Source: http://www.16thandgeorgetown.com/2014/05/photos-day-after-photoshoot.html
Colin Davis Jimmy Daywalt JeanDenis Deletraz Patrick Depailler
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
Sunday
Saturday
Denny Hamlin wins Talladega under yellow; Keselowski wrecks twice
TALLADEGA, Ala. ? For drivers, Talladega is NASCAR's version of Disney World, a place where dreams come true and every frog can be a prince, if only for a moment. It's a place where seasons can be salvaged and teams can be saved, and on Sunday, it might have kickstarted one of NASCAR's sputtering stars.
Denny Hamlin might well be a future champion, but he's hit a serious dry spell. Coming into Sunday, he hadn't won since last year's season finale, and hadn't won a race meaningful to his championship hopes since the second race of the 2012 Chase.
But none of that matters at Talladega, where you've got a chance to win provided you keep most of your wheels on the track. Hamlin was in the right place at the right time, leading when a final-lap caution fell, and as a result he ended up with a virtually certain Chase berth.
We'll get to that later, though. Whenever NASCAR comes to Talladega, fans and drivers alike know that there are going to be wrecks. Huge, chassis-warping, day-ending wrecks. Sunday was no exception, with many of the sport's biggest names ending the day either several laps down or on an early plane home.
Brad Keselowski was at the center of two wrecks, both apparently self-inflicted. He made contact with Danica Patrick on Lap 14 and spun into the infield, eventually restarting six laps down. Then, while racing in the pack trying to get his laps back, he got loose and set off a major wreck that involved Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon and several others.
Keselowski, for his part, took responsibility for the wrecks after the race on Twitter:
It's too soon to tell if that will placate many of the drivers who appeared either openly or implicitly irritated at his actions.
"I don?t know what he was doing,?? Gordon said. ?Obviously thinking that was going to be the way to get his lap back. All that it did was get a bunch of other cars wrecked.??
?If it was the other way around and it was anybody else except for him, we?d all be getting lectured," Kenseth added.
With only a handful of laps remaining, Jimmie Johnson got loose and took out Joey Logano and others. All in all, Gordon, Kenseth, Keselowski, Johnson, Logano, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart, and Kurt Busch fell out of contention via wreck. That's some serious star power on the sidelines, and with that many top drivers on the shelf, the door was open and the way was clear for someone to make a move.
Which brings us back to Hamlin, who up until this point had exactly zero wins at Talladega, and no points-paying wins at fellow superspeedway Daytona. Talladega is always something of a crapshoot; you're at the mercy of those around you, and your day can end because of the mistake of someone 20 spots ahead of you ... or, in this case, behind.
Greg Biffle and Clint Bowyer were running second and third behind Hamlin when the final caution flew at the very start of the final lap. That flag froze the field, denying Biffle and Bowyer the chance to make a run at Hamlin.
"I was setting up to go by [Hamlin] but just never had the chance," Biffle said. "I wish I would have known that we weren't going to race all the way back, but it was a good day for us."
"It's a wild situation," Bowyer added. "It was kind of funny, we see all the smoke and it was 400 yards behind us. We're supposed to be looking out the windshield."
If they'd looked through that windshield, they'd have seen only Hamlin, who admitted after the race that he might actually be getting the hang of this superspeedway thing. "I drive superspeedway races a lot different than I used to, for sure," he said. "I'm not always the guy making the move now. I'm more staying in like and trying to be patient ... for God's sake, after nine years, you would think I'd come close to winning one."
"Denny really operates a lot off momentum," Hamlin's team owner JD Gibbs said. "He's just a great leader. He's a great driver. But he has to have that confidence, and I think he has it now."
Hamlin thus leaves Alabama with a smile on his face. The other 42 drivers leave with some mix of resignation, frustration and outright fury. "That's Talladega. What can you say?" Johnson said afterward. "Stuff happens. Well, there's a four-letter word that says it better. But that's Talladega."
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Friday
Brad Keselowski on pole for Sunday's race at Dover
Damn, Brad Keselowski's average qualifying position keeps improving.
The 2012 Sprint Cup Series Champion qualified first for Sunday's race at Dover. He beat out Kyle Busch, teammate Joey Logano and Dover dominator Jimmie Johnson for the top spot.
As we mentioned in Tuesday's Power Rankings, Keselowski's average starting position of 6.8 was the best in the Sprint Cup Series since Ryan Newman in 2005. Now, with Friday's pole position, it's a scant 6.4. And the only other driver with an average start in the single digits? Logano, Keselowski's Team Penske teammate.
Through the first 13 qualifying sessions of the season, Team Penske have been beasts in the knockout qualifying format. Keselowski has started on the front row eight times and has made the final round of qualifying in all but two races. Logano has also only missed the final session twice and has started on the front row three times.
But while Keselowski's win was from a front row starting position, Logano's two wins haven't been. He started 10th at Texas and 17th at Richmond, the two tracks he's won at this season. And the main competitor to the Penske cars on Sunday? That's Johnson, who won his first race of the season last year.
Johnson has eight wins in 24 Dover starts. In six of those wins he's started in the top 10.
Kyle Larson starts fifth, while Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Brian Vickers and Clint Bowyer round out the top 10. Only 43 cars attempted to qualify so no one missed the race.
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Thursday
The Story Of The Safety Car (Video)
The Safety Car played a big role this season, with its presence becoming a deciding factor in multiple races. Although some fans were left frustrated by its influence, there?s little doubting of the importance it has in modern F1. Official Safety car driver Bernd Maylander takes us on a trip through the machines he has [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/RIDEwYgT5uU/the-story-of-the-safety-car-video-3
Juan Manuel Bordeu Slim Borgudd Luki Botha JeanChristophe Boullion
Wednesday
Clint Bowyer re-ups with Michael Waltrip Racing
Clint Bowyer may be having one hell of a Cinco de Mayo party.
Michael Waltrip Racing announced Monday that Bowyer, crew chief Brian Pattie and sponsor 5-Hour Energy signed contract extensions with the team. Bowyer's contract had been up at the end of the season. It's a new three-year deal.
This is big news for all of us,? Bowyer said in a statement. ?It creates great stability and excitement about what the next few years can bring. MWR is my racing home and continuing this relationship with 5-hour ENERGY was a high priority. It?s time to put the paperwork in a drawer and focus on winning.?
Bowyer joined the team before the 2012 season after Richard Childress Racing downsized from four teams to three after sponsor General Mills cut back on sponsorship on Bowyer's car.
Earlier Monday, Bowyer announced (in truly Clint Bowyerian fashion) that he and wife Lorra were expecting their first child, a son. The couple got married over the Cup Series' Easter off-weekend.
So the Mrs @LorraBowyer and I went in to get one of those picture thingies...WHEW, good news! It's got a dingy!!! ?????
? Clint Bowyer (@ClintBowyer) May 5, 2014 In his first season with Michael Waltrip Racing, Bowyer finished second to Sprint Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski. Last season he fell back to seventh in the points standings and is 18th this season after a frustrating start to the year.
5-Hour Energy's deal with the team is for 24 races a year through the length of its contract.
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