5 replies to this topic

[Pete Falcone]

JR basically had the race locked up on the final lap, but crashes into the wall in the FINAL TURN. Wheldon takes advantage and finishes first as JR's car slides into second place, only a second behind.

[metsfanohio]

and in the nascar race, dale jr took the white flag and was still leading into the last turn of the race when he ran out of gas. not quite the blunder of smashing the wall, but still we had two major races on the day where the last lap leader was unable to bring it home in first.

[Pete Falcone]

I pity Dale Jr. That kid is mired in one hell of a slump.

[birtelcom]

JR basically had the race locked up on the final lap, but crashes into the wall in the FINAL TURN. Wheldon takes advantage and finishes first as JR's car slides into second place, only a second behind.

Feeling under the weather this weekend, I actually sat down and watched a car race -- this one-- on TV for the first time in many years. Truly bizarre ending, but the whole watching-racing-on-TV experience is strange. The whole rhythm of all-out racing alternating with caution periods during which all the cars bunch up again doesn't seem to fit with my normal understanding of how sports work. And the interaction of the race standings with the pit stop/fuel/tire calculations seems poorly explained by the announcers and graphics. Only after the fact was it explained that Hildebrand, who seemed to come out of nowhere late in the race, had been husbanding his fuel while others were using theirs up. It might be interesting if each car's fuel gauge were available to viewers so one could actually have a better sense of what is going on from that point of view.

[Pete Falcone]

It's very difficult to gauge fuel economy in these cars because last time I read the tech specs of these cars, the fuel bladders (like most motorcycles) don't have oxygen sensors to tell the teams what their fuel state is. All they know are the capacity, the pace, and the fuel mixture settings which they need to calculate to determine what the pit stop strategy will be. HIldebrand ran a very smart race up to the very last turn, but the most impressive come-out-of-nowhere victory in the history of the 500 is Jacques Villeneuve's "Two-lap penalty" win in 1995. Villeneuve, coming from an earlier penalty where he was brought down two laps behind the field, used an intelligent combination of pit stop strategy and pacing to win that race. All of that was happening without ABC's awareness of his team's strategy.

[birtelcom]

It's very difficult to gauge fuel economy in these cars because last time I read the tech specs of these cars, the fuel bladders (like most motorcycles) don't have oxygen sensors to tell the teams what their fuel state is. All they know are the capacity, the pace, and the fuel mixture settings which they need to calculate to determine what the pit stop strategy will be. HIldebrand ran a very smart race up to the very last turn, but the most impressive come-out-of-nowhere victory in the history of the 500 is Jacques Villeneuve's "Two-lap penalty" win in 1995. Villeneuve, coming from an earlier penalty where he was brought down two laps behind the field, used an intelligent combination of pit stop strategy and pacing to win that race. All of that was happening without ABC's awareness of his team's strategy.

Sadly, this 2011 Indy will now be remembered for a whole different reason.