Marcos Ambrose underlined the point that he is NASCAR’s top road racer these days as he came from the back of the grid to win Saturday’s second-division Nationwide race at Le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal. It was Ambrose’s second road course win in six days coming hard on the heels of his first Sprint Cup victory at Watkins Glen.

But the story of the day was Patrick Carpentier’s retirement. The French-Canadian ran the last race of his career in a Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota sponsored by race backer NAPA Auto Parts. He qualified eighth and ran with the leaders until getting involved in a couple of fender-banging incidents, eventually crawling to a stop on the track.

Carpentier is one of a number of drivers whose careers were overshadowed, if not diminished, by the CART/IRL war. A native of Ville la Salle, outside Montréal, Patrick won the Canadian Formula Atlantic championship in 1992 and the Toyota Atlantic championship in ‘96 with a record nine wins. He broke into CART’s Indy Car World Series in ‘97 with the late Tony Bettenhausen’s team and took rookie of the year honours before joining the top-ranked Player’s/Forsythe team in ‘98.

Carpentier drove for Forsythe (below) for six years and established himself as one of CART’s top drivers. He scored his first win in the 2001 Michigan 500, beating Dario Franchitti by a car length, and enjoyed his best year in ’02, winning at Cleveland and Mid-Ohio and finishing third in the championship. In 2003 he won from pole at Laguna Seca and won there again in ’04 when he finished third in the points.

But by then CART had been driven into bankruptcy as top teams like Penske, Ganassi, Andretti-Green and Rahal defected to the IRL. Champ Car replaced CART for three years, while Carpentier also switched to the IRL in 2005 with a less than stellar team for what was his last year racing Indycars. He made his NASCAR debut at the end of 2007 and ran most of the Sprint Cup season in ‘08, taking one pole. In ‘09 he ran a handful of races but it was clear his career was coming to an end.

Patrick has run a few more NASCAR races over the past 18 months and went to this year’s Indy 500 in an uncompetitive car only to crash while trying to make the field. He celebrated his 40th birthday on August 13 and decided a few months ago to conclude his career in the Nationwide race in Montréal, where he was enthusiastically applauded as a national hero.

Carpentier is a fast, clean driver and a gentleman at all times, on and off the track. He is an amiable, good-humoured man who honoured a bet after winning at Mid-Ohio in 2002 by running a lap of the track on foot in the nude, save for a small chequered flag wrapped around his loins. But he is much more than that – an intelligent, softly spoken man who splits his time between Las Vegas and Quebec. Married in 1998 to the equally low-key but charming Anick, the Carpentiers have a daughter Anais and son Loic. We wish them the best in their new life after racing.

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These podcasts are coming pretty thick and fast at the moment, but we didn’t want to hang on to this one for too long, especially since Allan was on such good form.

On Tuesday March 29 when we recorded it he had spent the past nine hours in a film studio recording a three-minute clip for an Audi advert. When he made it to the Motor Sport offices we couldn’t believe he even wanted to do the podcast and we definitely didn’t think he would be as lively as he was. So thank you Allan!

As always, we hope you enjoy it – we certainly did – and do let us know what you think.

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After a rare week off, NASCAR was back to business last weekend with round four of the 36-race Sprint Cup championship on the half-mile Bristol bullring in the mountains of east Tennessee. Kyle Busch came through to score his first win of the year and his fifth in a row at Bristol, including last Saturday’s second-division Nationwide race. In Sunday’s Sprint Cup event he beat Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson amid a late-race, three-way battle between this year’s title favourites. Edwards was on pole at Bristol while Johnson led the most laps, but it was Busch who came through to score Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing’s first victory of the year, becoming the series’ fourth different winner in 2011.

“Carl kept me honest,” said Busch. “I made a couple of mistakes but it all worked out. A couple of lapped cars held me up a bit, but our guys won this race by coming out of the pits first. I don’t know if I could have got by Carl. Our car was definitely better on the longer runs and we stretched it out a bit at the end. I was worried Jimmie might get by Carl and come and ramble me. But I felt good about what the guys did in the pits.”

Five-time champion Johnson also felt that the race was won in the pits. “Clean air is important, even here at Bristol. It makes a big difference. The number 99 car [Edwards] and I were relatively equal and whoever had clean air could get a little gap and that was it. It came down to that last pitstop. We just didn’t get off pitroad first and I think that’s where the race was decided, especially with Kyle. He restarts well and knows how to take advantage of a clean track. He really had control from the last restart.”

Edwards leads the Sprint Cup points, one ahead of Kurt Busch. Tony Stewart is 12 points behind in third, followed by Ryan Newman and Paul Menard. Bristol winner Busch is sixth, 17 points behind Edwards, and Johnson is 20 points behind the leader in seventh. Juan Pablo Montoya is hanging in there in eighth, just four points behind Johnson.

NASCAR races at the California Speedway next weekend and continues in action through the next four weekends followed by a break for Easter. Then the true grind of NASCAR’s marathon season begins with 13 weekends of racing through May, June and into July.

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While reading Simon Taylor’s account of his Lunch With… Alex Wurz I was briefly transported back to New Zealand and the Peter Jackson series in which the Austrian played a spectacular part.

Arriving in Auckland just before Christmas 1990, I had been signed up by TV New Zealand for its coverage of the series which was then the highlight of the season Down Under. These were the days of cigarette sponsorship and the tobacco company had put a considerable wedge of dollars into promoting events for Formula Atlantic, Formula Ford and assorted touring cars. Essentially, it was local heroes Kenny Smith and Craig Baird (below) versus The Rest of the World, the latter camp including European racers Julian Westwood, Harry Nuttall, Guy Smith and Matt Aitken in a team run by Graham Lorrimer – and, of course, a teenager called Alex Wurz who was up against local champion Ashley Stitchbury among others.

On Christmas Day we had a barbecue, just one of the joys of leaving the English winter behind. Supplied with a new Toyota coupé I then set off for the races, the first of which was at Pukekohe, a fast and challenging little circuit on the North Island. Coming from Britain the circuits were a bit of a shock to the system. Safety standards were, shall we say, a little unsophisticated, and the facilities were basic, reminiscent of Brands Hatch in the ’60s. But the sun shone, the crowds came and veteran Kenny Smith went toe to toe with the 21-year-old Baird, as they did all season.

Double NZ champion Stitchbury set the pace in Formula Ford. Wurz reckoned him to be one of the quickest drivers he’d ever seen, but the young New Zealander tragically died far too young after a racing accident in Australia some years later. It was clear that Wurz had talent, and he was certainly the tallest, but he was on the wild side, crashing too often to feature in the final results. His command of English was minimal, meaning that he was not at the top of the TV interview list, although his different coloured boots were much filmed and photographed. By the end of the series, however, he stood out as one to watch.

Seeking some advice on the local racing scene, I went to see Denny Hulme (below) at his home near Tauranga where I found him mowing his orchard. We spent all day talking about his extraordinary career and he decided he should come to one of the races. That day was an education. He was perfect company, his mischievous humour and no-nonsense approach making for some scathing comments on the antics of some of the competitors. The former World Champion suggested that one or two would be still be looking for the apex as long as they lived, and that the circuit didn’t seem to have changed that much since he raced around it in bare feet.

In the British camp Westwood made a good impression, returning home to some good results in F3000, while both he and Nuttall (who later inherited the Nuttall Baronetcy) spent many happy hours competing with Baird for the prettiest ladies in the paddock. Baird, who later tested with Dick Bennetts’ F3 team in England, found time to win the first of his back-to-back Formula Atlantic titles.

Meanwhile, Kiwi superstar Scott Dixon was still three years away from his first single-seater race.

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Chip Ganassi’s Grand-Am team added to its already stunning record in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona last weekend when its pair of BMW-powered Riley Daytona Prototypes finished one-two. Defending Grand-Am champions Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas shared the winning car with Graham Rahal and Joey Hand, while Scott Dixon/Juan Pablo Montoya/Dario Franchitti/Jamie McMurray drove Ganassi’s second car. This was Ganassi’s fourth Rolex 24 win but only its first one-two. The team scored three straight wins in 2006-08 and finished runner-up in 2009-10.

Last weekend’s sweep further embellishes Ganassi’s reputation. His teams scored successive wins in last year’s Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400, and now the Rolex 24. Some people are calling it ‘The Chip Slam’. Grand-Am team leader Pruett, by the way, now has four Daytona 24 Hours wins to his name and has been on the podium in 14 of his 26 starts in the race.

Ganassi’s previous Rolex 24 wins came with Lexus (Toyota) engines, but Chip’s Grand-Am team switched last year to BMW power. Pruett and Rojas won the championship for BMW last season and have now scored the German manufacturer’s first Daytona victory since 1976, when Brian Redman/John Fitzpatrick/Peter Gregg won the 24 Hours in a factory BMW 3.5 CSL.

Neither of Ganassi’s cars enjoyed trouble-free runs last weekend. Montoya used his NASCAR fender-banging style to good effect on a number of occasions, but that also meant his crew had to twice change the car’s nose. Joey Hand made his debut with Ganassi’s team and did an excellent job in the winning car. Last year he drove for Bobby Rahal’s BMW GT team in the American Le Mans Series and has served a long apprenticeship in open wheel and sports cars. Hand lapped as quickly at Daytona as any of Ganassi’s drivers, and recovered well from a Sunday morning pit penalty after he was mistakenly waved out too early and hit one of his used tyres.

An indication of the thorough professionalism of Ganassi’s team was a decision during the race’s second hour to change the gear clusters in both cars. Warmer weather than anticipated and a change in wind direction meant both Ganassi cars were hitting their rev-limiters on the banking, so each car was brought in under successive yellows to remove the short gears and install a new stack of ratios.

Finishing third behind Ganassi’s cars were last year’s winners. The Action Express team ran two Riley-Porsches this year with João Barbosa/Terry Borcheller/Max Papis/Christian Fittipaldi finishing a strong third after the team’s other car was delayed by a few incidents. Martin Brundle/Mark Blundell/Mark Patterson/Zak Brown were an excellent fourth aboard United Autosports’ Riley-Ford run by Mike Shank Racing (see Damien Smith’s blog).

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Denny Hamlin established himself as the top seed in NASCAR’s Chase for Cup by scoring his sixth win of the year in last Saturday night’s race at the 0.75-mile Richmond oval. Hamlin dominated the 400-mile race’s final stages in his Joe Gibbs Toyota, narrowly defeating team-mate Kyle Busch and defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. Joey Logano showed the strength of Gibbs’s Toyotas by taking fourth place in Virginia.

Richmond was the 26th and last race of NASCAR’s regular season before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, which kicks off this weekend on the one-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Twelve drivers qualify each year for the championship play-off and they are seeded based on victories, so Hamlin goes to New Hampshire as the championship leader with 5060 points. Hamlin, 29, has been racing in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series since ’05 driving for famed NFL coach Joe Gibbs’s team. He finished third in the ’06 championship and came fifth last year. This season has been his most successful to date.

Defending champion Johnson is seeded second in the Chase for the Cup with 5050 points, courtesy of five wins. He has won the last four Sprint Cup championships with Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet team and is going after a record fifth straight title. Johnson was very competitive at Richmond, leading a good deal of the race, and is the favourite going into the championship play-off.

Kevin Harvick led the championship for most of the year and has won three races but could finish no better than ninth at Richmond. Harvick is seeded third in the Chase for the Cup with 5030 points. He drives for Richard Childress’s three-car Chevrolet team and has been racing in NASCAR’s premier series for 10 years. His best season came in 2006 and ‘08 when he finished fourth in the championship, and he won NASCAR’s second division Nationwide championship in 2001 and ‘06.

Seeded fourth, also with 5030 points, is Kyle Busch who’s won three races so far this year. Busch, 25, is known as ‘Rowdy’ and has been touted as a future champion since his arrival in the Cup series in 2004. But he’s yet to find the consistency to challenge for the championship. His best year thus far came in ’07 when he finished fifth in the points in his last season with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team before moving to Gibbs’s Toyota operation.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt has won two races this year driving one of Roger Penske’s trio of Dodges, so he’s seeded fifth. Kurt won the championship in 2004 with Jack Roush’s Ford team. Completing the list of this year’s 12 championship chasers are 2002 and ‘05 champion Tony Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet), Roush Ford driver Greg Biffle, four-time champion (1996, ‘97, ‘98 and ‘01) Jeff Gordon in one of Hendrick’s Chevrolets, Carl Edwards (Roush Ford), Jeff Burton (Childress Chevrolet), 2003 champion Matt Kenseth (Roush Ford) and Clint Bowyer (Childress Chevrolet).

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As the 2010 Grand Prix season beckons, most of my acquaintance are agreed that it’s been a very long time since we anticipated a year with such relish. Schumacher back… Alonso at Ferrari… Button with Hamilton at McLaren… four World Champions in the pack… the prospect of four highly competitive teams… All right, we have lost BMW and Toyota (after Honda), and one or two of the new teams look more than a little flaky, but overall the prospects are indeed enticing.

It’s interesting that, when forecasting the likely World Champion, most seem to be choosing between Schumacher, Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel – to be focusing, in other words, on one driver in each of the four top teams.

There’s no denying that, in the normal course of events, within a team one driver tends to assert his superiority over the group, to become the de facto number one, even if this is not officially acknowledged. And it’s a fact, too, that Michael, Lewis, Fernando and Sebastian have all shown themselves to be very keen on this thing of having the team revolve primarily around them. But I wonder if it’s going to be as clear-cut as some imagine.

Consider the ‘other’ driver in each team: Rosberg (Mercedes), Button (McLaren), Massa (Ferrari) and Webber (Red Bull). Of these only Nico has yet to win a Grand Prix, but then he has never – until now – had the car to enable him to do so. Shout me down if you will, but I have a suspicion that he will show a great deal better against Schuey than most appear to believe. Although Ross Brawn presided over a Ferrari team that for years clearly favoured Michael, he has publicly said that such will not be the situation at Mercedes.

Over at McLaren, Martin Whitmarsh has said the same about Hamilton and Button – and, again, I expect the performance gap between them to be far less than some suggest.

On to Ferrari. While I believe Alonso to be the best driver in the world, don’t forget that Massa – fully recovered – largely dominated Kimi Räikkönen, and came within a Toyota dry tyre of winning the 2008 World Championship. Felipe is cowed by no one these days, and quite right, too.

Finally, there is Red Bull: Bernie Ecclestone has predicted that Vettel will win the championship this year, and that’s not the silliest thing he has ever said, for Sebastian is prodigiously talented, with ambition to match.

I do, however, think it would be a great mistake to underestimate Webber. Because he’s in his thirties, and has been around a while, Mark is sometimes overlooked, but remember that last year he won twice – and that included a sound defeat of Vettel in Germany. Webber is Trulli-quick over one lap, and in a race no one fights harder. Twelve months ago he began the season with virtually no testing behind him, legacy of the badly broken leg sustained the previous autumn, but he never moaned about the discomfort, put up with his team-mate’s occasional tantrums, and simply put his head down and got on with it. I’m sure he will do the same in 2010.

Four top teams, then – but there are more than four drivers in the mix, and that’s what makes the forthcoming season so mouth-watering. And I’d add a final thought: if Renault comes up with competitive package, expect Robert Kubica – as talented as there is – to be in the thick of it.

If pushed, my money would be on Alonso for the title – but I’m not sure I’d bet very much…

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Order was restored in NASCAR as defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson bounced back from failing to finish the Daytona 500 to score the 48th win of his career in Sunday’s 500-mile race at the California Speedway.

Johnson was the man to beat in California, leading 101 of the race’s 250 laps, but he was running no better than fifth in the closing stages when a yellow flag came out as he was pulling into his pit for his final stop. The yellow was a stroke of luck, allowing him to rejoin the race in first place.

The final restart came with 26 laps to go and Johnson took off in the lead, chased hard by Richard Childress team-mates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. Harvick tried to pass Johnson with three laps to go but got sideways and brushed the wall, then spent the final laps battling for second place with Burton. Harvick edged Burton by a nose to lead the championship points.

“Today, fortune came our way,” Johnson admitted. “When we hit pitroad and the caution came out it gave us track position. We lost the handle on the car in the second half of the race. We were making gains and coming back but a lot of other guys were ahead of us and it was going to be tough to pass them. But then we got that break and I drove my butt off.

“We finally got the car turning at the end of the race,” Johnson added. “It was a little loose and Harvick was coming, but then he hit the wall. Kevin and I raced really hard all day and had a lot of fun.”

Harvick had led 70 laps but lost track position in the middle of the race when he broke the pitlane speed limit, which earned him a drive-through penalty.

“The #48 saw me coming and he moved up the track,” said Harvick. “When I got behind him I lost the nose and got into the wall. But the car ran good all day and the crew did a great job. I got that speeding penalty on pitroad and we should never have been in that position, but we made it back up.”

Mark Martin was fourth in another Hendrick Chevrolet, followed by Joey Logano in one of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Toyotas. Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray qualified on pole, followed by Earnahardt-Ganassi team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya. McMurray didn’t enjoy a strong race, falling back at the start and eventually finishing 17th, while Montoya took the lead and set the pace through the opening 29 laps only to blow his engine.

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Renault – in more ways than one – has had a poor time of it in Formula 1 over the last couple of years. True, Fernando Alonso returned to the team, after a single season with McLaren, but even the world’s best driver can do little with a fundamentally uncompetitive car, and although Alonso invariably gave 100 per cent (for that is his way), he won only two races in two seasons – and one of those was the controversial affair at Singapore in 2008. His victory in the next race, at Fuji, was from the top drawer, but there were to be no more, and in ’09 Fernando really struggled, his Renault frankly nowhere near the pace.

As he left for Ferrari, so Robert Kubica – on the market following BMW’s withdrawal – took his place, but through the late months of last year rumours abounded that Renault, too, might follow the lead of Honda, Toyota and BMW, and disappear from F1. Theoretically, therefore, Kubica might have been on the street once more – and, frankly, I was surprised that during that period any team signed any driver before being certain of Robert’s situation.

For my money, he is one of the top four drivers in F1, and some go further than that. His close pal Alonso has said he considers him the best, while even Lewis Hamilton has – privately – admitted that Kubica is the driver he most fears.

When Renault announced that, while the team would be continuing under the same name, a considerable chunk of it had been sold, Kubica declared that he now considered himself free to walk, should he choose to do so. After being reassured that it would remain a serious F1 operation, he said he would remain – but his original contract was for one season only, and there has been speculation that he could well join Alonso at Ferrari in 2011.

It could be that Kubica will have a frustrating time of it – again – this year, but still it astonishes me that when pundits consider the prospects for the coming season, frequently they omit to mention him. In all probability, this is because they do not expect very much from Renault, but if the car is even half-decent expect to see Robert in there, pitching. He might not look the part as much as some, but potentially this is a great Grand Prix driver.

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Another Grand Prix and another win for Button. He may have lost a place to team-mate Barrichello at the start, but the Brit got his head down and gave us another remarkable display of driving and getting the most out of the car and tyres. A large shunt at the beginning finished Trulli’s, Fisichella’s, Sutil’s, Bourdais’ and Buemi’s race but the other talking point of the afternoon was just how wrong it all went for Ferrari. Again.

Here’s how they all stacked up…

Jenson Button (1^st)
On finishing the race, just before going onto the podium Button asks “sorry, where do I go”? A sign of just how many times the Brit has visited the podium in Barcelona. Another great day, even though he lost first place to Barrichello at the start, he proved that when a driver is at the top of their game nothing can stop them. Or indeed go wrong – he crossed the start/finish line 1.6secs before the end of the Q3 session to start his flying lap that got him pole. Changing to a two-stop strategy in the race (rather than three) certainly helped. 9.5/10

Rubens Barrichello (2^nd)
“I don’t know how I lost that race man.” He was quicker than Button throughout the weekend (bar Button’s stunning qualifying lap) and humbled the Brit at the start. However, he couldn’t get his tyres to work in the second and third stints meaning that almost certain victory slipped through his hands. A good sign for Brawn though when one of their drivers is disappointed with second. If he can’t pin Button back in the next few GPs it’ll be like Ferrari all over again where he had to play second fiddle to Schumacher for so long. 7/10

Mark Webber (3^rd)
He’s so far been outclassed by his team-mate Vettel this year and this weekend looked to be going along the same depressing lines for the Australian. As soon as he tussled with Alonso in the opening stint though we knew we were watching a man on a mission. A great drive and one which heralded receiving the ‘Drive of the Day’ award from Coulthard. Anyone else notice how he always backs the Red Bull drivers? Funny old world… 9/10

Sebastian Vettel (4^th)
Tipped by Coulthard to win the race. The German’s afternoon effectively ended when Massa ‘KERSed’ him off the line. If Red Bull need any information on the Ferrari rear-end though, I’m sure Vettel will be able to tell them exactly what it looks like after staring at it for an hour and a half. 6/10

Fernando Alonso (5^th)
All he had to do was overtake a back marker and the crowd would erupt. Which is exactly what they did when he fortuitously took fifth in the dying laps when Massa had to slow because of a lack of fuel. Probably would have won if he was being powered by the support for him during the weekend. As luck would have it, he was in a Renault and was lucky just to get points. Solid drive. But that’s the least we expect from him… 7/10

Felipe Massa (6^th)
Ferrari has certainly improved ­– the car that is rather than their general running of the team – but I suggest Massa flattered them somewhat today. A catastrophic error in the final pitstop meant that he didn’t have enough fuel to finish the race, so had to give up fourth to Vettel and then fifth to Alonso. Only managed to keep Vettel behind him for that long though thanks to KERS. At least his car didn’t come to a grinding halt. Ah, of course it did, it ran out of fuel just before the end. 7/10

Nick Heidfeld (7^th)
A pretty quiet race for Heidfeld although he did well to keep Räikkönen behind him in the opening stages. The BMW is faster, but definitely not fast enough. Had the measure of Kubica though. When you drive reasonably well, only 14 cars finish, you’re in a car that was fighting for the World Championship up until the last few races the season before and you don’t even get a point you’ve got to struggle to see the point of it all. 6/10

Nico Rosberg (8^th)
Continues to excel in Friday practice, but that doesn’t really help a team get points on the board. Could be worse, he could have a team-mate who pushed him more… Good, long first stint though after punting Trulli off on the first lap. 6/10

Lewis Hamilton (9^th)
“What did you feel when Jenson Button lapped you near the end of the Grand Prix?” Hamilton, deadpan face: “nothing”. I very much doubt that Mr Hamilton. It must have felt like one last kick in the tender area after another weekend of having no grip whatsoever. This season is going to feel as long as 2008 was exciting for the current World Champion. 5.5/10

Timo Glock (10^th)
Qualified well but just slipped further and further back in the race. He out-drove Trulli, but only because his team-mate’s race ended on the first lap. An afternoon Glock will want to forget. If Hamilton is as unhappy as he is with ninth then Glock in a Toyota – which, lest we forget, is supposed to be one of the fastest cars in 2009 ­– finishing behind him must be as painful as being stuck with a Toyota Prius as a courtesy road car (I’m sure he has something a lot more interesting). 4.5/10

Robert Kubica (11^th)
He’s never sought out the limelight and even when he was battling for the World Championship last year he was quiet. Now though, he looks positively rock star noisy last year compared to how he is now. We know he’s one of the most naturally quick drivers on the grid, but you might as well put him in a soapbox at the moment judging by how fast the BMW is. An improvement, but an improvement to 11^th can’t put his mind too much at ease. 5/10

Nelson Piquet (12^th)
Crasher Piquet didn’t crash, and drove a solid – if uninspiring race – to finish where he did. However, it does look as though he’s happy to just coast round the track, but with Alonso – one of the most exciting and aggressive F1 drivers around – as team-mate, he isn’t going to look like Senna is he? The last two races haven’t been bad, but his likely replacement, Romain Grosjean, only went and took pole, a race victory and a second place in the GP2 round this weekend. News about as welcome as a kick to the head you feel. 5/10

Kazuki Nakajima (13^th)
‘Copy’ and ‘paste’ first sentence of Piquet’s report here. Pitted early after contact at the start, rejoined at the back, but drove a long, solid second stint to move up the order. End of the day though, he finished in 13^th. With only 14 runners at the end of the race. 4/10

Giancarlo Fisichella (14^th)
Qualified last, and was last in the race (out of the finishers). The Force India is not the fastest car out on the track at the moment – quite the opposite in fact – but you have to ask yourself whether the Italian is the right man to push this team forward. Personally, I think this is his last season. Here’s hoping he can go out with a bang. I.e. points, not an explosion. 3/10

Kimi Räikkönen (15^th – RET)
Some say he lacks motivation, but how can you have any motivation when your team doesn’t persuade you to set another time in Q1, to make sure you make it into Q2? Out he went in Q1, and then started the race complaining that his KERS wasn’t working. He seemed to be all the better for it though after making up six places in the opening racing laps. Oh, and he also couldn’t see the lights at the start because the new rear wings are so big. All this then his car came to a grinding halt on lap 18. You could argue that he should have made the call to go back out in Q1 but when you have this much bad luck on race day it doesn’t really matter at all. A sentiment I am sure Raikkonen shares. 6/10 (for making up places at the start) 1/10 (Ferrari’s management of the Finn) 10/10 (for bad luck)

Heikki Kovalainen (16^th – RET)
It wasn’t a day for the Finns was it? A lacklustre qualifying performance followed by gearbox failure. He seems very relaxed for a man that has been completely outperformed by his team-mate this season, even if he has admittedly only finished two races thanks to a healthy dose of bad luck. 3/10

Jarno Trulli (17^th – RET)
Nudged off by Rosberg at the start and then rejoined the track, facing sideways. Cue a pile up that took out all the drivers below. A racing incident but not what Toyota need. 1/10

Sébastien Buemi (18^th – RET)
Taken out on lap one. 1/10

Sébastien Bourdais (19^th – RET)
Taken out on lap one. 1/10 (Level of anguish at Toro Rosso after both cars need collecting on a truck after not even completing one lap? 10/10)

Adrian Sutil (20^th – RET)
Went wide at turn one, only to rejoin the track at turn two, into Trulli. Not really his fault but when you don’t even make it round one turn successfully… 0/10

On an unrelated note, did anyone notice that the podium looked quite, umm, ‘old’ this weekend? Button, Barrichello, Webber… A combined age of 97 must be some sort of a record in recent years.

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The Chinese Grand Prix was another soaking affair, yet this weekend it wasn’t Brawn GP scoring a one-two but Red Bull. Sebastian Vettel, who proved his prowess in the wet at last year’s Italian Grand Prix, once again drove faultlessly to score a maiden victory for the team.

1st: Sebastian Vettel
Having put his car on pole the German managed to keep the Brawns at bay and, despite atrocious conditions and safety cars, he drove brilliantly to his second career win. Escaped serious damage after Toro Rosso’s Buemi drove into the back of him, which goes to show just how much luck can play a part when it’s that wet. 9/10

2nd: Mark Webber
A career best for Webber who, although he was outdriven by his team-mate, managed to keep his car on the track – most of the time – and battled well with Button’s Brawn. 8/10

3rd: Jenson Button
Complained of severe grip problems after not getting any heat into the tyres, which meant that at some points he was weaving down the straight. Another solid race for Button, whose smooth style is just what’s needed when it’s this wet. A few mistakes, but overall a good weekend. 8/10

4th: Rubens Barrichello
Even though he has yet to outclass his team-mate in a Grand Prix this season Barrichello drove a solid, if a little uneventful, race. 7/10

5th: Heikki Kovalainen
Unlike Hamilton, Kovalainen drove a mature race and kept his car on the black stuff. Even if he didn’t have the speed that his team-mate showed on occasion, he will be satisfied with completing more than one lap of a Grand Prix, something that must have been starting to worry him a little. 7/10

6th: Lewis Hamilton
Got his car into Q3 for the first time this season and started well from ninth, storming through the field to fifth, only to spin off. He stormed through the field again, and then span off again… While he showed blistering pace his driving style means he doesn’t always conserve his tyres well. He complained of losing all grip on his front left after five laps, but he must accept some of the blame for that. Well done for pushing hard though – he had nothing to lose after all… 5/10

7th: Timo Glock
After starting 19th on the grid Glock drove smartly up the field, only for a clash with Heidfeld on lap 13 to delay him. He recovered well and despite meandering off course on a few occasions – something that you have to forgive drivers in weather like this – he clawed his way back up again. Although he is yet to do something spectacular, something tells me that he has a bright future ahead. 7/10

8th: Sebastien Buemi
The only rookie on the grid had a brilliant race, challenging Vettel for the drive of the day. He was lucky to escape after hitting the back of Vettel (who had slowed under yellow to avoid passing the car in front, which he thought was Barrichello but was in fact Trulli) but recovered well to another points-scoring finish. 8/10

9th: Fernando Alonso
Having put his car second on the grid with a light fuel load, the team decided to pull him in early after only seven laps – when the safety car was still out. He rejoined at the very back and with a full tank of fuel and zero visibility he struggled to work his way through the field. The Renault, however, was hardly the car of the day. Eventually made up ground, but a spin late meant he missed out on points when he was starting to show some real pace. 7/10

10th: Kimi Räikkönen
The Finn had real problems finding any grip at all and seemed to be going backwards at times. His team-mate had no such problems, but Räikkönen’s lack of speed was such that Hamilton overtook him on numerous occasions before spinning off again. Although he was classed fourth at one point he never worked his way back up the field after pitting. 5/10

11th: Sébastien Bourdais
His rookie team-mate showed that the Toro Rosso was one of the cars to have in the wet conditions, but Bourdais never looked like setting the world alight and spun so often that he never kept position. 5/10

12th: Nick Heidfeld
After a good start Heidfeld took over Webber’s mantel of the ‘unluckiest man of the day’, aquaplaning off the track, colliding with Glock on lap 13 and then being hit by one of Sutil’s wheels from the wreckage of his crash and losing four places as a result. 6/10

13th: Robert Kubica
Trulli was going so slowly it was inevitable that someone would drive into the back of him, and that someone was Kubica. The replacement wing fitted after that clash eventually worked loose, so he lost even more time pitting again. Kubica is a great driver but has had little to shout about so far this season – I suspect BMW will struggle to hold onto him if it can’t start to find some extra pace somewhere. 6/10

14th: Giancarlo Fisichella
Fisichella spent much of his time finding his way back onto the track and suffered severe graining problems with his tyres. Another sedate race for a man who can’t afford to keep being outdriven by his team-mate. 4/10

15th: Nico Rosberg
A day to forget for Rosberg who complained of severe visibility problems – something I would have thought most of the grid was suffering with… He did drive well, when he could see, but never really looked set to challenge. A late gamble on intermediates was a real long shot, but you’ve got to admire him for a least taking a punt. 5/10

16th: Nelsinho Piquet
Another dreadful day for Piquet. Again hugely outclassed by Alonso in qualifying and the race. He had to stop twice for a new nose after two huge spins and really doesn’t seem to have any positives to take away from the weekend. Another few races like this and his seat may not be safe for the rest of this season, let alone in 2010. 2/10

17th: Adrian Sutil
A good performance from the German, who was looking at a points finish until a spin and a big impact ended his race on lap 51. Another very disappointing outcome following a good strategy by the Force India team and a good drive. 6/10

18th: Kazuki Nakajima
Although he was unlucky to retire with transmission problems, he didn’t exactly make a huge impact when he was ‘on’ the track. Numerous spins and off-track excursions meant this was another weekend to forget. 4/10

19th: Felipe Massa
If Räikkönen’s speed was any measure of how fast the Ferrari was in these conditions, then Massa drove an absolute blinder. The Brazilian – often criticised for only being able to drive a good race from pole, or for not being able to drive in the wet (please see Silverstone 2008) – proved his critics wrong. A real shame that an electrical problem robbed him of his first points in 2009. 8/10

20th: Jarno Trulli
The Italian really struggled in the wet, complaining that he couldn’t get any grip and only lasted 13 laps before Kubica ploughed into the back of him. 5/10

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

After the whirlwind of action over the past few weeks in Formula 1 the dust is finally settling.

Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams found a loophole in the regulations regarding the rear diffuser. They took it and at the pre-season tests they were considerably quicker than the other cars. The other teams complained, the FIA provisionally said that they were legal – as did the stewards at the Australian Grand Prix – and more recently an appeal has been considered and rejected.

Forgive me for being cynical but do we really think that the other teams, if they had spotted the loophole, would have thought that it just ‘wouldn’t be cricket’ if they were to follow it up? No. That is about as likely as Mr Mosley putting a ‘Spank it to the Max’ sticker on the rear of his car (an item you may be interested to hear that can be bought at the Nürburgring).

What’s more, Ross Brawn approached the other teams before the season started asking whether they wanted to clarify that area of the new rules. They politely declined.

Formula 1 is all about (restricted) innovation. And I admire any team that can gain an advantage by legally interpreting the rules in a different way. If the FIA was to rule the other way at the appeal and claim that the diffusers were illegal then it would have been a sad, sad day for the sport. What was quite telling was the fact that certain teams started redesigning their rear diffusers as soon as they saw the Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams cars, long before they were declared legal…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Four of 36 NASCAR races down and the Sprint Cup is wide open. At this early stage four-time champion Jeff Gordon leads the series from Clint Bowyer and last weekend’s winner Kurt Busch, while defending champion Jimmie Johnson has yet to win a race and is 13th in the points. Gordon has been the most consistently competitive driver so far this season, but no one has a clear edge. Matt Kenseth won last month’s Daytona 500 and won again the following weekend at the California Speedway, before Kyle Busch scored his first victory of the season at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt scored a convincing win at the Atlanta Motor Speedway last Sunday, dominating the race and out-duelling points leader Gordon and Carl Edwards in the final sprint to the flag. Kurt is Roger Penske’s lead driver, but he and Penske’s team have been conspicuously uncompetitive in recent years. Busch demonstrated at Atlanta, however, that Dodge’s latest NASCAR engine has plenty of power. His victory was the most impressive performance for both driver and team in two or three seasons.

In the four races run so far, three drivers have won for three different teams and manufacturers. Kenseth, the 2003 champion, scored his two wins for the Roush Fenway Ford team, with Kyle Busch winning for Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota, before brother Kurt won for Penske and Dodge. And of course Gordon leads the championship for Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports, so that all four of NASCAR’s competing manufacturers have something to crow about. In that way NASCAR couldn’t have asked for more from its opening races.

Nor are there any problems – so far at least – in filling the field with 43 competitive cars. Four drivers and teams failed to qualify at Atlanta, but every qualifier was a strong runner with no stragglers. The depth of the field is evident in Juan Pablo Montoya’s continuing struggles with Chip Ganassi’s Dodge-equipped team. Montoya qualified an encouraging fourth at Atlanta but didn’t run well in the race and eventually finished five laps down in 27th place. Scott Speed is also discovering how tough NASCAR is as he struggles to match the pace set by Red Bull Toyota team-mate Brian Vickers, who challenged Kurt Busch for the win at Atlanta. Speed, meanwhile, ran near the back of the field and his race ended in the wall.

Nor has the season started well for three-time champion Jimmie Johnson or team-mate Dale Earnhardt Jr. Johnson and Earnhardt are Gordon’s team-mates, along with veteran Mark Martin, in the four-car Hendrick Chevrolet team, but neither has been able to score any results so far this year. Johnson has run well but has yet to enjoy a clean race. He finished ninth in Atlanta and is currently 13th in the points. Earnhardt – by far NASCAR’s most popular driver – has been mired in the midfield after bearing the brunt of criticism from both fans and the media following his collision with Vickers at Daytona.

One thing is clear, and that is there are going to be plenty of empty seats at many NASCAR races this year. Daytona was close to full thanks to numerous creative ways of giving away tickets, and Las Vegas two weeks ago also enjoyed a pretty strong crowd, although not a sell-out by any means. But the California Speedway the week after Daytona was only half full, and Atlanta wasn’t much better. Atlanta has been struggling to sell seats for many years and last Sunday the place was around two-thirds full.

After four straight races on superspeedways NASCAR takes a rare weekend off before resuming with a pair of short-track races on half-mile ovals at Bristol, Tennessee on March 22, and Martinsville, Virginia on March 29. Bristol seats no fewer than 130,000 fans and has been a sell-out for many years, but not this time. It was reported last weekend that more than 30,000 seats are unsold, but it’s fair to say that in today’s economy 100,000 isn’t anything to sneeze at. NASCAR has its troubles, but the party is far from over.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago my esteemed colleague Rob Widdows, wrote a blog about his predictions for the 2009 Grand prix season.

Well, I decided that it’s all very well making predictions but what are the odds of any of these happening? I annoyingly agree with almost every point Rob made, but others have different views and I decided that the only way to sort it – apart from waiting for a year – was to find out the odds of everything happening.

So here you go, Rob did say that he wasn’t taking any bets but Blue Square are apparently…

Robert Kubica to win the 2009 Drivers’ Championship: 6/1

McLaren to win the 2009 Constructors’ Championship: 15/8

The BMW F1.09 will win in Melbourne: 3/1

Giancarlo Fisichella will retire at the end of 2009: 10/3

Jarno Truilli will retire at the end of 2009: 7/2

Kimi Raikkonen will retire at the end of 2009: 11/4

Toyota will stop participating in Formula 1 at the end of 2009: 10/3

KERS will be stopped at the end of the season: 5/1

Williams will score over 50 points in the season: 2/3

Fernando Alonso will move to Ferrari in 2010: 11/4

Sir Fred Goodwin will be the next FIA president: 12/1

And a couple of others that I couldn’t resist while I was there…

Sebastien Loeb will win every rally this season: 7/1

Valentino Rossi to win the 2009 Championship: evens

James Toseland to win the 2009 Championship: 80/1

One of the most surprising ones? Loeb winning every rally this season at only 7/1. It appears that we aren’t the only ones that think the Frenchman is nigh on invincible.

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It is truly remarkable just how many people love to watch motor racing. Almost everyone I meet knows something about the forthcoming Grand Prix season. Many have plans to go to at least one race. Many have their favourite drivers.

They all have opinions, both negative and positive, about the sport. I was queuing in a shop the other day when a man started telling me how wonderful Lewis Hamilton is. Then I was standing at a bar, having a quiet glass of wine, when a woman asked me who would win the championship this year?

I have no idea. Have you?

Lots of people ask me how Mr Ecclestone has managed to hold on to so much power. They all like to offer a wager on what will happen in 2009.

So, if we haven’t met, here are a few thoughts on the year ahead:

1.    The BMW F1.09 will be very fast in Melbourne.
2.    Robert Kubica will be in the hunt for the championship.
3.    Giancarlo Fisichella will retire.
4.    So will Jarno Trulli.
5.    And Kimi Räikkonen.
6.    Toyota will not continue into 2010.
7.    KERS will be very troublesome, and controversial.
8.    McLaren will win the constructors’ title.
9.    Williams will be revitalised and score points.
10.    Fernando Alonso will move to Ferrari in 2010.
11.    Sir Fred Goodwin will join the FIA.
12.    Rear tyre wear will be a headache.

I’m not taking any bets but some of these will come to pass.

More interestingly, David Coulthard will be the star of the new BBC TV coverage. This will reinvigorate Martin Brundle and the coverage will be warmly received.

Plans for a Grand Prix in London will be announced. Boris Johnson will support the plan and Donington will be put on hold

Aston Martin will not win Le Mans but the team will bring the race back into the headlines. The cars will look wonderful, sound terrific.

Meanwhile I have been talking to Bob Dance, chief mechanic at Team Lotus during the golden years of Colin Chapman’s innovative team. The old mechanics are simply the most colourful, entertaining and honest people you’ll ever meet in this sport. Bob has so many great stories from the Grands Prix of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s that he could fill the fattest possible book. He was a big fan of Mario Andretti, another huge character from the days when etc, etc. Mechanics tell good stories so keep an eye open for Mr Dance’s recollections of a wild night out with the 1978 World Champion in the magazine soon.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The Formula 1 circus has come to Monaco and so far, apart from a few gentle brushes with the walls, the whole grid has managed to complete the opening two practice sessions.

The forecast is for rain and what better race to have it at than Monaco, when none of the drivers have raced without traction control in the wet yet. If the promised rain does arrive, the race – I fear – will be won by the most level headed and cautious driver on the day.

Hamilton seems to love the circuit through the Principality and spent much of the day at the top of the sheets. Raikkonen did respond with a flurry of quick laps at the end of the first session and nudged the Brit from 1st place; however, Hamilton was even quicker in the next session and was only briefly knocked off the top of the sheets by Rosberg, who seems to be in great form in the Williams.

Piquet still seems to be struggling with the Renault – Alonso was 1.5 seconds quicker in P1 and then a second quicker in P2. Last year Briatore was very publicly vocal about Kovalainen taking time to get up to speed yet remains silent on Piquet’s pace. I doubt he is as relaxed as he looks but I suspect it is only a matter of time before the pressure of needing to perform further hampers the young Brazilian.

The McLarens do have the measure of the Ferraris for the time being, but as speculated the Scuderia is certainly not as far back as last year. As for the race – well, thanks to the overtaking possibilities in Monaco, much of the result depends on how the drivers do in qualifying. I would have thought, bar a problem or a mistake, Hamilton will take pole, with either one of the Ferraris or Kovalainen lining up alongside him.

However, with the likes of Rosberg showing the pace he is at the moment and the BMWs going well, I will no doubt be completely wrong. (When Hamilton does get pole I’ll delete this last sentence).
Practice 1

Practice 2

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So here we are in Istanbul, Turkey. The sun isn’t quite shining, but it certainly looks like we’ll be in for a good race on Sunday – this being one of the Formula 1 tracks where it is actually possible to overtake.

As expected the Ferraris seem to be roughly half a second quicker than the McLarens. Although the times are much closer than that, the long runs suggest that the Scuderia’s cars do hold a clear advantage. As for Hamilton‘s time in P2, well… he went out right at the end and completed just the one flying lap so who knows how much fuel he had in.

The Renaults showed that their pace in Barcelona wasn’t a one-off with two strong sessions from Alonso and it’s good to see Red Bull up in the top 5. Webber clipped the grass early on in the second session which sent his car spinning into the barrier. The Australian was unhurt but the armco certainly did a pretty good job of short-wheel basing the car.

As for the rest, Kovalainen seemed to have left his sense of self-preservation in the hospital, as he was straight back on the pace. A quite remarkable feat considering he suffered a 26G crash less than two weeks ago. The BMWs don’t seem to be as close to McLaren as they have been promising but, as I said before, the practice times can be a little misleading.

So predictions for the Grand Prix on Sunday? Short of a breakdown or moment of madness from Raikkonen or Massa, the Ferraris look as though they could take another 1-2. As for the last place on the podium, I would have thought that both Hamilton and Kovalainen have the pace to take it.

Having bad mouthed the ITV F1 live feed the other week, I am pleased to say that it is vastly improved. Last time I watched something on there I spent an hour and a half staring at a frozen screen with snippets of flying laps sped up a hundred times so that the ‘feed’ could catch up again. However, its gremlins seem to be cured and you can now sit back and soak up the sound of the V8s. Whether this was down to me and my blog, I very much doubt, but it is now a pretty good place to catch the practice sessions.

Practice 1

Practice 2

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Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

So the European season has begun. Almost all 22 cars completed the two Friday practices without incident and the Ferraris look like they are the pace setters at the moment. The Scuderia occupied the top two spots in the opening practice and were just under half a second quicker than Hamilton. Massa managed (after I had said that his ‘moments’ would become less frequent from Bahrain onwards) to spin twice, once at the chicane on his flying lap and then on the exit of turn 8 later on in the first practice.

The most interesting part of the two opening practice sessions? Well in the first, a second covered the first 4 cars and in the second, it covered a quite remarkable 12 cars. Indeed, if you ignore the Super Aguris, all the cars were within two seconds of Räikkönen’s fastest time. It may surprise you even more that in the second Friday practice in the French Grand Prix last year, the top 15 cars set times within 1 second of each other. And they say Formula 1 isn’t interesting…

On the subject of Super Aguris, it is great to see them on track as up until today they were still in talks with Honda over whether or not they could actually compete this weekend. With the rule changes next year, the Japanese manufacturer has made it quite clear that they aren’t prepared to keep shelling out inordinate amounts of money to keep Aguri Suzuki afloat. After one possible backer dropped out at the last minute the team is again looking for a sponsor. Let’s hope that they find one otherwise this may well be one of the last times we see them on the Grand Prix circuit.

I was actually quite surprised to see them leave the garage this morning as competing over a race weekend amounts to what us mere mortals would consider a cash bonfire. Of course, they don’t want to miss out on the money they receive for competing in a Grand Prix.

As for the rest… The Renaults certainly looked quick in the second session but watching the onboard footage it looked as though both drivers were pushing pretty hard. Whether they can keep that sort of pace up over the whole weekend, I doubt. Force India, after saying mid-week that they are ready to get into Q3, have taken another step forward with strong finishes in the second session.

Whether all the teams were actually trying to set quick times, I am not convinced. I suggest that the Ferraris are going to be hard to beat come Sunday and the McLarens seem to have the edge over the BMWs for the time being.

The good news for all of you is that Nigel Roebuck is getting ready to write his first www.motorsportmagazine.co.uk Grand Prix Report and will share his views with us, here, after the race on Sunday. For a far more insightful and interesting read… log back on, Sunday evening and go via the ‘Grand Prix Reports’ link on the homepage to read it.

Practice 1

Practice 2

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Well, Massa needed a win, or at the very least a strong performance with all four wheels staying firmly on the Tarmac, and he delivered. From when the red lights went out he dominated a fairly uneventful race for the two Ferrari cars and finished over three seconds ahead of his Finnish team-mate.

He has a good record in Bahrain, having won there last year ahead of Hamilton and Raikkonen, but the fact that he managed to drive such a dominant race after so much criticism was a testament to his mental and driving ability. I am not saying he is cured of his moments – but if he can drive like this for the rest of the reason, they will be forgotten by many.

As for the McLarens, Hamilton had yet another disastrous race. He was extremely slow off the line, his car looking as though he tried to draw away in 3rd, and dropped back to 10th place. He then slammed into the back of Alonso and consequently had to pit for a new nose cone. With the rest of his race hampered by a heavy fuel load and traffic he came home a disappointing 13th.

His team-mate, however, drove an undramatic race to finish 5th. It is obvious that the BMWs are quicker than the McLarens now (or at least in Bahrain) and hopefully for the Woking-based squad they will have found more speed from somewhere, come the European season. If not, they will be the ‘BMWs of 2008′ – the team that is relying on others not to finish in order to score good points and finish on the podium. Something that none of them would accept.
But well done Kovalainen, he may not have the raw pace of Hamilton but his lows are much higher than Hamilton’s when things go wrong. Something that, come Australia, may well count towards beating his team-mate in the Championship standings.

The BMWs both looked strong with Kubica finishing 3rd, and Heidfeld only three and a half seconds behind him. They have had a remarkable start to the season – lets hope they can continue competing for the podium. They certainly have one of the strongest driver line-ups on the grid.

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Massa looked very much the strongest driver all weekend until Robert Kubica took the first pole of his career in Q3. Whether he was carrying a much lighter fuel load or not, we won’t know until tomorrow. If this is the case or not – he drove a remarkably good lap.

At the front of the grid, it was business as usual. The Ferraris still seem to have the measure of the McLarens and, as predicted, Hamilton managed to qualify ahead of Raikkonen, (I have to point this out as all my other predictions are so far off I have promised myself never to bet on Formula 1).

Again, the ‘Don’ of one lap pace – Trulli – finished well in 7th and for the first time this season Button made it into the third session. Having been bold enough to say that the Toyotas just don’t have the race pace to finish in the points earlier this season, I stand corrected. Having been the only team that started with a clean sheet of paper for their 2008 car they seem to be consistently capable of scoring points. Add to that the fact that they are one of only two teams to test in Bahrain – expect more of the same tomorrow.

It was good to see Button finish the day 9th on the grid. The Honda is improving and I suggest it will continue to do so. Brawn has made it clear that he has the ability to make on-the-spot decisions which before had to go through days of committees. With the capacity to move forward unhindered by delays (in the right direction) they really should be scoring points sooner rather than later.

However, if there was one driver with ‘less luck’ than Webber – you’d probably have to say Button was up there with the ‘best’ of them. Lets just hope that’s not the case on race day.

Predictions for tomorrow? Well, if Massa stays on the track and his Ferrari engine doesn’t decide to pack-up then I am sure he will finish on the podium. Whether he can keep Raikkonen behind him or whether Kubica has the pace to challenge the Scuderia over a long distance I am not sure, but the Pole is certainly in the right position to fight for his best finish yet. I don’t think the McLarens have the speed to trouble the two teams on the front row so I doubt whether they’ll be on the podium. Who knows… knowing my predictions, the podium will consist of McLarens and Red Bulls.

Qualifying

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For the first time I decided to watch the two practice sessions on the ITV site with their ‘live feed’. This was, without a doubt, my worst Formula 1 viewing session ever. The fact that there isn’t any commentary is brilliant. An hour and a half of unrelenting, unmolested noise is wonderful.

However, as soon as it lulls you into a V8-induced slumber the sound is taken over by what can only be described as ET on speed. The picture then decides to pack up its bags and go home, leaving you in a suspended state, watching… well… nothing. Everyone in the office thought that I had finally lost the plot and was lost in a photo of the F1 ITV logo.

At first I thought it was something our end but with the latest Macs, this is utter rubbish. I understand that a ‘live stream’ is never going to be perfect but this was an utter waste of time. Raikkonen lost it at one point, and someone else did but I can’t for the life of me tell you who. They were using Bridgestones though. That was what the screen decided to freeze on anyway.

There is something quite eerie about the Bahrain circuit. There are no landmarks to speak of on track and the tarmac is so wide it looks like the cars have all been bought by Corgi. A fascinating place as Rob Widdows will tell you in the next issue of the magazine.

As for the racing, the Ferraris look like the ones to beat with Massa finishing the second practice nearly a second quicker than his team-mate Raikkonen. However, the Ferrari garage isn’t all sunshine and smiles as Raikkonen lost it in both practice sessions, needing to return to the pits in the first to get sand removed from his car. The dusty nature of the circuit does seem to be causing problems as many drivers were struggling for grip in the opening laps of the first session. If Massa can keep his pace throughout the weekend and stay on track it will certainly silence a few of his critics.

Hamilton ran well but lost it at turn 7 late in the second practice sending him sideways into the barrier. His car is badly damaged but we have heard that he is fine. As he said on Top Gear, he does occasionally enjoy a “good shunt”.

The Williams are back on form after Malaysia and the McLarens are biting at the heals of the Ferraris. What will happen in qualifying? Well, as long as everything goes according to plan, I suggest Massa will get pole, with Raikkonen making up the front row. Hamilton may well be able to beat Raikkonen to it but looking at the speed of the Scuderia’s cars he will have to carry much less fuel. Time will tell.

The rest? Well, the Toyotas don’t seem to be as fast here as they were in Malaysia. And five teams have finished with times that put their drivers next to each other on the time sheets. You may well ask; how much difference does the driver make? Quite a bit I think and that’s why I am sure that Kimi is going to push Massa all the way, even if his time sheet does look as good as the Brazilian’s so far.

Practice 1

Practice 2

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The second round of the World Championship saw Ferrari take a dominant victory, with Raikkonen crossing the line some 20 seconds ahead of BMW’s Kubica.

Massa, who took pole yesterday, was leap-frogged by his Finnish team-mate during the first round of pit stops and later spun off. It isn’t clear as to why he lost the back end but I suspect there was a slight driver error, something that Massa isn’t new to.

As for the McLarens, well, both of the cars were penalised 5 grid places yesterday for holding up Nick Heidfeld, and in my opinion rightly so. As I mentioned in the Qualifying report, the speeds which they were doing their fuel saving in lap at were lethal considering the BMW was closing at 170mph. So having started from 8^th and 9^th, Hamilton got a great start and come the end of lap one was up to 5^th. Kovalainen did well, but didn’t manage to get higher than 7^th in the opening stages.

It was during Hamilton’s first pit stop that his hopes of a podium were dashed as there was so much brake dust on his front right that the pit crew couldn’t get the wheel off. The stop took some 20 seconds meaning that a final position of 5^th was about all he could hope for.

The real surprise for the day was that Trulli managed to keep his qualifying pace and ended the race in 4^th position. After two dreadful seasons it seems that Toyota have finally made a more competitive car. Indeed they were one of the only teams to start with a blank piece of paper for their 2008 car, most teams being content to revise their 2007 cars considering the rule changes coming in to place next year.

Coulthard, having been openly critical of Massa’s move in the Australian Grand Prix which took him out of the race, has since changed the mirrors on his Red Bull – perhaps not the best advert for being innocent?

Although Ferrari can leave the weekend with a well-deserved win it will be playing on their minds that, after losing three cars to engine failures last weekend (Raikkonen, Massa and a Toro Rosso which uses a Ferrari engine), Adrian Sutil’s engine (another Ferrari customer) failed on Friday. It is rare for even one engine to fail during a weekend’s racing, let alone an average of 2 every Grand Prix.

The Australian Grand Prix it wasn’t; there were certainly less accidents for a start, but Sepang’s final results were a remarkably fair reflection on all the drivers’ and cars’ pace. The BMWs were the second quickest cars out there, behind the Ferraris. While the McLarens, even though they started down in 8^th and 9^th, really didn’t have the pace to have fought for a win.

Well done Kimi for another typically relaxed win.

Constructors Championship

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An all Ferrari front row and an all McLaren second row; the British outfit is saying that Ferrari must be carrying more fuel, Ferrari are saying that Massa did a particularly good Q3 lap and Nick Heidfeld is quite rightly complaining about cars being in the way on his flying lap. Oh and both ‘number 2s’ out qualified their team-mates.

The Ferraris are definitely carrying more fuel than the McLarens but the gap is too big for that to be the only reason why they are struggling round the Malaysian circuit. McLaren will be running longer in the first stint but whether it is long enough, I doubt it. Ferrari have got their act together since Australia and we will see a much better reflection on just how much they have progressed over the winter months.

It was really down to Nick Heidfeld’s driving that prevented what could have been a monumental accident during his final flying lap as many of the other cars on the track were cruising round, saving fuel, having already completed their fast lap. There is nothing strange in that but many of them were sitting on the racing line, meaning that Heidfeld, who was still at race speed, had to weave in and out of them losing perhaps two hundredths of a second. This would have pushed him up to P3 ahead of Kovalainen.

As to why the other cars were on the racing line is unclear, although I wouldn’t have thought that they had seen Heidfeld approaching, such was his closing speed. Something desperately needs to be done – whether the cars have to complete the lap in a minimum time or have a minimum speed (off the racing line) I am not sure but it is only a matter of time before we see a rear-end of huge proportions.

As for the rest of the field, Trulli qualified well putting the Toyota on the third row and another strong showing from Webber put him in 8^th position. I suspect the Toyota will slip down the order in the race and the two Williams’, which qualified down in 16^th and 18^th, may well be more competitive in the race. Time will tell.

The new qualifying set-up makes such a difference – I wonder if anyone else has been surprised to find themselves on the edge of their seat at the end of Q3? I certainly was. I will no doubt be clean off it come tomorrow and the red lights going out.

Qualifying

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Kyle Busch (above) has threatened to win every NASCAR Sprint Cup race run this year and at the high-banked Atlanta Motor Speedway last weekend the 22-year old finally put it all together to score a dominant victory. After three years with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team, Busch was dropped by Hendrick last year in favour of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Busch was snapped up by Joe Gibbs’ team which also switched over the winter to Toyota and the combination has been the quickest in NASCAR so far this year.

Busch’s win at Atlanta was Toyota’s first in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series while teammate Tony Stewart (above) made it a one-two sweep for Toyota. It took Toyota just thirteen months and forty races to get to the front in NASCAR and with Busch now leading the championship it’s clear to all that Toyota not only has arrived in NASCAR but that many more wins are bound to follow.

(Kyle Busch)

Meanwhile, the passel of open-wheel drivers who followed Juan Pablo Montoya’s tracks in switching to NASCAR this year are beginning to face the cold reality of their new lives in stock car racing. At this early stage of the season Montoya is doing no better than last year and is mired in twenty-fourth place in Sprint Cup points while each of Sam Hornish, Dario Franchitti and Patrick Carpentier are outside the top thirty-five in points. Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier have been fortunate through NASCAR’s first five races of the year in enjoying quaranteed starting positions. But if they’re unable to break into the top thirty-five at the Bristol, Tennessee bullring this coming weekend they will face the same challenge encountered last year by A.J. Allmendinger.

(Montoya leads the pack in the number 42 car)

Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier will have to make it into the field on pure qualifying speed which means they’ll have to be among the ten or fifteen fastest cars at each race to have any hope of making the field. Like Montoya and Allmendinger before them, each of Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier are discovering that NASCAR is a much tougher game than they ever imagined.

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As this goes live on Monday February 25 I will be 30,000 feet above the Atlantic, returning from the NASCAR race at California Speedway. As you can imagine, I am more exited than a six-year-old child before Christmas.

As someone who has never been to the U.S. of A., let alone a NASCAR race before I’ll hopefully be able to tell you all about it from an ‘outsider’s point of view’. My aim is to find out whether Toyota has been embraced by the fans and what impact they have had on the die-hard American supporters and teams.

Hopefully I’ll make it through LA customs and I’ll let you all know how it goes on Tuesday February 26 when I get back…

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It all began with a telephone call from his son.

“Hey Dad, one of our drivers has pulled out, how about you come and drive with us? We’re testing next week, why don’t you come along?” said Justin Bell who was due to race a Riley-Pontiac for RVO Motorsports in the Daytona 24 Hours in January. His Father did not immediately accept the invitation.

“Well, it was tempting of course,” says Derek, “ but I’d been back home to England for Christmas, I’d had quite a lot to eat and drink and, although I’ve always kept in shape, I wasn’t sure about going to Daytona at the age of sixty-six in a car I’d never driven. Anyway, Justin persuaded me to go along to a test at the start of January and I first drove the thing at night which wasn’t exactly ideal.”

The initial test wasn’t all plain sailing, even for a man who has won eight twenty-four races, three of them at the Daytona speedway.

“Yes, I was a bit jet-lagged, I’d only just got back to Florida. And it was at night, it was cold, and I couldn’t get used to the sequential gearshift to begin with. I had problems changing down the gears with the paddle system, I was driving like an old woman, and I felt a bit depressed. The last time I’d used that kind of semi-automatic shift was in the Ferrari 333SP and that was about five years ago, so I was a bit all over the place. But the guys talked me through it and after a couple of days I was pretty much on the pace. I was loving the whole thing about being back in a competitive car, and being part of the whole scene again. The car is quick, you know, it’s got nearly 600 bhp and it’s quite tail-happy which keeps you on the ball. It was quite emotional and I was a bit mixed up in my own mind about what to do. So I had a chat with my wife Mistie,” he smiles, “and she said, ‘look honey, if you want to do it, do it,’ which was great, and typical of her. Then a few days later she said, ‘hey, sweetheart, do you really need to do this? It makes me a little nervous,’ and my young son Sebastian said, ‘ yeah, and it makes me feel nervous too Dad’. I understood that, with his big brother and his Father in the race, but I’d made up my mind to do one last big twenty-four hours. If it was back in the days when people were getting killed all the time, then I would almost certainly have stayed away.”

By this stage Derek had just three weeks to prepare for the race. He went to the gym, worked out a bit, got a new helmet and some new overalls, and started to get back into the routine.

“Don’t forget,” says Derek, “ I did race in 2007, I drove the Porsche 962 at Brian Redman’s event at Daytona and I beat Emerson Fittipaldi in a Toyota celebrity race, that was good. I always try to do the Goodwood Revival, too, after all it’s where I won my first ever race in a Lotus 7 in 1964 and it’s a wonderful circuit with some great memories. Then I drove the Bentley Le Mans car at Sears Point at the end of the year, and that was pretty physical, so I knew I was in good shape. In fact the doctors said I was absolutely fine, all the vital functions up to speed, you know. I mean, if I’d been out for a year or something then I probably would have said no to Justin for Daytona.”
There were to be five drivers in the RVO Riley-Pontiac – the Bells plus team owner Roger Schramm, a young Estonian called Tonis Kasemets, and Paul Dallenbach from the famous American dynasty of racing Dallenbachs.

“It sounds like a big crew,” says Derek, “ but Roger was only going to do some laps towards the end while all the younger guys would be doing double stints and I was really looking forward to one last twenty-four race, one last hurrah. We rented a big fifty-foot camper and set up home at the circuit, the families came down for the race weekend, and I felt pretty relaxed about it all, very calm about the whole thing. It’s hard, you know, to give it all up after forty-four years in a racing car.”
So, raceday came, and went. Just like that. And Derek never even got behind the wheel.

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, or something,” he laughs, “but I feel cheated and today, sitting at home, I do feel very disappointed, yes. I wanted to finish with one last big race, especially at Daytona, where I’ve won three times, but I’ve been here before and it was nobody’s fault.”

There was relief, however, that Justin had survived what could have been a very nasty accident and which resulted in the car being packed away.

“We were running well,” explains Derek, “I’d told everybody to keep out of trouble, stay out of the way, and only come in if you have to, just keep it going. We were up in ninth place and Justin was flashing down the back straight at over 180 mph when he felt a vibration. Before he could get it slowed, bang, a front disc exploded and bits of it came through the floor and went whizzing past his ear, it was pretty shattering. He arrived backwards into the chicane but gathered it all up and managed to pull off the circuit and get a tow back to the pits. The damage was just too bad to continue – the wheel and the disc had torn the front suspension out of the chassis and the floor was nearly worn through to the fuel tank – so it was just as well we had to stop. Disappointing, such a shame not to have even had a go.”

So, no more Le Mans, and now no more Daytona. But lots of great memories in the bag.

“God, yes, absolutely,” Derek grins, “I mean, now we live here in Boca Raton in Florida, the place is only a couple of hours down the highway and it’s a fantastic racetrack. It is now the mega place for racing in the States, great facilities, especially since the money came in from the NASCAR races. And the fans are fantastic, they love it, and they come and talk to you, know exactly who you are and what you’ve done. For me, Le Mans will always be number one, but Daytona is very special and the twenty-four hours there is a tough race to win. It’s very different, of course, from Le Mans – in many ways. At La Sarthe you’re on an eight-mile lap with fifty-five cars whereas at Daytona you’re on a lap of less than three miles with up to seventy cars. So the traffic is much harder work, twice as stressful, and it’s much more physical. You can pass on the Mulsanne at Le Mans, at least you could before they bastardised it with those two chicanes, and there’s more of a flow to the place. Before those silly new chicanes you could relax on the Mulsanne too, move your shoulders around, flex your wrists and relax some of the cramps in the muscles. At Daytona it’s all point and squirt, with lots of second gear corners, 90 mph corners, but second gear all the same. There are slower cars everywhere, so you can get badly held up on the infield – but then you can overtake on the banking. Both places call for tremendous discipline and stamina but I think Daytona is more challenging in some ways. All these 24-hour races are extremely demanding, whether it’s Le Mans or Daytona. I remember in 1987, at Daytona, I was sharing a Porsche 962 with Al Unser and Chip Robinson and one of the side windows had been sucked out, so the ventilation system was ruined and it was getting pretty uncomfortable. Al was sick, I had the cramps and Chip was totally knackered so we brought in Al Holbert, who’d been working as crew chief, and he took over for an hour and a half. In the end A.J Foyt, who’d been chasing us, blew his engine up and we had quite an easy victory. I really thought I wouldn’t be able to do the final stint that year. The masseur put me on a bed of ice and I had such bad cramps I couldn’t get back into my overalls for those last few laps, but then the guys told me I’m on in fifteen minutes, the adrenalin kicked in and somehow you jump back in and you’re racing again. Of course it does help if you are leading the race and you’re about an hour away from victory. In the days when the cars had loads of grip, you were really knackered, especially when it was just the two of you sharing a car like the Porsche 917 at Le Mans – you can do that race with two drivers – but it’s not an option at the speedway, three is essential.”

The scene of three victories, then, in 1986,’87 and ’89, but also the scene of an extremely close encounter with concrete, an encounter of the kind that was surely responsible for a few crags on the famous craggy features of the Le Mans legend.

“God, yes, I am the luckiest bastard alive,” he laughs now, but not at the time, “that was in 1990, we were running just outside the top three in the Porsche 962. It was during the night when the left rear tyre let go on the banking between turns three and four. I tell you, tyre failure on the banking at Daytona is something you can really do without. The car went straight into the wall and took off into the night. I always used to run high on the banking, close to the wall, just in case something like that happened. Anyway, the front end went up in the air and that was it – we just flew upside down for a very long way. There were guys racing underneath me while I was flying…….. then it landed on its tail on the concrete apron by the pits. It seemed to slide for ever on its roof, my helmet was wearing through on the concrete, then it stopped. I could hear liquid trickling around somewhere, and I could smell petrol, so I released the belts and banged the fire extinguisher button quick as I could. The problem then was that the gas extinguisher sucked all the air out of the cockpit – and all the air out of me too – so I passed out. Boy, I tell you, I was lucky that time. But I have great memories of the speedway at Daytona and I just wish I could have started that one last race at the place.”

So, that’s it then, is it? Has Derek Bell finally retired? Again.

“ Well, um, yes, but…………well, look, for now it’s over, yes. But I’ve thought it was all over before. I’ve never, you know, officially retired because it’s just so hard to do. I always said that I would never do Le Mans again and there’s a thousand youngsters out there wanting to have a go, prepared to pay for a drive. I have never, and will never, race for nothing. Who knows, if I get another offer I can’t refuse……………..you forget how much you love it until you get back in the car.”

To translate that response, Derek Bell will definitely probably retire. Maybe. Remember, he first started talking about retirement at the end of 1988, the year before he took his third victory at Daytona. At the time he said he hoped he would be able to stop sensibly, not make a “bloody idiot” of himself, not become some old fogey in a blazer.

So far, so good, then.

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NASCAR is where the show and entertainment is king and the sanctioning body is in complete control of the entire production. As such, NASCAR could not have hoped for a better kick-off to its season at Daytona last weekend prior to Sunday’s 50th running of the Daytona 500. To the delirious delight of his legion of fans, scored a dominant victory in Saturday night’s Bud Shoot-out in his debut with Rick Hendrick’s team and during an early, Friday night practice session, notorious bad guys Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch got into each other on and off the track, providing the media and fans with a perfect piece of juicy controversy.
Driver introductions before the Shoot-out told the story. Busch was roundly booed by most of the crowd. Stewart enjoyed plenty of cheers as well as boos while defending-champion Jimmie Johnson and team-mate Jeff Gordon were greeted with muffled boos drowning out small ripples of applause. But when ‘Little E’ was introduced he brought-down the house as the place erupted in passionate cheering. Clearly, Earnhardt stands in a class of his own as NASCAR’s most popular driver and cultural icon.

And when ‘Little E’ went to the front in the race the place went wild, cheering with resounding enthusiasm whenever he fended off challenges from Stewart, Gordon or Dave Blaney, and going bananas on the final lap as he stayed out front entirely resistant to any moves or tricks tried by his competitors to beat Stewart, Johnson and Gordon across the line. Casey Mears also ran well, ultimately finishing sixth behind Reed Sorenson and Blaney, so it was essentially the four Hendrick Chevrolets versus a couple of Toyotas.

Of course, today’s modern, restrictor-plate constrained Daytona 500s rarely offer a window on the season to follow. What happens at Daytona and Talladega often prove to be unique, rarely if ever repeated elsewhere. Whether or not Earnhardt will be a serious championship contender this year remains to be seen, but at Daytona this week he is the unrivalled favourite.

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In Champ Car testing at Sebring last weekend, 23-year old Frenchman Franck Perera showed he will be a man to watch this year. Driving one of Eric Bachelart’s Conquest Racing cars, Champ Car rookie Perera set the pace and yesterday Bachelart announced that Perera will lead his team this year.

Can a rookie in a small team win races and challenge the likes of Newman/Haas/Lanigan for this year’s Champ Car title? Bachelart says the strength of Champ Car’s Panoz-Cosworth rules package means a small team with good engineers and a fast, young driver can compete against teams like Newman/Haas/Lanigan. With Perera in one of his cars and another competitive young driver in Conquest’s second car, Bachelart hopes to be a serious contender this year.

And Perera? He was a member of Toyota’s young driver program in Europe from 2001-2004 and tested a Toyota F1 car in ‘04. He won the Formula Renault Italian championship in ‘03 and raced in GP2 in ‘06, finishing second in the Monaco GP2 round. Perera came to the USA last year to race in the revived Mazda/Atlantic championship with Carlos Bobeda’s Condor team. He wound up finishing a strong second to Raphael Matos in the Atlantic series, scoring his first win at mid-season on the challenging Mt Tremblant road course. He won again in Toronto the next weekend and also won the year’s final Atlantic race at Elkhart Lake.

At Sebring last week Perera proved he can pedal a Champ Car as quickly as anyone and it will be interesting to see what he can do when the beleaguered Champ Car series kicks-off at Long Beach in April.

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