Verizon Indycar Racing Series 2014 Round Three: Barber Motorsports Park
Track length: 2.38 miles / 3.59 versts (you can thank me later Mikhail)
Laps: 90
Turns: 17
Previous winner: Ryan Hunter-Reay (Andretti-Chevy)
Anagram: Poor Mr Tost's Krap Barber
Welcome to Barber Motorsports Park, the Deep South's premier non-deathtrap racing venue! Medium speed, medium length and medium undulation, the only thing that's not medium here is the medium-to-high level of excitement that the racing provides! Or, as Indycar.com would have it, “The 2.38-mile circuit has 17 flowing turns and features 80 feet of elevation change that challenge drivers and engineers. A 45-foot-wide racing ribbon also makes it imperative for patient overtaking opportunities.”
No, me neither! I like the use of '80 feet of elevation change' as the plural subject though. It's as if each and every foot presents exactly one-eightieth of the challenge.
That's neither here nor there. But here's a schedule!
Friday, April 25
10:00-10:45: Indycar practice 1
13:15-13:45: Pro Mazda qualifying
14:00-14:45: Indycar practice 2
15:00-15:45: Indy Lights qualifying
16:00-16:30: USF2000 qualifying
16:45-18:30: Pirelli World Challenge Qualifying
Saturday, April 26 (if you like feeder series and GT3 racing this is totally the budget-priced day for you)
09:05-09:45: USF2000 Race 1
10:00-10:45: Indycar practice 3
11:00-11:40: Pro Mazda Race 1
12:00-12:40: Indy Lights Race
13:00-13:40: USF2000 Race 2
14:00-15:10: Indycar qualifying!
13:00-13:40: USF2000 Race 2
15:55-16:45: Pirelli World Challenge (GT/GTA/GTS) Race 1
17:15-18:00: Pirelli World Challenge (TC/TCA/TCB) Race 1
Sunday, April 27
09:05-09:45: Pro Mazda Race 2
10:00-10:30: Indycar warm-up
10:55-11:45: Pirelli World Challenge GTs Race 2
12:15-13:15: Indy Lights Race 2 sponsored by Wait, there's an Indy Lights race 2?
14:15-16:15: Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama for 90 laps! YES!
17:00-17:45: More Pirelli World Challenge (touring cars I think?) race 2
Alabama? Sounds like a fruity Spanish Communist place to me
You couldn't be more wrong! Despite voting Democrat for most of the twentieth century, Leader of the Anti-American Communist Party Barack Obama has had a hard time convincing Alabamians to follow his godless programme of despair and serfdom, with citizens narrowly defeating a motion to rename the state AlObama in honour of their Commander-in-Chief.
Famous Alabamos include George Costanza's favourite author Truman Capote, Indy 500 flavour of the month Jim Nabors, sour-faced segregationist George Wallace and, at least in his earthly persona, the inestimable Sun Ra. And probably a bunch of NASCAR drivers. Alabama's largest city is called Birmingham and its oldest city is called Mobile, which despite the name has stayed in the same place since 1702.
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Questions
The last couple of weeks threw up a lot of questions which I have no intention of answering here. Questions like: Does Tony Kanaan really drive for Ganassi? Are drivers just allowed to crash each other off now? Did Montoya get a legit fourth place or did everyone have to crash in front of him? Is Graham Rahal still a professional racing driver? Can Castroneves & Castroneves Tax and Social Media Consultants Inc recover from their latest setback?
These are questions which only time and possibly Prost1997T can answer. In the meantime here's a picture of the giant metal LSD spiders which one day will carry on their backs the Barber motorcycle collection and breeding partners from the Andretti and Unser families to safe ground in the Appalachians when the nuclear holocaust comes.
I for one welcome our arachnid overlords
The World as Will Power and Representation
Will Power is getting a lot of snooty press for ramming Simon Pagenaud off the road last race. This act of ruining a leading Honda driver's day was balanced by his red-tyre-inspired charge from fourth scaring the top three off the road all at the same corner. Power is truly the Superman to whom the little matters of right and wrong that restrain us from cheating or stealing or posting comments about race officials on Twitter don't apply. All hail Uberwill!
But don't hail Sebastien Bourdais. His drive at Barber in 2012, finishing ninth in that ungodly JPS/McAfee Lotus which was about as powerful as the one in Grand Prix Legends, has entered racing folklore in the way that only ninth-place finishes can. Indycar's least popular underdog had a pretty undistinguished race at St Pete but ran briefly near the front at Long Beach before some kind of brake issue caused him not to put the brakes on hard enough under pressure from James “The Mayor” Hinchcliffe. But this is his first full season of anything since being Sebastian Vettel's teammate in 2008 and it would be nice if he got some results to demonstrate that he should've had full-time drivers in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 too. See also: Jack Hawksworth, Charlie Kimball.
Better mention tyre degradation too. For some reason the performance of the Firestone compounds dominates the racing just as much as Pirelli does for F1, but for some reason when an Indycar race is made exciting by the red compound being a second a lap quicker than the black one, or when it falls apart after five laps, the nattering nabobs of negativism -- and indeed the hopeless hysterical hypochondriacs of history -- don't climb out of their pits and make a fuss that usually ends in invoking Lotus 49s, Mclaren-Hondas and sometimes Michael Schumacher doing 10 qualifying laps in a row in Budapest. But they've decided the last two races at Barber, so watch out for whose sidewall is what colour at which times on Sunday. Every race I have a grand plan to make notes about when drivers pull into the pits and what tyre they use on each stints and each time it falls apart in the opening laps.
What are you talking about? I don't even like Indycar
Well you're in luck because although this weekend is by no means on the racing calendar A-list, there are other ways to waste your glorious late-spring weekend. NASCAR are for once racing further north, albeit only as far as Richmond, Virginia, and there's MotoGP from the land of Martin Fierro and Lionel Messi. If you're really desperate there's Formula Renault 3.5 from one of the Spanish circuits, and you could probably watch the football or old episodes of Robot Wars on Youtube.
But for anyone who does like Indycar, or at least likes football or Robot Wars even less, I can promise you we'll have a motor race on a real proper racing track on Sunday. All the other Indycar races at Barber have been good, so this one probably will be too. Have I sold it to you yet?
Edited by Risil, 23 April 2014 - 20:45.
i guess we'll have to wait till we get his 'double birdies' when he's on the receiving end.
now he's just ****. 
) 
??? it's confusing to see temp up past boiling pt (he he he)
i was rooting for him. both frenchies are just a 'bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys'
