Racing Year in Review

by Tammy

Simon and I are taking a blog hiatus for the end of the year (going dark for 2 weeks over the holidays), and when I return, it will be January 6, 2014. Leaving aside that I'm not prepared for the new year, at that point, we'll be less than two weeks to the 24 Hours of Daytona, the first race of the year and the first race of the TUSCC (the Tudor United Sports Car Championship). Big stuff.

So it's time to reflect on what I thought was significant about 2013. Chime in with your thoughts and anything I've missed....

• Daytona 24: I was embedded in a race team, and it was fabulous.
• Daytona 500: Danica on pole, which set a bar too high for her to meet the rest of the year. By the stats, I think she did well for a rookie, but of course, the Danica lovers or haters will believe what they believe, no matter what. We'll see if she improves in 2014.
• Long Beach Grand Prix: the introduction of Team Kate! And the start of the long good-bye to the American Le Mans Series (the merchandise trailer was absent from this race, for instance).
• Indy 500: Kanaan wins!
• Le Mans: the death of Allan Simonsen (which, as I noted in a blog post, eerily reflected a plot idea I'd hatched just the night before), the triumph of Audi. Leena Gade as a rock star.
• Baltimore GP: what a bus-wreck of accidents.
• IndyCar: A more contentious year between drivers and Race Control? The oval races were mostly uninteresting? Dario retires.
• Petit Le Mans: farewell to the ALMS. Hello to the Corvette Stingray. A great time had by all.
• Formula 1: a total snoozefest. I'm not sure I watched more than 10 laps of a single race.
• NASCAR: Jimmie wins 6. Danica receives hate mail. Smoke breaks a leg. 

What did I miss? What do you remember as being the most significant racing events of 2013? Overall a thumbs-up or thumbs-down?

Hey, while you're ending the year and prepping for 2014, make sure you're following me on Facebook and Twitter (@tkaehler and @katereilly28)!

The End of an Era

by Tammy

The American Le Mans Series is over. Fifteen years of competition and friendships, perhaps now scattered to the winds. I say that with wistfulness more than negativity, because I get that things change, and I believe that change and evolution are good things. But it was hard to leave the friends I'd made at the end of the night, wondering if I'd ever see them again anywhere but on social media.

It was in the Series that the outlook was uncertain (and that the new series seems more like a buy-out than a merger). In the paddock, Petit was also simply another race to be run and struggled through and won. And 2014 promises nothing but new, exciting challenges, starting with the (former) ALMS teams taking part in the 24 Hours of Daytona, come January.

Pinning down my favorite memory from my experience with the ALMS was pretty hard, until I thought all the way back to the beginning. Sebring, 2004. Team media guy (and now good friend) Shane Mahoney took me from the pits, over pit wall and across pit lane to stand at the wall of the track. During the race. At night. Unforgettable!

And what I'm most excited about for the future is seeing the new Corvette C7.R out on track, whaling on the new GTLM competition. And as a really cool side note, I got to meet Harlan Charles in the paddock at Petit on Saturday. He's the product manager for the new C7 Stingray, and he's a reader. Fingers crossed he's going to like the book I gave him!

What's your favorite ALMS memory? What are you looking forward to in 2014?

Team Kate at Petit

by Tammy

Watch out, Atlanta, here we come! Next weekend is the final race of the ALMS season, and the final race of the American Le Mans Series. What a weird thing to write.

The ALMS has been my racing security blanket—the series I really understood and had friends in. Now I'm afraid that my friends will be too big and too good for me, having merged with a NASCAR operation and all. As if I'm stuck in junior high and they've graduated to high school.

Of course, the end of one era means the start of another that holds a lot of promise. It's going to be really fascinating to see what the United Sports Car Championship turns into.


But first, one last Petit Le Mans for the ALMS! And I'm going to be there with other "crew" ... which means prizes!

Prize details are posted on my other blog, but the basics are this: find me or another Team Kate crew member, and take a photo with us, then tweet it or post to Facebook, and you'll win a prize. Take a photo with us and a female racecar driver? Win a better prize. You get the idea.

Will we see you there?!

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.

Pros and Ams

TAMMY: Sportscar racing, more than other types (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), means professional racecar drivers sharing the track with amateurs. Granted, they're usually very good amateurs, but they often don't have the same level of experience as the pros. And that sometimes gets them in trouble.

Remember the huge crash at Le Mans this year, in which British pro Anthony Davidson's Toyota prototype flipped nose-over-tail and slammed into a tire barrier, fracturing two of Davidson's vertebrae? (See the video.) That involved a pro and an amateur, with the general consensus being that the amateur was responsible, as he just didn't understand how fast the prototype could and would maneuver.

There were two incidents at Petit caused by the same amateur driver, Peter LeSaffre in the Green Hornet Racing Porsche. The first was a dramatic upside-down slide by the Nissan Delta Wing during practice.



The second was impact with the Muscle Milk LMP2 car, which almost had enormous implications for the championship contender. Only heroic repair work by the Muscle Milk team enabled the car to get back out on track to complete the requisite number of laps and take the championship.

Tony DiZinno, Web editor for Racer magazine, wrote an excellent, thoughtful opinion piece this week reconsidering his initial stance that both incidents were LeSaffre's fault. Considering his points, I have to say I agree. However, I think it behooves amateur drivers to do a lot more studying of the other cars on the road, particularly closing speeds of prototypes at each racetrack. Similarly, as DiZinno points out, the pros need to cut the amateurs some slack also, and not expect every other driver on the road to react as a pro would

But I sure wouldn't get rid of the mix of pros and ams. What's your take, Simon?

SIMON: I wouldn't get rid of amateurs from pro racing, for one simple reason--Define pro??  Look at Romain Grosjean.  The best way to eliminate these incidents is through licensing.  There are different licenses needed for different types of racing and some series have low level license requirements.  All drivers need to earn their stripes and they will if they can't jump up a series until they have enough points finishes under their belts in a lower series.  Also I've mentioned before that mixed testing was a great learning tool.  I once tested with F3, F3000, Touring Cars and sports prototypes while I was driving a Formula Ford.  I had to have my wits about me with cars that cornered slower and cars that could catch me on a 1/3mile straight when I was hitting the braking area.  It taught me a lot about speed and manners.

Petit Le Mans Tomorrow!

by Tammy

Simon is away being celebrated this weekend, but I'll be at home, sitting in front of the computer. Because Saturday is Petit Le Mans! I attended this race the last two years and have written about it in my next book, so it's a race I really enjoy.

Check out how cool this race poster is. That's the Delta Wing there on the right, and ahead, the 2012 GT champion Corvette! All of them sweeping down the hill at Road Atlanta into Turn 12. Great spot!

Will you be watching with me? Coverage starts at 8:30 a.m. Pacific/11:30 a.m. Eastern, on ESPN3.com. I'll also be posting a lot on Twitter: @tkaehler. Hope to see you around the mediaverse!

Memorial Day

by Tammy

If you don't have barbeques today, than you're probably dealing with a meat hangover from yesterday. Certainly we've all got racing hangovers ... what a day of racing! Monaco, the Indy 500, and the Coke 600. All of that, and I'm focusing on Petit Le Mans for the story I'm writing.

I'm going to keep this brief except for a few shouts-out:

To Dario Franchitti for the Indy 500 win. I saw a tweet from someone saying they were tired of him winning, but I'm more tired of Chip winning. Besides, Dario sure can drive.

To Oriol Servia and DRR Panther Racing who took fourth in the Indy 500 and celebrated (I hear) like it was a win. A great job for a one-car team that isn't one of the big boys.

To Beaux Barfield for officiating his first Indy 500. You keep doing your new job with humor, grace, and skill. Have a great rest of the season. I hope you enjoyed it.

To Mark Webber for the F1 Monaco win. Nice to see him get his first win of the season (because the person I'm really tired of seeing win is Sebastian Vettel).

I'm sure there are plenty of others who deserve recognition for the weekend. Who were you impressed with or happy for?

Notes from a Sunday Race Day

by Tammy

After a trip to Atlanta for Petit Le Mans (I saw less of the race than I'd hoped, but spent a lot of time talking to race fans who like to read!), I decided that Sunday was devoted to doing as little as possible, and watching a lot of racing. Primary on the schedule is the two-hour recap of Petit in the afternoon (the view down the hill to Turn 12 at right), but at mid-day I flipped back and forth between NASCAR at Dover (New Hampshire) and IndyCar at Kentucky. Ovals, both. (Silly of the series to roll their races off at almost exactly the same time of day.)

Since what I like are the stories, here are some of the interesting ones that came up:

• Tony Kanaan and Vitor Meira, IndyCar drivers, are both training for the Championship Ironman in Kona, Hawaii. That's a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run in a 17-hour timeframe. That's insane.
• NASCAR threw a couple cautions for rain. I know, I know, they can't deal with rain on ovals. But it's boring. (Yes, sportscar and roadcourse snobbery in effect here.)
• IndyCar looked like a farce for a while. As one Twitter user posted, "I mean ... is it that hard to go into the pits and stop? Left lane is for those about to pull in and right is for enter/exit." In one set of yellow-flag pit stops, there were two collisions and two cars running into crew members. It wasn't a good advertisement for the professionalism of the drivers in the series, sadly.
• Of course, then IndyCar gave us a fairytale finish, with Ed Carpenter winning for the first time in 113 starts and giving team owner Sarah Fisher her first owner win. That win came after at least 15 laps of side-by-side racing with Dario Franchitti, and came with Ed's car's nose only about a foot in front of Dario's. Epic finish.
• Racing breaks hearts as often as it brings joy to teams. The season-long (decades-long?) rivalry between Audi and Peugeot added another contentious chapter at Petit. Both teams had one of their two cars break and have to be retired. The other two clashed in a way that saw the Audi R18 out of the race, leaving the Peugeot to take the win of the race and the International Le Mans Cup (ILMX) season championship. Race control and Peugeot took the view that the clash was a racing incident. Audi had a different view.
• After fighting through crowds at Petit Le Mans all weekend, it's strange to see stands for the ovals at Kentucky and Dover half-empty. Everyone tells me people like ovals because they're great to watch, since you can see the whole track from every seat, unlike road/street courses. Hmmm.

Did anyone else watch any of the races? Any other interesting storylines?