Currently watching the Grand Prix of Detroit on ABC. Several of the top runners are ex-F1 drivers: Sato, Ericsson, Rossi. They're always in the fight from a competitive standpoint.
Montoya ran in yesterday's IMSA prototype feature race at the same track and won.
Button is in Japan dominating their domestic GT series. Mark Webber cleaned up at LeMans last year.
A small thought jumped into my mind. Ex-F1 drivers seem to do well in other series. Formula-E, FIA GT, DTM, Supercar, etc. etc. Rally Car even, and that's about as polar opposite of road and track driving as one can get!
However, there is one series they can never seem to come to terms with; NASCAR. Any ex-F1 driver who has come to NASCAR or dabbled in a few races can't seem to make any appreciable progress or noteworthy finishes in the series. I wonder why that is?
Talking in terms of an individual or entity that had made it to the top or the leaders of the midfield, but suddenly could never reach those heights again. A few of my examples:
Jacques Villeneuve - Son of the legendary Gilles, he won the Indy 500, CART Title, Runner Up and then Champion in Formula One in the space of 3 years, then only scored a few podiums and a 24h Spa win since 1998.
Jordan F1 - Underdog championship contenders in 1999, floundered year after year afterwards while sponsors departed and the team was bought out in 2005 after financial troubles.
He use to have a video on youtube, seems it got deleted? anybody have the link?
Lance Reventlow was born on February 24th, 1936, as the son of Danish Count Kurt Reventlow and an American woman named Barbara Hutton. Mrs. Hutton was born the daughter of Edna, who herself was the daughter of Frank Woolworth, founder of a successful line of dimestores, who at his death was worth more than 800 million US dollars. Barbara inherited a third of his fortune and was one of the richest women in the entire country by the time of Lance's birth.
Lance was her only child and result of the 2nd of her seven (!) marriages. He would grow up with a plethora of influential stepfathers, most notably legendary Hollywood actor Cary Grant, followed by Igor Troubetzkoy (former ski racer and 1948 winner of the Targa Florio with Clemente Biondetti in a Ferrari 166), Porfirio Rubirosa (Dominican playboy, buddy-buddy with dictator Rafael Trujillo, drove the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice and almost entered a Formula 1 Grand Prix in 1955 with an outdated Ferrari 500) and Gottfried von Cramm (two time winner of the French Open and ranked #1 in the 1937 tennis rankings).
Oh, and Barbara Hutton also had an affair with aviation magnate Howard Hughes while he was engaged to Katharine Hepburn, and gladly told the press that she watched him masturbate after he couldn't get her to climax, as he repeatedly stopped her from pleasuring herself... well. That should tell you what kind of woman she was.
Igor Troubetzkoy especially would greatly inspire young Lance to take on motor racing himself. A much needed distraction, since he not only suffered from health problems throughout his childhood, but also was the center of a massive custodial battle that his mother ended up winning.
While starting out his racing career thanks to his family's fortune, he became acquainted with none other than then-Hollywood great James Dean. He was one of the last people to see him alive, as he had a coffee with Dean half an hour before he was killed in a tragic accident.
Lance himself would go on to be married twice, also to women that are not completely obscure – Jill St. John, best known for playing Bond girl Tiffany Case in the 1971 movie Diamonds Are Forever starring Sean Connery, and Cheryl Holdridge, who was an original cast member of The Mickey Mouse Club.
Anyway, moving on:
Reventlow would go on to fund, design and construct the Scarab, which was deemed to be
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> [2008 Season] was the first time in the history of Formula One that all teams used the same two drivers throughout the season
And during the 2008 Season Team Aguri only participated in 4 rounds.
There's an asterisk, of course, for that Sahara Force India became Racing Point Force India, but they are the "same" team and have the "same" constructor for most intents and purposes.
I think on a simple track like an oval it is easier to say with confidence that a lap in reverse would be identical to a forward lap. However, more complicated circuits like those in F1 are trickier to think about. Some tracks would have ridiculous challenges that don't exist in the forward direction - Spa's Eau Rouge or Monaco's tunnel have elevation and direction changes that are more easily managed in the conventional direction. Even a more simple corner like Monza's Parabolica would change from an opening corner into a tightening corner. Would any time lost at these kinds of corners be found elsewhere?
Formula One tracks are never run in reverse to my knowledge because they are designed to be safely driven in only one direction. In the WRC, stages are sometimes run in reverse and it has been remarked that, even though the road is the same, the change in direction makes it feel like a new stage. I have not seriously tried to analyse this data though due to the variability of WRC road conditions.
