F1 and IRL

F1Renault continues their domination with another win by Fred yesterday at Bahrain. Noticeably absent from the proceedings was JPM who allegedly hurt his shoulder playing tennis. Rumors had it that he actually got hurt in a motorcycle accident. Either way I hope he is back by Imola. His replacement Pedro de la Rosa turned in a nice performance, finishing fifth and garnering fast lap honors.The race itself was nothing to write home about. I do like that track though and the racing should only get better as the years go by.Sunday was another miserable day for BAR. First TS went out with brake issues. He was spewing brake dust almost from the outset and eventually had to pull off. 20 laps later Buttons was out with a clutch problem. BAR continues to struggle and no one seems to be able to explain their situation.Ferrari is still struggling as well. Schummi failed to finish and the Sandwich was 9th and out of the points.IRLThe first right turns fired in anger happened yesterday on the streets of St. Petersburg, FL. In doing so, FTRG has come full circle and is now CART circa 1985. Now don’t get me wrong, I for one and all for some road course and even street course racing and I feel that even one more would be okay for the schedule. I think like most people I would prefer real race courses to temporary street circuits, but 4 out of 18 is okay with me.What is wrong is the hypocrisy of FTRG. Suffice it to say he is just a mumbling dork who seems to have no clue what to do next. With the success of the race yesterday I fear the knee jerk reaction will be to make the series half oval, half road course.As street courses go, St. Pete was pretty good. It’s not Monaco, but nothing is. The course was wide where it needed to be and narrow enough in places that you had to be thinking the whole time. Unfortunately, Little AJ and Mr. Ed found out it ain’t as easy as it looks. Then again, they make driving around in a circle look difficult at times.For the record Andretti Green finished 1-2-3-4 with Wheldon on top. TK had a helluva day by twice climbing through the pack to get to the front. Too bad for Tony when he had a shot at it, he got tangled up with Disco Briscoe and lost the lead to his hard charging team mate Wheldon.AJ and Julio got caught up early and AJ Jr. seemed to be near tears when he was interviewed. He knew the grandson was the cause and he seemed genuinely sorry. Julio for his part was as diplomatic as ever even though you could see his frustration.But as I said, for the most part Sunday came off without a hitch. The league certainly didn’t embarrass itself in its road course debut and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of carbon fiber torn up. A shit load less than that demolition derby at Bristol.Now it is on to Japan before the teams head to Indy in May.