News for March 4th 2010

Texas Motor Speedway: Q&A with IZOD IndyCar Series Driver, Dario Franchitti

Q: What is it about the Indy cars that you do so well in that you can jump back in it and win the championship?

I think that the Indy car I jumped in was a good one with Team Target puts really good cars out and that definitely made my job easier. I’ve been doing it for so long before that as opposed to when I went to stock cars was learning something completely new. This was going back to learning something that was instinct for me. It was all I’d ever really done so it was a lot easier and I love driving those cars. I love the horsepower, grip, and the tracks I get to drive on. So it was a good homecoming.

Q: Are the cars more driver-friendly?

No, I don’t think they are. I’m more familiar with them. I often think if you take the best guy in Sprint Cup – which right now is obviously Jimmie – and you give him a couple of days to test and say ‘Alright go do the IndyCar Series,’ he would struggle for the first year and would figure it out I think. The difficulties are so different than driving a stock car that to do one or the other you have to change your whole way of thinking. Everything is different. If you come here to Texas in a stock car against an Indy car, it’s completely different. It feels like a different track. Going to Richmond is the same kind of deal. One is not easier than the other. They are just very different. (more…)

Edited: March 4th, 2010

NASCAR to honor Wendell Scott’s first start

Cars in this Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway will bear a decal honoring Wendell Scott, who became the first and only black driver to win on NASCAR’s elite circuit on Dec. 1, 1963, in Jacksonville, Fla.

The tribute comes on the anniversary of Scott’s Cup (then Grand National) debut on March 4, 1961, at Spartanburg, S.C.

Why the 39th, and not the 40th, anniversary? I’m not sure. But any tribute is long overdue for Scott, who was not among the 25 nominees for the NASCAR inaugural Hall of Fame class.

Sybil Scott, the late driver’s daughter, will attend Sunday’s race along with NASCAR Drive for Diversity competitor Jason Romero, winner of last year’s Wendell Scott Trailblazer Award.

Scott, like many at the time, made the jump to auto racing after running moonshine. He raced until 1973, when he was injured in a 21-car crash at Talladega Superspeedway.

He was later inducted into the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame at Talladega.

The Danville, Va., native’s career included eight stops at the old Savannah Speedway, where he earned his first pole position with a track record in 1962. Scott, who went on to finish eighth in that race, had eight top fives at the half-mile track.

Scott died Dec. 22, 1990, after a long battle with spinal cancer.

Edited: March 4th, 2010

American-based Formula One team shelved for 2010

The dream of Ken Anderson and Speed TV commentator Peter Windsor to enter a start-up American-based team in Formula One this year has hit the skids.

The FIA, which governs F1 racing, announced that USF1 will not race in 2010 and that the team’s slot on the grid will not be filled by any other team.

There is apparently a possibility that the team could be allowed back in 2011, but don’t count on it. The operation, which had prematurely announced in January that it would test its car at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, foundered for lack of money, despite having YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley on board as an investor.

The team is based in Charlotte, which makes sense for a NASCAR team but little sense for a team competing in a series that mostly races in Europe and Asia. And instead of capitalizing on their American ties by hiring an American driver, they signed a driver from Argentina.

Edited: March 4th, 2010