usgp:

practice: only thomas enge screws his car up. Others spun out but no car damage.

race: a) De La Rosa and Villeneuve passing incident (de la rosa is at fault from my standpoint). Villeneuve out.
b) Heidfeld and Raikonnen hit and raikonnnen is out but only due to front wing damage.
c) Ralf spins himself out hitting no one, he's out.
d) Montoya is out ONLY because his team kept him in the pits tooooo long, he's out.
e) the USGP is comparable to Houston the cars are not that spaced out.


Houston CART race:

practice: didn't watch

race: a) Andretti spun AT LEAST 3 times during the race, AT LEAST 3 times, one time coming out of the pits on cold tires. Ridiculous, the track was dry...
b) Servia hits a tire wall, while TRYING TO PASS, with Jourdain following right into the back of Servia's car, Servia's on top. Both out. (as a rule in racing, never follow the race car in front of you, create your own line, don't follow the other driver's line.)
c) Bruno Junquiera, TRYING TO PASS, don't know why, he was not thinking i guess, scoops the back end of Dixon's car TRYING to gain a position. Junquiera comes in and the clutch doesn't work. He quite possibly put himself out.
d) Roberto Moreno goes to fast into a turn saves it but only to be out of the race later on, made contact i believe.
e) I laughed at TAGLIANI's SKILL when only about 5 laps left he screws it up and hits a wall in second place.
f) there was an altercation with Tracy, Takagi and some others. Tracy is out.
g) Brack is so good, that during the race he works his way back from 6th to 9th, and eventually ends up 7th Castroneves was sooo much faster than him eventually ending up 5th. and to think Brack is in TITLE contention.
h) De Ferran wins an oval and road course race. back to back.
i) G and H have nothing to do with anything, i just think BRACK sucks and De Ferran and Castroneves should both go to F1 since they are the only two drivers that are good.

In referrance to the other posts.

IT is possible to win the CART title on only Ovals, that is why i mentioned "4 lefts" so much.

Monaco is only in F1 because of its NOSTALGIA something the FIA has admitted to.

there is passing in F1, lot's of it, it's just that people would rather fixate the cameras on the top 3. ALESI did some passing in the USGP. Montoya passing shumacher, Hakkinen lapping Villeneuve(lapping is passing). Moving over to let someone through is passing. de la rosa tried to pass villeneuve.

another thing 1st rate drives like schumacher, hakkinen, coulthard, barrichello, ralf,alesi, and frentzen and villeneuve, may spin during practice but it is rare that they would spin during a race unless if they were hit. delarosa hitting villeneuve just shows delarosa's inexperience. Andretti spinning in houston is ridiculous, tagliani mucking up second is ridiculous, Bruno Junquiera hitting dixon was anticipated.
CART drivers try to pass and be aggressive but they usually get hit. F1 drivers don't hit often, they tap. many races this season have show clean starts in F1, while many races in CART this season have at least one car out on the first lap on every road course race. CART races have tons of more yellows and red flags than F1 F1: luciano burti hitting schumi, red flag
irvine hitting burti, red flag...only 2 of the season. CART: to numerous to mention,

As for NASCAR it sucks don't know why i mentioned it. EARNHARDT died and now some dude in ARCA just dies

death tolls:
NASCAR: 1
ARCA: 1
CART: 0* one driver gets legs mutilated and amputated legs.(zanardi)
F1: 0* one driver gets a visit to the hospital for possible brain "damage."(burti)

death tolls have nothing to do with anything either, but i must mention, the risks in cart, nascar and arca are unwarrented. get rid of oval racing.

 

I don't really see the point that your trying to make. Nobody questions that F1 is the pinnacle of motor racing. The absolute best drivers are in F1.


I know those first rate drivers wouldn't spin during a race unless they were hit. I mean, that's why Schumy, who had some huge lead in last year's USGP, just randomly spun in a chicane. EVERYBODY makes mistakes in racing.

Don't forget that your comparing Apples to Oranges in a lot of cases...

You mention CART drivers spinning. This is what happens when competition is high and you come out with cold tires. F1 heats the tires to race temperatures, meaning it doesn't take any time for them to 'stick like glue.' CART's tires are cold, making them prone to less grip. Sure, you can try to take it easy for a lap or two while they heat up, but competition is too high and you'll surely lose positions.

You say CART has too many Red flags to count. While I haven't watch as many CART races this year as I'd like, I can't recall any red flags except at Road America where they stopped the race to fix the track.

Part of the problem with the Texas circuit, is that there is little to no run off room on the entire course. If you spin, you're going to do some serious damage to the car. When you do your comparison, look at how many F1 drivers drive off course and then get back on. It was the nature of the track for CART to loose cars this past weekend. Had it been RA, the cars would have gone off course and then back on.

To prove your arguments, you'd need some statistics to back everything up. But even if you proved your arguments, I still don't get what your point is. Did you want us all to write to CART and tell them to cancel their series because they race on ovals and the drivers suck?

Really, it looks like you are particularily biased towards F1. That's fine, then don't watch the other series.

 

Hey Jayson,

obviously you think it makes you sound really cool to be some kind of motor-racing snob. I am a fan of both series, and in my opinion F1 is great but it is just not as exciting. You said in an earlier thread that CART is not as competitive - so why did Schumi wrap up the world championship with 4 races to go?

Second, about the spinning. The USGP was held on a permanent road course, with gravel traps and runoffs. The Houston race was held on a temporary street circuit, in which the marbles are killer. Get off-line, and you hit the wall, not the grass. Remember Villenueve chasing Frentzen down the straight last year and going off into the grass? He would have crashed into a barrier if he was at Houston. You should educate yourself a little more before going on these diatribes against CART which no one really cares to hear anyway.

 

Don't forget to add in the corner worker count for F1: 1 (Australia)


[Modified by madhatter, 11:31 AM 10/8/2001]

 

 

Dude, you have to pick an argument and stick with it. You got your panties in a bunch because somebody said it was more competitive. There wasn't one thing in your whole dissertation that had anything to do with competitiveness. The F1 championship was settled with 4 races to go, the CART championship just got a new leader as a result of this weekend's race. Just let it go man....

Matt

 

For what its worth...

My opinion is that regardless of which series has the best cars and best drivers, both races were just about boring as ****. It'd be great to see a pass every now and then. Or am I asking too much?
Not that I'm a fan of going in circles, but that damned IRL race in Texas this past weekend was friggin' awesome. Those guys (and gal) have nuts made of solid stainless steel.

As I've said before, if you want to see GREAT road racing action, go to your local track on an SCCA or NASA weekend and have a watch. Especially Spec Racer Ford.
Unless of course you can't keep the wine and cheese chilled out in the hot sun all day...

 

I HIGHLY reccommend checking out a Grand-Am / Grand-Am Cup weekend to anyone who can. That is some awesome racing! Passing all over the place (inevitable when there are multiple classes on the track, from SRPII racers down to GT porsches/BMWs). The entire race is intense--after a 6 hour race at Watkins Glen the separation from 1st to 2nd in SRPII was less than half a lap! The best part about it was that the infield was amost EMPTY, so we could drive/walk around to any corner we wanted to watch from AND check out the pits/garages/paddock/etc. Try THAT at an F1/Cart race without $ or connections (Don't get me wrong, I love both). I can imagine the Speedvision GT/Touring races are much like this. Sports car racing is awesome!

 

Again, trying to be a motor-racing snob. Why don't you like ovals? Because the Europeans don't race on them? Sure bad **** happens on Ovals, but Gilles Villenueve, Ayrton Senna, and countless others were killed on F1 road courses. I don't know if you've ever attended a race in person, but that is why ovals are popular. If you go to one, it is possible to see all the action. If you see a street or road race, this is not the case.


[Modified by Ross1013, 6:51 PM 10/9/2001]

 

With regard to Formula One, it is the hands down winner in overall technology, and probably in driver skill as well. In racing excitement, competiveness, and other categories it is questionable. What I watch it for is the superior technical innovation. It's not the driver's race that interests me so much, its the engineers' race throughout the season and off-season. Of course, since I also enjoy drag racing, the standing start is an event by itself!

So far sports car endurance racing has not been mentioned. Having just come back from Road Atlanta for the Petit Le Mans, I can say 10 hours of racing with 4 classes of cars on the same track was as great if not better than my time at the 2000 USGP or the 1999 Target Grand Prix. Even though the cars are mismatched, watching an Audi or Panoz LMP 900 car pass THREE GT cars in one swoop is awe-inspiring.

As for CART, I had a discussion a while back about potential rule changes to make F1 more exciting. We agreed on widening the cars, allow turbos, bringing back slicks, and using shaped underbellys: we had just described the basic layout of a CART machine! (Most of the discussion participants were from overseas as well.)

There is also World Rally Championship, which is just simply bad-***.

In conclusion, every series has its own entertainment or technical offerings. If there existed a series which had nothing to offer, it would disappear. Any true motorsports enthusiast will respect all race series; after all, it is reported that Jeff Gordon was offered a test by Frank Williams.

 

Now that I'd like to see. I've said for years somebody should get that guy into a road racing car while he still has the talent for road courses. There's a lot of money for him in NASCAR so it'd certainly take quite a package for him to leave.


[Modified by Shmeek, 8:05 AM 10/10/2001]