Yep. When aked about whether he'd like to drive in Formula One, Marco Andretti came out with this gem, claiming that he is well aware of the sort of underhand tactics that come as part of a drive in Formula One.

There is no denying that Formula One is far from squeaky clean. You only have to look at last years Stepney-gate fiasco between McLaren and Ferrari and the fighting between the teams at the back of the grid to try and get each other kicked out due to percieved idea that customer cars are illegal (Note: they're not, but soon will be). However, trying underhand back-stabbing to try and get one over on your competitors in a multi-million pound sport is nothing new. I could cite hundreds of cheating cases that would prove that for just about every sport going, but sabataging your own team. Now even for Formula One that seems a bit extreme.

The story goes like this. Micheal Andretti was brought over to F1 by McLaren in 1993 after 10 years in CART and a place as a runner up in the 1992 Championship. At the time McLaren were one of the big teams, having finished second in the constructors title to the dominant Williams team whose drivers took 1st and 2nd in that years drivers championship. To follow up they paired up multi-world champion Aryton Senna with Michael Andretti.

One thing about the following season is certain. Senna finished second in the drivers race and Andretti garnered only 7 points, and was replaced by a yound Finn called Mika Hakkinen for the final three races of the season.

Conventional wisdom is, like many drivers who have moved quickly from one form of racing to another, that Andretti struggled to come to terms with the differences in the Indycar's he was familiar with and the Formula One cars. Even in 1993 Formula One cars were massively spohisticated with a dazzling array of electrics and driver aids.

However, this is where Marco's opinion comes in, did McLaren use these electonics to sabotage his dad. Micheal did have a shocker, retiring in 7 out of his 13 races. Marco insists that the sabotage only stopped when Senna himself, who apparently knew what was going on, stepped in.  Admitedly, Michael's performance picks up. An 8th in Belgium, before at podium in his final race at Monza. Had Senna got the team to stop doing what ever skull-duggering they were up to, or was the Monza result because of the high attrition rate that day - with 6 out of the 10 drivers eventually to finish above Andretti in championship retiring and champion Alain Prost coming home 12th.

Either way the damage was done. Andretti was fired before the last three races of the season, to be replaced by Hakkinen, who had been the team's test driver and was (according to Marco) going to be paid far less. Andretti went back to the US and was never heard of again in F1.

McLaren are being predictably tight lipped about the whole thing, and any record of Senna's part in the story was lost into the wall at Tamberello corner in 1994. Even Michael has stayed silent so far.

What to make of it. The Truth? A young man taking advantage of a media opportunity the week before his biggest race of the year? A Formula One question that stirred the memories of a bedtime story that was told to a 6-year-old by his dad when he couldn't find "The Little Engine That Could".

My guess is a combination of the last two.

Enough has been written on these blog pages about various qualifying systems to create a fairly decent sized book.

We are almost universally agreed that the NASCAR system sucks to high heaven. Whether it be the system in general or the top-35 rule that comes as the ugly cousin tagging along behind it. Only narrowly behind the France family's offering is the third hand re-hashed system employed by Formula One. The Powers That Be behind the sport have been trying to crack the qualifying enigma code for nearly a decade. Moving for the 12 laps over and hour session of old, through the single lap qualifying format to the (pretty disaterous) two single lap aggregate system, before settling on the three stage system that has been tweaked and twisted over the last two seasons.

It is this three stage system that has been picked up in other forms of motorsport, from the DTM (German Touring Car Championship) and a modified system being used by the Indycar series at road courses.

All over the world there may well be as many qualifying formats as there are race series, yet they all aim to do the same thing - make qualifying interesting. That's it. Whether it be for the drivers, for the fans who come to the track or the people watching on TV. All these different systems aim, and miss. There may be occasional times when it gets interesting, when the whether changes, when there are suprises, but the seldom are. Take the three stage f1 example. When it was introduced it was good, drivers where frantically lapping, but now a few seasons down the line the teams have it down to an art, the top guys sit in the garages until the lasp possible moment, knowing full well they have no problem, all drama gone. The problem is that the idea of qualifying is boring. It is cars going round on single laps, racing other drivers who happen to be on the track is practically prohibited.

At least that's what I thought before I found I could watch practice and qualifying for the Indy 500 via the internet. OK, not every race in the word has a whole month at it's disposal to set-up the cars. But it does have three days of real, interesting, qualifying. A system where each place is fought over dramatically as the pole. The Danica Patrick's of the sport were afforded as much attention and importance as the "back-markers" - Buddy Lazier, Max Papis, Marty Roth - (when was the last time you could say that about most motorsport) Where teams take a risk trying to go faster. Yes, you could improve, but you could go backwards - ripping the safety blanket of a 'banker' lap away. The final 'bump day' was the most spectacular, teams trying everything to get into the race in a way that NASCAR's top-35 rule never quite seems to deliver. Teams that had struggled all month suddenly found speed, teams that had been on the pace all month suddenly found themselves facing an uphill struggle. Everything came down to the minute, when in a last attempt the final runner, Mario Dominguez smacked the wall.

It was what qualifying should be - fast, exciting, dramatic, all or nothing and, probably most important for the people behind the sport, incredibly watchable. Good qualifying should be an advert for the race, not a giveaway for who may win. That was what the Indy system is.  

We all had them at school, you may even have been one at school. I know I was. The "Look at Me!!" kid. He/she may not have been as clever/funny/attractive, or whatever counts in school this year, as the other kids in the class, but they refused to sit down, shut up and get on with their work. They wanted attention, they wanted people to look at them.

And in Sports School right now the look at me kid is Indycar.

Excuse me while I torture this metaphor some more. We all know about the kid's parents rather colourful private life over the off-season. The will they, won't they shack up together to provide a stable home life scenario, but the kid has not only survived the yelling and the kind of plate smashing displayed by Lester Burnham in American Beauty, but it seems he's become stronger because of it.

The school year started predictably enough. The trauma of his home life left the poor child with a pretty severe case of bi-polar disorder. Half of him was running around the class room getting all the attention and glory, while the other half languished in the corner of the classroom, running itself over at restarts (yes, I think the metaphor is tiring now too). The schools Psychiatrist shook her head, it wa exactly what they'd feared in the pre-year staff meeting, the kid's parents moving in together was doing it more harm than good, the fear was that the parents would see how bad little Indy was getting and split up again, and who knows what might happen to the poor child if that happened. He might even end up living on the streets.

And so he did, but it did him the world of good. Suddenly the two halves of the child became one, working in harmony to provide a well balanced, socially acceptable human being that the world could love. The side previously running amok in the classroom took a back seat and allowed the quiet hidden side to take centre stage with unexpected and record breaking consequences. Everyone took notice, the stable home life seemed to be working, the changes in the child's behaviour were starting to be seen far far sooner than anyone thought they would. Perhaps the parents had made the right choice.

More recently the two sides of the child have parted ways, but again for the better. The louder side has finally proved what it can do, as an element of Indy's personality probably better known for posing in swimwear that doing anything really helpful to the child as a whole (sorry, there goes the metaphor again), has finally started to pull it's weight. As the child performs better more people become interested in its progress towards adulthood, and it's recent showings have been very strong. Now hopefully the other side of personality can keep up the good work.

The better the child gets the more people want to go to its school. A prestigious open day in May looks like it's going to have to turn visitors away due to demand. Big businesses will want to sponsor its sports team, more people want to teach there. And that's good for the school, the child and all the parents everywhere.

I've had a pretty manic three weeks or so, so have stored up a few points that need to be unleashed. Adopt the brace position.

NASCAR-wise just about everyone has been proved royally wrong. The Hendrick cars continue to have a big round 0 in their win column (and long may it continue). By no means is their recent domination long forgotten but they've failed to pick up where they left off in 2007. Dale Jr continues to keep those of us who think he's over-rated and over-hyped happy by looking the same sort of ordinary he did last year. Also proving everyone wrong is the list (wel. two Toyota winners so far). Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin. You see Tony Stewart in that list. No. Me Neither. You expect that. No? Me neither.

So far it looks like were getting into the best NASCAR season in recent years - no matter what your opinion of the car is you have to agree the near identical templates have made the intended equality between the makers real. We've had all 4 makers win a race, a bunch of teams look strong, putting probably the longest list in years on a list we might put on the 'potential winners' list. Dave Blaney's luck continues to suck more than a breast-fed 12 year old. Running strong at Daytona - bumped out, running strong at Martinsville - unspecified mechanical problem drops him from 12th to 43rd. Joy Unconfined.

The new combined open wheel series is underway. Not that you would have noticed. Given the incredible-ness of last years Chicagoland title decider last weekends dull and very used dishwater Homestead opener was a turn off. It only confirmed what some of us already guessed. The same old IRL guys will be winning, the converted Champ Car guys will be mobile chicanes, so despite the 25 car grid that rolled up messily to the green flag in Miami the real race was probably between the same old 6-8 drivers. Amazingly I found the Cup race at Martinsville more watchable than the IRL race, something that given my very very low opinion of Martinville racing I never expected to happen.

Someone fixed Formula One!! From the first corner in Melbourne when Felipe Massa put his foot down and span towards the wall the sport was a very different monster. It might even now be described as a sport. The drivers have to drive. Incredible.

I have a new love. The American Le Mans Series. I've always loved endurance racing, the main Le Mans event especially, and the American sister series got off to a stormer in Sebring. Although Europe has a similar Le Mans series it is run much closer to 'real' ACO rules, meaning that P2 cars are far weaker than P1's. The ALMS's throwing out of that rule makes the racing far better. No-one wants to see Audi win over and over again. Thanks to Speed TV having coverage of Sebring on the internet and Radio Le Mans also broadcasting over the internet I didn't go to sleep till 2am. And I loved every minute of it.

Unfortunately I have to end some sad news.  A plane crash on Sunday claimed the life of two of the most well-known guys in British motorsport. Former Touring Car driver David Leslie and Team Owner Richard Lloyd crashed en route to the Nogaro circuit in France where they were planning on testing their latest project - a Jaguar GT3 car for the FIA GT championship. Both these guys were, if not childhood heroes of mine, central figures in the sport as I just started to follow it in the early 90's.

It's just a shame that after a great start to the motor-racing year, something like that has to happen.

Another day, another step towards of away from the sewing up of the 12 year open-wheel split.

It finally looks like they've cracked it - it's finally been officially announced.

As per normal here's the link to the article on Speedtv.com

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/open-wh
eel-unification-announced/

As anyone who has been following the NASCAR blogs page knows over the last week or two I've been writing opinions and posting links for Robin Miller's articles on the Indycar/Champ Car merger from the speedtv website. 

My general opinion, and that of quite a lot of the people who took the time to comment on my other posts, could be paraphrased as such "Great News....but".

We've had concerns over the tracks, with the possible loss of venerable events such as those in Toronto and Cleveland, in favour of a very oval friendly calender. The worry about the road-course specialists being outsted by teams who are suddenly looking at a whole new type of races.

Overall, we liked the idea, but we'd rather that sorted it out now and had the first season of unified racing in 2009, rather than cobble together an eleventh hour deal that had more holes in it that a moth-eaten jumper.

Yet it appears a gigantic hole has appeared around Long Beach and Montegi - here's a link to Miller's latest article.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/champ-c
ar-irl-deal-on-final-approach/

It's gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Two equal points scoring races for the same series on different continents, consecutive days, using different cars. Oh dear.

I think this is a sign that this merger needs to be worked out properly. They're trying to patch-over, over a decade's worth of divergence, in technology, events - everything, in 10 days. It is quite frankly impossible. The various parties - the heads of the series, the team owners, the track owners - need to spend a year sitting down to work this out properly, or I fear we're headed for an entire season of this type of madness.

Announce that they're merging for 2009 now and it could be even better, they then get a year not only to iron out the mountainous creases, but garner the no doubt greater sponsorshipa and TV deals a combined series will bring, plus get additional teams in on a newly profitable series.

Or course, they'll never listen to me 

It seems the rumoured open-wheel merger has been completed.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/report-
champ-car-indycar-deal-done//P1/

The Montegi vs. Long Beach disagreement has been solved, with the Montegi race rumoured to be moving to October, and obviously something close to a complete agreement reached, enough for owners in the series to believe they're headed for a single series.

A clutch of the big teams from Champ Car appear to have agreed to move over, with the only major exception being Minardi USA, which obviously increases the field and competition for the new season.

However, I'm still a bit worried. It still looks like a bunch of the road courses will be lost - Laguna Seca, Cleveland Airport, the two (admittedly awful) Champ Car races in Europe last year. This is one area where the Indycar Series seems to have the huge advantage. Champ Car races on a lot of the well known street circuits - Long Beach, Toronto, Surfers' Paradise - while these may be incorporated into the new calendar they may be lost. And I'd rather see these tracks, all very different put in, even if it comes at the expense of some of the oval tracks the IRL currently use. If some of these tracks are dropped long term, am I the only one who can see Kentucky vs. NASCAR style law suits on the horizon.

Also we're probably looking at a bunch of drivers out of work. Most of the  CCWS drivers are road course specialists - Justin Wilson, Robert Doorboos, Will Power, to my mind only Paul Tracy has oval experience. With these guys getting them into a series which is mainly run on ovals, is like trying to put a square peg in a round (or oval) hole. My fear is that what looks like a good idea on paper may cause teams to drop out through lack of drivers/results/sponsorhship, or the quality of the field to drop by engaging unknown drivers simply for their oval know-how.

Even if they do run in the same series there will still be two very distinct groups or teams and drivers, and this division may take years to disappear, and while it still exists the future of open-wheel racing is still in the balance. 

I'm hoping this isn't what I fear, which is a speedy merger for it's own sake, where not everything has been sorted out, and the problems are more than likely to tear the two apart again.

It would seem that someone has finally listened to the fans of open wheel racing in North America.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/open-wh
eel-peace-at-hand//P1/

Since the IRL/CART split in the 90's both series have been hemoraging big names and teams, not only to each other, but more recently as NASCAR becomes the sporting juggernaut it's become names have started to leap to the cars with fenders.

Although the article says the two could be united for the 2008 series, surely this is unlikely. The meshing of the events and the teams. The fact that the two series run totally different tracks, with totally different cars. The fact there's only a matter of weeks until the series start to kick off. I think the best we can hope for is a combined 2009 series, which despite putting us through another year of two quite uninteresting championships, would almost certainly be better than the 11th hour hodge-podge that is likely to result from a deal done right now.

Open-wheel racing in the US needs this. There is some big sponsorship involved - McDonalds in Champ Car, Motorola in IRL, and big teams Forsythe and Newman-Haas-Lanigan, versus Penske, Ganassi and Andretti. They both have big name drivers (despite the fact that several have decamped) and historic races - Indy, Long Beach, Toronto, Cleveland (and it's crash friendly first turn).

Is it too early to say roll on 2009??

An idea, I shamelessly stole from Tez, please forgive me. Except without the pictures, because I don't know how.

2008 marks a whole new chapter in the history of British drivers in international motorsport.

British drivers continue to be very well represented in F1 in 2008. The most experienced active driver in the field continues to be Scot, David Coulthard, as he enters his fourth year with the Red Bull team. There is no question that David deserves a place in F1, but the Red Bull cars have never been the most reliable. On a more positive note the input from F1 designing god Adrian Newey may start to truly show through. However, the car's reliability desperately needs improving if Coulthard and his team-mate Mark Webber are to improve on the teams finishes of last year. Coulthard may also be one to benefit from the out-lawing of Traction Control, he's driven TC less F1 cars before, which is more than some of the less experienced runners have.

Jenson Button continues to be the more over-rated driver on the face of planet earth, with '07's Pram-like Honda adding to his woes. The 2008 Honda looks less like it was painted by a 7 year old, instead looking like it's sponsored by a chewing-gum company, but whether it is any less pram-like is still up for debate. In the most recent test in Barcalona, Spain the two Hondas, including one driven by Button, were never out of the slowest 3 times set each day. However, F1 testing, especially this early is notoriously fickle, with different teams testing different things with different spec cars in different stages of development, but surely they can't make the car any slower.

Anthony Davidson is currently caught up in the mess that is Super Aguri. Despite their great showing last year, I don't think the sight of Takuma Sato passing World Champion whiner Fernando Alonso will ever start being less funny, their title sponsor SS United has pulled out and they are currently struggling to find a replacement. Should the worse happen Davidson would no-doubt be out of a drive, and probably forced to push a Honda round in testing again.

Oh, yea, some guy named Lewis is British as well. Like him of loath him, his debut season was very, very good, and only some bad luck, shocking calls by the team and a few rookie mistakes stole a title away from him in the final races. The spy-gate fiasco continues to haunt McLaren, how much this has effected their 2008 car will probably never be known. The loss of Alonso from the team may also hurt the team, they no longer have his experience and know-how of the workings of F1 cars. I think given all this to expect a repeat is too much, he may well win a few more races next season, but I don't expect him to be able to hold a candle to the Ferraris.

We know enter what we may call the 'Chip Ganassi section', if this man is not an Anglophile he has some explaining to do.

Firstly he gave NASCAR Dario. Why I don't know, Dario could well have stayed in IRL and had a whirl at defending his title, but he came to NASCAR. His Busch and ARCA results in the few races he ran last season were quite a bit less than impressive and the Dodges appear to be slowest of the 4 makers in testing. That he's well accustomed to going round ovals is sure, you don't win Indy and the title by accident, but perhaps the jump from IRL to NASCAR this quickly is just too much.

The IRL looks set to be the centre for British drivers in America, with 4 drivers currently confirmed. Dan Wheldon stays on at Ganassi alongside Scott Dixon, and may well be Dixon's biggest rival for the title with the exit of Dario and Hornish to NASCAR. He's pedigree is clear, winning the Indy and the title a few years back. The third car in the team is being driven by another Brit, this time, Alex Lloyd. He is the current champion of the IRL's developmental series, and to immediately move into a big name team says alot for his talent. Out of Ganassi-land Darren Manning continues to bother US motorsport like a moth round a lightbulb. In three years of IRL his best race finish is 4th and he's never been very consistent. The last British driver really needed looking up on Wikipedia, Jay Howard. The all-knowing source shows him as Lloyd's predecessor as Indy Pro series champion, and from the same English county as me. He joins Roth Racing as a second driver.

Champ Car, like IRL, loses it's top star, with Bourdais moving to F1. One of the drivers most likely to benefit is Justin Wilson, who finished second in 2007 to the beforementioned Frenchmen, and win a move from long term team R-sports to Newman/Haas/Lanigan, Justin may well be the favourite for the title. He is currently the only confirmed British driver in the series as 2007 driver, Dan Clarke, Ryan Daziel and Catherine Legge look set to move on, all three with nothing confirmed although rumours persist Legge may move to the DTM (where there are lots of other British drivers (but that's a whole other blog entry).