#like. imagine if he did end up in indycar

[hollywoodsargeant]

i am so compelled by how close logan was to going to indycar. it makes a lot of sense, obviously, since he's american, but i've been listening to a lot of interviews with him where he talks about it and he had tests lined up for indy more than once

the first time was between his second and third F3 seasons -- 2020 and 2021 -- which is i think the one that gets talked about more? he did really well in F3 in 2020, almost winning the championship with prema before he crashed out the last race... but couldn't make the move up to F2 afterwards (he's cited financial reasons in the past, and has said that even if he did win the title over oscar that year, he still wouldn't have been able to make the move) so he was looking for other opportunities in racing. he even mentioned in an interview that when charouz did call him at the last minute there, he almost considered not doing it because he knew the car would be shit and didn't really see a point to it. obviously, he did take that F3 seat, but in the time between those two seasons he went home to florida and considered testing for indycar...

then AGAIN! after that F3 season in 2021, he had an indy test lined up before he got the call from williams/carlin to race for them in Formula 2. his campaign in F3 in '21 wasn't all that exciting without context, he finished 7th i think? but he got charouz their first win in F3 and proved he could drive a less-than-ideal car well, so he finally made the move up. i guess this is the one that surprised me more, like i knew he had considered indy after 2020 but i didn't realize he had the time to consider it again after 2021. but he made it up to F2! and we all know how that went

i don't know i just think anything related to him is fascinating. but it was to the point the second time there that he had the test all lined up and had to tell them that, well, he could still come test, but he wouldn't be doing anything in indycar in 2022 because he had an F2 ride, so they just called the whole thing off to not waste anyone's time/money. i just think it is interesting to see how often it looked like his F1 dream wasn't going to come to fruition, and again -- we all know how that went! proud of him. look at that boy go

[earl-grey-teacake]

so how are we feeling after that news.

I am not sure how I feel about everything since I just keep finding out more stuff and it makes me feel worse and worse. I’m sad, and upset, and it feels like a tinge of grief. Not for my own dreams or aspirations but for Logan’s. That being said, I will continues writing my Baby!Loscar AU and I will continue/ start my other Loscar fics. I feel like it is a tough time and I hope to make it a little bit lighter.

I think my biggest feeling is overall disdain and disgust for how Williams went about this. My biggest issue is the whole situation being portrayed as “Williams is a business, this was a business decision. No emotion here” Businesses are not faceless entities, they are teams of people. It’s why teams put a lot of effort in PR and companies invest so much in HR. They are comprised of people and we as spectators and fans also play a role in the business that is Williams. Fandoms are profitable, fan content keeps people engaged, and those who are engaged spend money. This decision has shot William’s PR and whatever goodwill they managed to achieve last year. Logan is a martyr in the eyes of fans and James Vowles has come off as a deranged man. For the past month, any comments to the media are either of him passive-aggressively calling Logan a failure or thirsting after Carlos in a way that makes me want to call HR.

This decision isn’t even a money decision either. They talk about the upgrades, and need for points but are putting their faith in a driver that is clearly being brought up from F2 too early. They are taking risks that genuinely make no sense to me and I am afraid it may damage this new rookie’s confidence on top of it.

I cannot tell if James Vowles is doing this because he wants to live a bit wild before Carlos comes, has a vendetta against Logan, or he is just off his rockers.

I am happy Logan is out of there though and wherever he goes, I go. I hope he goes to Indycar. This is not me seeing Indycar as so lesser sport where unsuccessful F1 drivers should go it. I have great admiration for Indycar and genuinely enjoy watching it more than F1. My wish for Logan to go to Indycar is for the general vibe and how friendly everyone is and for the fact that I live 3 hours away from a track and will absolutely take PTO to see Logan race.

Personal feelings are below if anyone wants to read them.

I got into F1 last year around September but really dove into it around the beginning of November. Logan was someone who never really stood out to me in the beginning but I began to notice him more and more around October and November and I couldn’t help but sympathize for him. I remember how anxious I was waiting for him to be re-signed and the relief I felt when it happened.

I wanted him to do well and succeed so desperately and as it became more and more apparent that James and Williams, were doing, I became a bigger and bigger fan of him. I know I’ve mentioned it briefly on here before but near the end of last year and the first half of this year, I was dealing with a toxic workplace and an abusive supervisor. As the months went on, the treatment towards me got worse and worse and so did Williams’s treatment of Logan. Our workplace started to mirror each other.

The remarks, the veiled threats, the passive-aggressive comments that points to the same message “you’re under-performing, you’re not good enough”. Most of all, the expectation to practically perform miracles with tools and equipment that was vastly behind the rest of the field. I know very well how heavy and oppressive the work environment must have been. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been to have to be doing it everyday, to have to perform for the public like everything is fine, and take the abuse from James, from journalists and commentators, and social media. I was already breaking under my supervisors treatment of me, I definitely would have snapped in Logan’s shoes. However, while my supervisor got kicked out of their position, Logan was the one who got kicked off the team. I do hope he takes the summer to enjoy himself and heal.

I feel so bad for him and I’m so upset at how I didn’t know this was his last race. I had Abu Dhabi planned out thinking that was going to be Logan’s last and now I’m just a bit crushed.

[ilottthepilot]

ilottthepilot's Motorsport Moments of the Year: 2024

This is a list of events from F1, WEC and Indycar that I either, loved, hated, or was just shook by in general. This is by no means an objective list, you might find that some items are completely irrelevant to you. It is also heavily biased towards my faves. Think of this as a recap in my personal diary. This is also not a ranking, I just tried to find a semi-chronological order that makes sense. Enjoy!💞

1. Lewis Hamilton Ferrari Announcement

Has there ever been a better day to refresh every app 100 times and scroll all day? What started off as just a sketchy rumour grew throughout the day as more and more mysterious leaks surfaced. There were journalists camping out at Mercedes HQ when Toto Wolff scheduled a meeting with the team. And in the end this crazy bit of chatter actually turned out to be true. What a way to start the season! I love Carlos Sainz, but I love plot twists more!

Rating:🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

2. Bus Bros Divorce

Where do I even start with these two? If you are not familiar, I suggest this post, which gives a good summary. TLDR: they were besties with a youtube channel up until 2023, when Josef managed to win the Indy 500, but Scott was ahead in the champioship. In the beginning of 2024 Josef decides to cut out all distractions, so he unfollows everyone on social media, ends the youtube channel, and the two stop talking.

Weeks after the first race of the season, which Josef wins, it is revealed that their team had been cheating with software which illegaly allows the drivers to use push-to-pass on restarts, and they both get disqualified for using it. P2Pgate becomes the topic that won't disappear and everyone is arguing if it is possible that the drivers were not aware. Scott decides to die on the hill that he noticed nothing. Josef gives a tearful press conference admitting that he was aware of the push-to-pass when he pressed the button and it would have been impossible not to.

From there on out the energy between the two stays tense and they mostly avoid each other, including leading up to the Indy 500, when Scott breaks the qualifying record and gets pole and Josef wins the race the second year in a row. Then suddenly, when Josef gives his winner's speech at the Indy 500 banquet, he drops the "i still love you, my bus bro" and everyone goes wild. The season ends with Scott finishing 3rd, losing out on the championship due to the P2Pgate disqualification (if my math is right). Josef is 8th. It seems like the refocusing and cutting out distractions did not work. What version of Josef and Team Penske will we see in 2025? Will they ever be bros again?

Rating: 🤔🤔⁉️❓❓

3. Carlos Sainz Appendicitis and Melbourne Win

Carlos has been one of my favourite drivers ever since I became an F1 fan. Seeing him lose the Ferrari seat was a bit sad and seeing him lose out on one of his last races with the team did not help. Especially considering how painful appendicitis is and how it in theory seems like a huge obstacle to race fitness. So of couse I absolutely lost my mind when Carlos won the first race after getting back into the car.

I will admit right away that I did not actually watch the Australian GP because I was up until like 2am watching the figure skating world championships, particularly the free skate points record being broken (another sporting event I lost my mind over) but the moment I grabbed my phone to look up the results in the morning was like drugs.

Rating: 😱🤩😍🤯🤯

4. Georgina the Mannequin

Some racing moments are memorable because they are joyous, some are memorable because they are devastating. Some are just simply so bizarre that you could not have ever predicted them. If you have somehow gone all year without seeing a mannequin fall onto a racetrack in the middle of an Indycar race, I would suggest you check out the video right now. It's also the souce of some of my favourite silly race commentary of the year. "Imagine if she stuck the landing"

Rating: Tens across the board

5. #12 Wins the 6 Hours of Spa

I will tell you right now that I'm not really a WEC fan. I get fomo when I miss races and I simply do not have time to spend my entire weekend in front of a screen. But after I found out that my favourite driver got a ride in WEC I had to check it out.

The Spa race was a bit strange, as there was a long red flag around two hours before the scheduled end and instead of the timer running out, it was reset to the time of the red flag, allowing for more racing. This was a huge advantage for the #12 Jota, driven by Callum Ilott and Will Stevens, which got its first win and the first ever privateer Hypercar win. While I couldn't watch the end of the race live (I was at a classical concert with my phone off. I was stressed and manifesting), I feel like I have replayed the clip of the final lap 100 times. "Callum Ilott, you superstar" still lives rent free in my mind. It's one thing to become a fan of a driver that many people say is talented, with plenty of wins in his junior career. It's another to actually see that driver get a win and his hard work pay off. Spa 2024, you will always be famous.

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

6. Pato O'Ward Loses the Indy 500 Win on the Last Lap

This year I had many busy weekends and I missed out on a lot of racing, but the one that I was the most sad about missing was the motorsports super bowl double feature Monaco GP Indy 500 Sunday. While Monaco turned out to be the feel good story of Charles beating his hometown curse, the Indy 500 wrote a much sadder story. Pato O'Ward managed to overtake Josef Newgarden for the lead going into the final lap, ready to cement his place in history, only to lose the the position to the defending Indy 500 champion moments later.

The look on Pato's face after the race, all that sadness and disappointment really captured the fanbase and reminded everyone why we watch sports. How a single overtake can mean the world and change someone's life. I think about the video of Pato and Alexander Rossi, who finished 4th, hugging like every day. Either one could have had fate on their side that day and taken the victory, but it wasn't meant to be.

Rating: 💔💔💔💔💔

7. #12 Car Le Mans Wreck

I'm sure it's fun to be a superfan of an athlete or a team where everything runs smoothly and they win all the time. I wouldn't know.

As previously mentioned, I was on top of the world when my boy Callum won Spa. I was ready for him and the #12 Jota team to take that energy to the next race, the big one. I was so excited, I even followed qualifying. The #12 lucked its way into Hyperpole qualifying, after the #7 had all its lap times deleted. Time to breathe easy, right? Just a bit more practice and then time to throw everything at Hyperpole the next day, right? RIGHT? WRONG! My guy, my fave, my one and only spun during night practice and absolutely totalled the car. The team had to completely rebuild the car around a spare chassis that was provided by a different team. This process is supposed to take 3 weeks. The team did it in 48 hours, just in time to start the 24 hours of Le Mans. As they missed hyperpole and the other practice sessions, Jota got permission to shake down the newly rebuilt car at a nearby airfield, leading to some cool pictures.

While the Le Mans results table doesn't reflect a feel good story about overcoming setbacks, I am not going to forget what those mechanics pulled off.

Rating: 💔💔🥹🥹🥹

8. Lewis Hamilton Wins Silverstone

I have always admired Lewis Hamilton and his accomplishments, but I have always found it hard to root for him, ever since I started watching in 2023. If a guy has over 100 wins, why should I care if he puts his mediocre car in p4 or p3? What I will say is that I was sad that I had never watched a single one of those many wins live.

This win during his last season with Mercedes, after a two year drought, at his home race where he holds the record for most wins, was simply perfect. I don't fault anyone for getting emotional at that.

Rating: 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

9. Arrow Mclaren #6 Car Saga

I have spent so much time yapping about this all year, so I am not gonna summarize it again. You can read all about it here. As much of a mess as this was, I do think it's time to acknowledge the positive sides. Most importantly, Callum Ilott, my favourite driver, in case anyone has not yet noticed, got to race the Indy 500 in a competitieve car. Did it go completely smoothly? No. He had a problem with the steering wheel during the warm up lap and had to start from the back of the grid, where he had contact at the beginning of the race. All things considered, I really can't complain about a P11 finish. And nothing can compare to the moment Callum teased that he would be doing the 500 in his post win interview in Spa. Lives were changed.

The other great thing to come out of the #6 car mess was Théo Pourchaire's introduction to Indycar. Last year my feelings towards Théo where mostly ambivalent when he was fighting for the F2 championship. I primarily spent most of my time asking everyone why he was so unpopular amongst F2 fans. Well, the same can't be said for Indycar, where he was instantly embraced and given a silly nickname (that honestly got old after about 3 days). Nobody has ever seemed this happy to be driving in Alabama. His excitement was contagious and even famously grumpy Alexander Rossi referred to him as the nicest person he had ever met

Rating: ��😍🤠🧐🤯

9.b Mclaren's Broken Bones and July 21

Jumping off the previous point, I simply can't make this list without mentioning the comically insane number of broken bone incidents throughout the different Mclaren teams. Of course the Indycar silly season would have gone very differently, had David Malukas not fallen off that bike and broken his hand, which eventually got him fired the same weekend as Sam Bird broke his hand in Formula E, giving Taylor Barnard the chance to shine.

A third broken hand hit Mclaren on July 21, with Alexander Rossi out for the rest of the Toronto Indycar weekend after hitting the wall in qualifying. This of course gave Théo Pourchaire the chance to make a glorious return in form of a mad dash from France to Toronto, just in time to qualify a car he had never driven, with an entirely new type of power unit, on a track he had never seen before with absolutely no practice beforehand. The race is a huge mess of crashes, with Théo not only not finishing last, but also being the only Mclaren driver to not total his car. And if there wasn't enough going on during that race, Joe Biden dropped out of the US presidential race in the middle of it.

Hands are not the only bones Mclaren drivers can break and Oscar Piastri shocked the entire F1 fanbase when he revealed during the summer break that he had been driving with a broken rib, including the day he won his first race.

Rating: 🦴🚫🫠🤪👍

10. Oscar's First Win aka July 21 pt II

Roll the clip back for a moment. A few hours before the crashfest that was the Indycar Toronto GP, while Théo Pourchaire was probably flying over the Atlantic ocean, there was another eventful race. While Lando Norris got pole position, Oscar Piastri showed what he's made of at the start and snatched the lead away from him. As Oscar quickly built a healthy gap, the first win seemed inevitable until a confusing stategy call led to Lando retaking the lead with an undercut. Why am I recapping this, we all watched it. The following laps filled with endless radio messages pleading with lando to give the position back were some of the most excruciating minutes of racing i have ever watched. While I was so hyped for an Oscar win at the start of the race, watching Lando give that position back gave me second hand embarrassment to the highest degree.

What really surprised me after the race was that my opinion (Lando should have absolutely not given that position back, racing sometimes means grabbing every advantage that falls into your lap) was nowhere near as popular as I expected it to be. I saw so many people say that Lando should have given the position back immediately. While the incident as a whole was pretty bizarre, I stand by the fact that the moment you have the best car on the grid and a plausible chance (even if it's a long shot) of winning the championship, you need to smell blood and start biting.

Rating: 🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴

11. Franco Colapinto replacing Logan Sargeant

2024 was an eventful year in motorsports and some people really went through it. Not many people were having as bad of a time as Logan and Williams though. The moment something seems to be going well for he team you already know that they are about to encounter unbelievable horrors a week later. When Logan had to give his car to Alex in Melbourne the tone was set for the rest of the season.

2024 was the year when sweet, soft spoken James Vowles got his claws out and showed the kind of ruthless ambition that gets you into a team principal position. Firing someone mid season is always harsh, but it's not necesarily a bad decision. When Franco Colapinto got in that car he immediately made a splash, outscoring Logan's career points by his second race and winning the hearts of the eintire F1 community.

Unfortunately the euphoria of those first few races quickly wore off and Williams had one of the worst finishes to a season imaginable, with five DNFs and a DNS across the last five races. I hope the mechanics got the most relaxing christmas possible. With a dissappointing end to his year and no seat, things could be better for Franco, but I doubt we have seen the last of him. Ironically, I think he paved the way for many of theyoung drivers on the grid instead of him in 2025.

Rating: literally traumatizing.

12. The Thing With Liam Lawson

I will start this off by saying that I like a villain. It is very unlikely for me to hate an athlete because of his ego or entitlement. You can argue for day if a driver has that dog in him, or is simply an arrogant dick, I don't care. I want to see someone who beliees in his own skills and potential and fights to prove himself.

When Liam got that seat he knew exactly that these six races could catapult his career to new heights or ruin it forever. With Checo on his way out, Liam saw a chance to rip that Red Bull seat out of his hands and he was willing to do so, unafraid to make enemies along the way. Sure, we all know Yuki deserved his shot, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to see Liam give his all next to Max. Who knows, will he be the one to hold his own, or will that seat open up for Yuki after all in six months?

Rating: 🔥🔥🔥

13. Brazilian Grand Prix

I love Max Verstappen, but I coudn't root for him in 2023 because I was so bored of the predictable race results. I only became an F1 fan in 2022, so I was so glad that I finally got to see Max fight for something this year, and oh my god, it is remarkable. I don't think I've ever had this much fun watching F1.

The highlight, of course, was the Brazilian GP, with it's sunday morning qualifying, endless rain and yellow flags, an Alpine double podium (??) and of course Max going 17th to 1st. What. A. Day. (I also choose to ignore everything that happened beween Alpine and Esteban Ocon after this.)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

14. George and Max Beef

If you have followed me for a while, you have probably seen me daydream about a Max/George title fight. There is just something about the way they have opposite personalities but still match each other's energies that is so compelling to me, that, with the right cars, I think would lead to the most toxic but entertaining championship battle.

Well, turns out that such a title fight is not even necessary to to create the type of toxic mess I was predicting. I refuse to pick a side between "I have never seen somene try to scew another driver over like that" and "max is a bully", because I love them both equally. I did however have so much fun watching them trow insults at each other. And what coulld be a better time for a pregnancy announcement?

Rating: i love mess

[vetteldixon]

do you think seb could come back to F1 if the new regulations set for 2026 with the sustainable fuels happen? because he says said he didn't think he could come back if a change in sustainability didn't happen. so with a change like that... maybe? idk I am happy for him in general where it concerns his retirement this sport its getting more and more weird ? with the way F1 keeps adding street races and everything else and the travelling as well, away from family

as a fan, I would love it if he did and lowkey hope for it but I also realistically think he wont and he's kinda right for doing that but he always says he misses racing, whenever he goes to a race like he did in suzuka saying it hurt to be standinb there etc so who knows

i would love it too anon! i imagine the sustainable fuel switch is on his radar and his connections around a lot of teams in the paddock run both wide and deep so i'd be surprised if he isn't entertaining possible offers. i'm sure a major point on his wants list is still 'capable of winning races' which is naturally limiting and i don't know which (if any) teams would never consider him due to, let's say, non-racing factors. but i think there's bound to be some level of mutual interest to get him racing again. it may only be nominal for time being but *tired voice* life comes at you fast...

worth mentioning is that in 2026 seb's youngest son will be turning 7 and therefore almost certainly have started school full-time! the family factor has been brought up by both seb-hostile media and seb fans as if it means his new permanent station is by the hearth so to speak which from my personal observations and i think in general many parents find not very practical or desirable long-term (plus kids become more independent as they grow older of course). it's possible to strike a balance and is something that sounds imminently seb, so perhaps he decided try to be home especially to cherish the kindergarten days with his youngest in a way he didn't with the others but leave things open further down the road.

i'll note that 'it hurts to be standing here' is something i've heard quite a lot of drivers say particularly in indycar but i'm sure it's just as common in f1! i don't mean to say that seb isn't unique—his knowledge and zeal are unrelenting and beautiful—but rather that 'race fan' is a condition known to stay with its carriers until the end of their days... *cue sobbing over murray walker on his deathbed asking if seb's gonna be ok*

[f1]

Max Verstappen: Red Bull driver questions if Formula 1 is 'actually a good life'

Verstappen is top of this season's Championship standings after winning in Bahrain and Australia Max Verstappen says he enjoys racing and winning and the money that comes from it - but could still end up asking himself whether Formula 1 "is actually a good life". The Red Bull driver's concerns stem from the ever-expanding schedule and F1's trials of different formats, such as the revised 'sprint' in Baku this weekend. "I always said that even if there won't be any more sprint races, if we keep expanding the calendar and the whole weekend is that long, at one point you question yourself: is it worth it?" Verstappen said. "I do like racing. I do like winning. I know that, of course, there is the salary and everything, and you have a good life. But is it actually a good life? "I think sometimes you get to a point in your career where maybe you want to do other stuff. "I have the contract until the end of 2028 and then we'll review again, but I do feel that if it's getting at one point too much, then it's time for a change." The two-time champion has always made it clear that he does not especially enjoy the 'sprint' weekends, which feature a shorter race on Saturdays in addition to the grand prix. He prefers F1's traditional approach. But combine this with four-day weekends, and a calendar that this year will be a record 23 races, with potentially even longer schedules coming in the future, and Verstappen finds himself pondering his long-term future at a time when many might expect him simply to be loving life. He admitted it was "a bit difficult to imagine what is going to happen past 2028". And he acknowledged some would not understand why he was feeling so ambivalent about a long-term future in F1. "This sounds very weird for people from the outside, because they're like: 'Oh, you're in Formula 1, you're winning!'" Verstappen said. "And probably I would have said the same when I was in their position. But once you're in it, it's not always how it looks like or how people think your life is. "I mean, yes, it's great, it's amazing and I can do a lot of things. I'm very independent. But there is always a limit to certain things." Verstappen has won the title for the last two years - controversially against Lewis Hamilton in 2021 and then in dominant fashion last season - and is already well on course for a third championship in 2023. Red Bull look like they could dominate F1 for the next few years - at least until a new set of rules is introduced in 2026. Verstappen is said to be paid a salary in the region of 40-50m euros and he made it clear he was committed to Red Bull at least until the end of his existing contract. But he said he was not motivated by breaking Hamilton's F1 records. "No I'm not interested in winning seven or eight titles," he said. "If you have the car to do it great, but I am already happy so it's OK." Verstappen added: "I want to do other things, other competitions. A bit like Fernando [Alonso] did. But it also needs to be worth it to come back [to F1]. "Some people just love racing and that's the only thing they know and the only thing they want to do. I am probably a bit more in the middle. I mean, I do love racing. But I also want to do other kinds of racing. And then you can't combine the two or set up other kinds of stuff." He said his other ambitions were in "endurance racing" and "owning my own team". But he ruled out racing in IndyCars. "I like watching IndyCar," Verstappen said. "I think there are a lot of great drivers in there and also people I raced against, so I have a good connection with them. And I like seeing them do well. "But me driving the Indy 500? Absolutely not. I might go there and watch but not race." via BBC Sport - Formula 1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/

[bwoahtastic]

Imagine this for the 'I didn't know I was pregnant', verse.

Kevin did want to get pregnant, but he could because of hormone imbalance that doctors can't explain or solve, so he ended up giving his dream completely.

After he was confirmed to be going to IMSA, he kind of relaxed completely, like little changes in the diet (less strict), change in the training regime, so he didn't realize he gained some weight. He's bump didn't get bigger, either.

He had some morning sickness that happened around Romain's crash, so he thought it was due to the stress about the crash, and then as a stomach bug when he was supposed to fly to U.S.A. for the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Regner did suspect about the pregnancy, but he's not sure, and when IMSA and IndyCar shared the track, he asked Romain, who explained that Kev can't get pregnant.

Bonus point if Kev water's broke before a race, and he spent the whole of it racing, and they have to drag him to the hospital for a check-up.

Nfggg yes preggo kev!

Kevin never being able to get pregnant because he trains too hard and needs to watch his weight too closely

Kevin just fully disregarding the symptoms cos he knows he can't get pregnant so it's just wishful thinking. And Romain knows cos Kevin cried to him about it multiple times and he also knows it sorta drove apart Kevin and Nico because Kevin distanced himself too much 👁👁

Renger and Romain teaming up cos they know something is up, especially when they see Kevin stumble out of his room, white faced and trembling, and see his bed seems to be soaked 👀

Kevin still getting incar and Renger and Romain arguing with the team until they get Krvin back to the garage and checked out.

Kevin having the baby not even hours later and he is just so much in shock and just refusing to believe it and Romain has to take care of thr baby a lot at first. Nico arriving 1 or 2 days later and Kevin just cries and tells Nico he doesn't understand, that it isn't possible and that he is sorry but Nico just kisses him and tells him he loves Kevin still, and will love the baby too.

And ofc Romain and Renger are godparents xjjsj<3

[meaningofmotorsport]

Mid-Week Motorsport Headlines - 18th November 2021

F1

Having been the favourite all along, Zhou has been confirmed in the 2nd Alfa Romeo seat for 2022. He is an Alpine junior, who is currently 2nd in the F2 standings, with a few wins this year. Whilst there are more impressive CV’s out there, Guanyu is worthy of an F1 seat you have to say, and will be the 1st Chinese driver in F1. Money seems to be what allowed him to get the seat over Giovinazzi or Piastri, as Chinese backers are reported to have sourced $30 million for him.

After the stewards felt there was no need to investigate the incident on Lap 48 of the Grand Prix, Mercedes have lodged a right to review it, as the onboard of Verstappen’s car has been released now to the public. I imagine that the FIA will agree with their view, and allow them to appeal for a penalty, but given Lewis did get past before the race ended, the FIA may not feel it necessary to penalise him. I am sure it will be the subject of much debate!

Formula E

After the news of Zhou joining Alfa Romeo, Giovinazzi announced he will move across to Dragon Penske for next year. This was probably the best choice for him, as he is a very good driver, he just wasn’t quite cut out for F1. I am excited to see how he does. Alongside this, Sette Camara was confirmed to stay at the team with the Italian, creating a rather strong line up.

Vergne has also resigned with Decheetah, to continue the fiery partnership with Da Costa, which surely will lead to disaster soon! Until then, the team will have two great drivers, who have the potential to do great things for the team.

IndyCar

The US Air Force have pulled out of sponsoring the No. 20 Ed Carpenter car, presumably as the performance of that car is not what they were hoping for. Daly was unlucky on road courses this year, and Ed has been struggling to put it all together on ovals too. This has left a big vacuum at the team, and could be a major issue going forwards.

MotoGP

Unfortunately, work has kept me from writing another MotoGP review article, I can only apologise, there will be a review article of the season coming out soon, and things should be calmer for me when they return in March/April. As for the season finale, it was another weekend for Ducati, as Martin ended his rookie year on a high, before having the win snatched from him by Bagnaia, who offered it as a thank you to Rossi. The Italian squad look formidable for 2022, especially as Jorge was ill this weekend.

Quartararo was at sea all weekend, although he did get well inside the top 10 for the race, he can still be so proud of his year. Mir and Binder did their bit, for teams who are probably glad to leave 2021 behind them, and should expect much better next year. Bastiannini and Aleix Espargaro deserved to end their years in the top 10, after both having stellar campaigns. Morbidelli too showed promise for 2022.

However, that weekend was all really about one man, who was leaving behind one of the most incredible careers in racing, spanning 26 years. It was truly emotional to think that was it for the GOAT of motorcycle racing, and whilst it would have been crazy for him to win the final race, this year has shown he chose the right time to go, and has nothing to be ashamed of. We should all just be thankful we got to witness Rossi’s career unfold around us.

Other News

Glickenhaus will have 1 full time car in 2022 for the WEC season, with there being 2 entries for Le Mans. This is probably a smart move, as they are a small team, and don’t want to overstretch themselves. There is the potential for the 2nd car to race outside of Le Mans, but the logistics of that is still being sorted out.

Dodge is reportedly set to return to NASCAR, sources say it is 80% done, with them apparently joining up with Stewart Haas Racing to begin with. This would not happen in time for next year, but 2023 or 24 is highly likely. This would be a major coup for NASCAR, as Dodge would bring much more money and viewers to the sport, and complete the big 3 American Automotive giants.

-M

Thank you very much for reading this article! To keep up to date with when they go out, and to see my reactions to races and other news, follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/MeaningofMotor1

Also, if you want to support me, I have a Patreon Page at: https://www.patreon.com/meaningofmotorsport

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The Petrolhead Corner – Weird and Wonderful Automotive Innovations – Part 3

To complete the triptych of articles covering weird and wonderful innovations from the automotive world – part 1 and part 2 can be read here – we once again delve into history and uncover some amazing creations. After turbine engine cars or illuminated tires (yes, for real), The Petrolhead Corner tries to up the ante once more and deliver some curious machines that tried to hit… but missed. 

It has been a lot of fun gathering these stories, learning and sharing unique vehicles in our weekly Petrolhead Corner. And yes, we will continue the stories but this is (for now) the final instalment dedicated to the weird and wonderful automotive innovations. And I think I have another interesting line-up for you, a mix of road cars, concepts and racing cars. But more later this year.

Citroen Kar-a-Sutra

Calling a car ‘Kar-a-Sutra’ undoubtedly raises a few eyebrows, and I must admit it sounds quite cheesy. And yes, I am kind of stretching the concept of a car here as this was a mock-up only and not a drivable machine like all the other entries in these three articles. As a concept vehicle though, it ticks all the boxes for weirdness and can even be regarded as somewhat of a precursor to the MPV and many other expandable, shape-shifting concept vehicles.

The Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is a concept by architect Mario Bellini, Pirelli, Citroën and a furniture company and the latter seems to be quite obvious when looking at images of this thing. It was built for the 1972 MoMa exhibition, ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’. The emphasis for the Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is on the interior of the vehicle. The idea is that the interior is more than just space for a number of people moving from point A to point B. It is intended as a temporary living space, bars any sanitary amenities though, but with reconfigurable seating which can be turned into a comfy, velvety lounge area.

The roof of the car is what makes this car so extraordinary, as it can be raised from 4 feet while driving to 7 feet while stationary. It featured ingenious sliding windows tucked into the body when lowered, sliding out to keep a confined space when raised. 

Technically this is not an actual (concept) car as it cannot be driven but it is worth a mention as it predates what many consider the first MPV’s by well over a decade; the Renault Espace was introduced in 1984, over a decade later.

There’s very little additional information, but the Citroën Kar-a-Sutra is covered by Petrolicious and the architect himself is interviewed by DesignBoom. 

Nissan DeltaWing

All entries on this list combine innovation with weirdness and this one is no different; the DeltaWing project. The initial idea was to have a very narrow front profile to reduce drag and increase efficiency in both engine development and aerodynamics. Combined with a lightweight build, the car would theoretically need a less powerful and thus less thirsty engine but still be able to run at a competitive pace.  The project was first proposed as a new single-seater chassis for Indycar, but the Indycar organisers decided to run a more conservative chassis from Dallara instead. 

The team of DeltaWing Technologies, who proposed the prototype to Indycar, turned it into a car that was eligible for the Le Mans 24 hours under the Garage 56 regulations, with the help of Nissan as a sponsor. These Garage 56 stipulations mean that each year a radical, innovative project has the chance to gather real endurance racing experience and test their project to the limit. Each Garage 56 entry is not eligible to win though, it is purely a test-program for teams. In 2012 the roadster version was the first DeltaWing that entered the gruelling race. A 1.6-litre turbocharged inline-four pumped out about 300bhp which at first doesn’t sound like much compared to the 1000hp LMP1 cars. A big factor is weight and drag though and the Nissan DeltaWing weighed in at under 500kg’s without a driver and was thus able to run quite impressive lap times. Despite looking very promising on paper and backing up its potential on track, six hours into the race it was shunted off track and into a wall by another car and was out of competition.

Two years later, the DeltaWing project was back at Le Mans but now as a coupe, and labelled it the ZEOD RC (Zero Emissions on Demand Racing Car). It had a hybrid-electric powertrain with a 400bhp turbocharged 1.5-litre engine and an electric engine developing 295bhp. In its first lap into the race, it reached 300 kilometres an hour on electric power alone, a very impressive achievement! A gearbox-issue sadly meant another retirement for the DeltaWing. For more information on these cars go to DriveTribe.com.

Brooks Walker ‘Fifth Wheel’ system

You think parking assistance is a modern invention, due to the need of computers? Oh no, it really isn’t! It was first conceived in the 1930s by a man called Brooks Walker. Patented in 1932 and first shown to the public a year later, this specific innovation cannot be credited to a single car or brand as it was designed as an aftermarket installation. It is quite interesting to see though. And despite mayor efforts by Mr Walker it never caught the imagination of US carmakers. It is basically a very early, very rudimentary form of parking assistance we know today. 

It basically consists of a trunk-mounted fifth wheel, mounted perpendicular to the other wheels and lowered by a mechanical or hydraulic arm. You would pull up to a parking space, turned in the nose of the car, lowered the fifth wheel which would then pull in the back end of the car into the parking spot. Really rather ingenious, and quite a funny thing to behold.

The upside is it requires less space to park in comparison to regular parallel parking, the downside being it took up all available trunk space. The system never caught on despite all efforts, even into the fifties. In the fifties, it was marketed as an extra use for a spare wheel and was constructed in such a way it could be fitted to just about any trunk. Walker installed the kit on a 1953 Packard with a continental kit (spare wheel outside of the trunk) to free up the trunk again. You can see it in action here:

More information on this innovative system on Hagerty.com

Milliken Camber-Car

One of the mysteries surrounding setting up a race car is the positioning of a car’s wheels. Wheelbase, track width, positive or negative camber, toe-in or toe-out; it all greatly influences the dynamics of a race car. It also should be adjusted according to the conditions a car is run in, as a rally car requires a completely different set-up than, let’s say an F1 car. It affects wear, grip, braking, acceleration, aerodynamic flow, all very scientific stuff.

To explore various cambers for a car, legendary engineer Bill Milliken developed the Milliken MX-1 “Camber-car”. The car was developed with the idea to adjust camber positions and learn what the influences of various set-ups are on handling and driving capabilities. It featured a tubular chassis, with multiple mounting points for the suspension resulting in a set-up anywhere between 0 and 50 degrees of camber. 

Power came from a two-stroke six-cylinder engine, producing 80bhp. No real performance figures are specified but that is not what the car was intended for. Basically constructed as two motorbikes leaning in, it had difficulty running in a straight line until some adjustments were made. When all issues were sorted out, the car cornered at remarkable speeds, proving the concept to an extent. The Milliken MX-1 was tested for a number of years but made its first public appearance at the 2002 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Bill Milliken, 91 years of age at the time, piloted the car up the Hillclimb-course. There’s a short very low-quality clip available on YouTube where you see the car in motion but that’s it.

Rinspeed sQuba

Arguably one of the best car-related scenes in a movie is from the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Mr Bond is pursued by some bad-guys in his white Lotus Esprit. After the perilous chase, he reaches the end of the road and jumps his car off a pier. You’d think it would be the end of him, but no. Turns out the car is a submarine! After fending off more thugs underwater, he eventually drives out of the water, onto a beach, lowers a window, drops a fish and drives off!

The car used in the underwater scene is a second Lotus Esprit, converted to be a fully working submarine. Despite what the movie suggests, the road car did not convert into the submarine. There is only one car I know of that can pull off that stunt in real life; the Rinspeed sQuba! As the name sort of suggests it is an actual scuba-diving car, based on a Lotus Elise (a white one, as a nod to the Esprit).

Rinspeed is a Swiss company who have been building some of the wildest, innovative concept cars for over 40 years. The sQuba stands out though, as I believe it still is the only truly submersible car in existence. From a technical perspective, it is a very complicated thing to do. The solution was to make it electrically driven. From the outside it only a set of propellers are visible underneath the rear of the car and a pod on either side for under-water control.  The interior is clad in water-resistant material and all instruments are designed to provide information for both driving and diving the car. A pair of oxygen tanks are fitted, with piping and masks allowing the drivers to breathe. 

A ton of interest was shown when this car was launched, presented at the 2008 Geneva auto show but it never made it into production. The scalability of the prototype to a production-ready car is simply not there, with the concept car costing 1.5 million dollars. More information on Rinspeed.com and Motor1.com. Also, check out this video of the car in action:

Covini C6W

Some say 2 wheels are better than 4, some say it the other way around, but few people join the conversation stating 6 wheels is the way to go. There are some very well-known cars featuring six wheels, especially amongst petrolheads. For instance the Tyrrel P34 and Williams FW08B, both featuring a double axel at the front (Tyrrell) or at the rear (Williams). 

Regarding road cars perhaps the completely bonkers Mercedes-AMG G63 6×6 comes to mind, or the Panther 6, but I would like to focus on the Covini C6W and the C6W Spider. Both these cars were constructed by Covini, an Italian company founded in 1978 and has built a number of prototypes over the years with this one being their wackiest. No doubt fitting an extra set of wheels to a car can be beneficial in some areas but in terms of looks, it is…. disturbing I guess. 

The original idea for a six-wheeled car by Covini stems from the late seventies, most likely following the impact of the Tyrrell P34 in F1 in 1976 and 1977, and the introduction of the Panther 6 in 1977. The Covini C6W (2004) and C6W Spider (2008) were developed with the idea that, much like the other six-wheelers, a larger contact patch in the front would help a car corner better and faster. It would also result in a bigger surface for the brakes, reducing wear and increasing braking capabilities. Also, when one front wheel suffers a puncture, the theory is the other wheels would balance it out so it would still be considered driveable. 

A full carbon fibre body ensured a kerb weight of 1150kg, and being powered by 434 horsepower 4.2 litre V8 from Audi, the top speed was a respectable 300 kilometres per hour. More details on this six-wheeled wonder on DriveTribe.

The post The Petrolhead Corner – Weird and Wonderful Automotive Innovations – Part 3 appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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Column: Already a winner

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Column: Already a winner

  2019 sees one of the most exciting shake-ups of the driver market in recent years, but one name that will be returning to the F1 fold stands out above them all. Having completed only a handful of laps in the first pre-season test at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya, the jury is very much still out on Robert Kubica’s anxiously awaited return to full-time F1 racing. However, before we learn how much Williams has been able to improve on last season’s offering, or how much of the scintillating performance- from his first career- Robert Kubica can rekindle. Let’s consider the scale of his gargantuan comeback and celebrate the rarity of such an achievement.

  Cast your mind back- if you can- to the 2010 F1 season. In the U.K, Gordon Brown was succeeded by David Cameron at No.10, in the U.S, Obama was 2 years into his first term as president of the United States of America and in F1- Sebastian Vettel won the first of his four World Championships to date, snatching the title away from Fernando Alonso at the final race in Abu Dhabi. Aside from the beginning of an incredible winning streak for Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull and the return of Michael Schumacher into the F1 Paddock in 2010- we also witnessed a simply astonishing season of driving from one Robert Kubica, qualifying and racing his Renault into positions it had absolutely no right to be in. At Monaco, a track where overcoming car deficiencies with driver skill is still very much possible, he managed to qualify his Renault 2nd on the grid, a mere 3 tenths of a second behind pole-sitter and Monaco specialist, Mark Webber, and a full second and a half ahead of team-mate Vitaly Petrov (who qualified 14th). There are numerous Kubica 2010 achievements to consider, but in terms of pure speed, talent and ability; none do him a better service than qualifying 2nd and converting that to a finishing position of 3rd in the race with a car that in other hands failed to reach the top 10 in qualifying. Often praised by the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso as one of the very best, his efforts in F1 had not gone unnoticed by the top tier teams- it has since been revealed that he had even signed a pre-agreement to drive for Ferrari in 2012. Back in early 2011, it looked as if Robert Kubica along with Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel was going to dominate F1 for the foreseeable future. However, these hopes and expectations were suddenly and violently put on hold when in February 2011, Robert- competing of his own volition in an Italian Rally- suffered life-changing injuries as his car collided with an Armco-barrier that pierced into the cabin, impaling Robert in the process. His consequent injuries were horrendous- nearly losing his right hand alongside compound fractures to his elbow and leg. The same rugged determination that served Kubica so well in racing undoubtedly contributed to his remarkably speedy return to racing. Despite breaking the same leg again slipping on ice near his home in early 2012- as if to prove a point- Robert got into a rally car again on the 9th of September that same year! His competitive spirit and skills behind the wheel seemed undiminished as he went on to win the event by well over a minute, nonetheless, the confines of a single-seater did not give his right arm and hand enough space to operate. Undeterred, he went on to make successful appearances in other forms of motorsport, such as winning the 2013 title in the World Rally Championship’s WRC2 class and the ’14 European Rally Championship season-opener, Tests in GP3, Formula E and LMP2 machinery followed before a return to F1 machinery in a test for his old Renault team at Valencia in June of 2017. Lewis Hamilton summed up his thoughts on the Pole’s talents before a test later that year at Hungary’s tight and twisty Hungouring, “Robert’s one of the quickest drivers I’ve ever raced against, If he was still racing he’d be up in contention for the world title if not have won one. Just raw natural talent which in the sport is a shame we don’t have here with us. Not a lot of great, great drivers come through. It filters and then filters down, you have some that are much better than the rest but then still not the greatest. Then you have real special drivers like him.”

Why does this matter now? That 2017 test came at a relatively mature point in Robert’s comeback to F1. Rather tellingly, after an intense assessment from Renault, he was not offered a seat with Renault for 2018. It’s hard not to imagine that Renault would have snapped him up if he had fully recaptured the abilities that secured him 2nd place in qualifying at the 2010 Monaco Grand Prix. Late in 2017, Kubica had already begun testing for Williams, but after an inconclusive end of season in Abu-Dhabi, where his qualifying runs were not on a par with the heavily inexperienced Sergey Sirotkin, Robert had to make do with operating as reserve driver for Williams during the 2018 season before being confirmed as part of the 2019 Williams driver line-up. The pertinent and obvious question is, how much of the 2010 vintage Robert Kubica are we likely to see this year? Will he continue to improve with more time? Or will we need to be satisfied with the fact that it’s an absolute miracle, comparable with Alex Zanardi’s come back to full-time racing after losing both legs racing in a CART (formerly a rival series to Indycar) event, that Robert has made it this far?

Reflecting on his return to F1 late last year Robert intimated that “From the human point of view, I understand and see the point that it is a story that probably nobody has believed. Probably the only one who never gave up was myself and the people around me. We all knew that it might be something not achievable. This shows that somehow nothing is impossible. From the driving point of view, you just have to wait a few months and you will see. If I would not be able to drive competitively enough, I would not be here. It is a normal way of thinking that people see my limitations and ask how it is possible I can do it, and I know it is hard to believe. But Williams has seen it this year and I have seen it in the last 16 or 18 months since I first drove an F1 car in Valencia last year that I can do it, thanks to work, but also that my limitations are not limiting me as most people are thinking. Deputy team principal Claire Williams further endorsed the Pole’s incredible comeback: “It is a great credit to his strength of character and tenacity to return to Formula 1. He has a level of determination that is remarkable to see.” There can be no doubting the magnitude of Robert’s return to F1, his levels of determination to drive- to all intents and purposes- with one hand is obviously remarkable. But what would be fascinating to learn, is whether Renault would pass again on the opportunity to sign their former “Monaco Magician” if they assessed him now in 2019, with Robert having had more time to recover and gain knowledge of current F1 machinery. Remember, a lot has changed since he last competed in 2010- much wider cars with possibly the highest levels of downforce ever seen, totally different power units with various elements of hybrid technology and perhaps most importantly- entirely different tyres (the rock solid “Bridgestone” Tyres of 2010 required an entirely different style of driving to the still comparably fragile Pirelli tyres of today, Robert was a master of braking late whilst steering into the corner- certainly not a good idea in current F1). In an interview with F1’s in house podcast “Beyond the Grid” with Tom Clarkson, Kubica remarked that the muscle memory of driving the narrower-bodied cars from his first stint in F1 served him very well in his 2017 Valencia test for Renault in their 2012 car but that the wider dimensions of the 2017 and onward cars put him into the position of almost being a rookie. Evidently, there has been a re-learning process for Kubica, both in terms of coming to terms with an altered body and also vastly different F1 machinery.

  What can we expect from Robert in 2019? Undoubtedly, he will not be picking up where he left off in 2010, just the time away from F1 without his injuries would make that impossible (one only has to think of how long it took Michael Schumacher to get up to speed following his 4-year hiatus from the sport), but as he remarks above- he wouldn’t be on the grid if he wasn’t up to the required standard. Instead of lamenting the untimely curtailing of his first career in F1, let’s celebrate an unlikely comeback that ranks alongside any in the world of sport. Welcome back Robert, we’ve missed you.

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Canada GP: Jolyon Palmer column - will McLaren

Canada GP: Jolyon Palmer column - will McLaren

Canada GP: Jolyon Palmer column – will McLaren

F1 driver Jolyon Palmer, who left Renault in the course of the 2017 season, has joined the BBC group to supply perception and evaluation from the viewpoint of the opponents.

This was imagined to be the yr McLaren would lastly return to their former glories.

Affected by three years of driving with what they led everybody to imagine was a horrible Honda “GP2 engine”, they made the decision to change to Renault, the power-unit which had powered Purple Bull to eight victories within the 4 seasons for the reason that V6 hybrid engine rules had been launched in 2014.

However whereas Purple Bull have saved successful this yr, with Daniel Ricciardo taking two wins in seven races thus far, McLaren are removed from it.

Solely twice out of 14 makes an attempt have they even managed to qualify within the high 10 – when Fernando Alonso achieved it within the two races previous final weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix. On the similar level final yr, that they had achieved that feat thrice over the 2 vehicles.

Montreal is a tough mixture of low-speed corners and a protracted straight, the right storm for this yr’s McLaren, which has poor grip in gradual corners and an excessive amount of drag. Nevertheless it confirmed up the woeful place they’re on this season.

Have been McLaren slowest of all in Canada?

In qualifying there is a case for saying that they had the slowest automotive in Canada.

They certified 14th and 15th, however the one group to not have a automotive qualify in entrance of them had been Williams. And if you happen to take into account that Alonso, one of many greats, may nicely be greater than 0.6 seconds faster round a lap than Lance Stroll, who made a mistake and did not enhance on his final run, and rookie Sergey Sirotkin, then it is actually legitimate to argue that’s what the McLaren was.

Not solely that, however they really certified increased up final yr with the Honda energy unit they complained so vocally about. Alonso was 12th on the grid in 2017.

This can be a case of humble pie for McLaren, but it surely’s not simply the egos of everybody within the group that might be hurting. There was a monetary value as nicely.

The change to Renault engines value not far off $100m (£75m), considering the cash Honda had been paying into McLaren, together with sponsorship revenue and half the drivers’ salaries, and the price of paying for the Renault engines.

Due to that massive value, there have been fixed guarantees and a desperation to justify their change this season.

After the opening spherical in Melbourne, the place Alonso drove to a improbable fifth place (with a dose of luck from the protection automotive and vehicles dropping out forward), he mentioned “now we are able to combat” on the group radio. On the floor, it appeared that the McLaren-Renault partnership had introduced them nearer to the motion.

However when rookie Pierre Gasly within the Toro Rosso, utilizing the Honda engine which McLaren ditched, completed fourth on the very subsequent race in Bahrain, query marks had been raised. Certainly, Gasly mocked McLaren and Alonso by repeating the very same phrases on the group radio after the race.

Alonso retired type the Canadian Grand Prix due to an exhaust failure

Few indicators of progress

After regularly disappointing performances within the early rounds, we had been advised the ‘actual’ automotive would arrive with a giant replace in Spain final month. In actuality nothing has modified. The pecking order is as it’s and there are not any new guarantees as but.

Zak Brown, just lately promoted from a commercial-biased function to turn into boss of the whole group with accountability for efficiency as nicely, admitted pre-season that this yr there can be nowhere to cover for McLaren.

They had been the one group operating Honda engines for the previous couple of years however now they’ve direct comparisons to Renault and Purple Bull.

And what a disgrace that’s for them. Purple Bull are a league aside and even Renault in Montreal had been almost a second forward of Alonso’s main McLaren in second qualifying.

Even reliability hasn’t gone McLaren’s manner this yr. Alonso has retired from points-scoring positions prior to now two races, struggling a gearbox failure in Monaco earlier than an exhaust concern ended his hopes in Montreal.

Engine reliability has improved, although. Whereas McLaren suffered a number of reliability issues with Honda early final yr, they’ve loved higher success in that division with Renault.

However then Honda have additionally stepped up their very own reliability, with Gasly’s smoky blow-up in Melbourne the one engine-related failure for Toro Rosso.

Clearly the Honda engine is nowhere close to as unhealthy because it was made out to be. Toro Rosso have already matched their finest outcome from final yr with it and are related on tempo to McLaren.

The change has made no massive distinction to the aggressive order between them. Final yr each had been within the midfield, this yr it is the identical story.

A blessing in disguise?

Nevertheless, there’s one massive constructive out of this. Having a direct comparability with Purple Bull has pressured McLaren to cease passing the buck for all of their points onto their engine provider and begin to work on their very own flaws.

It appears the group weren’t even conscious that they had these flaws final yr, once they had been declaring that they may very well be successful races with the Mercedes engine.

To the informal observer, this yr would appear like a step ahead, as a result of by way of factors scored McLaren are a league above the place they’re this yr.

That is partly as a result of elevated reliability this yr in comparison with Honda’s struggles within the early a part of 2017, but additionally attributable to Alonso, who has a fame for wringing the neck of a Components 1 automotive, extracting the easiest when all appears misplaced.

Alonso celebrated his 300th Grand prix along with his fellow Components 1 drivers

Alonso’s expertise being wasted

In Canada, Alonso was celebrating his 300th Grand Prix – though it turned on the market was not a lot to have fun along with his and the group’s worst efficiency in qualifying this yr and a retirement from the race.

Earlier than the weekend, Alonso proclaimed himself as among the finest F1 drivers ever, and it is powerful to argue in opposition to him.

I grew up watching Alonso as an extremely proficient rookie, earlier than turning into the youngest ever F1 champion in 2005, successful the primary of back-to-back titles for Renault. I’ve all the time admired his never-give-up perspective, which he has proven along with his gritty willpower down the years.

In 2010, his first yr with Ferrari, he proclaimed after Silverstone midway by way of the yr that he would win the title that yr. He was 47 factors behind the chief, and with out the quickest automotive. But he got here oh so shut, shedding out solely with a expensive, heat-of-the-moment technique name by the group in Abu Dhabi.

Then in 2012 he once more virtually received the title for Ferrari, in a automotive that ought to have been nowhere close to Sebastian Vettel’s Purple Bull.

Even once I was racing him wheel-to-wheel for the final couple of seasons, he was the one driver who by no means knew when he was overwhelmed. Many instances I believed I might made a transfer stick on him and he would in some way discover a approach to wriggle again by way of on the subsequent nook, the place many others would settle for defeat and cede the place.

It is that dedication and drive that’s preserving McLaren within the midfield combine this season, and it is the reason for one other headache for the group – can they hold him motivated for one more yr?

Alonso’s team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne is a driver I fee extremely, having raced him in GP2 earlier than F1. If he was paired as team-mates with most different drivers within the midfield group, I imagine he can be trying fairly good. However Alonso is making him look distinctly common proper now, such is the Spaniard’s class.

It might be a disgrace for F1 to lose one of many nice drivers, nonetheless in his prime and a fantastic character for the present as nicely

Can Alonso face one other yr of this?

Given this was the season McLaren mentioned they need to be again on the entrance, the one which Alonso has been ready for, and it is turning into one other nightmare, how can his motivation maintain up?

One other retirement from the race in Canada will not assist issues. With each race, it is beginning to ring increasingly more of 2017, when he retired in Montreal and went and sat within the stands with the followers.

Alonso heads to Le Mans subsequent weekend with an opportunity to win a race once more. He received his endurance debut for Toyota at Spa a couple of weeks in the past and certainly have to be having fun with that racing greater than his time with McLaren this season.

There have been increasingly more mutterings of McLaren becoming a member of Indycar within the US subsequent season. In the event that they do, that would nicely give Alonso the prospect to have one other crack on the Indianapolis 500 and a full-time change to American racing, the place the environment is extra relaxed and he would have a a lot increased likelihood of success.

In spite of everything, whereas McLaren can flip this round in the long term, they don’t seem to be about to have a race-winning automotive anytime quickly. There may be an excessive amount of floor to make up. And with Alonso turning 37 subsequent month, you surprise how he’ll inspire himself to maintain driving the wheels off underperforming vehicles within the midfield.

Solely he’ll know what he desires to do. Possibly his love for F1 might be sufficient for him to remain. However along with his contract up on the finish of the season, and no obvious alternatives on the entrance of the sector in drives his expertise deserves, he may simply resolve it’s time for him to maneuver apart.

It might be a disgrace for F1 to lose one of many nice drivers, nonetheless in his prime, and a fantastic character for the present as nicely.

However I feel Alonso realises his expertise is greater than what he is able to displaying proper now by way of outcomes.

His assault on Le Mans this weekend, and aspirations to win the Indy 500, are about leaving a legacy as one of many best drivers ever. Placing it down on paper.

Successful the triple crown of motorsport occasions, these two, plus the Monaco Grand Prix, which Alonso has accomplished already, can be an unparalleled achievement within the fashionable period.

For McLaren, regardless of their improved championship place, no factors within the final two races, a disillusioned star driver and an underperforming automotive are all trigger for nice concern.

They’ve on their books a younger prodigy in Britain’s Lando Norris, present F2 chief, which is a cause for future hope. However Alonso’s sneakers can be very powerful to fill for any rookie.

If Alonso leaves, there might be a large void to fill at McLaren to stop them slipping right into a Williams-esque slide to the again.

BBC Sport – Formula 1 ultras_FC_Barcelona

ultras FC Barcelona - https://ultrasfcb.com/formula1/7238/

#Barcelona

[webittech]

Recipe 1 on ESPN sees monstrous change; IndyCar excited in Phoenix An awesome few days of open-wheel dashing with two night races in the forsake, universes apart.

A couple weeks prior, I laid into ESPN for the way it took care of its first Formula 1 race communicate. I know I hit home with some of you since that article keeps on producing messages from the readership. So it is quite reasonable that I again put fingers to console early today on the grounds that the system completed a stunning piece of work demonstrating to us the Bahrain Grand Prix this end of the week.

The enormous change? Continuous scope from the warm-up lap directly through to the post-race meet on the platform. Those of you who recommended that the arrangement was finding a solitary patron for the whole communicated? Great reasoning—it appears that is precisely what happened. Moms' Polish ventured up and purchased the publicizing for the whole race, saving us the shaking background of business softens that cut up and out with no notice or recap. Also, what a distinction it made! Well done ESPN, and keep it up.

A key race, yet a decent one

Not at all like numerous different arrangement, F1 races are frequently an intricate round of technique that set aside opportunity to play out. What's more, this end of the week in Bahrain, we really got a holding fight. The Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen had the crude speed to stake out the front column of the framework in qualifying, with the additional solace of realizing that Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes-AMG would begin with a five-put punishment because of a gearbox change on Friday.

Going into the race, everybody anticipated that would see the Ferraris split the 57-lap race up into three sections, halting for crisp tires twice. Vettel and Raikkonen began on the supersoft elastic, alongside Mercedes' Valteri Bottas. We accepted they would finish a short spell on these tires previously swapping to the delicate alternative, at that point come back to the supersofts for a short last stretch of extremely quick laps. The autos now would have consumed off the greater part of their fuel and consequently been at their lightest.

With Hamilton beginning further back in the pack, Mercedes selected to play the continuance amusement. He began the race on the delicate tire and looked set to finish the greater part of the race on the hardest compound Pirelli conveyed to Bahrain, the white-sidewalled medium compound. Vettel ceased first of the leaders, changing to the delicate tires on lap 18. Raikkonen did likewise a lap later, yet on lap 20 Mercedes played its cards, putting Bottas on the medium tires. Hamilton set on lap 26 (for a similar medium tires), and by the midpoint of the race, it was clear he most likely couldn't get Vettel.

Be that as it may, Bottas could. Vettel was going quick, however not sufficiently quick to give him the edge he expected to influence a moment pit to stop without being surpassed. So Ferrari settled on design B: Vettel would make his delicate tires last whatever remains of the race—an aggregate of 39 laps. What's more, he'd need to do it with no assistance from Raikkonen; on lap 35, the Finn came in for his second pit stop while everything turned out badly. Three delicate tires fell off and were supplanted by three crisp supersofts. Be that as it may, the left back wouldn't move. F1 pit stops are lighting quick—some place around the three-second range nowadays—and groups like Ferrari utilize a computerized framework to advise their drivers when it's a great opportunity to go ahead.

In any case, its framework works by checking when every one of the four wheels are safely affixed, and it couldn't tell that one of them was as yet the old tire—four secure wheel nuts equivalents "Go!" Raikkonen left his pit slow down on jumbled wheels—a major no-no—and to exacerbate the situation, the stubborn left back cut one of his mechanics, Francesco Cigarini, all the while. Raikkonen finished his race a couple of hundred feet up the pit path, Cigarini went to doctor's facility with a cracked shinbone and fibula, and Ferrari earned a $61,576 (€50,000) fine for a hazardous discharge.

Inside his auto, Vettel was beginning to sweat. As he related in the repercussions of the race, he understood it would have been close:

I went ahead the radio with around 10 laps to go and stated, "I have everything under control." I don't know whether they communicate that. Be that as it may, it was a lie; there was nothing under control! When they revealed to me the pace of Vatteri around then, there was no chance I could do that. I was making the maths inside the auto with 10 laps to go—at that pace, he will get me! I attempted to keep it as spotless as could reasonably be expected. Both Mercedes toward the finish of their stretches were extremely solid, as of now in the first. When they went onto the medium I imagined that is checkmate, since we needed to come in once more. That was the first arrangement, yet then we occupied clearly, and the tires, I attempted to make them last, breast fed them as much as I can, and it worked. Be that as it may, just!

The win is Vettel's 49th of his profession, and it occurred amid his 200th Formula 1 race. (Michael Schumacher, Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, and Lewis Hamilton likewise each won their 200th F1 races.)

IndyCar excited in Phoenix

From a race held in a leave around evening time to another. Curiously, I really got an email from a peruser this end of the week about IndyCar. He wasn't content with NBC Sports' introduction of the race, especially concerning the issues the system was having with its sound blend—you could hear the autos a considerable measure superior to the pundits. Be that as it may, I'll admit, I truly delighted in the oval race in Phoenix. Sebastian Bourdais was straight from his win at the season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida, and he qualified his auto on the post. He and kindred Frenchman Simon Pagenaud ruled the initial 60 laps, at that point both had the mishap to reach mechanics when leaving their pits—fortunately neither brought about wounds like the Ferrari occurrence.

The mile-long ISM Raceway in Phoenix is the main oval race on the IndyCar plan, and by the later stages in the race, the marbles (the bits of elastic that take off the tires as they corrupt amid the race) had developed to the degree that surpassing was turning into a hazardous business. Ed Jones discovered this out the most difficult way possible on lap 229, attempting to move beyond a back marker. He finished his night in the divider, a miserable end to a solid race. That caused a late-race alert and set us up for a dash to the wrap up.

The dash came down to a two-route fight between protecting champion Josef Newgarden, driving for Penske, and arrangement new kid on the block Robert Wickens, some portion of a resurgent Schmidt Peterson Motorsports exertion. It's Wickens' first year in IndyCar, yet the skilled Canadian put over the most recent couple of years in the wildly focused DTM arrangement in Germany (think German NASCAR) where he won a few races. He additionally relatively won his presentation IndyCar in St Pete yet was taken out by an excessively driven move by Alexander Rossi in the end phases of that one.

Wickens drove the restart, trailed by his partners James Hinchcliffe and Rossi, every one of the three on worn tires. Each of the three shunned halting amid the last alert, picking rather to keep track position. Newgarden opted for new elastic and made brisk work of Rossi and Hinchcliffe. Yet, Wickens—driving in his first oval race, recollect—completed an amazing activity of holding the youthful American champion under control for three laps. In the long run the unavoidable happened, and Newgarden overcame the high line thus 2 to get the lead on lap 246, completing the race four laps later with a three-second lead. Wickens clutched second, with Rossi third.

The differentiations between this present end of the week's F1 and IndyCar completes were a decent delineation of the contrasts between the arrangement. I frequently discuss the way each dashing arrangement needs to adjust three contending requests: being a game, being a building exercise, and being great diversion. I don't believe there's one right recipe, and each game needs to choose for itself what the blend ought to be. At the present time, on the off chance that you need edge-of-your-situate, yell at-the-screen energy, IndyCar has you secured (the autos likewise look tremendous this year). Furthermore, if Bahrain would anything say anything was to pass by, might F1 give us a cerebral clash of procedure to last the 2018 season? I positively trust so.

[eddiejpoplar]

The Man Who Trains F1 Stars

Rob Wilson looks at the stopwatch on his trusty Nokia 6210 cellphone. “I think a 1:50.4 deserves a cigarette,” he says as he delivers a warm and congratulatory pat to my shoulder. “It’s been a great morning.” I drop him off beside a decommissioned Boeing 747 tinged a bluey green by unidentified vegetation and then drive gently to the end of the runway to cool the brakes before looping around to collect him. “Right,” he says as he drops back into the passenger seat of our humble 198-horsepower Vauxhall Astra hatchback. “Let’s get lunch. Then I’ll set another target lap, and we’ll go again.”

And that’s how it goes. Wilson consumes maybe another 10 Marlboro Reds over the course of the afternoon as he chips away at my driving technique and I chip away at my lap time. This place—the Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in rural Leicestershire, England—is his second home, and it’s here that the great and the good of Formula 1, IndyCar, DTM, the FIA World Endurance Championship, World Rally Championship, and countless other professional racing series come to hone their craft under his tutelage. Yes, in a Vauxhall Astra.

Kimi Räikkönen. Juan Pablo Montoya. Valtteri Bottas. Marco Andretti. Petter Solberg. Whatever name pops into your head, chances are the pro driver has been to this former USAF base and been coached by Rob Wilson in a humble family car. Sometimes they’re a tenth quicker than he is but not often. He doesn’t advertise. There’s no website full of inspiring nonsense to build his business. If you want to employ Wilson, you need to know someone with his number. Fortunately, everybody in high-level motorsports has his number. “I used to travel to go to them,” he says. “But then they banned smoking on planes.”

So how exactly do you become the driving Yoda to the stars? The guy that every F1 team goes to when they want to polish a young talent or to just help an experienced racer through a sticky patch? It started for Wilson, as you’d expect, with a racing career. He left his native New Zealand as quickly as he could and competed in the U.K. in Formula Ford and then Formula 3. He was quick, too, and was lined up for an F1 drive in 1981 at Spa with Tyrrell until Michele Alboreto turned up a few days before with a big check, which ousted him from the seat. Money talks, and the F1 dream was over. Wilson then raced for many years in the U.S. in sports cars, NASCAR, Indy Lights, and anything he could get his hands on.

Coach and veteran pro driver Rob Wilson has helped the top names in racing improve their times. At an airfield in Leicestershire, England, he teaches his unconventional methods in lightweight Vauxhall Astra hatchbacks— and goes through many sets of tires.

His eureka moment came as he stood beside Stowe corner at Silverstone in the late ’80s—his broken Bowman F3 car next to him—with nothing much to do. So he started watching and then timing as Rickard Rydell and Gary Brabham pounded around. Brabham was incredibly early on the throttle and looked and sounded fast, but Rydell was quicker. Wilson worked out why and gave his solution to Brabham. Sure enough, those times improved. Suddenly Wilson was a driver coach, and in those early days he used Goodwood as his base. He carried on racing well into the 2000s, but his real gift was apparent: He made the best even better.

“Traditionally you find the limit of adhesion and feel like you’re going fast on that geometrically perfect line. But you know what? You’re not going forward that much.”

Bruntingthorpe looks as pretty as an old airfield can today under sunshine and threatened by dramatic, brooding storm clouds, but it’s still a million miles from the shiny, volatile, carbon-fiber and cash-soaked world of top-level racing. Wilson, you might imagine, is similarly detached from the F1 or IndyCar circuses. He’s a New Zealander, 65 years old, powerfully built with a fearsome appetite for nicotine. If you met him at a bar and asked him what he did, you’d scarcely believe a word. His stories, which he doesn’t give up lightly or embellish, are almost unbelievable. Today he’s coaching me. Last week? F1 rookie Lance Stroll, who’d been struggling for form but didn’t look so out of his depth in the last couple races. “He’s been here a lot,” Wilson says. “Couldn’t be nicer. I didn’t expect that.”

More stories later. First, why he uses the Astra hatchback. “It’s perfect. Truly,” he insists. “Tough and with a good chassis but also quiet and comfortable so we can communicate easily. And when you make a mistake in this car, you feel it for a long time. We can be talking about what went wrong while you’re still paying the price.” Wilson has three Astras supplied by Vauxhall, General Motors’ former bread and butter marque in the U.K. (now owned by French auto giant Groupe PSA). He gets through a set of tires a day and a set of brakes per week, and he keeps each car for about 5,000 miles. My car for the day has a Michelin front left tire, a Bridgestone rear left, something called a Sunny SN3970 front right, and an Avon rear right. “The circuit mostly goes right, anyway,” he grins.

So that’s the equipment. What about the technique? “Everything is the most important thing in the world,” Wilson says with a smile over a mug of tea in the cafe adjacent to the airfield before we get started. “The first most important thing in the world is the rate you move your body. It creates the initial weight transfer. So when we are coming up to a corner, I’ll say, ‘Turn left.’ We want to turn left, but we don’t mean a turn of a certain size. We just mean a turn of the tiniest, tiniest amount. You can’t even see it.” This is the foundation of Wilson’s obsession with maximizing a car’s potential by managing weight transfer: Introduce a subtle, almost imperceptible amount of lock and then manipulate the car to the apex more assertively.

Wilson’s driver training is a hands-on experience, quite literally. He likes to teach in the Vauxhall economy car because “when you make a mistake in this car, you feel it for a long time.”

He’ll also often talk about a “flat car.” The physics concept behind it is obvious: the less steering angle, the greater the acceleration. To achieve this you begin each turn with that miniscule weight transfer then progressively steer to the apex. In the middle of the turn—where there’s the least amount of penalty for tire scrub—quickly introduce a bit more lock than seems natural to shorten the corner and then actively straighten the car to the exit. “It’s about altering our values,” Wilson explains. “Traditionally you find the limit of adhesion and feel like you’re going fast on that geometrically perfect line. But you know what? You’re not going forward that much. And that’s bad, actually. I want you to be offended when you feel tire scrub.”

This introduction to Wilson’s techniques goes on for maybe an hour. We discuss shortening corners, braking lightly for a fraction before really applying force to ensure the rears are responding before the nose dives and the rear raises up, trying to match wheel speed and car speed momentarily in the braking phase, and how all this feeds into a race scenario by putting less stress on the equipment. “Shortening the corner reduces tire degradation,” he says. “So in the middle of the corner there’s a bit more lock, a higher peak, but for the next 10 car lengths there’s less load. It’s like putting your hand on a red-hot stove for a millionth of a second. You won’t burn. If the stove is half as hot but you put your hand on for a few seconds, guess what happens.”

It sounds simple. Then Wilson demonstrates personally on his unique circuit, drawn out by the airfield’s natural turns and a few cones to add a crucial chicane and a slow switchback. “Monaco’s Lowes hairpin,” he calls it. The running commentary is enlightening. Probably. I just can’t get over the speed and efficiency. He’s smooth with the car at times then sometimes more assertive, and his lines don’t trace the long arcs of a classicist. Watching the dramatic “corner shortening” is really remarkable. The car doesn’t gracefully blend out of the turns to the circuit’s edge on the limit of adhesion. Rather, he literally steers it out there in a straight line, and you feel the rate of acceleration climb the instant he’s removed the exaggerated midcorner steering input. It’s bordering on phenomenal, and my nerves skyrocket. This guy has coached Nigel Mansell. Now I have to show him my silky skills? Punch me now.

Fortunately the teacher is patient and remains calm even if I barrel into a turn way too fast, the tires scrub wide, and my exit is a mess of wheelspin. Most importantly, you feel he wants you to be better and gets great satisfaction when you get things right. To be honest the first few laps are ugly, probably worse than if I drove my own “natural” way. But slowly it starts to click—the lovely feeling of the car responding accurately because of that initial steering input, the extra lock midcorner allowing you to quickly get the car straight and drive out to the exit, the gentle and then assertive braking that seems to keep the car more level and more stable on corner entry. The time tumbles away. That 1:50.4 is just 0.8 second off his target lap.

After lunch he blitzes me with a new target: 1:47.8. On these tires that’s a good lap, he says. On four Michelins maybe we’d get down to 1:47.2 or even a high 1:46. The roast-beef lunch at the local pub has slowed me down, though. I do a 1:50.6, then whack a cone, then another. It feels like it’s going the wrong way. But it clicks again on the last couple of laps. My hairpin is close to perfect, I negotiate the esses with Wilson’s line (avoiding the curbs and straightening each section), and my braking and steering techniques improve so the last two corners are much sweeter.

The result is 1.48.7 despite one mistake coming onto the crucial back straight. “Fantastic. You have the speed,” he says flatteringly. “It’s not about making you faster. It’s about making you do the right things. Now you can see the progression … how you could get to a low 1:47. You’re on the road from being somebody who can drive a race car to a racing driver. There’s a difference.”

“Some of the Indy teams have what they call the ‘Rob Matrix’ in new telemetry programs,” he tells me between long drags on his beloved Marlboros.

I’m elated and leave full of anecdotes and advice. Rob Wilson is a fascinating guy, and the truly amazing thing is, in a digital world of telemetry, his techniques have become even more important. He looks at what’s between the telemetry traces shown on computer screens and is now working with engineers from BMW’s DTM team, Porsche’s WEC guys, and pretty much every F1 team to help them understand what those squiggly lines can’t show them. “Now [that the engineers have been here], they can feel this stuff and apply that knowledge to what they’re seeing on the telemetry,” he confirms. “All of them are [now] trying to measure that first 5 percent, the rate of weight transfer. Some of the Indy teams have what they call the ‘Rob Matrix’ in new telemetry programs,” he tells me between long drags on his beloved Marlboros.

I can’t leave without asking him who he thinks is the best of the best. “I love Kimi,” he says. “He’s maybe the one guy I’m biased toward.” Wilson spent a lot of time with Räikkönen in his early days and has huge affection for him. OK, so who’s second? “I never coached Mansell until after he’d won the F1 title and just before he started racing in the U.S. But when I did, I couldn’t believe his finesse, his understanding of the surface. Totally at odds with his reputation for being a real beast in the car.” And third? “Everybody’s third, Jethro. That’s the point. Everybody’s third.”

The post The Man Who Trains F1 Stars appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

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[parkrangercirca2016]

North Cascades; Season Two, Episode One

The weather in Rockport, Washington is 81 degrees right now. It’s sunny with the occasional breeze to cool things off. Washington and Rainy Passes have been open for less than a week, and the Cascades received--for the first time in several years--a typical winter snowfall. The Skagit River and it’s tributaries are swollen with spring runoff, the rhododendron are in full bloom, and State Route 20 is packed with bicyclists enjoying the weather. 

Tomorrow I start my second summer season at North Cascades National Park. This past winter I worked at Mount Rushmore, which was good. I was lucky to have a winter job with the Park Service, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to go back to South Dakota for the winter again. The winters there are much nicer than back in Illinois. Sure we had a few days of below zero temperatures compounded with frigid wind chills, but when it snowed, it didn’t stick around for long and the temperature didn’t really stay below freezing for long. There was also very little to do with my time off over the winter. The Black Hills area shuts down for the most part once the tourists leave for the year. One bar stays open in Keystone, and a Subway stays open in Hill City. Other than that, you are on your own. 

Chapter One, The Surprise

On May 11th, at 5:01 PM, I left work at Mount Rushmore and started driving home. Earlier that day I had checked out of housing and turned my keys in. I had told Jillian that I would be leaving South Dakota on Friday the 12th, the same day as her Honors Convocation, and that I would try my hardest to make it back to the Quad Cities for dinner with our families that night. Unbeknownst to her I was going to surprise her at her Honors Convocation by making it to Macomb by 2:00 when the program started. It was a long drive to make, especially after having worked for 8 hours earlier that day. My plan was to drive for as long as I could (safely, mind you, I’m not a maniac) and then find a place to stay for the night.

As it turns out I made it to just about halfway to Macomb that night. I ended up getting a hotel at just a little past midnight in a town called Worthington. It’s located in Minnesota on Interstate 90 and gets most of it’s business, I’d imagine, from travelers on I-90. The hotel clerk didn’t seem too pleased to have been woken up, but I got my room and had a nice night’s sleep until 6:00 AM when I hit the road again. It’s probably good that I was tired enough to sleep so well because the smoke detector in my room needed a new battery and chirped every fifteen minutes. I slept through all of the chirps. 

The drive to Macomb was mostly uneventful. I turned on my little GPS unit so that I could keep track of what my estimated time of arrival was, and battled it the whole way down, it seemed. First it told me that I’d be arriving at 1:40. then I stopped for gas and it said I’d be arriving at 1:47, then I’d battle it back down to 1:40, and so on and so forth. My stops for gas were a little like pit stops in an IndyCar race, although mine were considerably longer. 

Cedar Falls, Iowa was my last stop at around 10:15 that morning (Jillian and her family, it turns out, had left only an hour before that.) While I was topping my tank off in Cedar Falls I grabbed a piece of pizza to tide me over until dinner. That pizza was the only thing that I’d had to eat that day because the stores in Worthington, MN aren’t open as early as I was up. Luckily I made it to Macomb with plenty of time to spare for the Honors Convocation. When I came in I didn’t see where Jillian’s family was so I grabbed a seat all to myself in the back and settled in to enjoy the convocation. It was a good convocation. Jillian was recognized for graduating Summa Cum Laude, for graduating as an Honors Scholar, for graduating as the RPTA Departmental Scholar, and for graduating as the College of Education and Human Services Scholar. She sure did make a lot of noise with all those medals around her neck as she walked off stage. 

One of her sisters had noticed me sitting on the other side of Western Hall just before the ceremony began, but Jillian didn’t see me until I hunted her down after the program. The look of surprise and joy on her face was well worth the drive after work, and the hours of driving that day. (Her graduation was good, too, although she was the second to last person to receive her degree during the commencement and the audience had already lost focus by that point, so they all started standing to stretch and blocked most of our view of her receiving her degree.) 

Chapter Two, The Plan

Once Jillian was a college graduate, the two of us could go ahead and celebrate with a small vacation before I started my summer season. For many weeks the two of us had planned on having her ride with me from the Midwest to Washington State, and now we could put the plan into action. The day after her graduation, May 14th (Mother’s Day), each of us were in our respective hometowns packing. Jillian had less to pack than I did because she would be flying home after I made it Washington. I spent part of my Sunday unpacking my winter stuff and packing my summer stuff, but the rest of that day was family time. 

Tami, Manny, Maximus, and Hudson came to visit for the day. It was good fun, although it had been so long since Maximus had seen me that he was unsure about me. Hudson was too little to notice, and far too preoccupied with his newfound ability to pull himself into a standing position and then look around until somebody could sit him down. He hasn’t figured out that part yet. 

After Tami and her boys left, I packed my car. Thank’s to Dad’s due diligence, the oil had been changed and it had received a new right side tie rod end. The trip to Washington will use most of that new oil change’s 5,000 miles. I will also need to buy new tires for the car in Washington. These are starting to wear thin. 

Jillian and I’s itinerary was thus: 

Monday-pick Jillian up in Cedar Falls and drive to the Black Hills, camp.

Tuesday-pick up the rest of my stuff from fellow Mount Rushmore Ranger Jeanie in Keystone, then drive to Yellowstone, camp.

Wednesday-spend the day having fun in Yellowstone, camp.

Thursday-drive to Glacier National Park, camp.

Friday-drive to Spokane, WA, find a hotel to shower.

Saturday-move in to my summer home in Rockport, WA.

Sunday-Jillian flies home. :(

Pretty much all of that worked.

Chapter Three, On the Road

I picked Jillian up in Cedar Falls just a little after 9:00 in the morning. Unfortunately no members of her family (besides her dog, Bella) were around to see that I really do know how to find their home when I drive through Cedar Falls. From Cedar Falls we set out north, towards Minnesota and I-90. I had planned on listening to several episodes of the podcast Harmontown during the drive, but as we approached Waverly some sort of poltergeist possessed my iPod and turned on the aid for the visually impaired. There was a voice reading all of the episode titles out loud to us, and in addition to that, it started to play whatever songs it felt like, and not my un-listened to podcast episodes. Jillian plugged her iPod in, and the same poltergeist took up residence there, too.

We did what any young, hip Millennial couple would do and googled the problem on a smartphone. No help was found there for our very specific problem. I took the auxiliary cable out of my car’s dash, unplugged the iPod, and flipped the cable around. Everything worked after that. 

We grabbed some lunch in Sioux Falls and stretched our legs after the grueling drive across Minnesota’s stretch of I-90. (Minnesota, if you’re reading, get your act together and up your speed limit; that part of your state is no different from South Dakota and you should be able to drive more than 70.) Then we put the hammer down to get to the Black Hills before sunset. 

We took a short detour through the Badlands so that we could stop looking at flat grassland out the car window’s, and so that we could get out and walk around for a little bit. During our brief stop in Badlands National Park we saw a couple of bighorn sheep, and a few bison. Then we went in to Rapid City for dinner. Dinner was at a Tex-Mex place called On the Border. The food was good, but we were also comparing it to what we had gotten at a fast food joint. 

The plan we had made called for camping somewhere in the Black Hills that night. By the time we made it to Ellsworth Air Force Base we had a pretty good idea that camping wasn’t going to happen. The Black Hills are so named because, with the ponderosa pines growing on the slopes, the hills look black from a distance. That night, as we made our way towards them, they seemed blacker than usual. And that was because of the storm clouds coming in over them. Knowing South Dakota’s propensity for hail, we decided to not stay in a tent and to find a hotel instead. So we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Keystone, just a short way from Jeanie’s house. It was good that we did, because it hailed as we ate breakfast the next morning. The hail finished before we checked out, but the rain and fog stayed.

After breakfast we crammed a couple of my totes into the back seat of my car and stopped to see Jeanie at her museum in Keystone. Allow me to briefly plug it: The Keystone Historical Museum is a good museum that celebrates the rich history of the town of Keystone, and even houses a few artifacts from our favorite Little House on the Prairie. Go and visit. 

It was a little after 10:00 that morning when we left Keystone and bought groceries at the Krull’s in Hill City. After that we set off through the fog and rain that still hadn’t cleared up. This was our longest day of driving, and also some of the best. The road was boring from Deadwood to Sheridan, WY. We stopped in Sheridan for lunch.

And let me say something about Sheridan. I don’t understand that town. There are 17,916 people that live there, which is less people than Macomb has when WIU is having classes. I have stopped in Sheridan a total of three times, and every time I have stopped, traffic has been nonstop, bumper to bumper. It’s a nightmare trying to get somewhere there if you can’t check all of your blindspots. What is Sheridan’s problem? 

Jillian and I ate Taco Bell for lunch, but got it through the drive through so that we could keep driving. We bought one big soda to share. I spilled some of it on my pants because the lid leaked. I don’t think that I’ll ever stop in Sheridan again. I always have bad experiences there. 

After Sheridan we exited the interstate for Highway 14 and started driving into the Bighorn Mountains. That was an excellent drive. As we moved up into the mountains we both saw half a dozen moose. At first, from a distance, I thought that there was a horse on the side of the road, but Jillian corrected me and said that it was a moose. And she was right. Then I saw another moose out the left side of the car, but I thought that it was dead because it’s rear was up in the air while it had both of its forelegs outstretched with it’s head down to the ground as it faced us in the car. Eventually it stopped bowing to us and stood up. In the middle of the mountains there, Jillian saw a wolf. I was not fast enough to see it too. We also saw three moose standing well of the road near some trees. Then we saw a baby moose on our way out of the mountains. 

Once we were out of the Big Horns, we drove through rangeland until we got to Cody, Wyoming where we bought gas before entering Yellowstone National Park. We got through the east entrance before dark when there was just enough light to see two young men give us a heart attack. As we approached Yellowstone Lake we saw a bison on the side of the road. One of these young men was getting his picture taken with it. As we came upon them we both thought that he was too close. Once we drove past he ran right up to the bison and touched it. Thank the good Lord that he didn’t get gored. Never get close to a bison. They can out run and out turn a barrel pony. You won’t escape it. 

After we both thought that we were going to witness a death, it started to rain. Then we climbed higher in the park and the rain turned to snow. Our campsite at Madison was at 6,800 feet, and it was raining there as we pulled in. We pitched the tent quickly before making some macaroni and cheese for dinner. Jillian was cold, so she got into her sleeping bag and left me to finish the big pot of mac’n’cheese, which I did not because there was a lot. 

At some point in the night the rain stopped, and turned into snow. Getting ourselves up that Wednesday morning was hard. Our sleeping bags were warm, and it was cold and white outside. Eventually hunger got the best of us and we got up to make some oatmeal. Our neighbors were brushing their cars off and warming them up. It had only snowed an inch or so, but it was still coming down. 

The snow kept falling all day. Unfortunately that meant that neither of us was comfortable with finding snow covered trails to hike so we spent the day driving from boardwalk to boardwalk and checking out the thermal features in the park. We also watched many bison. Even though it was May and snowing, there were dozens of tour buses in the park and all of the boardwalks were crowded. I’m glad that I don’t have to work there in the summer. 

At lunch time we decided that we would go and get some food at Old Faithful. Lunch was wonderful in the old lodge there, and I filled myself up at the buffet while Jillian ate a bison burger. I texted Tami during dinner and told her about the live webcam at Old Faithful. We made it from lunch to the geyser just in time to see it erupt. Unfortunately it took Jillian and I forever to figure out where the webcam was pointing so that Tami could see us online. We disappointed her by not striking a pose or waving to the camera. We also couldn’t figure out where the camera was, because the one you see online is not the camera that you see in the window of the Old Faithful Visitor Center. 

There was more snow Wednesday night. We had to clear off about four inches from the car on Thursday morning and put my tent away wet. But that was okay, because Yellowstone is, I think, much prettier in the snow than it is in the green. You can pick out thermal features from a distance, because of the vast plumes of steam spewing from the ground, and the bare, snow-free patches of earth that are too warm for snow to stick to. It’s an American treasure. 

Our drive out of Yellowstone and towards Glacier was dandy. The snow turned to rain, and then the rain cleared up by Bozeman, Montana. We even had good enough cell service for Jillian to watch her youngest sister run at the state track meet in Iowa. (They got third place, or so I hear.) 

We had beautiful weather in Glacier National Park, and took a wonderful drive as far up Going-to-the-Sun road as we could. Both of us decided that we would plan a trip just to Glacier sometime in the future to enjoy it more. And May was a great time of year to go since there were so few people there. We got to walk down by Lake Macdonald all by ourselves. 

Friday was a little sad because we wouldn’t have any more National Parks to drive though once we left Glacier. It was just the open road until we could get to Rockport, WA. The two of us decided to stick to Route 2 and cut across Idaho’s panhandle. That was a good choice, it was a scenic drive that was only broken up by a large stretch of road that the state’s Department of Transportation had torn up, left, and then posted 35 MPH speed limit signs. 

Spokane later that afternoon was a wake up call. It was the biggest town we’d been in since Rapid City and had traffic that was almost as bad as Sheridan’s. We grabbed a room at a Holiday Inn Express and showered. I had been worried going into that hotel because, after we parked, I raised my arms and caught a whiff of my body odor after three days of driving and staying in parks. It was not good. Thankfully the attendant at the counter, who is my new best friend because of how nice and cheerful he was, either didn’t notice or didn’t say anything. Jillian and I felt like new people after we’d showered. 

Dinner was at Chili’s down the road, and then, because we had so much time on our hands what with the time change to Pacific Time, we took a walk through one of the most beautiful parks we’d ever been to, Riverfront Park. It was within walking distance of the hotel and we spent a few hours checking out the new construction in the park, and enjoying the waterfalls that ran through it. It ended up being quite a bit of walking because we slept like the dead once we got back to the hotel after sunset. 

Saturday was short. The drive from Spokane to Rockport is only five hours or so, and the scenery in eastern Washington isn’t anything to write home about. Coming over Washington Pass was incredible, though. It had only just been opened on Tuesday and the road crews had dug out 45 to 50 feet of snow from the avalanche zones. There were places were the snow had fallen as deep as my car was tall. It was just like driving through a tunnel, or between two cornfields on a narrow road. 

Chapter Four, A New Home

All of the snow in my part of the valley is gone. Flowers are blooming, the trees are leafed out, and it’s almost hot. The house I’m staying in is a delightful little place. Two stories, wood floors, three couches, a wood burning stove, long dining room table, big kitchen, and a full-sized bed, unlike the little twin beds the Park Service has in their housing. Lots of windows in the house, too. And a great big porch. (Three of  them, actually.) I think that this will be a nice place to live for the next few months.

Today, though, was the saddest day. Because Jillian and I had to be on the road by 6:30 in time for her to board her flight at 10:47 AM. She goes back to spend her summer at a girls’ camp in Wisconsin, and I probably won’t get to see her again until I’m home at the end of September. It would have been nice if the week had been able to stretch out just a little bit longer. But I guess that you can’t always get what you want. 

I hop into training tomorrow. It’s already been going on for a week, so I suppose I’ll see what I’ve missed so far. I can’t imagine it was anything I didn’t know from last year. 

Anyhow, I’ve procrastinated long enough. I’ve got to go and get my stuff together for tomorrow, and get lunch made, too. Then go to bed and rest up.