2008–09 A1 Grand Prix Season Puns

Does anybody who watched around 2008 remember this race being an important race of the season? I guess I cannot use hindsight since I'm watching the 2008 season through as if it was happening currently.

Does anyone remember this race being a "turning point" of sorts, only in the 5th race of the season?

Or was it significant because of Lewis' early performance?

The Wachowski's Speed Racer (2008) was a critical and commercial failure, but it has always had a special place in my heart. Sure it's campy, the effects are hit and miss in places, and the constant technicolor strobing could give an epileptic a seizure, but I felt it had heart and some really fun racing sequences.

This clip is an edit I did of the final race, the Grand Prix. The original clip was about 12 minutes long. I cut it down to 7:30 by removing most of the dialogue (I left in some of the VOs), and I felt there were a few unnecessary reaction shots and some action shots that just made an already chaotic scene more confusing that needed to go. When you watch the clip, it might not be easy to tell but I truly cut this thing to ribbons (as evidenced by this screenshot of the timeline).

Anyway, I think the final clip really tightened up an already crazily fast-paced scene and made it a little easier to follow. Hope you enjoy and please share any feedback!

link (fyi: this link will disappear in 14 days)

In the e-zone there was a space hopper race where the winner got to meet the F1 drivers. I'd never used a space hopper before, let alone race one.

A chubby young kid (me) bounced once, fell off backwards. Dusted myself off, bounced, fell off again. Stanced my legs around this rubber hopping beast, jumped forwards, then fell on my arse again. Rinse repeat for 100m infront of literally hundreds of adoring, laughing hysterically, fans.

As I stumbled and fell, the DJ played Benny Hill's 'Yakety Sax', only adding to the embarrassment. With a team of army men behind me, taking great pity on me, ensured I didn't fall backwards again by picking me up by the arms and physically bouncing me to the finish line.

On my final leg, one of the army blokes popped my well trained space hopper. A blessing in disguise that let me just run with it between my legs to the finish line.

Despite my best, tragically pathetic attempts, I never got to meet my heroes. But I've always wondered if anyone here saw/remembers that day? And this is the place to find someone that might've done...

Tony Kanaan will start from the pole in Sunday's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, his first on the tight 1.8-mile street circuit. Kanaan survived the new IndyCar Series qualifying for road and street circuits, making his way through three rounds to claim his ninth career pole.

The IndyCars were divided into two randomly drawn groups for Saturday's first practice session. The first round of qualifying started with these same groups each given 20 minutes of track time. The top six from each group graduated to a second round of qualifying, which lasted 15 minutes. The third, and final round of qualifying, involved the six fastest from the second session.

"It was tough," said Kanaan after qualifying at an average speed of 103.627 mph. "I think the IndyCar Series is so competitive now that you have to give everything. When I finished the qualifying run, I was exhausted."

Will Power recovered from a slow start on Friday when he had an ill-handling car, to an outside front row starting position. Power's best lap (104.288mph) from the second round of qualifying would have out him on the pole, but he was unable to duplicate that lap in the final round. "I was a little disappointed that we didn't get the pole considering the lap time we posted in the previous session, but I'm very happy to be on the front row."

After a long night at last weekend's Homestead season opener, Justin Wilson said, "This weekend has just been great from start to finish." Wilson (103.444 mph) will start third. "I would like to have gone a tenth (of a second) quicker and got the pole but that's racing and Tony (Kanaan) obviously put a good lap in."

Team Penske drivers Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe will start fourth and fifth, respectively, with both drivers noting the strenuous nature of competing in three rounds of qualifying. "It was a race," said Castroneves. "Everyone was pushing the limit. Obviously, I went as hard as anyone."

Briscoe said, "It was hard work with a long qualifying session and a lot of laps." Although he was happy to be in the Firestone Fast Six in his first road course race with Team Penske, Briscoe noted that he was "disappointed in the last ten minutes" when his car faded at the end.

Fading can be attributed to the car's handling, tire condition or in Kanaan's case, physical condition. Kanaan, who has competed in triathlon competition, said, "If you look at my suit, I'm all wet. I had to sweat to get this one done."

Rahal Letterman Racing driver Ryan H

As "swan songs" go, the last-ever Champ Car race at the 34th Annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach is shaping up to be a dandy!

A blend of veterans and youngsters are among the nine drivers transitioning to the IndyCar Series that are entered in the Long Beach race scheduled at 1 p.m. Sunday, April 20. The nine drivers will be running for IndyCar Series points at Long Beach.

Briton Justin Wilson and hot young American talent Graham Rahal will be driving for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. Wilson was runner-up to Champ Car Series king Sebastien Bourdais the past two seasons while Rahal, ranked fifth in the 2007 points chase, became the youngest driver in history to finish on a Champ Car podium when he was second at Houston last year.

"It's quite fitting that the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, which was the first Champ Car race for many of us, will be the last Champ Car event ever," Wilson said. "We're going to have fun there and look to score points and you can be sure there is going to be plenty of action."

KV Racing Technology will campaign cars wheeled by Will Power and Oriol Servia.

Power scored a pair of Champ Car wins in 2007 (Las Vegas, Toronto). Servia, a veteran of eight Champ Car seasons, put on perhaps the drive of the year here at Long Beach when, with virtually no seat time, he replaced the injured Paul Tracy in the Forsythe Racing entry and roared back from starting 14th to finish second!

Dale Coyne Racing will have a decided South American flavor with Brazilians Bruno Junqueira and Mario Moraes behind the wheel. Junqueira will be seeking his ninth career Champ Car win at Long Beach. Moraes was runner-up in the 2006 South American Formula Three Series in 2006.

"I'm very excited about competing in Long Beach for many reasons including a great chance to earn points," said Junqueira. "The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach is one of my favorite street tracks, with great crowds and weather. It will be very competitive."

Two Champ Car rookies will carry the Conquest Racing colors at Long Beach.

Franck Perera was the 2007 Atlantic Series Rookie of the Year, notching three wins and finishing second in points. Enrique Bernoldi, an ex-Formula One driver, competed most recently in the StockCar Brazil Series.

HVM Racing will return for one last battle at the beach with Venezuelan rookie Ernesto Viso, who has competed in the European GP2 Series for the past two years.

Canada's James Hinchcliffe has been given the honour of drivi

LEXINGTON, Ohio, Saturday, July 19, 2008 - Helio Castroneves put himself in the perfect position to chip away at the 63-point deficit in the IndyCar Series championship point standings. The series all-time leader in poles added No. 25 to his career tally during PEAK Motor Oil Pole Qualifying for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio presented by Westfield Insurance.

Castroneves advanced through the first two qualifying elimination rounds to the Firestone Fast Six for the 13th time in 14 IndyCar Series road/street races. In that session, he lapped the 2.258-mile, 13-turn circuit in 1 minute, 7.2480 seconds, 120.878 mph to earn his second consecutive pole of the season and his second consecutive pole at Mid-Ohio.

Castroneves' Team Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe qualified second with a best lap of 120.846 mph.

Marco Andretti and Justin Wilson will start on Row 2 followed by Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon. Dixon, the reigning race winner, holds the points lead over Castroneves.

PEAK MOTOR OIL POLE QUALFIYING NOTES:

• Helio Castroneves wins the PEAK Motor Oil Pole Award presented by AutoZone. It is his second pole of the season and the 25th of his career. Castroneves also won the pole last weekend at Nashville. Castroneves started first at Motegi earlier this season based on points.

• This is Castroneves' second consecutive pole at Mid-Ohio.

• Ryan Briscoe qualified second, his third front row start of the season. He won the pole at Watkins Glen and started third at Indianapolis.

• This is the third consecutive pole for Team Penske.

• This is the 36th time teammates will start 1-2 and the third time this season. Earlier this season, Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon qualified 1-2 at Kansas and Indianapolis. Team Penske teammates have qualified 1-2 13 times, most recently at Kentucky in 2006 when Castroneves won the pole and Sam Hornish Jr. started second.

• Marco Andretti qualified third, his third top-three start of the season.

• Justin Wilson qualified fourth. He has qualified in the top four at all three road/street events this season.

• Tony Kanaan qualified fifth. He is the only driver to participate in all 14 Firestone Fast Six sessions.

• Scott Dixon qualified sixth, his 10th consecutive top-10 start but the first time out of the top five since qualifying 13th at St. Petersburg.

• Bruno Junqueira qualified ninth, tying his best start of the season (Richmond).

PEAK MOTOR OIL POLE QUALIFYING QUOTES:

HELIO CASTRO

I have a 2008 Grand Prix that has a reduce engine power light I’ve searched through everything and have not been able to find a problem to fix I clean the throttlebody and I even change the gas pedal are there anything else that I could do to fix it thank you

The IndyCar Series starts the second half of the 2008 season on the road course at Watkins Glen this weekend. When the drivers take the green flag for 60 laps of competition on the 3.4-mile Grand Prix circuit, three months will have passed since most of the drivers have driven on a road or street circuit. Of the first nine races this season, eight were conducted on oval tracks. Eight races remain to decide the championship and five of those races will be on road or street circuits.

Drivers transitioning from the Champ Car World Series are expected to shine on road circuits but current point standings may keep them from being championship contenders. Graham Rahal won the race through the streets of St. Petersburg, earning Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing their first IndyCar Series victory but the rising star, and son of Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, is currently 17th in points.

Oriol Servia tops the other transitioning drivers in points, yet he resides in 9th place, 157 points behind series leader Scott Dixon.

With the latter half of the season favoring road course specialists, talented drivers like Servia have their work cut out for them. Servia has shown great promise on the ovals, finishing 6th at Milwaukee and 5th at Richmond, both difficult ovals. But to contend for the championship, Servia needs to score solid finishes on the ovals combined with some stellar work on the road circuits. While that's not out of the question, he'll also need the usual suspects to garner some bad luck.

The usual suspects, the eight drivers from Ganassi, Penske and Andretti Green Racing, occupy the top eight positions in the championship standings.

With three victories, Scott Dixon leads the championship standings by 43 points over Penske Racing's Helio Castroneves. In nine races, Dixon has failed to finish on the podium twice. He was fourth at Iowa.

Castroneves has not climbed the fence in 2008, his traditional victory celebration, yet he's shown consistency similar to Dixon, failing to finish outside the top five only once.

The Ganassi duo are the only drivers to earn multiple victories this season with Wheldon scoring a pair at Kansas and Iowa. Wheldon, third in the standings, is very much in the hunt for the championship, 52 points behind his teammate.

"There's still a long way to go in the championship," said Wheldon. "I've been around this business long enough to know now if you get on a roll, everything's great. But if you're not on that roll, it's really di

my 2008 pontiac grand prix has been saying it has reduced engine power i did a little research and ended up cleaning my throttle body and even bought a new gas pedal but none of them fixed the issue i have seen different forums and i found that lots of them say they jus changed the map sensor but i wondered it could be anything else?

*Quoted directly from Greg West's forum post*

https://forums.iracing.com/discussion/12780/season-1-2022-iracing-grand-prix-series-updates#latest

"Beginning with Season 1 2022, the iRacing Grand Prix series (iGPS) will see a few format updates in conjunction with the release of the Mercedes AMG F1 W12 E Performance car.  iGPS will feature 2 official series at the A license level running in the normal bi-hourly format and a third series that will run throughout the 2022 calendar year similar to the NASCAR iRacing Series.

The first of these series, iRacing Grand Prix Series Sprint - Fixed, will launch on the odd hours GMT and will feature 75 km sprint races utilizing custom competitive fixed setups for both qualifying and races.

The second series, iRacing Grand Prix Series, will launch on the even hours GMT and will have 150 km open setup races similar to the current format.

Lastly, the year-long series will feature full length, 305 km, open setup events with limited time slots closely following the 2022 real world schedule. Additional details for that series will be announced at a later date.

For the inaugural season of the new car, iRacing maintained the community submitted schedule with limited changes to the order of events. The schedule is as follows:

Week 1                    Silverstone Circuit - Grand Prix

Week 2                    Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps - Grand Prix

Week 3                    Suzuka International - Grand Prix

Week 4                    Red Bull Ring - Grand Prix

Week 5                    Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya - Grand Prix

Week 6                    Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari - Grand Prix

Week 7                    Hungaroring

Week 8                    Hockenheimring Baden-Wurttemberg - Grand Prix

Week 9                    Autodromo Nazionale Monza - Grand Prix

Week 10                  Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Week 11                  Nürburgring Grand Prix Strecke - Grand Prix

Week 12                  Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace - Grand Prix"

#Replay thread for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - FP1

So I did a bit of data mining from ergast.com F1 API and decided to check who was the fastest driver in Season 2021 Hamilton or Verstappen and the result surprised me. The data from ergast included each driver's fastest lap in GP, so I think why not, let's check who was the fastest driver in GP. I had to skip Austrian, British and Hungarian GP's because there was no data from the both drivers or the data was not usable.

So the difference was a stunning 38 milliseconds, and the winner was Max Verstappen.

edit: After adding Austrian and Hungarian GP fastest lap result the winner was Lewis Hamilton with still stunning 266 milliseconds!

What are your favorite bets?

SONOMA, Calif. -- Several IndyCar Series drivers hope their trip to California wine country this weekend will improve seasons that have trailed their expectations.

They include two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, who has been consistently strong but is still looking for his first win of 2008; Marco Andretti, in a two-year winless drought, and several former Champ Car World Series drivers who have struggled after migrating to the IndyCar Series this season.

The Champ Car drivers, in particular, are looking to rebound Sunday at the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma County because it's being held at Infineon Raceway, a curvy road course that was typical of the layouts used on the Champ Car circuit.

"I think we have got what it takes to be on the [top-three] podium this weekend if luck goes our way," said Will Power, a former Champ Car driver who won this year's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on the city's seaside street course.

And Power, along with Castroneves and his Penske Racing teammate Ryan Briscoe, were among the fastest drivers in practice Friday.

But the odds-on favorite is Scott Dixon, who has won six times this year -- including the Indy 500 -- and is poised to capture his second title for Target Chip Ganassi Racing.

The New Zealand native also is the defending winner at Infineon, where the drivers navigate a 12-turn, 2.25-mile course for 80 laps. Qualifying is today to set the race's 27-car starting grid.

Dixon holds a 78-point lead in the title standings over Castroneves with three races left. "I know I'm comfortable on a road course, but the bad news is he's [Dixon] also very comfortable on the road course," said Castroneves, who hasn't had a winless season since 1999.

Two other former series champions, Dixon teammate Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan of Andretti Green Racing, are a distant 138 points and 147 points behind Dixon, respectively. Kanaan also won at Infineon in 2005.

Andretti, Kanaan's teammate, scored his only IndyCar win at Infineon in 2006, when he was a 19-year-old rookie. But the son of former IndyCar driver Michael Andretti and grandson of former Indy 500 winner Mario Andretti hasn't seen Victory Lane since then.

At the time, Marco was the youngest driver ever to win a series event, but that record was broken in April by Graham Rahal, son of another former Indy 500 winner, Bobby Rahal.

Rahal, also 19, won his first series race on a street course in St. Petersburg, Fla., for Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing, which had

The championship showdown between Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves continued in Belle Isle, as the two faced off in qualifying for Sunday's Detroit Indy Grand Prix. At the end of an exciting Firestone Fast Six Shootout, Dixon put his No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing machine on the pole position, edging out his rival in the No. 3 Team Penske entry.

Dixon ran a 1:12.2861 lap time (103.090 mph) around the 14-turn, 2.07-mile Belle Isle course, good enough for his sixth pole of the year. Four of those brought wins in the respective races. The Kiwi's last top starting position at a road or street course came over a year ago at Infineon, a race that he also won.

"We pride ourselves on spending most of our time on strategy as a team," Dixon said. "I think we still have that in our pocket, and our position on the pit lane will definitely help during the race. Hopefully we can save some fuel and keep that going. There is going to be a lot of different people trying different strategies to improve their positions. A lot of these guys and girls, eight to 10 spots back, are going to try some pretty crazy things. We'll keep out mind focused on the race and try to go for the win."

Dixon didn't have a trouble-free weekend, though, as his Ganassi machine brushed the concrete walls on at least three occasions in practice, causing suspension damage. An eye must be kept on the championship, as Dixon holds a 43-point lead over Castroneves heading into Sunday's penultimate round. With his second IndyCar title in sight, he needs a trouble-free run tomorrow.

"It was tough, the track is definitely demanding. It was probably the only session I didn't bend the car, which was kind of nice, too," admitted Dixon. "For us, it was just putting a lap together."

Castroneves will start alongside Dixon, after setting a 1:12.7649 lap time (102.412 mph) in his Team Penske machine. The Brazilian said he knew he was going to be in the thick of the battle, but changes made to his car prior to the Fast Six Shootout didn't work out to his liking.

"We have a great car," Castroneves stated. "I knew this was going to be between Scott and I. Unfortunately, the times that you see out there does not represent what we think it is in all our times. But it will be very close between both of us.

"I was pushing as hard as I could. Second is not bad," he added, "actually, it's pretty good. And we're going to try to do everything we can to win the race tomorrow."

Oriol Servia put in the third quickest