NASCAR, not knowing tired, continues his tour of the cities, scales and time zones of North America. After the west coast, the championship moved closer to its historic homeland, having spent the fourth stage on the super-fast track in Atlanta. The second consecutive victory after Las Vegas won the current champion of the series Jimmy Johnson, which allowed him to move to fourth place in the overall standings.
His partner at Hendrick Motorsports, Jeff Gordon, was a long leader, but he lost the circle at the end, rolled into the tail of the peloton and, despite a beautiful breakthrough, could not finish above 12th place. In the championship, he remains in second place, losing only 8 points. Well, the leadership continues to be held by 48-year-old veteran Mark Martin, who again finished in the top ten.
More than two hundred thousand in the stands of the capital of Georgia
It’s only a pity that Mark once again confirmed that he will miss the stage in Bristol next weekend. The first short track of the year (almost a velodrome - just 800 meters and incredibly bent bankings) and the first race of NASCAR’s new brainchild - a single chassis of the future, nicknamed COT ( Car Of Tomorrow ). Skipping this, as well as the next one in Martinsville stages, will automatically throw Martin back in the classification. A simple fact speaks about the density of leaders. Mark now has 629 points, Gordon has 621, and Johnson has 618!
The main surprise was the first finish in the five of Juan Pablo Montoya. The Colombian seemed to have completed his period of adaptation to the ovals and in Atlanta looked simply brilliant. The day before, he finished eighth in the race of the second division, and on Sunday secured his success with a confident fifth place in the main battle. In the overall championship standings, the former McLaren pilot is now in 15th place out of five dozen pilots. But whether the Colombian can develop his success in the specific conditions of Bristol is a big question!
Atlanta speed brought Montoya first successes on ovals
There, in America, but on the famous highway, Sabring was a much more chamber in terms of spectator interest, but important in preparation for Le Mans, a 12-hour race of sports prototypes. In the absence of the Peugeot 908, which had just started the tests, their much more streamlined and fired diesel rivals, Audi, were practically without rivals. Rinaldo Capello, Alan McNish and Tom Christensen this time lost a lot of time and finished fourth in the absolute and second in their class with 11 laps. The Dane failed for the sixth consecutive time to win at Sabring!
But the success was celebrated by another "P10" - Marco Werner, Frank Biela and Emmanuele Pirro. They were ahead of the Akura crew, made up of ChampCara and IRL stars Brian Herta, Dario Franchitti and Tony Canaan, by ... six laps! Much more interesting was the development of events in body classes. In GT 1, Max Papis, Olivier Beret and Oliver Gavin (all three are ex-F-1 pilots, except that the latter had this experience only with tests, and in races - only with aerobatic maneuvers ...) on his Corvette won against teammates, for whom last year's winner of this class, Jan Magnussen, also went less than a lap. In GT 2, the winner after 12 hours of the race was determined almost in the last corner. Ferrari 430 beat Porsche 911 ... 202 thousandths of a second!
Well, in Europe they are testing more. The starts of the main championships are yet to come. Including the GP2 series, which, being a kind of support race for the F-1, joins it only at the "near" stages. Accordingly, Australia and Malaysia, the "big guys" will spend on their own, but already starting from Bahrain they will join the hopes of the future. Their last pre-season test session was held at the Paul Ricard circuit last Thursday and Friday.
The main advantage of the purchased and rebuilt Bernie Le Castelle is the modularity of the track, allowing you to create a huge number of different configurations. So it’s possible to test pilots and tune cars for different types of tracks. The GP2 series took advantage of this opportunity and spent two days on fundamentally different routes, albeit using parts of the same race track.
Vitaly Petrov completes preparation for the racing season
On the first day, Andreas Zuber was the leader in both 3D sessions, and the acquaintances Timo Glock, Giorgio Pantano and Antonio Pizzonia were in the 3rd, 9th and 15th in the morning and 3rd, 6th and 5th after lunch. Vitaly Petrov showed the 22nd and 21st results, losing 1.3 and 1.8 seconds to the leader, respectively. The lag behind the Campos teammate (the same Pantano) was less - 0.6 and 1.3 s.
The next day, the configuration was changed to 2D-B, and the leadership in the first part of the tests was taken by Lucas di Grassi. After lunch, Zuber was again the fastest again, but di Grassi never reached the best morning time. Petrov showed the 22nd and 21st results, but he was inferior to the leaders by the second exactly. Pantano lost 0.8 and 0.7 tenths. Given the better racing than Vitaly’s qualification form last year, it is hoped that in several stages the pilot from Vyborg will be able to compete for points.