Grand Prix Rejects

Cynon wrote:Back-to-back driver's circuits for our F1 Rejects in NASCAR... and guess what, they were crap!

Darlington showed that Scott Speed, at this point in his career, is a pretty sh*t driver. He finished 28th, 4 laps down.

Max Papis was 29th, 6 laps off the leader.

Encouraging week for the very underrated driving combo of Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya. Both the Earnhardt-Ganassi cars scored top five finishes. Jamie Mac has the edge over JPM in the points standings, as they both sit 16thand 17th.

What about the F1 Rejects?

Scott Speed is 26th, A.J. Allmendinger 27th, and Marcos Ambrose 28th...

Max Papis sits 38th, and honestly, he struggles to qualify for every race...

Papis's car is a shitebox though, isn't it?

Yes, the Germain Racing car is a shitebox, but the problem is that he's not doing much with it. He has never outperformed the car... road courses aside...

Ambrose as an F1 Reject? have I missed something here?

I mention Ambrose, Sam Hornish, Jr., Montoya, because they're semi-well-known racing personalities in other disciplines.

In Sprint Cup Qualifying, Max Papis was ... pathetically slow and failed to qualify. Scott Speed starts 28th.

Edit: In the NASCAR truck race, Max Papis further embarrassed himself by wearing his tires out way too fast and clobbering the wall, ending his day. His pace wasn't very encouraging either...

Also, here's a video everyone should probably see. NASCAR paid tribute to Ayrton Senna, and most notably, Dale Earnhardt, immediately after winning the race.

Narain Karthikeyan and Nelson Piquet, Jr. both had respectable drives in the NASCAR truck race in Texas... Piquet finishing 8th after having several pit road incidents in Billy Ballew's #15 Toyota, and Karthikeyan came home a quiet 11th in the Starbeast Toyota.

The Cup race, which finished all of 10 minutes ago, was at the NASCAR equivalent of the Hungaroring. However, it turned into a brawling pit on the last lap, with the NASCAR equivalent of Vettel v. Webber. Kind of.

On the last lap, Kasey Kahne makes an ambitious dive down the Long Pond straight on the inside of his teammate, A.J. Allmendinger. Allmendinger moved to block, and Kahne dove into the grass. He promptly lost the car and spun up into ... pretty much everyone else in a spectacular accident.

However, since NASCAR cars are the safest cars, I seriously doubt there will be anything worse than Kasey Kahne's bruised ego and his F1-style whinge.

Cynon wrote:Narain Karthikeyan and Nelson Piquet, Jr. both had respectable drives in the NASCAR truck race in Texas... Piquet finishing 8th after having several pit road incidents in Billy Ballew's #15 Toyota, and Karthikeyan came home a quiet 11th in the Starbeast Toyota.

The Cup race, which finished all of 10 minutes ago, was at the NASCAR equivalent of the Hungaroring. However, it turned into a brawling pit on the last lap, with the NASCAR equivalent of Vettel v. Webber. Kind of.

On the last lap, Kasey Kahne makes an ambitious dive down the Long Pond straight on the inside of his teammate, A.J. Allmendinger. Allmendinger moved to block, and Kahne dove into the grass. He promptly lost the car and spun up into ... pretty much everyone else in a spectacular accident.

However, since NASCAR cars are the safest cars, I seriously doubt there will be anything worse than Kasey Kahne's bruised ego and his F1-style whinge.

Yep, pretty spectacular - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm_D11pDfKM

Cynon wrote:However, since NASCAR cars are the safest cars, I seriously doubt there will be anything worse than Kasey Kahne's bruised ego and his F1-style whinge.

Still, safe as the NASCARs might be, they should seriously think about replacing the hedges in Pocono with a fence. I realize the heges give the track a lot of atmosphere, but they are also a bit of a death trap.

P_Friesacher wrote:

Cynon wrote:However, since NASCAR cars are the safest cars, I seriously doubt there will be anything worse than Kasey Kahne's bruised ego and his F1-style whinge.

Still, safe as the NASCARs might be, they should seriously think about replacing the hedges in Pocono with a fence. I realize the heges give the track a lot of atmosphere, but they are also a bit of a death trap.

Or if they want to keep them, they can just make the retaining wall a foot or two higher, or they can put the catch fence behind the hedges. But they have to be able to keep the drivers within the track.

My understanding is that the track owners are looking to put a spectator stand along that straight, so presumably the hedges are out and 'catch fencing' is in.

In my opinion, how about just ditch the 17 ton, 6-liter cars for Super 2000 regs? Then instead of being identical shiteboxes, manufacturers would get their identities back and safer, closer racing. Alas, the Deep South will never catch on to technology.

RejectSteve wrote:Alas, the Deep South will never catch on to technology.

They'll just next year start to get fuel injection...

Also, big F1 Rejects news, Jan Magnussen will attempt to make his NASCAR debut at the road course in Sonoma, driving a Hendrick Chevrolet... fielded by James Finch's Phoenix Racing, which was around long before the Phoenix F1 "effort"...

Cynon wrote:

RejectSteve wrote:Alas, the Deep South will never catch on to technology.

They'll just next year start to get fuel injection...

Also, big F1 Rejects news, Jan Magnussen will attempt to make his NASCAR debut at the road course in Sonoma, driving a Hendrick Chevrolet... fielded by James Finch's Phoenix Racing, which was around long before the Phoenix F1 "effort"...

I bet Magnussen could out-chain-smoke the entire NASCAR garage.

Don't count on that. There's a LOT of smokers in the NASCAR garage...

Not to mention Dale Jarrett got a strict talking-to by NASCAR officialdom by visibly smoking in front of fans a few years ago... so if you think F1's strict on smoking advertisements...

By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

Cynon wrote:By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

The fact that his teammate won it might make the conspiracy theorists stand up a bit.

baddriving50 wrote:

Cynon wrote:By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

The fact that his teammate won it might make the conspiracy theorists stand up a bit.

Piquet bounced off Justin Lofton (an odd move to do by accident), and it put Aric Almirola in with a chance of winning... ... at least Nelsinho has learned how to be a team player and keep himself in the race!

baddriving50 wrote:

Cynon wrote:By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

The fact that his teammate won it might make the conspiracy theorists stand up a bit.

*stands up*

baddriving50 wrote:

Cynon wrote:By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

The fact that his teammate won it might make the conspiracy theorists stand up a bit.

Wondered how long it would take for that to happen.

tommykl wrote:

baddriving50 wrote:

Cynon wrote:By the way, Nelson Piquet, Jr. recorded a 10th place finish in the NASCAR truck race at Michigan. This after spinning into the grass earlier in the race.

The fact that his teammate won it might make the conspiracy theorists stand up a bit.

*stands up*

*also stands up* but because the Real Slim Shady was asked to please stand up. Sorry couldn't resist.

Another Aussie has come to NASCAR in the form of Owen Kelly, who will be running the Nationwide series race at Road America this Saturday. Also in that same race is Jacques Villeneuve. Both Kelly and JV have shown a good deal of pace. Porsche factory driver Patrick Long is in the field as well, and is also showing some ominous speed.

Former Champ Car driver and former Texas Barrel Roller Michael McDowell is showing some decent pace as well, which is unusual, because the only thing McDowell has shown he's good at in NASCAR is crashing...

Jan Magnussen qualified for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Sonoma, California at the Infineon Raceway, but he could be on his way to NASCAR rejectdom as well since he's starting 32nd of 43 cars.

P.J. Jones, son of the great Parnelli Jones, qualified a second car for Robby Gordon's team. P.J. Jones is known for being crap just about everywhere, except unlike guys like Paul Stewart and Mathias Lauda, he actually made it into CART...

Marcos Ambrose starts 6th after blowing the final turn of the track after he was tracking the pole by well over a second.
JPM starts 14th
A.J. Wallmendinger starts 15th
Scott Speed starts 23rd
Max Papis starts 29th
Jan Magnussen starts 32nd
Mattias Ekstrom starts 38th after a very dodgy qualifying lap. His car seemed really stable all through practice, so it may have been that the team gave him a setup that was more stable rather than fast... hmmm, seems that NASCAR is an awful tough nut to crack, even for someone of his caliber.

Road America, Post-Race:

Villeneuve made many, MANY... AWESOME passes throughout the course of the race (including a three wide last minute pass at Canada Corner) but showed his talents by being able to make such ballsy passes without wrecking anyone else, but a combination of a bad alternator and Paul Menard's stupidity cost him a shot at winning the race. With two laps to go the car failed on JV.

Owen Kelly came in 5th in a strong showing. He's lucky he didn't get nerfed off the road by Paul Menard, and should send Brendan Gaughan a thank you note for nerfing Menard on the last lap!

The race was a crashfest after about half distance, which did not surprise me in the slightest.

Paul Menard ran over JV towards the end of the race for .... what was essentially first but JV got the track position due to other people failing. Menard irritated me with his stupid driving. He ran over Victor Gonzalez, JV, and ran Patrick Long off the road a few times. He basically drove like Michael Schumacher did in Canada. He also wore his brakes out really early in the race.

Carl Edwards dominated the race easily to take the win... who beat the pants off Michael Schumacher in the Race of Champions and ever since then has done squat in NASCAR... hmm, or maybe the ROC people don't like to see an American NASCAR driver legitimately destroy Michael Schumacher on an even playing field.

I now hate Paul Menard for the fact that he ruined JV's race. Anyone who does that deserves to be hated. This includes whoever was responsible for his car not having a windshield wiper in Montreal a few years back.

Cynon wrote:Road America, Post-Race:

Villeneuve made many, MANY... AWESOME passes throughout the course of the race (including a three wide last minute pass at Canada Corner) but showed his talents by being able to make such ballsy passes without wrecking anyone else, but a combination of a bad alternator and Paul Menard's stupidity cost him a shot at winning the race. With two laps to go the car failed on JV.

Owen Kelly came in 5th in a strong showing. He's lucky he didn't get nerfed off the road by Paul Menard, and should send Brendan Gaughan a thank you note for nerfing Menard on the last lap!

The race was a crashfest after about half distance, which did not surprise me in the slightest.

Paul Menard ran over JV towards the end of the race for .... what was essentially first but JV got the track position due to other people failing. Menard irritated me with his stupid driving. He ran over Victor Gonzalez, JV, and ran Patrick Long off the road a few times. He basically drove like Michael Schumacher did in Canada. He also wore his brakes out really early in the race.

Carl Edwards dominated the race easily to take the win... who beat the pants off Michael Schumacher in the Race of Champions and ever since then has done squat in NASCAR... hmm, or maybe the ROC people don't like to see an American NASCAR driver legitimately destroy Michael Schumacher on an even playing field.

Sprint Cup race at Sonoma wasn't kind to what few rejects were in the field...

Max Papis was classified stone dead last after being involved in a 9 car pileup on Lap 67.
Scott Speed was in no-mans land for almost the whole race, until the carnage of the last 20 laps set in, and he rose to 18th. Outperformed by his team-mate, who made his NASCAR debut at the race.
Mattias Ekstrom may not be an ex-F1 driver, but the multiple ROC winner was Speed's new team-mate for this race. He was one of the few drivers to avoid any carnage...until Lap 92 anyway. Once Brad "Destroy everthing in sight" Keselowski got behind him he spun the Swede out and put him a lap down. He got the lap back, but only managed 21st place. It was scant reward for one of the most measured drives in the whole field - he ran in the Top 10 for almost the entire race beforehand. Made Speed look crap. Hopefully he comes back to RBR for the remaining Road Course events.
Jan Magnussen did manage a 12th place finish for Phoenix Racing, but only after half the field decided to take each other out first.
Juan-Pablo Montoya was fast but got involved in way too much argy-bargy over the duration of the race - he was lucky to survive long enough to record a 10th place finish.
Robby Gordon of Dakar fame recorded his best finish since 2005 by taking second place, after driving like a madman to keep Harvick at bay in the last 5 laps.

However, my heart was well and truly broken by Aussie V8 Supercar convert Marcos Ambrose. With only 6 laps to go, and Johnson's tyres thoroughly worn, he was set for his first ever Sprint Cup victory. Alas, while in fuel saving mode he coasted his way to the foot of the Turn 2 hill, couldn't restart the engine and got stuck halfway up the hill. What would have been an easy 5 lap run to victory turned out to be a last ditch kamikaze attempt to make back places from 7th place. In the end, he only got 1 place back.

The kicker about Marcos Ambrose is that they've allowed drivers to drop "Below Minimum Speed Under the Yellow" before... they allowed Kevin Harvick to take first place back after he stalled at Phoenix and allowed Greg Biffle to take a win under yellow flags in 2007 after he slowed on the apron... very fishy outcome...

NASCAR is sort of known for kissing Jimmie Johnson's ass when it comes to giving penalties.

Cynon wrote:The kicker about Marcos Ambrose is that they've allowed drivers to drop "Below Minimum Speed Under the Yellow" before... they allowed Kevin Harvick to take first place back after he stalled at Phoenix and allowed Greg Biffle to take a win under yellow flags in 2007...

NASCAR is sort of known for kissing Jimmie Johnson's ass when it comes to giving penalties.

I guess the era of Dale Jr...ahem, Debris cautions is over then?

kostas22 wrote:

Cynon wrote:The kicker about Marcos Ambrose is that they've allowed drivers to drop "Below Minimum Speed Under the Yellow" before... they allowed Kevin Harvick to take first place back after he stalled at Phoenix and allowed Greg Biffle to take a win under yellow flags in 2007...

NASCAR is sort of known for kissing Jimmie Johnson's ass when it comes to giving penalties.

I guess the era of Dale Jr...ahem, Debris cautions is over then?

No, but those only come when he's being lapped, these days.

thehemogoblin wrote:

kostas22 wrote:I guess the era of Dale Jr...ahem, Debris cautions is over then?

No, but those only come when he's being lapped, these days.

Or if 'les autres' get ahead. When Johnson opened big leads and somebody went off, the race stayed green. When Ambrose led, any incident brought out the pace car.

Having watched these two NASCrap races, JV was by far the best driver at Road America and deserved to win and the same applies for Marcos Ambrose at Sonoma. Given equal equipment and they'd have finished miles ahead of the rest. Despite Villeneuve's overtakes at Road America, it was a borefest from both races in my opinion.

cynon wrote:...Paul Menard's stupidity...

This just in from the Redundancy Department of Redundancy.

cynon wrote:...Paul Menard's stupidity...

This just in from the Redundancy Department of Redundancy.[/quote]

When your dad is the team owner and sponsor, redundancy isn't in your vocabulary.

Road America was a meddling race, but I think most of that was due to half the field being wiped out by Paul Retard.

...and the fact that it was pretty obvious that Carl Edwards was going to win the race just on the basis that none of the other drivers in the field were decent road course drivers that had regular drives.

Infineon was just typical crap officialdom on the part of NASCAR. No local yellows in the rulebooks means full course yellows any time Brad Krashalotski ran someone over or Joey Logano spun.

By the way, NASCAR kisses Joey Logano's ass even more than ITV kissed Lewis Hamilton's ass. No matter what Logano does, the commentators will mysteriously do their best to try and pin any incident involving him on the other guy...

...and good on JPM for nerfing him off the road, too.

Speaking of JPM, he's on the pole for the New Hampshire Boring-As-Batshit-But-It's-Still-Better-Than-Valencia race.

The New Hampshire round was... well, bad. But still better than Valencia. Another win for Jimmie Johnson using the old bump-and-run that's usually only seen on short tracks... and New Hampshire isn't really a short track...

Max Papis was the first retirement I think and JPM crashed late in the race. Scott Speed was busy being faster than his new teammate, Reed Sorenson... Reed Sorenson is just bad, I mean, he got thrashed by SCOTT SPEED for crying out loud...

Cynon wrote:The New Hampshire round was... well, bad. But still better than Valencia. Another win for Jimmie Johnson using the old bump-and-run that's usually only seen on short tracks... and New Hampshire isn't really a short track...

Max Papis was the first retirement I think and JPM crashed late in the race. Scott Speed was busy being faster than his new teammate, Reed Sorenson... Reed Sorenson is just bad, I mean, he got thrashed by SCOTT SPEED for crying out loud...

Mattias Ekstrom >>>> Scott Speed >>>> Reed Sorensen.

It's like NASCAR's going backwards. The most experienced drivers are sucking while the rookies are blitzing their team-mates.

kostas22 wrote:

Cynon wrote:The New Hampshire round was... well, bad. But still better than Valencia. Another win for Jimmie Johnson using the old bump-and-run that's usually only seen on short tracks... and New Hampshire isn't really a short track...

Max Papis was the first retirement I think and JPM crashed late in the race. Scott Speed was busy being faster than his new teammate, Reed Sorenson... Reed Sorenson is just bad, I mean, he got thrashed by SCOTT SPEED for crying out loud...

Mattias Ekstrom >>>> Scott Speed >>>> Reed Sorensen.

It's like NASCAR's going backwards. The most experienced drivers are sucking while the rookies are blitzing their team-mates.

Kevin Conway is going to win Rookie of the Year due to being in Sebastien Buemi's position. He's the only rookie driver. He's also a pay driver (bringing ExtenZe sponsorship of all things), and most of the time is over a second off the car in front of him. That wouldn't be so bad if that kind of margin was basically unheard of in NASCAR... it's like being on HRT pace... on a MUCH smaller track.

Cynon wrote:He's also a pay driver (bringing ExtenZe sponsorship of all things),

Oh boy, here we go coaxing the spambots on.

RejectSteve wrote:

Cynon wrote:He's also a pay driver (bringing ExtenZe sponsorship of all things),

Oh boy, here we go coaxing the spambots on.

And it's Cynon's fault again!

I completely forgot about the former F1-guys in NASCAR this weekend.

Firstly Dale Jr won with the Wrangler #3 car with the former crew chief of Dale Sr. (This was Nationwide)

Then in the Cup Series, Steve Park made comeback after 7 years out of a Cup ride and managed to finish 13th!

Myrvold wrote:I completely forgot about the former F1-guys in NASCAR this weekend.

Firstly Dale Jr won with the Wrangler #3 car with the former crew chief of Dale Sr. (This was Nationwide)

Then in the Cup Series, Steve Park made comeback after 7 years out of a Cup ride and managed to finish 13th!

What you forgot to mention is that Steve Park should have been killed at least twice but somehow survived... but it was a very Jan Lammers thing from Steve Park, except that in NASCAR, a 13th means a hell of a lot more than it does in F1, so Park's accomplishments (even if aided by accidents further up the grid) are even more notable for being smart enough to lay back and wait for everyone else to finish destroying themselves for him to make his move -- in the worst car on the grid, period.

Juan Montoya got himself in a big wreck, Max Papis didn't last long either... but the need for SCOTT SPEED was found, and he found himself in 10th when the dust settled.... hmmm, seems that Scott Speed seems to have a knack for these superspeedways, he did lead a bunch of laps in the Daytona 500 towards the end.

Myrvold wrote:I completely forgot about the former F1-guys in NASCAR this weekend.

Firstly Dale Jr won with the Wrangler #3 car with the former crew chief of Dale Sr. (This was Nationwide)

Then in the Cup Series, Steve Park made comeback after 7 years out of a Cup ride and managed to finish 13th!

It's great to see Park back and doing well - especially when you consider the poor guy would've probably become one of the more successful drivers in the sport had it not been for the brain damage he suffered in this crash.

Juan Pablo Montoya is not very happy with fellow driver Mark Martin after the race in Joliet, Illinois... oh, excuse me, NEW LENOX, Illinois (because that's where the bloody track is located, but it's Postal box is in Joliet).

Sorry.

JPM: Mark Martin Needs Driving Lessons...

Mark Martin's been driving in NASCAR for well over 25 years, and is one of the most respected drivers in the garage. Normally, I would just laugh off a JPM whinge, but if Mark Martin agrees with him, then I think that should say enough really.

JACQUES IS BACK.

Driving the #32 Braun Racing Toyota in an attempt to qualify for the Brickyard 400 in a week. Best of luck to him, that car's not very good...

However, they have got some support from Joe Gibbs Racing! Not only help during the race, but also an Joe Gibbs Racing engine. If he qualify he will be the second person to drive on Indianapolis, in three different top series.

This weekend, Nelson Piquet Jr is taking part in Nationwide event at Watkins Glen, so we can see how he performs in road course.

Bleu wrote:This weekend, Nelson Piquet Jr is taking part in Nationwide event at Watkins Glen, so we can see how he performs in road course.

I predict a lucky win for his team-mate