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Thursday
What Did We Learn At Daytona? Nothing.
If you read or hear any media member say this week that Jimmie Johnson is on his way to a sixth title, or that Danica Patrick is a contender, or that the Gen 6 car needs to be tweaked, know one thing: they don’t have a clue. Did Jimmie win the 500? Yes. Did Danica […]
Wednesday
Tuesday
Ryan Hunter-Reay wins Indianapolis 500 with last-lap pass over Helio Castroneves
Second place was the most advantageous place to be in the final laps of Sunday's Indianapolis 500.
After starting first on the race's final restart with six laps to go, Ryan Hunter-Reay traded the lead with Helio Castroneves four times and drove past Castroneves for the final time on the last lap to take the checkered flag in the second-closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history.
The margin of victory was a minuscule .06 seconds, second-closest only to Al Unser Jr.'s victory over Scott Goodyear in 1992 when he won by just .043.
Hunter-Reay, the 2012 IndyCar Series champion, is the first American-born driver to win the 500 since 2006 when Sam Hornish Jr. made a last-second pass of Marco Andretti for the victory.
The significance was not lost on him as he celebrated with the customary bottle of milk in Indianapolis Motor Speedway's victory lane as the winner of the 98th 500.
"I knew we had a good racecar," Hunter-Reay said of his first Indianapolis 500 win. "We didn't qualify well, we started 19th but we ran to the front. And I was just biding my time, making the right adjustments on the stops ? I'm so excited now I can't even think. This is just a dream come true, we did everything right today and that's what it takes to win this race."
"I've watched this race since I was in diapers sitting on the floor in front of the TV. My son did it today, he watched me here. I'm thrilled ? this is American history, this race. This is American tradition. Our auto industry is based on it and this is as big as a championship for me."
Kurt Busch, the first driver since Robby Gordon in 2004 to attempt both the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 in the same day, finished sixth. (Coincidentally, Robby Gordon's sister, Beccy, is Hunter-Reay's wife.)
Leading wasn't all it's normally cracked up to be late in the race because of the style of the cars. The draft, where a car behind another car can go faster because of a lack of air resistance, was an integral factor. Over the final six laps, the car in second could consistently close up on the lead car and make a move, as Castroneves did right as the green flag waved for the final time.
Castroneves assumed the lead for a second time following the restart with two laps to go after Hunter-Reay had made a daring pass for the lead on the backstretch, nearly going into the grass to complete the move. However, it left himself open for Hunter-Reay's winning move, which happened on the outside lane on the frontstretch as the drivers took the white flag.
A three-time Indianapolis 500 champion, Castroneves simply ran out of time to get back to Hunter-Reay, only closing to his bumper as the two got to the finish line.
It was incredibly thrilling racing as the two drove for the Borg-Warner Trophy after the last restart, but the impact of it was lessened because of ABC's presentation. While the camera views of the racing were top-notch, the production team inexplicably went split-screen three different times to show the reactions of Beccy Hunter-Reay and Adriana Henao, the girlfriend of Helio Castroneves.
Even worse, split-screen shots on lap 198 and lap 200 each lasted a half-lap. While the previous presence of Ashley Judd, the ex-wife of three-time Indianapolis 500 champion Dario Franchitti, likely played a role in the decision to show the significant others, the space devoted to them detracted significantly from the viewer experience over the final five laps. The racing spoke for itself; as the margin-of-victory strongly points out, it was far from a blowout. It deserved to be full-screen.
While the field was bunched up for the final quarter of the race, the first 75 percent scooted on by. The first caution came out on lap 150 for Charlie Kimball's accident, the longest time since the Indianapolis Motor Speedway started recording caution flags that a 500 had gone without a yellow flag.
The biggest incident of the day was when polesitter Ed Carpenter and James Hinchcliffe, the driver who started second, crashed together with 25 laps to go. The duo were three-wide with Townsend Bell entering turn one on a restart and made contact, skidding into the outside wall. After they exited their cars, Carpenter was very unhappy with Hinchcliffe, who made the group three-wide ? a huge no-no entering turn one ? on the inside.
Bell's car escaped unharmed from the incident, but his crash with 10 laps to go caused a red flag and set up the restart for the thrilling finish between Hunter-Reay and Castroneves.
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Rubens Barrichello Michael Bartels Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi
Monday
Bill Elliott leads 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame class
Bill Elliott didn't have to wait long to get in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
In just his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot, Elliott got in during Wednesday's vote for the 2015 class of the NASCAR Hall and will be inducted in January.
Wendell Scott, Joe Weatherly, Rex White and Fred Lorenzen are also going in with Elliott.
Elliott won 44 Sprint Cup Series throughout his career and the 1988 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Elliott was eligible for the Hall of Fame in this class because of NASCAR's recently tweaked eligibility guidelines. In December, NASCAR announced that any driver 55 years old or older was immediately eligible, even if he was currently competing. He received 87 percent of the vote.
Scott was the first African-American to win a Sprint Cup Series race. He won at Jacksonville in 1964, leading 27 of 202 laps. He had 20 top-five finishes and 147 top 10s. He got 58 percent.
Weatherly won 25 races and the 1962 and 1963 Cup titles. He was killed when he sustained head injuries in a crash at Riverside in 1964. He got 53 percent.
White won 28 races and was the 1960 champion. In 1962, he won eight races in 37 starts. He got 43 percent.
Lorenzen won 26 Cup races including two Daytona 500s. His win in the 1967 Daytona 500 was the final victory of his career. He got 30 percent.
Notable exclusions from the 2015 Hall class were Rick Hendrick, Buddy Baker, Benny Parsons, Robert Yates, Bruton Smith and Terry Labonte. When NASCAR announced the new eligibility guidelines in December, it also cut the list of nominees from 25 to 20. Jerry Cook, Yates and Parsons were the next three highest vote getters.
One of the people who fell off the list in the cut down from 2014 to 2015 was Anne B. France. France was awarded the inaugural Landmark Award.
The relatively low vote totals of White and Lorenzen do raise an interesting question about future classes of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. How will candidates separate themselves from each other going forward for a case for the Hall? There aren't many slam dunk nominees going to be eligible in the future and the biographies of the 15 people people who will likely carry over to next year's list won't change much.
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Eric Bernard Enrique Bernoldi Enrico Bertaggia Tony Bettenhausen
Sunday
How not to lose gracefully?
Luca Montezemolo says (again) that Formula 1 is not working and claims that it is declining because the FIA has “forgotten that people watch the racing for the excitement. Nobody watches racing for the efficiency”. Montezemolo might see himself as a campaigner for true sport, but there are a few things which are wrong with […]
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/how-now-to-lose-gracefully/
Francois Cevert Eugene Chaboud Jay Chamberlain Karun Chandhok
Saturday
Friday
How accurate were Neil deGrasse Tyson's NASCAR tweets?
When Neil deGrasse Tyson started tweeting about NASCAR Sunday evening during the Coca-Cola 600 we were intrigued. And upon reading the tweets below, suddenly skeptical.
Um, no, not really. And it's a wall. While Tyson is an astrophysicist and knows much more about how objects move and relate to each other than we ever will, even your lowly compadres at From the Marbles knew that these tweets didn't pass the smell test.
First, there are a number of factors that help corner speed, namely the age of the pavement, the durability and grip level of a tire, downforce and horsepower, among others. Secondly, Jimmie Johnson's pole speed was an average of over 194 MPH around the 1.5 mile oval. If Johnson was having to slow to under 165 in the corners, it wouldn't be possible attain an average like that without having a straight-line speed higher than a Cup car can currently obtain.
Fortunately, our skepticism wasn't unfounded. BuildingSpeed.org has a fantastic breakdown of what happens when a NASCAR series car (or truck) goes around a race track. And yes, the tires help a lot with being able to go faster than the theoretical 165 MPH barrier.
Here's a snippet rom BuildingSpeed, who feels that Tyson made the calculation based on tires that we buy for our street cars. But you should go read the whole thing for more detail:
The important thing here is the difference in friction between race car tires and regular tires. Race car tires are made of a different composition of rubber. They get much hotter than passenger car tires and the surface layer of the tire actually melts a little bit. Rubber gives additional grip in a way I like to describe as what happens if you step on a piece of chewing gum on a hot day. The chewing gum sticks to your foot and prevents you from moving ? a slightly different type of friction.
Plus, there's that detail about downforce that we brought up earlier and Tyson even mentioned in one of his tweets about the race.
So why did Tyson jump into NASCAR in the first place? Ah, well, Cosmos, the series he's hosting across all Fox networks, was pre-empted for the race. His tweets came during the normally scheduled hour for the show. It was an attempt at cross-promotion and it worked, as you can see how much attention the tweets got via retweets and favorites. They just weren't completely accurate.
Maybe NASCAR and Fox can invite him out to a race to give him the VIP experience after fellow Fox co-worker Donovan McNabb got treated like a king at Auto Club Speedway this year after saying Jimmie Johnson wasn't an athlete.
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Thursday
The Future For Edwards & Biffle
As has been reported nearly everywhere, both Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle are in play on the free agent market. Nobody on either side is saying much, and that silence is deafening. What Biffle does will likely be dictated by the move Edwards makes, but make no mistake, Roush Fenway Racing could be about to […] 
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Jaime Alguersuari Philippe Alliot Cliff Allison Fernando Alonso
How accurate were Neil deGrasse Tyson's NASCAR tweets?
When Neil deGrasse Tyson started tweeting about NASCAR Sunday evening during the Coca-Cola 600 we were intrigued. And upon reading the tweets below, suddenly skeptical.
Um, no, not really. And it's a wall. While Tyson is an astrophysicist and knows much more about how objects move and relate to each other than we ever will, even your lowly compadres at From the Marbles knew that these tweets didn't pass the smell test.
First, there are a number of factors that help corner speed, namely the age of the pavement, the durability and grip level of a tire, downforce and horsepower, among others. Secondly, Jimmie Johnson's pole speed was an average of over 194 MPH around the 1.5 mile oval. If Johnson was having to slow to under 165 in the corners, it wouldn't be possible attain an average like that without having a straight-line speed higher than a Cup car can currently obtain.
Fortunately, our skepticism wasn't unfounded. BuildingSpeed.org has a fantastic breakdown of what happens when a NASCAR series car (or truck) goes around a race track. And yes, the tires help a lot with being able to go faster than the theoretical 165 MPH barrier.
Here's a snippet rom BuildingSpeed, who feels that Tyson made the calculation based on tires that we buy for our street cars. But you should go read the whole thing for more detail:
The important thing here is the difference in friction between race car tires and regular tires. Race car tires are made of a different composition of rubber. They get much hotter than passenger car tires and the surface layer of the tire actually melts a little bit. Rubber gives additional grip in a way I like to describe as what happens if you step on a piece of chewing gum on a hot day. The chewing gum sticks to your foot and prevents you from moving ? a slightly different type of friction.
Plus, there's that detail about downforce that we brought up earlier and Tyson even mentioned in one of his tweets about the race.
So why did Tyson jump into NASCAR in the first place? Ah, well, Cosmos, the series he's hosting across all Fox networks, was pre-empted for the race. His tweets came during the normally scheduled hour for the show. It was an attempt at cross-promotion and it worked, as you can see how much attention the tweets got via retweets and favorites. They just weren't completely accurate.
Maybe NASCAR and Fox can invite him out to a race to give him the VIP experience after fellow Fox co-worker Donovan McNabb got treated like a king at Auto Club Speedway this year after saying Jimmie Johnson wasn't an athlete.
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Tuesday
After driver dies last year, Aston Martin team takes 24 Hours of Le Mans class title
Last year in the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans race, Aston Martin driver Allen Simonsen crashed on his fourth lap of the race and was killed.
This year, his team won the race.
The No. 95 Aston Martin Young Driver AMR V8 Vantage GTE won the GTE Am class by two laps at the famed French circuit. The race began Saturday morning in the United States and ended Sunday morning.
We have achieved what we were aiming for last year but didn't succeed,? owner Jan Struve said (via Motorsport.com). ?We have now fulfilled it and we know that Allan has been cheering for us and smiling down on us and, of course, he has been in our thoughts. This win is extremely important to us and I'm proud of all of the team and drivers. They are all Le Mans winners.?
The No. 95 was driven in 2014 by David Heinemeier Hansson, Nicki Thiim and Kristian Poulsen.
Former F1 driver Mark Webber's team was forced to retire from the race in its final stages. As Webber prepared to pilot the Porsche to the finish, the engine had issues. Audi finished 1-2 for the manufacturer's 13th overall victory in the race.
Webber was replaced at Red Bull Renault in F1 by Daniel Ricciardo, who got his first win at Montreal last week. Ricciardo drives the No. 3 car in Formula 1 as a tribute to Dale Earnhardt.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
Monday
F1 WAG: Isabell Reis
Timo Glock may not have been the most successful of drivers on the grid, but that didn?t stop him bagging an absolute beauty in the shape of Isabell Reis. The leggy blonde won Glock?s heart during her appearance on Germany?s Next Top Model, and it?s easy to see why. As well as good looks, Reis [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/gKVJd5dWr9g/f1-wag-isabell-reis-2
Mario Andretti Michael Andretti Keith Andrews Elio de Angelis
Sunday
Saturday
Kyle Busch crashed after contact with Clint Bowyer at Dover
Kyle Busch's chances for a weekend sweep hit the wall thanks to the rear bumper of Clint Bowyer.
Busch, the only driver to win a truck race, Nationwide race and Sprint Cup Series race on the same weekend at the same track, had crossed off the first two races on Friday and Saturday at Dover. A win Sunday in the Cup race would have given him the second triple of his career and he started on the pole.
However, when Clint Bowyer slid up in front of him on lap 125, Busch ended up crashed into the wall and furious with Bowyer.
After his car was battered from the contact, Busch basically chased Bowyer around the track as Bowyer was forced to accelerate around the cars ahead of him to avoid being retaliated against. Cooler heads prevailed after Busch was told by his team and NASCAR not to do anything and he pulled into the garage without further incident.
Busch's team also told him that Bowyer's spotter had cleared him. Before the crash, Bowyer's spotter encouraged him to get up in front of Busch in his lane before the No. 18 had a run off the high side of turn four. However, when Bowyer heeded his spotter's advice, Busch was already outside of him and contact was unavoidable.
"I hated that with Kyle," Bowyer said. "We're teammates, so to speak, with the manufacturer (Toyota) and it was a bad deal. Obviously I thought I was clear and he kind of got up there and I thought he was going to give it to me and he didn't. Ruined his day for sure and certainly didn't help ours."
Bowyer didn't escape the accident unharmed, either. The right-rear of his car was damaged and his team spent the next part of the race fixing the damage. They did a good enough job of it to allow Bowyer to drive back in to the top 10 and he briefly took the lead late after a two-tire pit stop.
On the race's final restart, Bowyer restarted fourth and tried to give Matt Kenseth, Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, a push into turn one. However, he hit Kenseth a bit awkwardly and Kenseth's car squirted into the outside wall, though he finished third, one spot ahead of Bowyer. Busch, meanwhile, finished 42nd.
"I was just trying to help him, man we were all spinning (the tires) like crazy and I had a pretty good run at him and he was still spinning when I hit him and knocked him into the wall and I was like 'not another Gibbs car,'" Bowyer said.
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Slim Borgudd Luki Botha JeanChristophe Boullion Sebastien Bourdais
Friday
Jimmie Johnson passes Matt Kenseth late, wins Coca-Cola 600
We can stop with the needless worrying about Jimmie Johnson's winning stretch in 2014. It's over.
The six-time Sprint Cup Series Champion caught and passed Matt Kenseth in the final stages of Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 and got his first win of the season. Yes, he is now virtually guaranteed to be in the Chase.
But if you were fretting for some inexplicable reason about Johnson not winning in the season's first 11 races, the defending champion certainly was not.
"Absolutely," Johnson said when asked in victory lane if winning was a relief. "It's great to win. But believe me, I promise you, all the hype and all the concern and all the worry, that was elsewhere. That wasn't in my head. There are plenty of voices in my head, I'm not going to lie, but we've had a great race team. We've had opportunities right there in front of us and had stuff taken away from us. And we've had some bad races, I've got to be honest about that too. But tonight we had a great race."
Johnson didn't venture far from the front all night. He started on the pole and led the first 79 laps of the race before he was caught by Kevin Harvick, who eventually finished second. And he grabbed the lead for the final time by clearly having the strongest car on a night that made clean air look like an invincible turbobooster.
Kenseth got the lead with 17 laps to after he powered around Jeff Gordon on the race's final restart. After getting past Gordon, Kenseth set sail in the clean air as the leader while Johnson was trapped in fourth on the inside in traffic. By the time he got past Gordon and into second place, Kenseth had a lead of a second.
It didn't matter. Johnson immediately clawed into Kenseth's lead by tenths of a second each lap and before Kenseth could start thinking about his first win of the season, Johnson was on his bumper and then alongside him. Soon, he was ahead of him, with Kenseth powerless to fight back against a driver who led 165 of the race's 400 laps.
Kenseth wound up third while Carl Edwards was fourth and Jamie McMurray, the winner of last week's Sprint All-Star Race, finished fifth. Before the race's final caution flag, Edwards was in position to swipe a potential win on fuel strategy after inheriting the lead without pitting. But those plans were foiled when Alex Bowman hit the wall.
Kurt Busch, attempting to complete both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 in the same day, saw his engine expire in the latter race after he had completed just over 400 miles. He finished 40th.
Johnson's win was his seventh points race win at Charlotte Motor Speedway despite being his first since 2009, when he also started on the pole. From 2003-2005, Johnson had five wins in six Charlotte races. He's now sixth in the points standings, 44 points behind Gordon, who maintains the points lead.
Oh, and he's in the Chase too, remember. But also remember that there was never any doubt. This win was on it's way. It simply showed up Sunday night.
�
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Thursday
2014 Sepang World Superbike FP4 Results: Guintoli and Melandri Quickest
Sylvain Guintoli and Marco Melandri topped the sheets ahead of Superpole in the untimed practice session.
Results:
Wednesday
NASCAR Still Working Out New Inspection Process
The introduction of the Gen 6 car this season has brought with it some new equipment for the inspection process, namely the new laser measuring rig (see details and a photo here). The laser system helps NASCAR more accurately measure the chassis and things like where and how the rear end is located. But the […] 
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Tuesday
Monday
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