2005 ChampCar Half-Year Awards Thread

[mlittle]

Since the ChampCar World Series has the week off, I thought I'd take a page from the IRL forum and present some half-year awards for the ChampCar side. Feel free to comment, good or bad, positive or negative, just keep the postings clean.

Driver of the Half:Sebastien Bourdais. Now, I almost split this between Bourdais and 2003 series champion Paul Tracy, but Bourdais has finished all 7 CCWS races this year, while Tracy's pit crew, w/a bad call on fuel strategy, cost him a possible podium or win in Toronto. Also, in their two on-track run-ins this year(Monterrey and Toronto), Bourdais won both rounds.

Rookie of the Half:Timo Glock. Barring a late-race tangle w/fellow F1 alum Justin Wilson, Glock nearly had a podium himself in Edmonton. The former Jordan F1 racer has gotten very acquainted w/the vagaries of the 750+ hp ChampCar, a completely different beast that the nimble Formula 1 car he drove in 2004.

Team of the Half:Normally, this would be a no-brainer, w/Newman-Haas Racing, but RuSport gets this award. Why? 3 yrs. ago, this team didn't exist. 2 yrs. ago, it ran a record-setting Toyota Atlantic season w/Atl. rookie A.J. Allmendinger. Last year, it graduated to ChampCar, picking up rookie-of-the-year honors for Allmendinger(first American to do so since Jeff Andretti in 1991). This year, they're a two-car team, and barring the bad luck at Edmonton, both Allmendinger and Wilson would be w/in striking distance of SeaBass and Tracy for the Vanderbilt Cup. Considering how long it took NHR and Forsythe to get to where they're at, RuSport wins this award, hands down.

Race of the Half:Edmonton. The newest edition to the ChampCar schedule had some of the best racing I've seen in years, comparable in a sense to the late-race duel btwn. Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher at the San Marino Grand Prix earlier this year.

Surprise of the Half:For that, I've got to travel over to ChampCar's top feeder series, the Toyota Atlantic Championship. Why? With her second victory of the year at the Atlantics' race in Edmonton, series rookie Katherine Legge has indeed proven that she can race w/the best of them, and we may just have seen the first glimpses of a potential legend in the making. Somebody should give series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven a medal for taking a shot and hiring her to race in Atlantics this year. If everything works out, we might just see her race agst. Tracy, Bourdais, Allmendinger and some of the current CCWS racers, possibly as early as next year.

Hard-Luck Award of the Half: Imagine how A.J. Allmendinger felt in Edmonton last Sunday. Your only a few laps from winning, and, bang...you hit the wall slightly, and your day ends w/out victory. Anyone who saw the race, either live or on TV, had to shed tears for him, he was that shaken after bringing his mortally-wounded Champ Car to pitroad.

Predictions......
Series Champion:one of three--Sebastien Bourdais, Paul Tracy or Justin Wilson
Rookie of the Year:either Timo Glock or Andrew Ranger
Atlantics Champion(I mention this because whoever wins this year will get a one-off ride w/a CCWS team in Mexico City at the season finale):one of five--Charles Zwolsman, Tonis Kasemets, Antoine Bessette, Andreas Wirth, or Katherine Legge.