On tap this week:
- Hinchcliffe wins an ugly one
- Rising star in NASCAR
- Indy 500 Bump Day now meaningless
- Mercedes still in charge
- Quote of the Week: Coulthard needles his old team
- Girls too scared to race?
Racing in New Orleans certainly wasn't the Big Easy for IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, but he also didn't leave with a case of the blues.
Battling car sickness, the 28-year-old from Oakville, Ont., coaxed his fuel starved Schmidt Peterson Motorsport racer to the finish and won the inaugural IndyCar Grand Prix of Louisiana marred by treacherous conditions, nasty accidents, and repeated full-course yellow caution periods.
"All those yellows, weaving back and forth and accelerating and braking, I literally felt like I was going to throw up in my helmet," Hinchcliffe said after scoring his fourth career IndyCar win on Sunday at New Orleans' NOLA Motorsport Park.
"Whenever you're racing IndyCar in the rain it's incredibly taxing mentally — the visibility was shocking and there were some pretty big puddles on the track. Winning the first race - the inaugural event at any track - is always special."
Less than half of the 47 laps the drivers managed to complete in the one hour 45 minute time-limited race were under green flag conditions, with 26, including the finish, going into the books under full course caution. The average speed of winner Hinchcliffe was a sluggish 115 kilometres per hour.
With the probability of precipitation in New Orleans in April around 25 per cent and a huge thunderstorm washing out qualifying on Saturday, the heavy downpour wasn't a surprise.
The damp conditions and the accidents played a huge role in the one pitstop strategy that delivered Hinchcliffe's win, even if the Canadian wasn't sure he'd be able to stretch his fuel to the finish. In the end, enough yellows fell and Hinchcliffe made it to the chequered flag on fumes before running out of gas as he made his way back to pitlane.
"I was kind of 50-50 on it when they made the call (to one-stop)," Hinchcliffe said.
"But that's why those guys (race engineers and strategists) do what they do, and that's why I just shut up and drive the car."
Random thoughts
As a 16-year-old, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series regular Erik Jones made a name for himself successfully battling Sprint Cup star Kyle Busch for the win in the super late model Snowball Derby in Florida. He was at it again at the Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday night, fighting tooth and nail with Sprint Cup star Dale Earnhardt Jr. before out-duelling 2012 NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski on a late restart to take his first Xfinity Series victory.
"It's amazing, just amazing — we beat Cup guys tonight," said the 18-year-old from Michigan. "Man, [Earnhardt] raced us hard. We threw it right back and raced right back with him. I hope he had fun, I had a blast."
By the numbers
There will apparently be a Bump Day to set the 33-car field at the Indianapolis 500 this year after it was announced that both IndyCar manufacturers, Chevrolet and Honda, have each committed to fielding 17 cars for the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" on May 25. Fans might want to hold their excitement because it really means little in the end. Like in 2011 when Ryan Hunter-Reay stepped into Bruno Junqueira's car after getting bumped, a big name driver who gets knocked out can simply buy a seat from one of the Indy 500-only entrants and get back in the field.
Technically speaking
It appears that reports of Ferrari taking the fight to Mercedes were greatly exaggerated. While the scarlet cars pulled off an upset in Malaysia two weeks ago, Mercedes completely controlled Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix. When the gap between second-placed Nico Rosberg and a chasing Ferrari got too close following the first round of pitstops, the Mercedes driver asked the team to tell leader and eventual winner Lewis Hamilton to step on it so he could widen it again. "Lewis is driving very slowly so get him to speed up. If I get closer, I destroy my tires like in the first stint, that's the problem."
Quote of the week
"This is fantastic coverage for these teams —they all get quantified reports of how many seconds of TV images they got and if McLaren had any sponsors, this would be great news for them."
— BBC commentator David Coulthard takes a shot at the McLaren team he raced with for nine F1 seasons while describing the spirited battle between McLaren's Jenson Button and the Lotus of Pastor Maldonado late in the Chinese Grand Prix.
The last word
After Williams development driver Susie Wolff's panned F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone's suggestion of a separate all-women grand prix series as "most definitely not the right way forward," it will be interesting to see her reaction to 17-year-old Max Verstappen's opinion of female racers. "I think they lack something when it comes to physical strength and perhaps it is also true that some women are more easily afraid in a racing car," Verstappen told a Dutch newspaper.
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Jeff Pappone