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Stargate Worlds will not be her sponsor anymore because it's a dead project with no money. There must be a different sponsor on board for Simona.

EDIT: BTW KV and SH Racing signed a deal for Indy 500 partnership

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... -indy-500/

Helio shouting at the ref.

He did get a test (with Jag) and he wasn't very good

look at Bourdais, US success means nothing in F1

Formula One cars are beauties, Indy Cars are beasts. You have to be a really special talent to master both, like Mario, Mansell, Emerson, Montoya and... Jacques.
Zanardi and Bourdais failed too hard.

Nobody who does a 1 day test is any good. Montoyas first test was awful too. He went off to America, came back and was awesome. Villeneuve didn't set the world alight in his first test either. I don't think he particularly should get an F1 driver, but single tests are not worth looking at.



Well almost everyone on my shift at work knows Franchitti.

Look, I know I'll get flamed for this (And 70+ Posts on TBK without being flamed.. I was told you'd all hate me!), but I stand adamant in saying that IndyCar (Do I use IRL till the end of the year? I dunno) is the most diverse, and therefore best open wheel series in the world....

Formula Whining "I won" drivers would never win the Indy 500. It's a fact. Bernie could give them the whole of May off, and the Vettels, Alonsos and Hamiltons could all go and try, but simply put, Formula 1 drivers of today would not be able do well. It could be the fact that their cars are suited to racing round Spa etc, but I'd bet a lot of money against any of them winning the 500, even if they had Penske/Ganassi at their side. And the same can be said about most ovals. Most would not understand the need to run 2/3 wide lap after lap at somewhere like Texas/Chicagoland, and even if they did, the skill needed to race at those speeds, lap after lap, is so much more difficult than calling up your pit guy, and asking to pit early to jump the guy ahead.

On the other side of the pond, Power, Franchitti, TK, Castroneves, and more could go to F1 and do better than at least half the guys out there. If they have a shit setup, they DRIVE to sort it out, not spend their lives in the Pits looking at telementary. Power could well be a title contender in 2 years if he went to F1, and if Franchitti was 5 years younger, I'd say the same for him...

Whilst IndyCar is a bit of a Ganassi/Penske battle royal at the moment, we had that with Ferrari/McLaren, Williams/Bennaton etc where 2 teams are light years ahead of the pack, so people can't moan about that. And Andretti could easilly be the Jordans of the late 90's or the Mid 90's Ferrari's, just in a different car.

What I'm tryingf to say is, I have a fuck load of respect for Indycar. The drivers are top notch, they bitch AFTER the race, but are not afraid to bang wheels and so on, and whilst some of the rules are stupid (The Overtake line rule to name one), IndyCar, with the right backing, and a bit of sense, could very easilly rival F1, and the diversity of road/street/Low Ovals/High Ovals is something that Can't ever be ignored....

*Feel Free To Flame Me, but the IRL is NOT SHIT!!!!!!!*

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"Every day on Memorial weekend, comes the chance to cross these bricks, and live forever. No votes, no politics, no thanks to the Academy. Nothing. Just driver, machine, and pursuit of immortality"

I'm not gonna flame, but your post makes so many ludicrous assertions that it begs the question - how long have you actually been watching motorsport for?

I understand that, but I believe the feedback from Jag wasn't particularly positive which resulted in him not getting called back. At the time (mid-2002, I think), he was in the running for a drive but the poor test killed his hopes off. The same went for Dixon and his Williams tests. However, alternatively, Toyota were suitably impressed by Helio's test in 2002

I'm sure Dario could have made it into F1 had his cards fallen right for him in the late 90s before he went over to the States. He was particularly impressive in 95 in the DTM. But AOWR cars are so different from F1 cars that I'd say it's virtually impossible to adapt successfully from one to the other after more than about 3 or 4 years in one of them - hence why JV and Montoya did succeed in F1, because they hadn't been in CART that long. It's the same for most types of racing, though


This is absolutely hilarious

You obviously don't know a great deal about motor racing because otherwise you'd know that the majority of drivers in that championship (bar maybe Dario and Helio, who were successful in Europe and converted well before most of the guys out there when CART was pretty big) are only there because they weren't good enough to compete in Europe - Briscoe, Power, Wilson, Sato, Wheldon, Viso, Moraes etc, even Marco who was pretty average in A1 GP

Power is a prime example - by and large, he was pretty mediocre in F3 and World Series by Renault when competing against a lot of the drivers who are now in F1. So for you to suggest that he'd "do better than at least half the guys out there" is, quite frankly, laughable

Even someone like Zanardi wasn't as special as people make him out to be, even in his first stint in F1

Maybe because it's 8:17 AM here and I just woke up, but I had a hard time reading that post without feeling stupid.

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Ducks Angels Sounders Spurs

Well no not really. That test suffered from the same thing that killed off Jaguar. They wanted results and they wanted them now. Montoya and Villeneuve had the benefit of having Frank Williams spot the obvious talent and then harness it properly. Jaguar expected results instantly, rather than look for the diamond in the rough. They were notoriously harsh on drivers, in the same way Toyota was in the first year. Eddie Irvine said he often got blamed for Jaguars short comings, even though the car was fundamentally slow. It felt fine, but was slow which made it extremely difficult to develop. But because it felt fine, Jaguar insisted more could be gotten out of it. I suppose really it should be Ford, since they pulled the strings, but the points the same. Jaguar tested a boat load of drivers who never got anywhere. If Franchitti and Dixon has tested for a team that was more forgiving then they'd have probably done multiple tests.

As for adapting to cars, I think once you've won in Touring Cars, LMPs and 2 different styles of AWOR, you're pretty much fine at that. As I say, I still don't think he'd have suited F1, but a Jaguar test is the worst possible test to judge anything on. Might as well call Jeff Gordon at Indy a test, because it wasn't much different for Jag testers.

Andretti Strive to Keep Ryan Hunter-Reay: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/87220

_________________
"Every day on Memorial weekend, comes the chance to cross these bricks, and live forever. No votes, no politics, no thanks to the Academy. Nothing. Just driver, machine, and pursuit of immortality"

Its only going to definitely be shit for one more yea, then it is up in the air again.
Could be decent, could be as shit, all depends on the new car really.
(Has there been any initial reports yet on downforce levels of the new car or whatever? )

Thinking about Power and his Road Course/Oval performances got me to wondering how dominant he would've been if Champcar was still around (Ah...there I go again *sigh*)

Since he wouldn't have to bother with the whole Oval thing and assuming his car was of the same level of competiveness, he could well have been as dominant as Bourdais...if not MORE so.

I guess that shows how lucky Sebass was really, he got into the right car at time when the rich guys didn't mind funding a series to further their own interests.
If it'd all gone south in 2004, which it so nearly did, he'd just be another also ran in the IRL instead of....oh wait, yeah, another also ran in Superleauge Formula.
But an also-ran with 4 titles under his belt at least.

Power could've been another Bourdais if Champcar was still around is the point I was trying to make though, just a case of wrong place, wrong time for him.

I just don't think you can compare different series. Some brilliant Indycar drivers have struggled in F1, but that's not to say some F1 drivers would struggle in Indy. Then you have a whole bunch of different teams with different cars and different resources. People like Sato and Piquet should have been brilliant after beating big names in GP2 and F3 but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

Every open wheel driver wants to be in F1 because it's a far bigger worldwide series. It doesn't mean that those who don't have the funds to make it are bad drivers. Sure, you have Milka Duno and others who are there purely for money, but most of the field are good drivers with some achievements in junior formulas. Do I think the Indycar field is stronger than the F1 field? No. But I do think there's a lot of talent in the series which would do fine in any top open wheel formula. I can't understand why this series isn't more popular because the races generally have a good amount of action in them. Maybe not so much on the ovals recently but we can hope for a good new car...

they are 2 completly different types of racing tho so its really hard to compare. sure they are both open wheel but that about where it stops. the cars are completely different, f1 doesnt race on ovals or airport circuits. sure once in a while drivers may switch series and still be successful (nigel, villenuve, montoya) but i honestly doubt you'd ever catch any f1 driver entering even the indy 500 these days

The best drivers in Indy has always been world class drivers, but the worst drivers have always been amazingly bad, which is not the case for F1.

Yup. Guys like Yamamoto, Kiesa, Yoong, Marques, Tuero and never forget tosseR are world class.

Ide.

Ide was much worse then Duno.

Compare them with the worst from Indycars, and you'll see my point.