Thread: Truly Thrilling Weekend for Racing Fans

Whatever your flavor of motorsport, the races around the world this past weekend all produced surprises. Lets start at the top: Lewis Hamilton won one of the most exciting F1 races in a long time grabbing the lead from Sebastian Vettel five laps from the end. Even more impressive, Mark Weber stormed through the field from a poor 18th starting position to finish third. If you watched the race it seemed as if there was more passes in this single race than you might have witnessed in a complete season recently.

The fourth round of the 2011 WRC in Jordan was almost a non-starter after transportation problems getting the cars there from Europe. However, the event turned into a thriller with Citroens Sebastien Ogier eventually beating Fords Jari-Matti Latvala by just 0. 2 seconds – the smallest margin of victory in WRC history – after two days of driving on hot, dusty gravel roads.

The Grand Prix of Long Beach was another good race with Mike Conway, who suffered major injuries in a horrifying crash at the Indianapolis 500 last year, taking the lead 14 laps from the end to win his first Indy Car race. The Brits win was a surprise as he had only finished in 23rd and 22nd place in the previous two races after missing the rest of the season after May last year.

NASCAR fans were treated to a typical high-bank oval race at Talladega with a couple of dramatic pileups. The final lap was one of the best ever with eight cars – four pairs of two — pushing each other around the track to finish four abreast and within 0. 145 seconds of each other. Dale Earnhardt Jr. literally pushed his teammate Jimmie Johnson from seventh place going into the final corner to give Johnson the race victory by a margin of just 0. 002 seconds – equal to the closest ever finish previously.

That margin, after 500 miles of racing, was half the margin drag racing fans witnessed at the four-abreast NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte. Top Fuel driver Del Worshams winning margin, after just 3. 819 seconds of racing, was . 0048 seconds.

On a personal note I spent Saturday at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach watching the American Le Mans Race. I have been to the event almost every year since the inaugural F5000 race in 1975. It was really gratifying to see the headline Cadillac Racing returns to competition Sunday at the historic Streets of Long Beach in a press release last week. When Christopher Robin Pook, the founder of the race managed to get the event started everyone involved dreamed of it becoming as famous as Monte Carlo – that other famous street course. The dream has certainly come true, if it is now regarded as a historic race.

Alas, the ALMS race ended up finishing under a yellow flag so it was the least exciting race of the weekend. The overall (LMP1) winner was the Aston Martin Racing Lola driven by Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf. The GT class winning BMW M3, driven by Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller, finished fifth overall.