Winter Blues

by Tammy

It's happened again, hasn't it? The days are growing shorter, the temperatures are falling ... and we're nearly out of racing for the year.

Dammit!

Grand-Am is over. The ALMS is down to one race of the year and of its life. NASCAR has only six races left, and F1 has only five. Sure, we've still got some good competition left (except for F1—ouch!), but I can smell it, can't you?

The dark weekend days of winter with nary a car race to be had. *sniff* That must mean it's time for Christmas shopping and plotting our fantasy race teams for 2014, right?

Here's what I want to know:

1. How are you going to make the most of the last few races of 2013? Viewing parties? Getting to any races?
   Me? I'm headed out to Petit Le Mans in a week and a half.
2. Who do you think will take a championship? (Any of them, pick one.)
   I'm tired of Vettel, who will undoubtedly win F1 again. And I'm thinking Corvette will take the last ALMS GT title (hooray!). NASCAR? I still think old five-time could make it a six-pack (that's Jimmie Johnson). 
3. What will you miss about this season?
   Hmm, I'm not sure there is anything. This year's been a little lame-duck in my sportscar racing series, and the anticipation is high for next year.

I didn't even get into all the driver-swapping and silly-season moves ... that'll have to be another blog.

The 52 Hours of Daytona

by Tammy

Sure, the race is the 24 Hours of Daytona. But I'm heading out to Florida this week to embed with my friends at The Racer's Group (see my December post about it) for the duration of the weekend. And as best I can figure it, I'll be at the track for the better part of 52 hours between Thursday morning and Sunday evening.

And no, for everyone who's asked, I won't stay up all night. I don't think I can. But I don't expect much in the way of sleep, that's for sure.

Next Monday I'll have a quick report, with more details and lots of photos to follow (I'll be posting to Facebook and Twitter throughout the weekend, if you want to follow along). And on a personal level, I expect to have piles and piles of notes for the next book.

So what am I looking forward to?

• The racing season getting underway!
• Sitting in on team meetings, to find out what really goes on there ... I've got my suspicions and some memories from the 2004 season, but I need some current details.
• Sitting on the pit box with a radio headset, listening to team communications.
• Seeing the Corvette DPs.
• Seeing friends from over the years, including Kevin Buckler and Bob Dickinson at The Racer's Group and drivers Patrick Long and Andrew Davis.
• Hanging out with friends Barb and Mary.
• Generating new ideas for the story I'm working on (I hope).

What about you? Will you be watching the 24 Hours of Daytona? Are you looking forward to anything in particular?

Grand-Am Le Mans

by Tammy

While the new year means resolutions and diets and such for many people, for race fans, it means a renewal of optimism. The Roar Before the 24 happened this weekend, giving everyone a taste of 2013 racing ... lame duck as that might be for the ALMS and Grand-Am, which will merge into one series in 2014.

As promised, planners of the combined series are starting to make some plans for the future. Some make sense, such as appointing Paul Walter to be race director for both the ALMS (a position he's held for a year now) and Grand-Am this year. I think that's an excellent idea that will begin to draw the series together before that merge is official.

Some plans both make sense, and are really confusing. I'm not going to recap the new proposed combined class structure, I'll just point you to the basics in an article on Jalopnik: ALMS and Grand-Am Announce Plans to Become the Most Confusing Thing in the World. It's entirely possible that headline is right.

On the other hand, they've got seven different classes to condense into fewer than that. Plus new, experimental cars to accommodate (the case in point is the Delta Wing). So I don't have an answer for making it less complicated.

What do you think? Could they do it better?

Onward to the racing season!

Seasons' End

by Tammy

IndyCar, Grand-Am, and now the American Le Mans Series, all done for the year. All headed for the off-season now, the extra-silly-season.

For the ALMS, which wrapped up its season with a dramatic 9.5 hour Petit Le Mans on Saturday (that's the Turn 10a/b complex in the photo), and for Grand-Am, this means time finally to work on the specifics of the merger for 2014 (those in charge have promised decisions about the class structure for the merged series by the end of 2012). For teams in respective series, it means gearing up for a final, possibly lame-duck season as a separate entity. Because while they'll be preparing for 2013, their eyes will undoubtedly be on 2014. I can't imagine there won't be losers in the merger, but it's certainly too early to tell who that will be.

For IndyCar, F1, and NASCAR, it's time for drivers and sponsors to move teams and new deals to be struck. For fans, it's time to hunker down and either get friendly with Aussie V8 Supercar racing or haunt racing sites daily for the latest news. Maybe we do both. Certainly we spend some time trying to teach ourselves the new driver, sponsor, number combinations (for NASCAR, at least).

For me, it's time to do some of the above, plus a lot of writing on a new book. But I know I'll be following the off-season soap opera that is racing, avidly. Sometimes I think I like the stories about racing even more than the racing itself. I suppose that figures.

But hey, there's still a month of racing left! So until the fat lady sings, signaling the end of F1 (4 more races, finishing Nov. 25) and NASCAR (4 more races, finishing Nov. 18), I'll savor some of the year's last competition and look forward to 2013. Only 96 days until the 24 Hours of Daytona!

Who's with me? Are you done with racing for this year? Hanging on to the bitter end of F1 or NASCAR? Making travel plans for Daytona?

Stop Copying Me!

by Tammy

Grand-Am Road Racing released their 2013 schedule at the end of last week, and it contained a few ... well, not surprises, given the coming merger, but features that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.

For one, Grand-Am is racing at Road Atlanta (owned by Dr. Panoz, who owns the ALMS). I'm hoping in return we see the ALMS at Watkins Glen (owned or closely affiliated with Grand-Am/NASCAR interests). But one race on the schedule almost made me fall over in shock.

You see... I started writing my second Kate Reilly Racing Mystery in 2006. Then I scrapped most of that idea and started it again in 2007. Ditto 2008, 2009 (you're getting the trend here). Every time I restarted it, I changed the two featured tracks and races.

I always knew it would include a visiting NASCAR star, and so at one point (probably in 2009), I decided that the star (Miles Hanson, who made it into the final version) wouldn't be present because he was racing in the ALMS. I came up with a much more far-fetched idea: the ALMS and Grand-Am would share a double-header race weekend for a SportsCar Summit.

Where did I set this unlikely, fictional event? At the Road America track in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

So imagine my shock when I saw that Grand-Am's 2013 schedule includes an August double-header weekend race event with the ALMS. At Road America.

Life imitates art? I suppose. But maybe the new Grand American Le Mans Series (or whatever they're going to call it) should put me on the payroll ... just sayin'.

Best Laid Schemes

by Tammy

In his poem "To a Mouse," Robert Burns famously said, "The best laid schemes of mice and men/Go often awry." We all know this to be true, and most of the time our best laid plans are shot straight to hell. But once in a while, they turn up trumps.

The news last week of the merger between the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am (which Simon and I discussed on Friday) threw me for a loop. First, the surprise that it would happen. Second, wondering what it would mean to me.

See, in 2010, as I was preparing my first book for publication, I faced a dilemma. I'd written the book in 2005, which was before Lime Rock Park revamped its track and before the ALMS restructured its racing classes. So my book didn't match the current state of the world. At the time, I made the decision to add a note to the book asking for readers' indulgence, and leave it as-is.

Well, now the ALMS is changing again, but bigger. And I dodged a bullet that the ALMS will still be the ALMS in 2013, when my second book set in the ALMS is published (BRAKING POINTS, due out April 2013, set at Road America and Road Atlanta).

Where it gets interesting is because I'm starting to think about Book 3, which I plan to set at the 24 Hours of Daytona and hope to publish in early 2014. The nagging worry in the back of my head has been how to forge the same kind of contacts with teams and officials in Grand-Am that I have with the ALMS--contacts that are vital to do the kind of insider research I like to include.

But you see what happened here, didn't you? I think my work just got easier. Because now I'll know some teams (and even officials) in the new combined series whose first race will be the 24 Hours of Daytona 2014. Not to mention there will be a whole bunch of new drama to write about, with new competition, new rivalries, new rules, new suppliers ... and plenty of the above who've been left out in the cold, because, let's face it, we're downsizing from two series to one. Yeah, I can work with this.

But it just goes to show: you never know what's going to happen to change your plans, and you never know if the change will be for the better or worse. Has anyone out there had a situation where you thought a change would ruin everything, but found it was the best thing in the end?

And Then There Was One

TAMMY: An earthquake rocked the racing world this week: As of 2014, the American Le Mans Series and the Grand American Road Racing Series--the two premier sportscar racing series in the United States--will become one.

Let's look at what we sportscar racing fans stand to gain:

1. Wide-open track choice. ALMS GT battle at Watkins Glen? NASCAR at Road Atlanta? Bring it on.
2. No more trying to pump up car-counts in either series with lower-level classes (the competition in ALMS Challenge classes has been good, but you didn't need them when you had a robust class of manufacturer prototypes).
3. The first string of commentators. Love them all, but I really, really miss Leigh Diffey and Dorsey Schroeder.
4. A solid roster of manufacturers in one place, not halfsies in both.
5. One series to point to and say "this is the best sportscar racing in the world." (Yes, that's US-centric, I know, but I'll argue ALMS GT is the best in the world right now, so it's not a stretch.)

I've decided what we have here is another case of Fred and Ginger. You know what they said about them? He gave her class, and she gave him sex appeal. In this case, it's the ALMS with the class and Grand Am with the sex appeal (money and muscle). It's just possible that the merger of the two series--both of which have struggled for manufacturers, car counts, and fans--is going to be spectacular.

I just hope we really do get the best of both worlds, and not the worst. Simon, what are your thoughts? Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

SIMON: I'm actually happy about this because I think it will inject more competition. My issue with multi-class racing is that some classes end up with a handful of entries and it weakens the appeal, but the merger will make results a little harder to come by. Also with the bad economy, I think it makes it more cost effective to combine series so that the bad times aren't so apparent. Look at Euro F3 and there's just over a dozen entries. That series would benefit with merging with the British F3 series which also has small grids. I think over the last decade or so, motorsport has stretched itself a little thin with too much expansion. This merger is a step in the right direction.

What do you guys think?

Underdogs Take the Win

by Tammy

It's a truism that anything can and will happen in an endurance race.

The 24 Hours of Daytona race proved it again this year, with favorites falling early and late, and a couple underdogs staying out of trouble and pulling through for their first wins.

Was it epic? Probably. It was only one lap short of an all-time record distance, and each class had two or three cars that finished on the lead lap. In fact, in both classes, first and second were separated by no more than 10 seconds ... AFTER 24 HOURS OF RACING! That's astonishing.

What's interesting is the change that's happened in the endurance world, the result of teams and cars getting better and more reliable. More than one "old timer" commented during the broadcast that in their day, you'd be conservative until the last couple hours, and then you'd really race--because if you tried to race flat-out the whole time, your car would break. But as one driver (Andy Lally, GT winner) put it, "This was 24 hours of qualifying."

I can't even stay awake to watch it all. I can't imagine how the crew does it (even the drivers get some sleep, but the crew only catches what naps they can in the pits between pit stops).

There's always a story with the 24 Hours of Daytona, and this year, between the visiting celebrities of the entertainment world (Billy Johnson of AC/DC and Patrick Dempsey) and those of the racing world (Michael Waltrip, Travis Pastrana, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jamie McMurry, Mario Andretti, Dario Franchitti, and many more), a set of series regulars and underdogs came through for the win. Both were, in some ways, the Little Engine that Could.

New winners. New stories for the year ahead. I'm liking this start to the 2012 racing season. What about you? Did you watch? Did you enjoy?

Off-Season Upheaval

by Tammy

Racing's off-season (that of any sport, for that matter), is always an interesting time, and this year is no exception. At least one historic team is closing up shop (Newman/Haas Racing in IndyCar), and at least one championship driver is out of a job for bad behavior (Kurt Busch in NASCAR). There is good news, too, with different teams expanding to new series (Dempsey Racing running both Grand-Am and ALMS), new cars (the Corvette DP for Grand-Am), and new sponsors coming on board.

I watch all of the news reports with lots of interest and no little concern, because I write about a fictional driver and race team in the real racing world. That means I'm constantly hoping nothing dramatic happens to the races and series I'm writing about between one season and the next. For instance, while I was selling my first book, Dead Man's Switch, which is set at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, not only did the track get renovated and restructured, but so did the ALMS class structure (I decided to keep those as written and hope the reader understands).

Another for instance: last year at this time I was worried that the ALMS wouldn't return to Lime Rock for 2012, which would have ruined my plans for launching the book at the race it was written about (fortunately, all systems were a go). At least the race schedule is set for 2012, so I know that the races I'm writing about for the second Kate Reilly Racing Mystery (Road America and Road Atlanta; publication in March 2013!) will stay on the schedule at least this year.

Of course, even if there's the possibility for changes in the racing world messing up my careful plans, there's equal opportunity for more real-world stories to inspire Kate's adventures. A driver fired for swearing and temper? A championship-winning team that fires its crew chief? Sponsor dollars dictating which young driver gets a job over more-qualified (but unsponsored) colleagues? Golden. (And what always happens, for the last one.)

So these days, I'm writing, but I'm also watching the racing world carefully, ready to see what other funny business comes to light. What stories are making you the most interested or excited for the 2012 season?

Goodbye to the 2011 Racing Season

by Tammy

With a predictable outcome, if not a whimper, the 2011 racing season ended Sunday (at least for the big five series). Even if it wasn't 2011 champion Sebastian Vettel on the top step of the podium (only second, poor thing), it was his teammate, as Red Bull Racing dominated the last Formula 1 race of the year.

To which I say, yawn.

I suppose we'll look back on these years in F1 and think they were amazing ones, for what Vettel accomplished (he set a record for the number of pole positions in a season, for instance), but mostly one person dominating a season's racing is pretty boring. Just ask NASCAR fans about the last five years.

But everything changes. I suppose it's true of all sports, but it seems especially so for racing: it's hard to predict anything.

In 2011, reigning and five-time champion Jimmie Johnson was defeated and Tony Stewart became the new NASCAR champion in an epic, down-to-the-wire battle. The American Le Mans Series and Grand-American Racing (sportscar series, both) offered predictable champions who led most of the season and last-race battles for the championship, thanks to multi-class racing (yet another reason to love it!). IndyCar saw some great racing and a fierce battle championship fight, right up until the wind was taken out of all sails in the last race of the season with the horrific accident that claimed the life of Dan Wheldon, the reigning Indy 500 winner.

I don't think anyone would have predicted Wheldon would win at Indy (nor be gone forever at Vegas), or that rookie Trevor Bayne would win the Daytona 500. Or that Stewart would win five of 10 races in the chase to seize the NASCAR crown. Nope, you just never know what will happen. And maybe that's why we love it.

All I know for sure? The counter on the Grand-Am site tells me there are just 61 days until the 2012 racing season begins with the 24 Hours of Daytona. I can wait. Barely.

What are you all looking forward to seeing in 2012?