin "pinch of salt" Havern from Eurosport was saying that because they don't change tyres as F2 is about the driver not the pit crew, they can't change to wet tyres if they need to, meaning that wet races are red flagged. This cannot be correct - surely part of F2 is preparing them for wet weather driving too?

[Paddy]

You'd hope so.

Anyway to more bump and barging racing, BTCC, Turkington got 2 victories and Thompson got the third race victory at Oulton Park today. Oulton Park medium circuit. The one with Island chicane.

Collard drove in race 3 from 20th on grid to 4th at finish line challenging for 3rd, only 15 laps long and Oulton park is not an easy place to overtake.

[paulgilb]

Rather confusing result of the 2nd Valencia race:

1 Wickens (completed either 14 or 17 laps, depending on which part of the official F2 site you believe, compared with 23 laps in race 1, which is supposedly meant to be the same length as race 2)
2 Bortolotti
3 Eng
4 Soucek
5 de Marco
6 Aleshin
7 Piscopo
8 Iaconelli
9 Hegewald
10 Jousse
11 Sanchez
12 Surtees
13 Hohenthal
14 Moore
15 Karjalainen
16 Ebrahim
17 Pavlovic (impressive given that he supposedly failed to qualify)
18 Gladdis
19 Clarke
20 Vasiliauskas
21 Hoing
22 Gandolfi
23 Brundle (+1 lap)

DNF: Palmer, Gachnang

Standings:

1 Robert Wickens 20
2 Mirko Bortolotti 11
3 Carlos Iaconelli 9
4 Mikhail Aleshin 8
5 Philipp Eng 6
6 Kazimieras Vasiliauskas 6
7 Andy Soucek 5
8 Nicola de Marco 4
9 Julien Jousse 4
10 Henry Surtees 2
11 Edoardo Piscopo 2
12 Alex Brundle 1
13 Tobias Hegewald 0
14 Sebastian Hohenthal 0
15 German Sanchez 0
16 Natacha Gachnang 0
17 Jack Clarke 0
18 Jason Moore 0
19 Armaan Ebrahim 0
20 Henri Karjalainen 0
21 Milos Pavlovic 0
22 Tom Gladdis 0
23 Jens Hoing 0
24 Pietro Gandolfi 0
25 Jolyon Palmer 0

[Panda]

May 31, 2009 23:09:03 GMT 1 paulgilb said:

17 Pavlovic (impressive given that he supposedly failed to qualify)

Maybe he raced on foot...

[Panda]

Result from Round 5 of the Indycar Series at the Milwaukee Mile:

1. Scott Dixon
2. Ryan Briscoe
3. Dario Franchitti
4. Graham Rahal
5. Danica Patrick
6. Raphael Matos
7. Marco Andretti
8. Hideki Mutoh
9. Mario Moraes
10. Dan Wheldon
11. Helio Castroneves
12. Ryan Hunter-Reay
13. Tomas Scheckter
14. Robert Doornbos
15. Justin Wilson
16. Ed Carpenter
17. Paul Tracy
ret EJ Viso
ret Tony Kanaan
ret Mike Conway
dns Stanton Barrett

Points standings after Round 5 of 17:
1. Dixon 161
2. Briscoe 157
3. Franchitti 157
4. Patrick 139
5. Castroneves 136
6. Wheldon 126
7. Kanaan 122
8. Rahal 114
9. Andretti 109
10. Hunter-Reay 102
11. Will Power 99
12. Mutoh 95
13. Wilson 92
14. Matos 88
15. Doornbos 85
16. Carpenter 84
17. Moraes 75
18. Vitor Meira 62
19. Viso 61
20. Conway 60


Round 6 is a night race at Texas Motor Speedway next Saturday.

[paulgilb]

Regarding the pitstop situation in F2:

Q. Why was the plan to have pitstops scrapped for Valencia, do you still plan to introduce them?

Jonathan Palmer: We wanted to get through this first weekend without the added complication of pitstops. We've never done them before and it was just one extra complication that we didn't need for this round. We'll adjust a few things for Brno and pitstops might be one of them, we haven't made the decision yet.

[Panda]

So in other words, he's just making the rules up as he goes along... Nice job, "Doctor".