Round 9--Centrix Financial Grand Prix of Denver

[mlittle]

After two new exciting street circuits, the ChampCars return to the familiar stomping grounds of the Pepsi Center in Denver, site of the Centrix Financial Grand Prix of Denver, set for the weekend of Aug.12-14. Last year's race saw a thrilling back-to-front charge by series champion Sebastien Bourdais, who got spun out on the very first turn by teammate Bruno Junquiera, fell back to near last, then charged all the way back to retake the point from Paul Tracy w/5 laps to go, passing him at the "mile high corner(turn 9)" and winning the race. With the track over a mile in elevation, there's less grip on the tires, and less downforce on the cars, meaning that anything can happen. Here are the mid-week storylines as the race weekend beckons....

1}Home-sweet-home for RuSport? With the luck that the Loveland, Col.-based RuSport team have faced in the past few races, a win or good showing would be a nice turn-around for the team. Both A.J. Allmendinger and Justin Wilson are still in the thick of the points chase, but will need a good result here to entertain thoughts of hoisting the Vanderbilt Cup in Mexico City.

2}Can SeaBass repeat? Quite possibly; his teammate, Junquiera, won here in 2002-2003 and Bourdais does seem to have the hot shoe right now, w/wins in Edmonton and San Jose. It was at this point last year that he cemented his grip on the series title, and the question this year is...will he do so again?

3}Will history be made in Denver? With three wins to her credit this year, Toyota Atlantic racer Katherine Legge has already rewritten some the Atlantics' history books, and can continue to do so w/a win in Denver Sunday. She would join a short list of past winners, including two current ChampCar racers--A.J. Allmendinger(2003) and Ronnie Bremer(2004). There'll be plenty of company for the win, though, as series pts. leader Charles Zwolsman, along w/Tonis Kasemets and Andreas Wirth will challenge the Brit for the victory.

Here's the schedule for the ChampCar weekend:
Friday Practice Session 1}12:15 PM EDT
Friday Practice Session 2}4:00 PM EDT
Qualifying Session 1}4:30 PM EDT(approximately)
Saturday Practice Session 1}12:30 PM EDT
Saturday Practice Session 2}4:00 PM EDT
Qualifying Session 2}4:30 PM EDT(approx.)
Sunday Warm-Up}11:30 AM EDT
Grand Prix of Denver---3:30 PM EDT(green flag to fall around 3:45 PM EDT)

As always, I'll provide summaries for the weekend events, plus commentaries as needed.

[mlittle]

Forsythe Championship Racing's Paul Tracy(#3 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) captured the provisional pole and a guaranteed front-row slot in Friday's QS-1, setting a fast lap just over halfway in the session w/a time of 59.759 secs.(99.821 mph). His teammate, Mario Dominguez(#7 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) was second, w/pts. leader Sebastien Bourdais(#1 McDonald's FC/L) in third. It was a good day for Loveland-based RuSport; both of their drivers, A.J. Allmendinger(#10 Western Union FC/L) and Justin Wilson(#9 Intel/SanDisk FC/L) qualified 4th and 5th, respectively. Other notables were Bourdais's teammate Oriol Servia(#2 PacifiCare FC/L) in 9th, 2002 series champion Cristiano da Matta in 10th, 1996 titleist Jimmy Vasser in 12th and Team Australia drivers Alex Tagliani(11th) and rookie Marcus Marshall(18th).

With the prov. pole, Tracy nipped Bourdais' lead by 1 pt. going into Saturday's QS-2. Observations/commentaries to come later this evening.

[mlittle]

Now that Friday's sessions are over with, here's a few observations of the day's events....

1}Congratulations, Tag. With Sunday's race, Walker Racing's Alex Tagliani will make his 100th ChampCar start, a streak which began at the old Homestead-Miami oval in 2000. To honor his achievement, the team's co-owners, Derrick Walker and Craig Gore, set up a celebration for the Quebecois native complete w/a large cake-replica of his Aussie Vineyards' Ford-Cos./Lola. The best part of the celebration...when Tagliani's wife, Bronte Tagliani, took a good piece of the cake and nailed Tag square in the face w/it.

2}Double AMR entries for Coyne. On another company note, both of Dale Coyne Racing's cars will carry the American Medical Response colors this weekend. It's only fitting, as the company is Denver-based, and will be hosting a fire-fighter chiefs' convention this weekend in Denver.

3}Woes for Walker Racing. Observation #1 was the high-point of the day for them, as neither Tagliani nor Marcus Marshall posted top-10 prov. qualifying times. Tagliani sits 11th currently, while Marshall smacked the tirewalls during QS-1 and lost his fast lap, placing 18th. Its' only natural, as the team has been struggling all year to adapt to the 2005-spec Lola B0/01 chassis(the team used a near-obsolete Reynard 2004-01 chassis last year).

More observations to follow as the weekend continues.

[sgd]

here we've got an even stranger structure:

NewsOnF1 Forums - Talk F1 Forum Index -> ChampCars



try http://newsonchampcars.net/ ...

[mlittle]

Sgd, I tried your link, and I got a "cannot find server" result. The reason that there is a North American Motorsports category here at NewsOnF1 stems from the extensive coverage of NA Motorsports posted on the Patrick-F1 thread over in the racing forum of the Formula 1 category. I'm sorry that you think it is a strange category to have, but I don't agree. After all, there is also a V8-supercar category here as well.

[mlittle]

Now that I've recovered from Kentucky.....

Bettering yesterday's QS-1 time, Paul Tracy(#3 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) will sit P1 for Sunday's Centrix Financial Grand Prix of Denver w/a time of 59.432 secs.(100.370 mph). His nemesis, Sebastien Bourdais(#1 McDonald's FC/L) qualified 2nd(59.541 secs./100.186 mph), while PT's teammate, Mario Dominguez(#7 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) starts 3rd. It was a good day, also, for both RuSport and PKV Racing, as their drivers, A.J. Allmendinger, Justin Wilson, Cristiano da Matta and Jimmy Vasser, will start 4th, 5th, 9th and 6th each. With the QS-2 win, Tracy nipped SeaBass another point, as Bourdais now holds a 216-190 pts. lead in the Vanderbilt Cup standings.

The race will be on Speed Channel(domestic sports cable) at 3:30 PM EDT(19:30 UTC 14 August); live scoring and timing available at www.champcarworldseries.com. There should be a free timing/scoring link on the front page, so anyone can follow along as the race unfolds. Commentaries to follow shortly.

[mlittle]

Whew, for a moment I thought sgd would make it to Denver....Here are the Saturday observations from Denver.

1}Official 2006 schedule released. With some fanfare, ChampCar officials released a 'tentative' 2006 schedule w/15 races slated. As expected, Houston joins the fray in 2006 w/a night-street race around Reliant Arena. There's the usual diversity of tracks....ovals, temp. airport tracks, temp. street courses and nat.-terrain road courses. Series officials noted that they are working on dates in Beijing, China and Philadelphia, Pa. Stay tuned.

2}See what happens when you mix 2 caustic substances together? The reference is to the fact that the series' Odd Couple, Paul Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais, will start 1st and 2nd on the grid Sunday. Hopefully, PT won't spinout SeaBass the way Junquiera did last year.

3}No Indy 500. As expected, the schedule effectively guts any opportunity for any CCWS team to take a stab at the IRL's flagship event, which is a crying shame personally. In 2000 and 2001 CART's marquee teams, Target/Ganassi and Marlboro-Team Penske, came to the corner of 16th & Speedway and spanked the living heck out of Tony George's teams. One can only hope a marquee team like Newman-Haas, Forsythe or RuSport will take a shot and embarrass George again. One can only dream....

[rah]

here we've got an even stranger structure:

NewsOnF1 Forums - Talk F1 Forum Index -> ChampCars



try http://newsonchampcars.net/ ...

Don't read it then muppet!

Keep up the good work mlittle, you are doing a top job.

[mlittle]

Thanks, rah.

[rah]

I hate to see someone get trod on when they are putting in the effort and doing good work for no personal gain. Maybe SGD has been hitting the beettle juice a littel hard.

[mlittle]

Last year, Sebastien Bourdais(#1 McDonald's FC/L) won here in a last-to-first bull charge, and this year he repeated his victory, w/a little help from Paul Tracy. More about that a little later.

At the drop of the green flag, PT checked out and built an early lead, while several drivers saw their day end early, most notably Jimmy Vasser(#12 Gulfstream FC/L) whose day ended w/contact in turn one w/RuSport's Justin Wilson. After a brief caution, SeaBass took the point, swapping the lead with A.J. Allmendinger(#10 Western Union FC/L), while Mario Dominguez(#7 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) began nipping at both of them. However, Tracy(#3 Indeck/Forsythe FC/L) soon returned and retook the point, stretching it out to almost 8 secs. over Bourdais, w/Allmendinger, and Dominguez fighting for 3-4. Then the race, quite simply, slid into SeaBass's lap as at Edmonton.

As Tracy was turning onto the pit-straight(the pits at Denver are not on the start/finish straight but between turns 4 & 5), the right-front suspension broke, and he slammed into the concrete barriers, ending his day and possibly pushing him further away from the Vanderbilt Cup. When the green flag fell on lap 70, Bourdais checked out once again on Allmendinger and Dominguez, not to be challenged the rest of the 97-lap race. Late in the race, Dominguez would slip past Timo Glock(#9 DHL Global FC/L) for third, and then passed Allmendinger for second. But the victory belonged to Bourdais, who now holds a 58-pt advantage, 254 to 196, over Tracy, while Oriol Servia held fast to 3rd. Justin Wilson currently sits in 4th, while Dominguez and Allmendinger swapped 5th-6th. In the Roshfrans Rookie Standings, Timo Glock leads Ronnie Bremer by 2 pts., 117 to 115, while MiJack-Conquest's Andrew Ranger has 98 pts. and is third in the rookie table(12th overall).

Next up for the ChampCar World Series....the series travels back to Canada, to the venerable Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for the Molson Indy Montreal on Aug. 28th.

[mlittle]

Maybe it's just me, but did I just see sgd trying to run the Pikes Peak Hill Climb? Naw, it's the high-altitude getting to me....Here are some thoughts for Sunday.

1}A.J., meet Paul. Paul, meet A.J. Back in Edmonton, Allmendinger saw his chance at a win meet the business end of a concrete barrier; today, the "Thrill from West Hill" lost his thrill when he met the business end of the turn 4 concrete. He also saw his hopes for a second Vanderbilt Cup potentially begin floating away like a mile-high cloud.

2}Taps for the ovals? With Milwaukee's dismal attendance, it's becoming clear that the old tradition of ovals, street circuits and road courses that made CART famous may begin to disappear. The 2006 schedule contains two ovals, Milwaukee and Las Vegas, and Vegas' is contingent on this year's race attendance. But there is at least a larger schedule than the past 2 yrs.(2004 & 2005) w/the chance of 2 more races(either Beijing, Philadelphia or Otaru, Japan) being added. At least they got the schedule out early enough for us to look at it; CART was never this quick.

3}Welcome to the front, Ryan. For most of this year, RocketSports' Ryan Hunter-Reay had just caught a lot of bad breaks. This day, it was a sweet finish as he posted a 6th-place finish. He made it through the melee of turn 1, fought a ill-handling car w/very soft brakes, and executed near-perfect pitstops. All-in-all, it wasn't a bad day for him, considering that his teammate, Timo Glock, whose gearbox slowly broke apart during the race, finally freezing up w/a few laps left.

[mlittle]

Here are the updated ChampCar World Series standings as of the most recent venue(Denver).

1}Sebastien Bourdais 249 pts.
2}Paul Tracy 196 pts.
3}Oriol Servia 183 pts.
4}Justin Wilson 179 pts.
5}Mario Dominguez 152 pts.
6}A.J. Allmendinger 151 pts.
7}(tie)Alex Tagliani 131 pts.
Jimmy Vasser 131 pts.
9}Timo Glock(R) 117 pts.
10}Ronnie Bremer(R) 115 pts.


R-1)Timo Glock 117 pts(9th overall)
R-2)Ronnie Bremer 115 pts(10th overall)
R-3)Andrew Ranger 98 pts.(12th overall)
R-4)Bjorn Wirdheim 88 pts.(14th overall)
R-5)Marcus Marshall 76 pts.(16th overall)
R-6)Ricardo Sperafico 66 pts.(17th overall)
Rookies Ryan Dalziel, Michael Valiente, Fabrizio Del Monte and Jorge Goeters have competed in one race each.