Goodwood Festival of Speed – The Greatest Celebration of Motorsports

Mike Shaw

On the same weekend as Pikes Peak and Mt. Washington’s Climb to the Clouds ,which should now be labeled as hill climbers weekend, was the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed.  Lord March once again hosted a spectacular event, arguably the greatest celebration of motorsports on the planet.  Illustrating how the internet has changed motosports in recent years the Festival of Speed coverage was streamed live globally for the first time this year (for free).  In addition to the streaming, they recognized social media’s big impact in motorsports with interviews including questions from around the…

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In Focus – Invested

Doug Patterson

Editor’s Note: We’ve had the pleasure and honor of having Tom and Brenda Turk offer their amazing photography skills to OpenPaddock.net since 2011. They own Piratical Photography offering a variety of services to the Washington DC area. His most recent work for OpenPaddock.net was covering the Pocono IndyCar 500 at the Pocono Raceway last weekend, and in the following article, he shares his thoughts on a sequence of photos he collected in pit lane that tell a powerful story. In Focus – Invested Words and photos by Tom Turk So…

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IndyLights – Pocono: The Cost of One Mistake

Doug Patterson

Andretti Autosport’s Zach Veach and Belardi Auto Racing’s Gabby Chaves were tied for the lead of the IndyLights Presented by Cooper Tires 2014 Championship as the series headed to Pocono Raceway for their second oval race of the year. With six races left after Pocono, the outcome of last Saturday’s race wasn’t necessarily going to make or break Veach’s or Chaves’ chances at the title, but it would yield an advantage to the race winner, and a potentially large advantage if either driver had an incident. Schmidt Peterson Motorsport’s duo…

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Episode 238 – OpenPaddock.net Podcast

Doug Patterson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadFearless Leader Mike Whitesell and the ever intrepid John Olsakovsky holdown the fort as Shaw and Patterson attend to real life issues. Formula 1 gets relegated to circus status until they get their act together, the IndyCar Houston Grand Prix offered two extremely different races and is now off to Pocono, and the boys relay Shaw’s comments on the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, the Mt. Washington Hill Climb, and Rally Poland. OpenPaddock.net Podcast, Episode 238 – Tuesday, July 1, 2014 Summer angst and illness…

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IMSA-Six Hours Makes for a Great Race

Mike Shaw

Perfect! Watching the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen this word came to my mind time and time again. Sure not everything IMSA did was perfect the racing it self was not flawless to say the least. But that is part of what made this race perfect for racing fans in general. Not to mention the fact that after the 6 hours the points races in all for classes are just beginning to heat up. Yes we can have the performance equality conversation between the DP and the LM P2…

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SCCA – Photos from a Packed Weekend for the Kansas City Region

Doug Patterson

Tire Rack SCCA Starting Line This past weekend, the Kansas City Region of the SCCA hosted two fantastic events. On Saturday, the Tire Rack SCCA Starting Line driving school where students learned car control skills and autocross racing techniques from a variety of SCCA Solo National champions. It was a wet and wild day where students were thrown into the deep end to sink or swim, literally! Our SCCA Solo reporter, Jeremy Salenius was there to capture some of the action. Kansas City Region SCCA Solo Event #5 On Sunday,…

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Op Ed – The Old IndyCar Bait and Switch

John Olsakovsky

As Saturday’s qualifying for the first race at the Shell/Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston was abut to start, I did as always and pulled up the IndyCar timing and scoring page. And much to my delight, I see this banner. It appears that IndyCar will have live streaming on NBC Extra. I’m excited because I’m eligible for NBC Extra, and used it to watch parts of the Canadian Grand Prix on my smartphone when I was traveling. It’s great! Since my daughter is watching Frozen and keyed up for a…

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In Focus – DAT GLOW!

Doug Patterson

We’re going to begin a new series of article here at OpenPaddock.net called “In Focus” were Brian McKay, Tom Turk, Brad Plant, and I will share a favourite motorsports photo from the OpenPaddock.net archives. We will discuss why we composed the image the way we did, what exposure settings we used, what techniques we deployed, and the story we wished to convey with the shot. We’re really fortunate here at OpenPaddock.net to have some seriously talented professional photographers on staff to provide us with amazing imagery for you, our readers,…

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MRTI – Andersen Promotions and MAXSpeed Group Form Alliance

Doug Patterson

Today at between practice sessions for the Pro Mazda Championship, Andersen Promotions, who owns and/or operates all three rungs of the Mazda Road to Indy ladder program, announced a recruitment program with MAXSpeed Group who supplies of the engines used in the Rotax MAS Challenge karting series. The goal is to recruit three drivers from the Rotax MAX Challenge karting series into the Mazda Road to Indy’s USF2000 National Championship beginning with the 2015 season by offering four one-day testing scholarships. I’ll say that while this partnership is extremely valuable,…

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SCCA – Mazda MX-5 Cup Joins the Double-Header Madness in Houston

Doug Patterson
Credit: Steve Bernstein

Double-Header Madness is in the air! The Verizon IndyCar Series and the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires will share the NHK Stadium parking lot with the SCCA Pro’s Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by BF Goodrich, and every will run two! It’s a rare thing for the MX-5 Cup to join IndyCar for a race weekend, although it’s not unheard of, especially at Houston where the MX-5 Cup was a regular with CART and Champ Car. The championship points standings after four races thus far is in many ways…

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