This is one of the busiest racing weekends so far this season. NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup series are at Texas Motor Speedway, one of the fastest tracks on the schedule, the Indycar series is on the streets of Long Beach, and the Chinese Grand Prix for Formula 1 continues that series' Far East swing.
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Tony Stewart has the pole for Sunday's Texas Sprint Cup race, hot on the heels of teammate Ryan Newman's win at Phoenix. Stewart does not normally qualify all that well, leaving "Rocket" Newman to turn in the pole performances. Possibly the performance was because of Stewart's coming to grips with the new spoiler on the back of the Cup cars, with Texas the first really fast racetrack they've run at. Joey Logano grabbed pole for today's Nationwide race.
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Silly season is that time of year when teams, drivers, crew chiefs and sponsors play musical chairs, and seems to start earlier all the time. However, I think we've just seen a new silly season record set with the announcement that Kasey Kahne will be going to Rick Hendrick's organization in 2012 to drive the number 5 car. Mark Martin will stay in the ride through 2012, and in fact was the impetus for Kahne's decision to move to Hendrick. Martin, who had committed three years to Hendrick, indicated that he still would probably be driving in 2012, but for someone else. After approaching Matt Kenseth and Jeff Burton about replacing him in the number 5 car, Martin had serious talks with Kahne that culminated in this week's announcement. This leaves somewhere for Hendrick to put Kahne for 2011, and the immediate thought that leaped into my mind was Stewart-Haas. Hendrick is already at the NASCAR-mandated four car team limit, but Stewart-Haas runs Hendrick-supplied chassis and engines, and has only the two teams of Stewart and Newman, leaving them room for Kasey.
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The longest-running street race in the U.S. also is taking place this weekend, as the Indycars take to the streets of Long Beach, California. The series is coming off their first-ever race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, which was won by Helio Castroneves after being dominated for most of the run by Marco Andretti. It was very much a fuel strategy race, as there are only about two places to pass on the tight, twisty Alabama track. After that race, the normally confining streets of Long Beach will seem pretty wide open, with more passing opportunities for the Indycars. The series has also adopted a "push to pass" button that gives the cars an extra 8-9 horsepower for 12 seconds, and can be used to complete a pass or to hold someone off into a corner. It's just the latest idea that Indycar has borrowed from the now-defunct Champ Car series, which had a 50-horsepower boost from their button. Indycar, first formed by Tony George to rid American open-wheel racing of the evils of road courses, engine leasing, foreign drivers, etc. has come full circle and become the enemy.
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If you are a night owl, you may want to tune into SPEEDTV at 11:30 p.m. today for the Grand Prix of China from Shanghai. Personally, I think I'll let the DVR watch it and then take in the race Sunday morning before the Texas Sprint Cup event. At this writing, the race is shaping up to be a McLaren-Mercedes battle, with Lewis Hamilton quickest in practice for McLaren, Nico Rosberg second for Mercedes, and then their teammates Jensen Button and Michael Schumacher next fastest. The Red Bull teammates of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were next on the practice charts, followed by the surprising Force India team. So far it has been a pretty wide-open season, but the strong teams appear to be emerging. However, don't count the Ferraris out when the green flag drops tonight. The next two races on the schedule are Spain and Monaco, and hopefully the ash fallout from the Icelandic volcano will dissipate in time for the teams to fly back and prepare for those events.
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