Jeff Gordon shares two Dale Earnhardt memories

DoxCar.CoM: Related posts:Jeff Gordon confronts and shoves Jeff Burton after crash in Texas Gordon-Burton Post Sound Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton talk...The boiling feud between Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson is about much more than two four-time champions having their differences DoxCar.CoM: ...Change is the operative word for Jeff Gordon as he chases a fifth [...] Related posts:
  1. Jeff Gordon confronts and shoves Jeff Burton after crash in Texas Gordon-Burton Post Sound Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton talk...
  2. The boiling feud between Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson is about much more than two four-time champions having their differences DoxCar.CoM: ...
  3. Change is the operative word for Jeff Gordon as he chases a fifth NASCAR Sprint Cup title Chris Trotman/Getty Images Four-time champ Jeff Gordon won his...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Source: http://doxcar.com/jeff-gordon-shares-two-dale-earnhardt-memories/

Bruce Halford Jim Hall Duncan Hamilton Lewis Hamilton

2010 Team Reviews: Penske Racing Perseveres as Lone Dodge Team

Filed under: , , , , ,


When Ryan Newman took the checkered flag in the 2008 Daytona 500, Penske Racing, his team at the time, got its first win in NASCAR's biggest race. Now team owner and motorsports mogul Roger Penske is in the market for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

In that regard, Penske looked to be in terrible position before the start of last season after it became the lone team operating under the Dodge banner. Penske made the best of the situation and, in fact, may have gained from the undivided attention his operation received from Dodge.

The team's driving leader, former champion Kurt Busch, made a small push by securing another berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, while Brad Keselowski often struggled in his first season as a full-time driver in the Cup Series. The team's other driver, Sam Hornish Jr., may see his ride disappear in NASCAR's top division after yet another disappointing season in his three-year career.

11th - Kurt Busch [2 wins, 9 Top-5s, 17 Top-10s, 2 DNFs, 15.3 Avg. Finish]

It took just four races in the 2010 season for Kurt Busch to lay claim to his first win of the year, taking the checkered flag at Atlanta Motor Speedway in March. The win -- which featured Busch scraping the wall several times -- seemed to galvanize Busch's chance of being a real championship contender.

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/06/2010-team-reviews-penske-racing-perseveres-as-lone-dodge-team/

Hans Heyer Damon Hill Graham Hill Phil Hill

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Talks About His Dad, Daytona and New Hendrick Digs

Filed under: , , , ,


DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spent a portion of his lunch break Thursday visiting with reporters at Daytona International Speedway, where his No. 88 AMP Energy Chevrolet was a respectable 11th fastest in the first morning session of a three-day test for the Feb. 20 Daytona 500.

This year's 53rd running of the Daytona 500 marks 10 years since his father, NASCAR's seven-time champ Dale Earnhardt, was killed on the last lap of NASCAR's biggest race. And while fans and the racing media are paying special attention to the sad milestone, Earnhardt said he thinks about his dad every day anyway.

"You think about your parents all the time,'' Earnhardt said, alternately bowing his head and then looking off in the distance, as he endured the inevitable questions. "I think about him and my mother all the time, especially getting back to racing.''

Earnhardt said his father would approve of the new $20 million pavement job gracing Daytona's 2.5-mile high banks. This week's test is the first time the majority of teams have tried the new surface. But Earnhardt didn't appear as concerned about the challenges of a new race surface as much as his desire to get out of a competition rut.

Earnhardt hasn't won a race in two and a half years and his 21st place finish in the 2010 standings was the second-worst of his career. The worst was a 25th-place ranking in 2009. Earnhardt will break in his third crew chief in as many years with NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports. Steve Letarte -- formerly Jeff Gordon's crew chief -- will now lead Earnhardt's No. 88 team, which will share a shop with teammate and five-time reigning Sprint Cup Series champ Jimmie Johnson.

"I feel good about the position I'm in now and I feel pretty confident about it and I'm looking forward to going into the season and working hard for it,'' Earnhardt said. "We'll just see how it goes.

"When you're running good you can put up with about anything. It's not fun being on the radar when you're running like crap. But last year we sort of fell off the radar altogether.

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/20/dale-earnhardt-jr-talks-about-his-dad-daytona-and-new-hendrick/

Michael McDowell Red Line Oil Dodge Steve Wallace Tony Raines

Tony Stewart on Way Back to US After Reported Scuffle in Australia

Filed under: , ,

Two-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart is reportedly en route to the United States a day after reports that he scuffled with a track owner during his final weekend racing in Australia.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Stewart threw his helmet at track co-owner Brett Morris during an alleged dispute over track conditions at Sydney Speedway. The newspaper said Stewart received a black eye in return from Morris, who the paper described as "not slight in size.''

Stewart's public relations manager Mike Arning said Saturday he was still trying to sort through the news but had spoken with Stewart, who was reportedly detained briefly by the local Rosehill police department for questioning about the incident. Although he was released and cleared for his already-scheduled departure Saturday, the paper says a local official confirmed there is ongoing investigation..

Stewart has been in Australia for the past four weeks -- the second consecutive year he and several other prominent American sprint car drivers have spent the off-season racing sprint cars.

The owner-driver is scheduled to drive his No. 14 Mobil 1-Office Depot Chevrolet in a three-day test session at Daytona International Speedway beginning Thursday.

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/01/16/tony-stewart-on-way-back-to-u-s-after-reported-scuffle-in-austr/

Jimmy Jackson Joe James John James Jean Pierre Jarier

Who were the top 10 F1 drivers of 2010?

Sebastian Vettel was crowned the youngest world champion in history after a memorable final twist at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but was he the best driver of the year?

It's a subjective question, and so difficult after such a momentous season that I have been wrestling with it for some weeks.

Does Vettel's pace in the dominant Red Bull mean he was Formula 1's top driver? How does that rank alongside the performances of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in inferior cars?

What about Robert Kubica's ability to mix it with the title contenders in the Renault? Or Kamui Kobayashi's attacking verve in the Sauber?

Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Robert Kubica

Vettel is centre-stage among the class of 2010 - but is he number one in our list? Photo: AFP

Here is my list of the top 10 drivers of 2010:

10) After battling for the title with Brawn in 2009, it cannot have been easy for Rubens Barrichello, at 37 going on 38, to drum up the enthusiasm for a season battling to make the top 10 in qualifying with once-great Williams.

But drum it up he did, impressing the team with his technical feedback and producing some excellent drives that resulted in strong points positions when Williams had something of a purple patch mid-season.

The veteran Brazilian was outshone by rookie team-mate Nico Hulkenberg at times as the German found his feet late in the season.

Nevertheless, as he heads into an astonishing 19th F1 season in 2011, Barrichello clearly still has a lot to offer.

9) Kamui Kobayashi emerged as one of F1's most exciting talents with some all-action performances in 2010.

Overtaking is notoriously difficult but the Japanese simply went for it, finding unconventional passing places to liven up such races as Valencia and Japan.

There remain doubts about his ultimate potential, with Sauber drafting in the reliable Nick Heidfeld for the final five races of the season to give Kobayashi a benchmark to measure himself against.

But Kobayashi responded perfectly and gives all the signs of having a great future.

8) It all started so well for Felipe Massa, who out-qualified new team-mate Alonso at the first race of the season. But when Alonso passed the Brazilian around the outside of the first corner, it set the tone for the entire year.

Alonso trounced Massa in 2010, proving faster than him at virtually every race, and there is no doubt the Spaniard's relentless excellence got to the man in the second Ferrari.

There were some good drives from Massa - particularly his third places at Monza and Korea. But he will have to pull something very special out of the bag, not to mention rediscover his mental equilibrium, to reverse this trend in 2011.

7) Nico Rosberg convincingly beat Mercedes team-mate Michael Schumacher this year and, had he achieved that feat 10 years ago, there would have been no doubt he had emerged as a truly great F1 driver.

But the Schumacher of this year was not the same driver as before, as even the seven-time champion himself effectively admitted.

Rosberg drove a strong season, and some good races, and there are an increasing number of people in F1 who believe he is emerging as a top-class contender.

But until he goes up against - and beats - a driver of the highest calibre, it will be hard to tell whether he deserves to be considered as that himself, or whether he is nearly there, but not quite.

6) Not even Jenson Button probably expected to be leading the championship after winning two of the opening four races of 2010 and out-qualifying McLaren team-mate Hamilton 3-1.

Button's two victories in the wet in Australia and China owed a lot to clever strategic calls but that was not all. The sight of Button pulling away from Hamilton in China on a wet track and on tyres of comparable age proved once and for all that this is a driver of the very highest calibre.

After that, Hamilton got on top and stayed there but Button, who was rarely very far away in qualifying and often more or less matched his team-mate on race pace, provided a convincing answer to those who said he had gained his 2009 triumph more by luck than ability.

5) Mark Webber chose the name Aussie Grit for his Twitter account, and 2010 proved why. Expected to fulfil the role of an obedient number two at Red Bull, Webber went toe-to-toe with team-mate Vettel throughout the season and led him in the championship for most of it.

After a shaky first couple of races, Webber came on song when the season came back to Europe with dominant wins in Spain and Monaco that left Vettel bemused at where his team-mate had found such electrifying pace.

By mid-summer, Vettel had got his edge back, but Webber remained large in his mirrors, ready to take advantage of any mistakes. That he was able to do this despite suspicions that Red Bull were not perhaps being quite as even-handed in their treatment of their drivers as they insisted was all the more impressive.

But his challenge faded in the end, crashing in Korea and failing to make any real impact in the final two races of the campaign.

4) Did Renault's Robert Kubica perform better than any other driver on the grid when you consider the equipment he had at his disposal?

You can certainly make that case. No-one else can claim to have made so few mistakes while extracting what appeared to be the maximum from his machinery.

The Renault was not fast enough for Kubica to regularly mix it with the title contenders but on three occasions he transcended the car's limitations in a way only the truly great can - at Monaco, Spa and Suzuka, F1's three great drivers' circuits.

To qualify second in Monaco, third in Spa and fourth in Suzuka was a momentous achievement - and he backed that up by taking podium places in both Monaco and Belgium before being robbed of another when his wheel came loose in Japan.

There is still a slight question mark over a man who, in 2009, was not able to comprehensively overshadow Heidfeld at BMW. And let's not forget that Kubica was not burdened with the kind of pressure that the likes of Alonso, Vettel, Button and Hamilton were.

But put Kubica in a competitive car and all his rivals would fear him.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


3) Sebastian Vettel is a great talent and a deserving world champion but, considering the stunning pace of the Red Bull car, he should have won many more races and clinched the title much sooner.

The car's fragility did not help - failures in Bahrain, Australia, Spain and Korea cost him a lot of points - but the German also made a number of high-profile errors. He crashed into rivals in Turkey and Belgium, suffered a puncture following a red-mist moment at Silverstone and was penalised for misjudging the safety car in Hungary.

Ten pole positions and five wins speak for themselves to an extent but, as the (slightly) faster driver in comfortably the fastest car, they are to be expected.

Some of those pole laps were stunning, though, with Vettel possessing an Ayrton Senna-esque ability to pull that little bit extra out on his very final lap, no matter what the circumstances, while each one of his wins was a masterpiece of domination.

However, there have to be fewer mistakes, more wins dragged out of adversity and more convincing performances when he is back in the pack for him to be ranked above the next names on the list.

2) Had this article been written after the Belgian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton would have occupied the number one spot.

Up to that point, Hamilton had made not a single mistake worth the name and he was leading the championship in what had from the mid-point of the season been the third fastest car.

Hamilton had maintained his exuberant, attacking style and stunning natural pace and had mated it to a consistency that was making him a formidable competitor.

His fantastic victory at Spa - not forgetting the qualifying lap that earned him second on the grid on slicks in a shower of rain - confirmed him as the outstanding driver of the season to that point, notwithstanding the canny Button's two wet wins.

Suddenly, though, it all went wrong. Hamilton crashed out of the next two races in Monza and Singapore and when he crashed again in Friday practice at the next race in Japan his season appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

But then came one of the laps of the season - third on the grid at Suzuka in a car in which he had done just six flying laps before qualifying. It was a reminder of Hamilton's amazing talent. By then, though, as far as the championship was concerned, the damage had been done.

1) Fernando Alonso's first year with Ferrari started with a few shaky races and finished with a strategic mistake that cost him the title. In between the Spaniard did just enough to earn the right to call himself the best driver of 2010.

Early-season errors were born of trying too hard in a car that was not quite on the pace. Combine that with Ferrari losing their way for a while and Alonso was 47 points off the lead at the midpoint of the season.

But in a car that established itself as the second fastest behind the Red Bull, he recovered that margin by driving with a consistent, relentless brilliance that his rivals were not able to match. His victories at Monza and Singapore were stunning. Only Hamilton at Spa and perhaps Webber at Monaco can claim a performance of comparable quality.

That ultimately Alonso did not win a third title was only because of his team's error in Abu Dhabi. For the 2005 and 2006 champion, as he said himself, it was still a great year.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2010/11/who_were_the_top_10_f1_drivers.html

Paul Menard Richmond Menards Ford Carl Edwards Copart Ford