Please discuss here all your remarks and pose your questions about all racing series, except Formula One. Both technical and other questions about GP2, Touring cars, IRL, LMS, ...
Juan Montoya makes the fuel last and wins the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma, his first career Nextel Cup Series victory. He is the first foreign-born driver to win a Cup race since 1974.
It sounds like a "Days of Thunder" kind of race...
... As he bore down on the final corner, Montoya unleashed a celebratory scream. Wingo, on his way to Victory Lane for the first time since he won with Geoffrey Bodine at this very same road course 14 long years ago, had a very different reaction.
"Can I throw up now?" he said over the radio, and with good reason. It had been a tense, stomach-wringing finish to a stressful week, one that began Friday when what Montoya thought was a good car qualified 32nd at a track where no one had ever come from further back than 13th to win.
"I was just shocked when [Wingo] told me the lap time after qualifying," Montoya said. "I thought he was joking. I looked at the stand and saw he was telling the truth and thought, 'Man, we sucked.'"
Even car owner Chip Ganassi, a winner in NASCAR's top series for the first time in five years, was worried. "I've got to tell you, Friday night I was looking at the ceiling a lot laying in bed, I can tell you that," he said...
JPM raced in a Busch series road race in Mexico, and won. THen at Infineon, he went 2 for 2 on road courses with his first Nextel Cup win.
It was a weird, unusual race with everyone on weird pit stop strategies to deal with the fuel mileage issues. But the Tennis pro won. woo hoo
[quote="Giblet"]He didn't fare too well and crashed out in the dirt last week, but hey, he got to drive an 800hp+ Super Modified car around a dirt oval.quote]
Actually they are 800+hp dirt Late Model. Big difference. I thought he did pretty good for never having raced on dirt in a car like that.
Its not worth making a new topic for it but there is more good news from across the pond. Although our man, and woman, in Germany didn't fair well with Susie Stoddart finishing last, 2 laps down after a drive-through and Paul Di Resta just one place (and 1 lap) ahead at the Norrisring for the DTM, fellow West Lothian Dario Franchitti won his second IRL race of the year this weekend and extended his lead in the championship after his first win in the Indianapolis 500.
Unfortunetly with DC not fairing well in his US GP (Indianapolis) last week and McNish being cruely denied another Le Mans win when a wheel came off the Audi causing it to crash heavily (at the Indianapolis corner on the French circuit) and elimination his 3 lap lead, it hasn't been a great week for motoring Scots.
Murphy's 9th Law of Technology:
Tell a man there are 300 million stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
A win in his first rookie season in F1 and now the same at NASCAR.
Mind you he is, if I'm not mistaken, the only active driver in the world that can achieve the Triple Crown, a feat that only Graham Hill achieved to this day.
After a win at the Monaco Grand Prix and Indy 500, he has to win the Le Mans 24h.
F1 Observer wrote:This shows how much of a racer JPM is.
A win in his first rookie season in F1 and now the same at NASCAR.
Mind you he is, if I'm not mistaken, the only active driver in the world that can achieve the Triple Crown, a feat that only Graham Hill achieved to this day.
After a win at the Monaco Grand Prix and Indy 500, he has to win the Le Mans 24h.
The Brickyard 400 wouldn't hurt, either.
Heaven: Where the cooks are French, the police are British, the lovers are Greek, the mechanics are German, and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell: Where the cooks are British, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, the mechanics are French, and it is all organized by the Greeks.
I think JMP is a very good driver, but he should have stayed at F1 to show his complete talent, because in oval racing you don't show it completely turning left all the time.
I've tried to follow JPM as much as possible in his new job, and from interviews it's evident Juan loves open wheel road racing, but absolutely detests the politics in F1.
Recently, JPM got involved in, of all things, a dirt track race, in modifieds. He actually qualified for the main, but ran near the back. http://www.eldoraspeedway.com/nextelprelude.html