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Join Shaun, Mike, and Doug as they recap an awesome Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. Full rundown of all the action and some analysis regarding the teams and strategies. Also, we talk about the Mazda Road to Indy and Rally de Portugal. It was a wild one for the WRC and we have the rundown! Thanks for listening and as always, enjoy the show!
I have been listening in the car for two days (short commutes!).
Listened to the podcast. Great coverage of the Indycar event, but a little lacking in Rally. I know you were getting tired, but you totally missed on mentioning SWRC and WRC Academy. Especially since the Academ features none other than American Chris Duplessis. Great write up on how Malcom Wilson sent him a personal letter saying he would do everything he could to help him to join the Academy (I’d drop a load in my pants if I received a letter like that!). Article is on Rally America site. Although Chris ended up without any points on the first event, his efforts were very much noticed by everyone. His knowledge from building his own R2 Fiesta made his car the “little engine that could” fixing a broken rear axle as best he could and still continuing on. It sounded like he eventually limped back to service with only 3 wheels in those terrible conditions…however he arrived so late that he was considered a DNF.
Farther up front in the Academy they had multiple stage winners with Alistair Fischer eventually coming out the winner of the first round. It was actually pretty exciting, even if the radio coverage didn’t catch all of it. In SWRC it was all about survival, and this time Haydon Paddon was the lucky one to come out on top and Craig Breen (last years WRC Academy Cup champion) had a DNF due to electrical issues (think it was a deep water crossing that was the instigator of that). That means the points race in SWRC is close with Paddon just 5 points behind Breen now.
As for the WRC, I’m a huge Petter Solberg fan as well. However, I think Ford made a deal with Petter who was going to quit if he didn’t get a manufacturer seat this year. I have no idea why it was so hard for someone with as much charisma, notoriety, talent, and especially marketability as Pettery to finally get a manuf. seat. Anyway, I’ve noticed that with every interview Petter is praising Ford left and right because he has owned and managed a team and is willing to bend over backwards to help them. I don’t think Petter is getting angry or upset at still being number 2. I think it has something to do with the deal they made, plus Petter is smart enough to know that his consistancy will keep him up near the top and Ford eventually won’t have a choice but to pick him as the new number 1 later in the season. After all Petter does have to thank Jari-Mati for using his Fiesta setups to test with at each event before he makes minor tweaks for his own style. It could be that they are still saying Jari-Mati is number 1 driver so he keeps his confidence up. Jari will become WRC champion…its just a matter of when.
Back to Indycar…. I’d love it if they came back to Portland International Raceway. I agree with Doug (or was it Mike?) that the NW USA is very underserved by motorsports. I recall going to the former CART FedEx event at PIR back in the mid 1990s and there were 120,000 people attending on race day. It was packed! Okay…we do have limits on when people can come here due to our wet weather, but if you come between end of June and end of September, you are likely going to have warm and dry conditions. Oh…and you guys talked about beer when talking about China…I think I mentioned to Doug about the beer here in Oregon. More breweries within the city limits of Portland than any other city in the world (its on Wikipedia so it must be true right?). And its good beer too. I guess that’s how we make up for the depressing months and months of rain. 🙂
Until next week…Cheers!
Good post there Mike. Apologize for the lack of coverage but we went waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy over on Indy stuff and that left rally out unfortunately. I will make sure it does not happen and I should have been a bit more forceful with pushing forward to give all of the events equal coverage.