Walt’s Weekly – 04/17/16

This week we just finished F1 with Rosberg and Mercedes winning the China GrandPrix by over 36 seconds at the finish and his 6th win in a row.  This gives both Nico Rosberg and Mercedes a large lead toward the championship.

Haas F1 at China did not get any points this week, possibly because of the incident at the start where Grosjean had contact and had to come in for a new nose and that car was not as driveable as at the start, but good news was that both Hass F1 cars did finish the race this week.

At this time the 6 hour race at Silverstone saw the Audi Hybrid take Pole and 2nd start position from the Porsche 919 Hybrid.  Porsche did take 3rd and 4th.  Have to wait to see what plays out at the end of this the 1st race of the FIA World Endurance Championship.  Just checked race live timing and the Porsche 919 has taken over the 1st and 2nd place in the race with 4 hours and 11 minutes left with Audi 3rd ad 6th.

Also yesterday was the Weather Tech SportsCar Championship and the only street course at Long Beach, California.  The GTLM class was won by the Porsche #911 of Nick Tandy and Patrick Pilet after many ups and downs with the team receiving a drive thru penalty for pit lane speeding.  There was another incident with the Porsche and a Corvette, the second incident in a row with the last happening at Sebring.  Hard racing, race incidents or what we will not know.

In the GTE we saw that the Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 win with Giancario Fishella  for his second consecutive year.

The Ford GT #67 Ganassi Racing Ford  had their problems during practice with a fire in one car and did not qualify because if that fire and damage but did manage to finish fourth at race time.  The #67 Ford GT suffered a pealty for speeding on pit road during an early driver change was brought home in eighth place.

Corvette is looking for their 100th win as the series heads to Monterey and Laguna Seca May 1st.

In Prototype was won by the Taylor brothers in their #10 Konica Minolta Corvette DP while not winning pole but besting the Pole sitter in DP Christian Fittipaldi into Turn 1 on the opening lap and went on to lead 75 laps, all but three laps to win.

In Prototype Challenge the JDC/Miller team who won the teams first victory at the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona, the longest race of the series, now win the shortest race in the series of 100 minutes. the #8 Starworks Motorsport Oreca FLM09 started by Alex Popov and finished with Renger van der Zande come in second place.

With so many pit lane penalties was there a problem with the teams setting pit lane speeds or a problem with the speed gun??

If you didn’t hear, Jerry Seinfeld sold some cars at auction and brought him the small sum of around 22 million for 11 cars.  Not bad for one auction!  How many of us have 12 cars to sell, yet alone drive.

See you at a race or around.

Drive Safe and DON’T TEXT AND DRIVE!