The Week in Racing

WRC
Once again, the WRC isn't shown in the United States. Luckily I have found that the WRC puts out podcasts of the races, thus allowing me to follow it. They also advertise an online radio station where you can listen to the action live, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet (but I will!). Anyway, it was wonderful for the monotony of Sebastien Loeb victories to be broken; congratulations to Marcus Gronholm on his victory in Sweden.

NASCAR
Yates Racing took the front row for the Daytona 500 and some are heralding the resurrection of the team. In the words of Lee Corso (where's my pencil?), "Not So Fast." Yates cars have always had a lot of horsepower, so it is not surprising to see them run well in single car, two lap qualifying. Thursday will better show whether or not they are improving when we see how they do on full runs in a large pack of cars. All of that aside, congratulations to David Gilliland for winning the pole, it is still a great accomplishment for a rookie. Congratulations also go to Juan Pablo Montoya on his 4th place in qualifying. He did quite well in the ARCA race at Talladega last year so I'm looking forward to watching him on Thursday and Sunday.

Toyota remains a question mark. They did manage to get two cars in the top 20, which is not bad for a first run. The question remains of how much they have concentrated on the super speedway program this year; perhaps they concentrated more on the rest of the season due to the fact that there are only 4 super speedway races. I'm not going to judge Toyota's performance until after both California and Las Vegas. Personally, I think Michael Waltrip was in a good position to do a lot of testing and development last year, but didn't do it. Instead of running an unsupported Dodge, he should have sat out a year and done nothing but test Toyotas. Perhaps it would have led to better performance not only for his teams, but the other Toyotas as well. Scott Pruett's similar move when Firestone returned to open wheel racing comes to mind as an example.


Formula 1
Only one more month until the F1 season begins. I can't wait for this season to start. With Schumacher retired, Alonso moved to McLaren, Raikkonen moved to Ferrari, and Bridgestone as the common tire, F1's pot has been mightily stirred. This year's championship could well be a wide open affair.


Champ Car/IRL
Unite.
Please.


Mac McCormick, KF4LMT
kf4lmt@comcast.net