Motor Sports Weekly News

By: Drew Hierwarter

The 77^th running of the 24 hours of Le Mans saw the French manufacturer Peugeot end the five year domination of Audi and win for the first time in 16 years.

 

One of the drivers on the race winning Peugeot was David Brabham, son of three time world Formula One champion, Sir Jack Brabham.

 

The last time a Peugeot won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the team drivers was David’s older brother, Geoff Brabham.

 

In spite of the current difficulties of the world wide automotive market, there is still a great deal of interest on the part of the manufacturers to compete at Le Mans. Peugeot and Audi have both committed a tremendous amount of resources to winning this race.

 

During 24 hours at Le Mans, a typical race team will consume an entire pallet of bottled water and over 150 pounds of snack food.

 

Mark Martin won the fuel mileage contest and came home first in the NASCAR Michigan 400 on Sunday. The last time this race was run on June 14^th was in 1998. The winner then was Mark Martin.   

 

In the battle of the NASCAR TV cartoon characters, TNT’s “Race Buddy” gets the win over Fox’s “Digger”. “Race Buddy” is available on your computer and gives you four unique camera views that you can choose, a dedicated pit reporter, team radio, a live leaderboard, and a chat room. While “Digger” is just a pointless cartoon.

 

Kyle Busch finished second to Colin Braun in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday. In post race interviews he jokingly predicted he would also finish second in the Nationwide Series race later that evening in Kentucky. Sure enough, he finished second to Joey Logano.

 

Busch has, once again, been highly competitive in all three of NASCAR’s top series this year, running up front and usually leading the most laps. But he has lost several races in the closing laps, mostly due to things beyond his control. And yet, he has only one less win than he had at this point in the season last year. If it wasn’t for bad luck Kyle Busch could easily have four or five more than he has already.

 

Colin Braun got his first ever win in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series by passing Kyle Busch in the closing laps. During his post race interview in victory circle, he made his only rookie mistake of the night when he forgot to mention his sponsor, Con-way Freight and his manufacturer, Ford. He’ll learn.

 

If you think it’s easy to drive a NASCAR Sprint Cup car just look at the world class open wheel stars that have tried to compete in NASCAR’s top series and failed. But you can also look at Joey Logano. Logano has won with seeming ease in Late Models, ARCA, and the Nationwide Series, yet he has struggled so far in Sprint Cup races. Logano is very, very good and he will figure this car out, but for now the learning curve is steep.

 

When the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series returned to Englishtown Raceway Park in New Jersey this past week emotions ran high. This was the first time the circuit was back at the scene of Scott Kalitta’s tragic death in a Funny Car crash one year ago. Kalitta’s car, now driven by Jeff Arend, was the first car on the track for Friday’s nitro qualifying. Arend did a Kalitta-like long, smokey burnout, followed by a solo pass down the drag strip, in the same lane as Scott’s fateful last run. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  

 

Ashley Force-Hood is on her game in the tough NHRA Funny Car ranks. At Englishtown she made it to her third straight final round when she lined up against Tony Pedregon. The two began the day tied for second in points and when they both rolled to the line for the final, they were tied for first. Pedregon won the race and sole possession of the points lead but look for these two to take the championship battle right down to the wire.

 

Could we see Honda, BMW, Mercedes, or Nissan competing in NASCAR in the near future? With support for racing by GM and Chrysler being cut off and Ford making reductions in their spending NASCAR has been “. . . talking to . . .” unnamed foreign manufacturers who build their cars in the US. Any decision is still a “. . .long way off.”, but this is a time when old paradigms must make way for new opportunities.

 

The controversy over Kyle Busch’s guitar smashing antics last week in Nashville just won’t go away. Two shards of the broken guitar have now shown up on eBay. One has an opening bid of $500.00! As of this writing there are no takers.

 

In spite of the rumors to the contrary, don’t look for Danica Patrick to make the jump to NASCAR any time soon. Chip Ganassi is said to be making plans to form a third Indy car team and sign Patrick to a multi-year deal.