Wheels: Monday Motorsports: Vettel, Johnson, Castroneves Score Weekend Racing Wins
Rogerio Barbosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Sebastian Vettel leading the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal on Sunday.Sebastian Vettel made easy work of the competition to win Sunday’s Formula One race in Montreal. Vettel’s victory extended his lead in the championship points standings over Kimi Raikkonen, who finished ninth after a trouble-plagued race. Fernando Alonso finished second and also moved ahead of Raikkonen in points. Lewis Hamilton was third.
Hamilton led three early laps, when Vettel made a pit stop. Otherwise, the race was all Vettel.
After the race, it was announced that a course worker had been killed during the event when a recovery vehicle removing a disabled car from the course ran him over.
In other racing news:
• Jimmie Johnson proved unstoppable Sunday in the Nascar Sprint Cup event at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania. Greg Biffle said he considered himself fortunate to finish second, 1.2 seconds behind. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was third and Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five.
It was Johnson’s 63rd career victory in the series, and helped him pad his lead in the points standings as he campaigns for a sixth championship. Only Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, with seven championships each, have won more titles.
• Helio Castroneves, known for climbing the fence between the race track and the grandstands after his victories, was up to his old routine again after winning Saturday’s IndyCar series Firestone 550 at Texas Motor Speedway.
It was first victory of the year for Castroneves, but his consistency through the eight races in the series so far this year has him atop the point standings, ahead of Marco Andretti, who came in fifth at Texas.
Ryan Hunter-Reay came in second Saturday, followed by Tony Kanaan and Ed Carpenter.
Jean Francois Monier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro Hybrid driven by Loïc Duval competes during the test day of the 90th Le Mans 24 hours endurance race.• Loïc Duval, driving an Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro, was fastest Sunday in a two-segment practice day at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France. The practice was a major tune-up for this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which will be held June 22-23.
Duval crashed in the morning session, but came back in the afternoon stint to post a stunningly fast time. He was three seconds faster than the next driver on the time sheets, Lucas di Grassi, who was also driving an Audi. Third quickest was Andre Lotterer in another Audi.
No further on-track activity is scheduled for the entries until the days immediately preceding the classic endurance event, which in 2013 is celebrating its 90th anniversary.
• The noted land speed racing pioneer Walt Arfons, who also developed jet-powered race cars as well as the parachutes needed to stop them, died June 4 at age 96 in an Akron, Ohio, hospital, a family member confirmed last week.
Arfons, who, along with half-brother Art and later with Craig Breedlove, traded many speed records in the 1950s and 1960s, was a self-taught engineer and inventor. His fascination with speed led him purchase a war surplus jet and try to adapt its power to land speed racing. It was a dangerous endeavor that resulted in many crashes, injuries and scrapes with death, but his so-called “Green Monster” cars became racing icons.
His perfection of jet engine use in racing also led him to adopt the now widely used drogue parachutes that safely stop drag racing machines.
Art Arfons, with whom Walt Arfons had a falling-out over safety concerns in their head-to-head duels, died in 2007. Walt’ son, Craig, was killed going for a speed record in a powerboat in 1989.
Wheels Blog: Coming Up Is Auto Racing’s Biggest Weekend of the Year
Alexander Klein/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A woman watches the first practice session at the Circuit de Monaco in Monte Carlo on Thursday.This weekend is auto racing’s biggest of the year. No major championship will be decided, but the weekend will see three classic events run in the United States and Europe. The action kicked off Thursday morning with practice in Monaco, which on Sunday will be the site of the sixth event of the year counting toward the Formula One World Drivers Championship.
On this side of the Atlantic, the 97th running of the Indianapolis 500 will be on Sunday, and that evening Nascar’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600, will be run at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. All three events will be televised.
NBC Sports, in the first year of its Formula One contract, is scheduling more than 19 hours of live broadcasts instead of having its announcers in an American studio talking over the Formula One feed. On the day of the race, the pre-event show will air on NBC Sports at 7 a.m.; the race itself will be on the NBC network at 7:30 a.m., the first time a Formula One event has been televised live on a major American TV network.
Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s boss, has demanded ultra-soft tires, turning this year’s championship into a guessing game over which tire compound to use. Sebastian Vettel of Germany, the three-time champion and his Renault-powered Red Bull car are in the lead with 89 points, with the Finnish Lotus-Renault driver Kimi Raikkonen in second at 85; Fernando Alonso, the Ferrari team leader from Spain is third with 72 points. Vettel and Alonso have each won two races, Raikkonen one. The event will consist of 78 laps of the 2.07-mile circuit for a total of 161.4 miles.
The Indianapolis 500, in its earlier years the dominant sporting event of the Memorial Day weekend in the United States, has declined in stature as a result of decades of internecine warfare among teams, organizers and sanctioning bodies, but still manages to produce a major spectacle for the more than 300,000 fans in attendance.
Ed Carpenter Jr., stepson of the former Indianapolis Motor Speedway president, Tony George, has the pole position with a qualifying time of 228.76 m.p.h. During qualifying, there was only a gap of 1.4 seconds a lap – or about five m.p.h. – between Carpenter and the last car in the 33-car field, driven by Katherine Legge.
ABC will be televising the 500 for the 49th consecutive year, beginning at noon. The race itself – 200 laps around the 2.5-mile oval – starts at 1 p.m.
Mike Mccarn/Associated Press Denny Hamlin after winning pole position for Sunday’s Nascar Sprint Cup series Coca-Cola 600 auto race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.Five hours later and about 600 miles to the southeast, the Coca-Cola 600, the day’s longest event, will get under way. Jimmie Johnson, the five-time Nascar champion and six-time winner of events at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, is as usual one of the favorites. Whereas passing at Monte Carlo will be difficult on the narrow city streets, passing at Charlotte is something else: the 1979 Nascar event holds the local record for passes – 59 lead changes in 400 laps.
The 600 will be shown on Fox, with preliminaries at 5:30 p.m. and the race beginning at 6 p.m.
Wheels Blog: Classic Car Show Season Kicks Off This Weekend in Rhinebeck
The trees are green, the birds are chirping and many area classic car enthusiasts are polishing their vintage rides for the annual Rhinebeck car show and swap meet, considered by many to be the beginning of show season. The show, held at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, N.Y., will feature hot rods, customs, compacts and pickups on Saturday, with unmodified antique and classic cars (anything from 1988 back) taking the limelight on Sunday.
Registration to show cars is full, as is the sign-up for swap meet stalls, so there promises to be a full complement of antique and custom show cars present, as well as vendors selling everything from hubcaps to horn buttons. Categories in this year’s judging include vehicles like Model A Fords, Corvettes, foreign cars, motorcycles and military vehicles.
A number of classic car clubs will also have representatives there, including the Mid-Hudson Antique Automobile Club of America, the Red Hook A.A.C.A., Early Ford V-8 Club of America, the Woodstock Motor Club, the Orange County Antique Automobile Club and the Hudson Valley Region Model A Restorers Club. The clubs work as a coalition – going by the name of the Hudson River Valley Antique Auto Association – to put on the Rhinebeck show each year.
The swap meet opens on Friday. The show will be open from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. As it has for decades, the event will be held rain or shine. Admission for spectators is $10; children 12 and under get in for free.