Full Throttle

1. Bouchut/Fomenko/Vasiliev Russian Age Ferrari 550 Maranello 1m 36.580s GT1
2. Bertolini/Wendlinger JMB Maserati MC12 GT1 1m 36.869s GT1
3. Bartels/Scheider Vitaphone Maserati MC12 GT1 1m 37.000s GT1
4. Longin/Kumpen/Hezemans GLPK Carsport Corvette C5R 1m 37.062s GT1
5. Babini/Biagi Vitaphone Maserati MC12 GT1 1m 37.088s GT1
6. Peter/Buncombe/Rusinov JMB Maserati MC12 GT1 1m 37.426s GT1
7. Kox/Simon Reiter Lamborghini Murcielago 1m 38.115s GT1
8. Ruberti/Camathias GNM Saleen S7R 1m 38.135s GT1
9. Lamy/Gardel Labre Ferrari 550 Maranello 1m 38.625s GT1
10. Deletraz/Piccini GPC Sport Ferrari 575 Maranello GTC 1m 39.337s GT1
11. Bryner/Calderari/Zacchia Labre Ferrari 550 Maranello 1m 39.772s GT1
12. Berville/Almeras/Casoni GNM Saleen S7R 1m 40.369s GT1
13. Stanco/Janus RAM Saleen S7R 1m 41.016s GT1
14. Keen/Halliday Lister Lister Storm GT 1m 41.168s GT1
15. Collard/Sugden Gruppe M Porsche 996 GT3 RSR 1m 41.893s GT2
16. Lieb/Rockenfeller Gruppe M Porsche 996 GT3 RSR 1m 42.043s GT2
17. Konrad/Becker Konrad Saleen S7R 1m 43.203s GT1
18. Balfe/Derbyshire Balfe Mosler MT900R 1m 43.297s G2
19. Kinch/Kirkaldy Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari 360 GTC 1m 43.333s GT2
20. Mullen/Niarchos Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari 360 GTC 1m 43.717s GT2
21. Hughes/Pearce LNT TVR T400R 1m 43.896s GT2
22. Alzen/Lechner Konrad Saleen S7R 1m 44.354s GT1
23. Collins/Cunningham Embassy Porsche 996 RSR 1m 44.561s GT2
24. Tomlinson/Kane LNT TVR T400R 1m 44.869s GT2
25. Jordan/Caine Eurotech Porsche GT3 RS 1m 45.695s GT2
26. Ried/Ried Proton Porsche 996 GT3 RS 1m 46.640s GT2
27. Jones/Jones Eurotech Porsche GT3 RSR 1m 46.817s GT2
28. Casadei/Vonka Czech National Porsche 996 GT3 RS 1m 48.820s GT2
29. Khan/Smith Ian Khan Porsche GT3 RS 1m 48.964s GT2
30. Bentwood/McKever/Wilson RJN Nissan 350Z 1m 48.974s GT2
31. Griffin/Hooker Emotional Engineering Vauxhall Monaro 1m 57.245s G2

TALLADEGA, Ala. - Kevin Harvick marked the birthday of the late Dale Earnhardt by winning the pole Friday at Talladega Superspeedway.

It was the third Nextel Cup pole for Harvick, who moved into Earnhardt’s seat at Richard Childress Racing a week after the seven-time NASCAR champion was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500.

“Obviously, it’s really special for everybody at RCR and the whole GM Goodwrench crew,” Harvick said. “Hopefully, we can open a new chapter in the long book of history that Dale and everybody at RCR have shared here and get a win on Sunday.”

Earnhardt, who would have been 54 Friday, won nine races at Talladega, making Childress the winningest car owner to compete here. Harvick has two second-place finishes in eight starts on the 2.66-mile track.

Harvick picked up considerably from his practice speeds Friday with a qualifying lap of 189.804 mph that was virtually unchallenged. Jeff Gordon was next at 188.988, putting Chevrolets on the front row for the Aaron’s 499.

“I think when you go back and look at most of the restrictor- plate races, we usually make one run and try not to overwork our motor,” Harvick explained. “That’s always been the philosophy of (crew chief) Todd Berrier, to run as few laps as possible.”

“We put everything we think we have on the car, and that’s pretty much what we’ve got. There’s no reason to beat a dead horse.”

Harvick was particularly happy with Friday’s showing, considering he was driving a new car.

“We destroyed both cars at Daytona (in February), so we had to go home and build new cars,” he said. “It’s obviously been a long process. We had to build new bodies and new chassis. Hopefully, we can carry the success of today on to Sunday.”

Gordon has won three of the last four races at Talladega and Daytona, the two tracks where NASCAR requires the horsepower-sapping carburetor restrictor plates to slow the cars.

He said missing the pole Friday was not a big disappointment.

“I don’t know where those guys found that speed, but I’m happy with second,” Gordon said. “We won this race here last year in this car.”

Elliott Sadler was third in a Ford at 188.548, followed by Scott Riggs in a Chevy at 188.474 and Ryan Newman in a Dodge at 188.237. Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson, the series points leader, was sixth at 188.226.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Michael Waltrip — mates on the DEI team founded by Earnhardt’s father — were a disappointing 36th and 38th. They have combined to win 11 of the last 16 restrictor-plate races.

“It’s disappointing to qualify as bad as we do, compared to how we used to run here” said Earnhardt, who won here last October and finished third behind winner Gordon and Kurt Busch in the Daytona 500 in February. “We’ve got to figure out how to get these things to run a little better by themselves. It’s a little embarrassing. “

“But we were slow in qualifying at Daytona. We will get up there somehow in the race. We always do.”

Roush’s take

Jack Roush, whose team has won four of the first eight races this season, doesn’t worry about any further changes NASCAR might make to its aerodynamics rules.

“As long as they publish rules far enough in advance, I’m committed to adapt to them faster than my competitors,” Roush said Friday.

There has been considerable complaining from Cup teams and drivers this year in the wake of NASCAR shortening the rear spoilers and getting Goodyear to provide softer, faster-wearing tires for the cars in an effort to promote more passing and closer racing.

Instead, the changes have appeared to make the cars harder to drive, with a larger number of crashes and spinouts than usual and even less passing than in the past. But Roush, who fields five Nextel Cup entries, isn’t concerned.

“Every time NASCAR makes a change, it changes the personalities of the cars,” he said. “There are winners and there are losers. If you’re losing, you say, ‘Let’s make a change.’ You have to learn to adjust.”

Roush, whose team has won the past two Cup titles, has obviously made the right adjustments. Heading into Sunday’s race, four of his five drivers are among the top 10 in points, with defending series champ Kurt Busch second, Greg Biffle third, Mark Martin sixth and Carl Edwards eighth. Biffle has won twice and Busch and Edwards once each.

Only Matt Kenseth has struggled. The 2003 series champion has only one top-10 finish and is 28th in the points.

“Right now, the moon and stars all seem to be aligned for us,” Roush said. “We’d better enjoy it, because you never know when it’s going to change.”

When it does, Roush will adjust.

Paul Dana, competing in the Indy Racing League Series forTeam Ethanal, is sponsored by a group of companies - The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) - within the fast-growing ethanol industry.

In March of this year it was announced that beginning with the 2006 season, the Indy Racing League’s IndyCar Series will be fueled by ethanol. Now, a short two months later, NASCAR is hearing the all too familiar call; “We’re from the Government, and we’re here to help you.”

NASCAR drivers are known for their ability to promote and advertise via their race cars. It is sometimes a joke amongst television commentators and die-hard fans, that a driver can do more promoting of his sponsor from the finish line than any other type of advertising.

Now several Midwestern Senators want to tap into NASCAR

This takes guts, or lack thereof, so to speak:

KERNERSVILLE, N.C. (April 29)–Kevin Harvick Inc. (KHI) has reported that last Tuesday night April 26, after testing the No. 6 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet Silverado at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Ron Hornaday was experiencing pain in is stomach. He took himself to a Mooresville, NC area hospital, and learned that his appendix had ruptured. Outpatient surgery was performed, and Hornaday

NASCAR in recent years has steadily grown and has attracted personalities that, in the past, you wouldn’t associate with stock car racing

In the early eighties Jack Roush split off from his drag racing roots to start a team that now dominates NASCAR. Joe Gibbs left behind two NFL Super Bowl Championships (He has since returned to do both sports) to enter NASCAR. The Busch Series has seen a couple former NBA stars form partnerships in that series.

The lure of NASCAR has apparently attracted former FIA World Rally Champion Colin McRae to have a “look see” down South.

Scotland’s former world rally champion Colin McRae is considering a move to America’s Nascar series.

McRae visited a Nascar event recently, and sampled stock car competition in 2002 at the UK’s Rockingham circuit. He told the BBC’s Top Gear magazine: “If I go and do it, I want to go and commit to it. I think you’ve got to look at least a couple of years’ plan.”

“I could go and do a couple of Nascar tests or a couple of races, but then that would be deciding time.”

The Scotsman, who won the 1995 World Rally crown took part in his second Dakar Rally earlier this year, crashing out on the sixth stage. In December, he took part against the likes of F1 champion Michael Schumacher in the Race of Champions at the Stade de France in Paris.

McRae quit the WRC in 2003 after losing his drive with Citroen. He rejected an offer from Skoda to return in this year’s championship.

If he decides to go the NASCAR route, and gets into a competitve ride, I predict he will be very competitive in a very short time, for a very simple reason. Precise car control.

Many of the current NASCAR stars started on the dirt bull rings of America where car control is at a premium. A 6 inch slip while “riding the cushion” gives you an very real opportunity for a cartwheeling, end over end ride that hopefully ends inside the track and not over the fence.

Now consider the life of a WRC jockey. He must possess the same car control skills, on similar 90 or 180 degree corners, but in most cases he does it at 100mph on snow, ice, gravel or rain soaked mud. And the corner being negotiated at that speed has no outer catch fence, is only 30 feet wide and one slip sends you and your $100,000 machine down a 1000 foot mountain cliff!

I hope the NASCAR magnet does attract McRae, it would be very entertaining to watch him showcase his skills in another venue.

Move over Michael. Here comes a former Japanese race queen raring to become a “racing” queen in the man’s, man’s world of Formula One.

Keiko Ihara, who swapped the model’s leotard and makeup for a racing suit and helmet in 1999 at age 26, declares her goal is to compete with Germany’s seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher.

After six years of duelling with male drivers on lesser tours in Asia, Britain and France, she is revving up for the the British Formula-3 series which has produced such F1 greats as Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen. “I respect Michael Schumacher and always will. I dream of running on the same track with him but I don’t dare imagine myself overtaking him,” Ihara said ahead of her British F3 debut on April 2 at Donington Park.

“I am working to the limit in testing now and my machine and myself have been improving each day,” the 31-year-old told AFP by telephone from Marlow where she is based with the Carlin Motorsports team.

“Of course, women are totally different from men in terms of physical strength,” Ihara admitted. “I have also had difficulty many times on the mental side in a sense that motorsport still very much remains a man’s world.”

“But I don’t feel any handicap in the team, being a woman or a Japanese,” Ihara said, adding that she has seen courtesy from male colleagues. “On test days, my teammates go outside the transporter which we share when I change my clothes. They are all kind enough,” she said.

Ihara has come a long way since she started as a model to finance her career as a competitive freestyle skier when she was still an economics student at Tokyo’s Hosei University. On her first day on the track as a race queen, a model who promotes the high-octane sport, the sound of speed so enthralled her that she was inspired to learn how to drive and to become a racer one day.

After four years of saving money and finding sponsorship, she raced in the national Ferrari 355 championship in 1999. She competed in the British Formula Renault in 2000 and in the French F3 in 2001. Both high and low points of her career came in 2002 when she could not race at home as Japanese sponsors pulled out amid the throes of recession. It compelled her to make spot entries in the Asian Formula-2000 series and she won two races — becoming the first woman in the world to triumph in a formula-car race sanctioned by the International Automobile Federation.

Ihara finished third in the AF-2000 category of the 2002 Macau Grand Prix, the first woman to climb any podium in the event’s 50-year history.

In 2003, Ihara placed third overall in the Formula BMW Asian series. She competed as a regular on the national circuit last year before clinching a deal with Carlin for the 22-race F3 season, sponsored by a Japanese cosmetics firm. “We like breaking new ground and one day, there will be a successful female driver in F1,” Carlin team boss Trevor Carlin said. “Keiko is joining us to train herself for the higher formula, following in the footsteps of BAR driver Takuma Sato.”

Apart from Sato, the team has launched into F1 such drivers as Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and most recently India’s Narain Karthikeyan. There have been several women drivers in F1 since the early years of the 55-year-old championship. But their results have been limited with only Italian Lella Lombardi posting a top six finish — sixth at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix.

This entry “tracked” to Kevin’s Carnival of Trackbacks.

TALLADEGA, Ala.

The thousands of dedicated fans who flock to Talladega in the spring and fall are united by their love of racing primarily, but most find plenty of other things to occupy their time before the big races Saturday and Sunday. The qualifying events are also big draws, but a lot of fans prefer to stick around the campgrounds and enjoy each other

One of the NFL’s games that will forever live in infamy is the “Heidi” game of Nov. 17, 1968. In that game the Oakland Raiders scored 14 points in 65 seconds in a remakable comeback to win 43-32 over the Joe Namath led New York Jets.

The stirring ending was missed by those viewers of the NBC broadcast in the Eastern and Central time zones. Instead the network went to commercial then began airing a made-for-TV premiere movie, “Heidi.”

37 years later ITV, a British broadcasting company, has reprised that egregious error. For the first time in ages, possibly years, Formula One actually provided an entertaining show in Sunday’s San Marino GP in Imola Italy. Many in Britain never saw most of it!

British F1 fans cursed their TV screens as Imola’s thrilling late-race battle reached a climax.

As Michael Schumacher harried race leader Fernando Alonso with three laps to run, broadcaster ITV switched to a 3-minute ad-break. The action returned on the final tour. After the race, the network was bombarded with complaints.

”I was absolutely disgusted,’‘ one viewer told ‘The Sun’ newspaper. ”I think ITV should give F1 back to the BBC.”

Executive producer of the F1 broadcast, Neil Duncanson, apologised but defended the ad-break as a contractual obligation.

”The advertisers pay top dollar,” he said.

Reports said ITV had delayed going to a scheduled commercial break when Jenson Button briefly led, and again when the Schumacher-Alonso duel began. When the latter did not resolve, though, eventually ITV was ‘forced’ to leave the action, a source told Autosport.

”I can only assume the producer is a football fan,” English F1 legend Sir Stirling Moss told The Guardian.

What a load of crap. Advertisers may pay the big bucks but that is predicated on having viewers. Piss off enough of them and there will be none to shill over priced junk to.

UPDATE: Via Yahoo UK.

However, Mark Whittell, a spokesman for ITV Sport, continued to defend their coverage. arguing that they were ‘obliged to include five commercial breaks during a race and that they did not want to take the final break while Jenson Button was in the lead’. However, as the Guardian pointed out, Button lost the lead on the 47th lap of the 62-lap race.

Again, another load of crap. Why isn’t it policy to never show the last of five commercial breaks within the last 10-15 laps? A little math shows the network had approx 20 minutes to show the last 3 minute advertisement yet they chose the most iinopportune time possible. Then try to hide behind a contractual obligation.

Capital “B,” capital “S.”

UPDATE II: PitPass offers an excellent “Talking Point” on this issue. If nothing else the lead photo is worth the visit!

Cross posted @ SportsBlog

Or was that a “race” that occured in Imola Italy? Did Bernie’s boys actually put on a show worth watching, vice a pathetic parade of over priced life-sized slot cars? I’m shocked!

I’m also going on record, barring any qualification screwups or mechanical problems by Schumacher, Alonzo has seen his winning streak peak out at San Marino. It stops at three. The combination of the new Ferrari and an excessive amount of testing by Bridgestone has resulted in, at least, a level playing field.

Add in the usual masterful tacticians in the Ferrari pits - starting on a heavy fuel load, Schumacher was able to make up positions as his rivals pitted - leaving him clear in third after his own stop on lap 27 - and it may not be a happy homecoming for Alonzo at Barcelona in two weeks.

Alonzo:

“That was one of the best, if not the best, fighting finish to any race in my life,” said Alonso.

“I knew Michael was at least one second a lap faster than me in the closing laps and I had to keep him behind me. My only chance to do that was to hold him up mid-way into the corners and then pull away.

“I had to push hard for the straights early then and it was a tactic that worked well. He was very close to me in two or three corners and I held on and in the end it was okay. I never thought of giving up and letting him through so I could settle for second place. Never.”

Schumacher:

“I don’t know if I should be happy or disappointed. Of course, I am glad for the team that we have shown we have a fast car and we have, at last, taken some points and finished second. That is good.

“Really, I have to be delighted for the whole team. They have worked so hard for us to turn this around, especially our tyre suppliers Bridgestone who have had so much bad publicity this year.”