Full Throttle

The 24 hours of the Nurburgring is underway as I write this (0530am Sunday) for those with an interest in the event they have a live video stream up that’s available here.

The link will launch Windows Media Player on PCs and VLC Player on Macs. At present there is 5 hours to go before the checkered flag falls.

The stars of the Stade for this afternoon’s Race of Champions

Since the first women strapped into a race car the debate continues to rage on whether they belonged and if they did could they compete successfully. The “belong” half of the debate is pretty much settled with a few notable cretins, and the occasional misogynist.

An event to be held this week at Silverstone may not solve the issues that still linger but should be interesting none the less as it attempts to answer the age old question; So, who are the better drivers

So it’s the morning before the evening’s NASCAR “spin dryer” session at Bristol and the day before the Grand Prix of Turkey in Istanbul. What’s goin’ on?

As the F1 Circus returns from its annual GriswaldsTour it finds itself near the Bosporus Strait. Ferrari has secured its fourth lock-out of the F1 front row. Felipe Massa busted his maiden and sits on the pole beating his teammate Schumie by nearly four tenths of a second.

Renault claimed the second row with Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella. Alonzo later claimed his R26 seemed to be down on power. Maybe it was a mistake not to change engines after the last event. It would be just what the doctor ordered for Schumie if the Blue & Yellow coughed and sputtered to the side of the tarmac. We’ll see.

Honda

Me thinks Home Depot is shooting themselves in the foot.

A popular, unofficial Saturday night car show at a Home Depot parking lot in Cedar Park will have to move because crowds are taking up customer spaces, company officials said.

“It’s regrettable,” said Home Depot spokesman Don Harrison, “but the lot is for our customers to park. They come first.”

The show, which happens by word-of-mouth every Saturday night and is not sponsored or advertised, has been around 10 years, first at a Round Rock restaurant parking lot, then at the Home Depot lot at Parmer Lane and RM 1431. Now, car clubs are scouring the Austin area for a spot to move their display of up to 300 classic and muscle cars, trucks, boats and motorcycles. The shows, where owners walk around and admire one another’s vehicles for several hours in the early evening, must go on, supporters say.

“It was something we looked forward to at the end of the week. It was a free socialization event for all of us in love with cars,” said Kate Morris, a member of the Mustang Owners Club of Austin.

Gary Alexander, who attends the show almost weekly to show off his sea blue 1966 Volkswagen bus, took Home Depot’s decision personally. “I’ll just shop at Lowe’s from now on. Home Depot took away an important part of this community,” he said (as Jimmie Johnson smiled).

One commenter on the linked story noted a “huge new Lowes/Shopping Center parking lot” that may be available for the event (J.J. laughs and CEO Robert A. Niblock joins him).

Lowes Home Improvement Centers, Home Depot, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle

The 2007 list of nominees for induction to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame has been released. There are 20 finalists, look over the list and see if your are as stunned as I was to realize some of the legends that have not been inducted as yet.

Cotton Owens, the highly successful race driver and car owner, and Jack Ingram, the five-time champion of what is now NASCAR’s Busch Series. Owens won over 400 Modified and Late Model Sportsman races, then captured 40 more as a car owner. Ingram won three Grand National titles in a row, then won the newly-named Busch Series in its first year in 1982 and then again in 1985.

That duo heads a group of ten candidates that are affiliated with NASCAR. Others include former Champions Red Byron, Rex White (here is an interview with White on NASCAR history and tradition), Jerry Cook, and Ray Hendrick, car owner Junie Donlavey, engine builder and crew chief Maurice Petty, promotional guru Ralph Seagraves (RJR executive that brokered the Winston sponsorship of NASCAR) and track owner Bruton Smith.

Grumpy Jenkins (known as “Mr. Chevrolet” in Drag Racing, ahem…circles. Here is a beautiful lithograph of Grumpy’s Camaro), who won six NHRA titles as a car owner, and Warren Johnson (The “Professor of Pro Stock”), NHRA’S all-time winner in Pro Stock with 98 victories, represent drag racing.

Sports car legends Oliver Gendebein and Brian Redman, Grand Prix driver Rene Dreyfus, car owner and promoter J. C. Agajanian (it’s unrelated but note the ref to Jocko Flocko and ask yourself, what would HWSBO think and how much would the fine be), and Jan Opperman (acknowledged as the first “Hippy” race driver), who won big in both midgets and sprint cars, carry the banner of open-wheel racing.

Others on the list of 20 finalists are three-time World Land Speed record holder Art Arfons (holder of the Land Speed Record on 3 different occasions), two-time AMA Superbike champion Wayne Rainey and record-setting test pilot Chuck Yeager.

The nominees that contain a link will take you to that individual’s history in auto racing.

Last years Class included Harry Gant, Dale Earnhardt, Janet Guthrie, Jack Roush and Humpy Wheeler. It will be interesting to see if the voters will be as top heavy with NASCAR selections this year. Final voting will be held over the next two months, and the five-man Class of 2007 will be announced in early November.

Here are my selections based more on my surprise they have been overlooked this far than any other reason. Cotton Owens, Rex White, Junie Donlavey, J. C. Agajanian and Grumpy Jenkins. (with Jack Ingram and Jerry Cook in a very close tie for sixth choice)

While looking thru the Junie Donlavey history a name form the past jumped out at me, (yes I’m that old) and it relates to the current “hot story” L

The answer, as everyone knows is to get to the top.

For some it’s not enough to just get to the top. It’s how many times you can hang your ass over a 1000 foot (or much higher) cliff while traversing a 180 degree (sans guardrail) turn. While enroute they must control a 800 horsepower mechanical 4-wheeled mountain goat.

For the drivers it’s an obsession. For the spectators it’s one of those “are they freakin’ nuts” moments. All together the race is the annual Race to the Clouds held each year since 1916 on Pikes Peak.

This years addition will be contested today and lists amoung it’s entrants Indy 500 winner Danny Sullivan and hill climb legend Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima. Former NASCAR driver Wally Dallenbach Jr and brother Paul will also attempt to scramble up the side of “America’s Mountain.”

New Zealand’s Rod Millen holds the course record of 10 minutes, 4 seconds, set in 1994. Of all the “mountain goats” that have made the 12.42-mile trip none has been able to match the performance of Millen’s Toyota Celica. (image above)

The car is probably one of the most expensive, technologically advanced Celicas ever built and it’s estimated the cost was over a million dollars.

When Toyota moved out of WRC the Pikes Peak Celica was dropped in place of a Tacoma body shell. Toyota finally dropped the funding of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb all together in 2001.

Millen’s record once again appears to be safe. Monster Tajima was driving his new Suzuki Grand Vitara (also valued at a million dollars) when he slid off the road and into the woods a little more than a quarter-mile from the practice finish line at Glen Cove Friday.

It took safety crews over an hour to extracate his machine but plans are to work all night to effect repairs. At the time of this writing I have seen no reports on the status of repairs or whether they will effect his run at Millen’s record.

Side Notes: Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser and brother Bobby are legends ’round the Peak. The Unser family began competing in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 1926. Bobby Unser won in stock cars, sports cars, rally cars and the IndyCar division 13 times. Al won twice and his son, Al Jr., won as well as Bobby’s son, Robbie, who last competed there three years ago.

It was very dangerous but it was amazing. It was one of those places where you did not make a mistake; said Al Unser of the timed competition over the 12.4-mile course without guardrails.

If you made a mistake, you were gone because there are some places that are 600 to 700 feet down.

You don’t make a mistake and you have to know where you are at for 12.4 miles of road. Now it’s not as tricky because the course has been oiled down and it’s almost like pavement. When we ran it, it was like loose gravel and you had to drive it like a dirt track.

In 1969, Mario Andretti scored the Indianapolis 500/Pikes Peak double.

Pikes Peak, Race to the Clouds, Rod Millen, Monster Tajima, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle