Mid-Ohio

[macdaddy]

The second half of the season is upon us. And back to a few road road courses.

Great day for the boyz at Penske during qualifying. Would have liked to have seen Helio get the pole, (if not for last-lap traffic he may have), because he's 22 behind in the championship and that point may prove important.

Great day also for Player's/Forsythe. Carpentier's pulled up his socks. And Tag was provisionally 4th until the dying minutes. Thought it might be a Player's second row.

Dixon outqualifies Gugelmin by .626 seconds.

Both KOOL cars in the top-ten. And some really hot laps by Vasser.

Brack qualifies 13th. Like to see him finish there. Not that I don't like the guy, 'cause I do, but Helio's still 22 back...

Got some guys way off the pace. In both chassis, and all 3 engines. Bad day for Servia. Likewise Jourdain and Wilson (glad he's back).

Looking forward to the early race. Hope the Marlboro colors survive the first lap and do like they did last year.

[macdaddy]

Interesting Sunday morning warmup times.
Kanaan, Fittipaldi, and Zanardi ahead of the two Player's cars.
Then Wilson! Too bad he couldn't do it during qualifying.
Helio 10th, DeFerran 21st. Franchitti 23rd.
Brack stays mid-pack, while Andretti continues to struggle.

[Liz]

Gil is never fast in morning warmups when he has the pole. He thinks about setup and not about racing people to the top of the warmup chart, for which he gets no points. My favourite part of your summary is the part that says "Andretti continues to struggle." I'm sorry, I can't like Michael Andretti. It is beyond my ability.

Our local station has decided to tape-delay the Champ Car race in favour of a Nutbar race, so I will be adjourning to Live Timing and Scoring shortly. This will give me time to do the Fantasy Grid stuff before the actual race, and to sit back and enjoy a Penske Win (I HOPE)!

I am so glad we are off the roundy-rounders and back to real man racing again. Forza Penske!

[macdaddy]

Been reading the post-Ohio threads...
Lots to say about Franchitti.
Lots to say about Servia.
Lots to say about Papis.
Lots to say about HANS.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE PENKSE BOYZ!
Deja vu all over again.
Wish Helio had won pole.
They paced themselves well, going just fast enough to stay ahead.
I'm sure they could have pulled away easily.

Kudos to Carpentier. What's he been eating for breakfast lately?
And kudos to Gidley. Put on a great show.
Too bad much of it was on the grass.

[Liz]

Live Timing kept on saying that Bruno was off in the grass and yet miraculously he was still fighting Moreno up at the head of the pack.

Then finally I noticed that Gidley had dropped to 17th and about 5 minutes later the correction came out that it was not Bruno taking the lawn tour, after all.

Later on when Bruno DID have his Off I kept watching for the correction but no luck this time.

I guess that pie in the face didn't slow Patrique down much, did it?

[mac]

I thought it was a pretty good race, even though there was no racing for the lead. There was enough to keep me happy.

Great drive by the Penske boys. Absolutely flawless. Hmmm....

Players' Forsythe are starting to look the goods too.

Team Green have started dropping back a little.

The Mo Nunn boys are starting to look good too. If only they could translate this to results. Did anyone see the incident with Zanardi and Fittipaldi at the last restart. As I look for Alex at the restarts, I saw it unfold at the back of the picture. I immediately thought it was a great move, but I thought it may look sus, as it was well before the finish line. From what I saw, I immediately thought that Alex pulled alongside Christian (on the outside) in The Carousel, but not in front, under yellow. Then, when the green flag was dropped, he ducked up the inside in the little left hand kink leading to the pit straight, for 8th place. I thought it was close, but definitely alright. Then I saw that Alex received the black flag. It seemed very harsh. What did everyone else think of it (if anyone saw it)?

Apparently, Alex was only asked by CART to let Christian by two laps later, Alex waited another lap and a half later to let Christian by, and CART deemed that was too long (subsequently stopping scoring him).

This is what Alex said (from MNR's website):

“What exactly happened on the restart is this: As we were coming to the end of the yellow lap, Christian had to lock up his brakes to avoid hitting Cristiano (da Matta), who was right in front of him. So I had to get alongside, but not in front of, Christian to keep from hitting him. Then I heard Morris call ‘green-green-green’ on the radio, so I got on the gas. Christian had no momentum at that instant, so I went right on by him. That’s all I am going to say.”

Sounds as though the great man may be feeling a little jaded by CART after the Jourdain situation at Chicago and now this. He doesn't seemed too happy. A bit of a rarity for Zanardi.

[f1manoz]

Originally posted by mac
Sounds as though the great man may be feeling a little jaded by CART after the Jourdain situation at Chicago and now this. He doesn't seemed too happy. A bit of a rarity for Zanardi.

Could you blame Zanardi though? By his standards he's having a poor season, and it's not really getting any better for him at the moment. He's being outperformed by Kanaan consistenly. His racing speed is like usual, fast and hard, but in qualifying he's plain shocking. He needs to improve in that area, and fast.

As for the race, it was a case of Div. 1 (Penske) and Div. 2 (everyone else). No-one else had a look in. Great race from both, but I felt sorry for de Ferran. He's been a bit unlucky with pit strategy this year.

Carpentier is on a serious roll at the moment. I hope for his sake it continues. If it does, maybe an outside shot for the tite if things fell his way.

Franchitti shot himself in the foot with his spin, but luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) Brack also didn't score.

Tracy was quiet all afternoon (a rarity too). I didn't even realise he finished in the top 5.

Gidley and Moreno both had superb, hard-charging races. Gidley just keeps improving and cementing his seat at Ganassi, while I hope that race silenced some of the talk surrounding Morenos seat for next year.

[mac]

Originally posted by f1manoz
Could you blame Zanardi though? By his standards he's having a poor season, and it's not really getting any better for him at the moment. He's being outperformed by Kanaan consistenly. His racing speed is like usual, fast and hard, but in qualifying he's plain shocking. He needs to improve in that area, and fast.

I wasn't pointing to Alex's season, more his treatment from CART in the last two races.

You couldn't expect much else from the team this year. Mo Nunn Racing has only been around one year, and this is their first year with two cars. In effect, Zanardi's team is brand new.

Alex has improved greatly from the start of the year. At Mid Ohio he was just as quick as Kanaan in every session, except qualifying, and should have finished eighth. At Chicago, he matched Tony's pace all weekend, and could have finished higher if not for certain backmarkers. At Michigan, he was also as quick as Tony, but the qualifying was washed out and he dropped down the field. In the race, he ran lap times at the leaders' pace.

Alex has never been a great qualifier, but he races like nothing else. Some may remember, in '98 when he set the record for most points in a season, he did not have one pole position.

[Liz]

Our Paul was starting his 3 race road course probation (for whatever they said he did in Toronto) and I expect he was being quiet just to get through that without any more notice. He drove a good race altogether I thought.

As for Alex and his Black Flag, from what I understand he developed those pesky Ralf Schumacher radio problems, which apparently caused his eyesight to be affected too as he could not see the pit board telling him to let Christian by or the black flag ditto until it was too late. You do the crime, you do the time, as Gil found out earlier this year too. Yes, Zanardi is having a frustrating year, but apparently this steward is going to be strict. He does look better and I hope he has a good run but not as good as Tony.

[Murph]

Hi All

I thouroughly enjoyed my first "in the flesh" CART race since 1980 this past weekend at Mid-Ohio....of course being picked as a "CART FAN-atic" played a major role in said enjoyment!!! Unfortunately, my home computer has bit the dust....but my new DELL is due in a couple of days....Liz... once I get everything hooked up including the internet I will start writing that article you requested for Parc Ferme..... shot over 20+ rolls of film and am most pleased with the results...once i get some stuff burned on a CD I will then send some pics to the thread.......I would like to offer a special thanks to Michael Andretti and the Motorolo Team....once they dropped out of the race I was able to use their abandoned pit as my photo headquarters for capturing a couple of pit stops.......

again, I really enjoyed the Mid-Ohio weekend.....and plan to "cover" more CART races next year....

take care

Murph