Art. 7 Vettel to Le Mans, we're getting hot at the Thermal Club, and SRX isn't dead!
what a week.
We all knew it would happen.
Vettel in a Penske Porsche? I was also shocked to see the picture of his seat fitting today. Given his most recent history, I had a feeling he’d have gone with Aston Martin’s Valkyrie project first, but I suppose it pays to be a free agent. This wasn’t rumored anywhere, and it’s awesome to see.
He expects to participate in a 36-hour test with Penske at Motorland Aragón next week. After extensive simulator time, this will be the next step, during which he will familiarize himself with the 963's operations and specifics. The miles covered will be valuable for both Vettel and Porsche as they continue developing the 963. Sebastian has been known to be a great driver in feedback and development cycles, which, Adrian Newey aside, helped him run dominantly at Red Bull in F1 for many years.
Vettel has said that he has been interested in endurance racing for some time and wants to try it.
"I’ve always followed other racing series and my curiosity for endurance events encouraged me to just give it a shot,now I’m excited about the long run in Aragon and I’m looking forward to my time behind the wheel. It’ll definitely take an adjustment and some getting used to but everyone in the team is very open and helps me. This will be a new experience for me. We will then see what happens next in this respect—at the moment there are no further plans for the future."
His debut with the Penske squad will be no earlier than Le Mans in 2025. Like Button and Alonso, another F1 driver will hit the grid soon. Despite being a niche sport, sports car racing is growing rapidly.
We’re back in the halcyon days. Enjoy it while it’s here.
Sebring recap.
I got three of the four class winners correct as I predicted in Article 6. GTP ended up nearly as I expected, except that Derani crashed out spectacularly in a place where accidents rarely happen at Sebring, ending their run, which felt unassailable at the time, I was thankful that nobody in the spectator area was hurt; I’d expect some catch fencing will go up there next year to prevent a similar incursion of tires.
Louis Deletraz is an up-and-coming talent in this Acura. Wayne Taylor Andretti has found someone who will be a lethal weapon for years to come, and the #40 will be a monster all year. His late divebomb down the inside on Sebastian Bourdais was a masterful setup, and his lunge caught the #01 off-guard heading into Turn 7. Deletraz may have been able to catch and pass him without this, but run through the open door when you see it. Bourdais attempted to counter on the run into 10, and through up until 13, but I think his tires were all but dead. Watching the on-boards, it was pretty obvious his drive off the corners was compromised, and the car looked very loose and unhappy.
In GTD-Pro, it sure felt like anyone's game. Risi, AO, and Vasser Sullivan all had a shot at the win, with an incredible back-and-forth bout between Risi's #62 and AO's #77. Without the late-race penalty for the #77 getting in the way, I think we’d have been in line to see one of the closest three-way fights for the win in a very long time. The race finished with a margin of 0.121 seconds at the line, with Davide Rigon needing just a few hundred extra feet to steal the win back from Jack Hawksworth, who made a bold move into T1 on the final restart to take the lead.
Outside of the Daytona debacle with BoP, we are off to a very strong start to this season, and it might be one of the best to date.
SRX isn’t dead!
Skip Barber bought the property. What they intend to do with it is yet to be known. As a previous graduate of driving and racing schools there, I am curious about it. It was the place in the late 90s when I went, and it made a strong comeback after the business issues caused its temporary closure. Could they revive it as a series? Maybe. Could they use those cars and spares to build a short-track dirt and asphalt school? Probably. And that is what I would expect them to do. There are few (essentially zero) oval racing schools in the US. This would be an incredible way to make a splash and get new people involved in local motorsport. While I’m just guessing at their intent, it’s what I would do.
Thermal Club is here.
A weird one-off weekend that is an interesting idea starts today in Thermal, CA. I haven’t been this interested in or excited about a one-off, non-championship race since I heard about the Hawaii SuperPrix, which never happened. IndyCar needs this to go well. The race format and setup will be interesting, and that should help.
It opens on Friday with two sessions for the first day of testing. Two more test sessions are on Saturday morning, with the afternoon qualifying deep into the Eastern Time Zone primetime hours. The ongoing March Madness tournament will harm viewership, as it is only live on Peacock.
Racing kicks off on Sunday with two heat races, which will set the grid of 12 cars for the main event and net the winning team $1.756 million.
Push to Pass has been enabled for all races from the green, a departure from the normal IndyCar rules. Additionally, during the main event's intermission, the teams will have time to make changes to the car to improve their performance.
Qualifying groups were picked last night in a random draw
Group One: Will Power, Santino Ferrucci, Kyle Kirkwood, Scott McLaughlin, Agustin Canapino, Nolan Siegel, Felix Rosenqvist, Sting Ray Robb, Romain Grosjean, Josef Newgarden, Colton Herta, Christian Lundgaard, Rinus VeeKay, Scott Dixon
Group Two: Graham Rahal, Alexander Rossi, Pietro Fittipaldi, Pato O'Ward, Colin Braun, Christian Rasmussen, Marcus Armstrong, Marcus Ericsson, Alex Palou, Linus Lundqvist, Tom Blomqvist, Kyffin Simpson, Callum Ilott
Early predictions? Power, McLaughlin, Newgarden, Rosenqvist, O’Ward, Palou, VeeKay, Rossi, Ericsson, Herta, Dixon, and Grosjean will make up the pack of 12 to run for the money.
I think Dixon takes the payday home with him; he’s so good in these high-pressure situations, and despite the incredible talent that will make up the rest of the grid, how can you not think it will be him? Palou finishes up second, followed by Newgarden.
This event will hopefully be another where Penske Entertainment hits it out of the ballpark, and people look forward to this every season, but maybe move the venue to where fans can attend; it’s an experiment .. I’ll give it time.
F1 in Australia.
There’s a Grand Prix this weekend.
Verstappen will win it short of some disaster and quite handily, I’m guessing it ends up being +25 seconds at the checker to P2. Que up the Dutch Anthem.
Williams is down to one car as well, I’m guessing someone must have deleted too many cells on their Excel sheet that told them they were a spare car short. I don’t know what’s happening in Oxfordshire, but they must get it together, it’s embarrassing.
In other news.
F3 already has a problem early into the weekend. Alpine Junior driver Nikola Tsolov punted Alex Dunne after Nikola came up on Dunne scrubbing his tires and blocked him on a flyer lap. Dunne appeared to have been caught out by the rapidly approaching traffic, quickly straightened his car out, and then was punted by an angered Tsolov.
Race control determined this to be “unintentional” but the video shows otherwise.
I don’t know what the race stewards are thinking. But it was intentional.
Tsolov should not participate in this weekend’s events, and he should probably sit out the next one as well. But instead, they think a feather slap on the wrist and a three-place grid drop is sufficient. It seems like they could have done even less and hand-broomed this away. It’s pathetic.
I have a massive concern over driving standards in Junior Formula. Numerous incidents over the last few years have gone unpunished, adherence to safety protocols and slowing down for yellow flags and sectors is unheard of. This isn’t even a new problem; Niels Wittich canceled a third race of the Monza weekend all the way back in 2015 because of this.
Not much has changed. My opinion on this? You have talent that has to succeed to keep climbing the ladder to Formula 1, but with incredible pressure comes a lack of emotional control. Santino Ferrucci was banned from F2 for crashing his teammate out AFTER a race and then gave a very milquetoast answer for why he did it.
Tsolov is just the latest issue in F3, unless the stewards start handing out appropriate penalties for this atrocious behavior, nothing will change. I’d suspect the only other thing that might move the needle is a driver getting killed by these actions.