The answer: No
The question: Did any one notice that there was a Yank in Sunday's F1 race?
Scott Speed, bearer of one of the greatest names in all of sports, finished 13th in Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix. Sadly, he's chosen to race in the worst racing series on earth.
More after the jump ...
The AP story called the finish "respectable". Maybe -- that's pretty much the same word you could use to describe Junior's 27th-place Vegas finish.
The story goes on to note that the American audience too busy ignoring Speed "was all too eager to waste an afternoon watching Matt Kenseth lead parade laps around Las Vegas Motor Speedway ..."
Maybe so. No one except maybe Bruton Smith and Jeff Burton can argue convincingly that the Vegas track produces good racing. But F1? Please. Look at the results:
* The top two finishers were within 1.2 seconds of each other
* The third place guy was 19.3 seconds back
* The 10th place finisher was 75.5 seconds back
* 12th place on back (22 drivers started) was at least one lap down on a track where the fast lap was 1:32.
Not exactly a reason to roll of bed in the morning and flip on the TV.
Besides, you know how awful you have to be to finish a lap down on a road course? Pretty bad. Almost as bad as last year's Indy race.
So here's one more answer: Yes.
The question: Is F1 still the biggest joke in all of sports?
Comments (2)
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The problem is that road racing is nothing in the USA compared to what it was 25 - 35 years ago. In addition to CART you had:
CAN-AM
Trans-AM (a shell of itself today)
IMSA
SCCA runoffs (that meant something)
Oh and by the way one the greatest drivers of all time in American roadracing, Mark Donahue, was a winner/champion in all of these American series, all with Penske. Then he was killed in the late 70's in Austria F-1 practice. He also won a Cup race in the boxie AMC Matador at Riverside.
American roadracing also had Mario Andretti (an F-1 Champion) and A.J. Foyt, a LeMans winner.
This was the era of the Pony cars, Camaro, Mustang Challenger, and Javelin and foreigns such as Porsche, Triumph, MG, Fiat, etc.
The best American road racer is a little busy on Sundays behind the wheel of the #24, and he is a few years too old for F-1.
Posted on March 14, 2006 7:05 PM
In answer to your first question - Yes I was aware Speed was signed and ran this weekends Bahrain F1 event.
In answer to your second question - maybe. It is a joke, dependent on your perspective. When Toyota is pumping just short of a half billion dollars per year in the sport and the other "majors" are close behind, it doesn't give someone like Scott Speed much of a chance when that teams budget is around a quarter of the rest.
Question: What other open wheel race series did Speed compete in this winter?
He spent part of the year running the Team USA enterant in the A1GP Series.
Posted on March 15, 2006 2:04 AM