It would, of course, be illustrative if the ACO would just publish it, the idiots.

And Ferrari were...marginally best over that period, on average finishing position. But if you're looking at average performance Toyota ran away with Bahrain in a way Ferrari never managed in that period. And Peugeot were close to both of them. I doubt the Ferrari BoP is as bad as they think.

Caught up to the last 20 minutes of Imola. Commentators were doing a by-team retrospective and were talking about how Ferrari had the worst BoP as champions. Except...that's not how we're told it works. The performance part is supposed to be last 3 races, or maybe best 2 of last 3 races.

(a small amount of research suggests: probably actually Zhiqiang Zhang, or if you want somebody who's name is written in Latin script, Eric Zitza).

I think winning the championship for my most useless thought today has to be "Xavier Knauf must be the racing driver with the highest mean scrabble score per letter of name".

Of course Percy didn't include the English-speaking junior series, and if you add them in both of the weekends without a meeting on get filled in...

The ACO says their plan to launch the next generation of LMP2 in 2028 is still on. They’ll weigh in at 950 kilograms and 563 horsepower (or 420 kilowatts, for the modern sophisticate), driven by a Gibson 3.4-literally twin turbo V6. Expanding from one OEM to two — ORECA and Ligier — is a big step, as it’ll make them compete on price.

Autocorrect rides again!
(also they're not going from one supplier to two, they're going from four suppliers to two, in theory, it's just nobody ever uses any of the chassis except the Oreca)

"Attention all teams, attention all teams, this is race control..."

Well, not this time apparently but Elkins was generally pretty good at running a Formula E race so I'd regard this as a pretty good get for IndyCar even if that's not his role this time.

the car is 2 Bronze 2 Silver which I interpret as 2 broke 2 hire Golds/Platinums...

I usually call this award or its equivalent in other championships the "should have qualified better" trophy

E-I that looks like a very English car for a team which is 100% Belgian.

there's the other good thing that everything's not being hurriedly thrown together at the last minute unlike certain previous generations I might name

Well the demo Gen4 livery is excellent anyway. I'm worried by Gen4, which I think will struggle to actually pass, but it does have some positive signs:
-switch to slick/wet tyres
-low downforce/high downforce kits for race/qualifying at least shows signs they're aware of the problem

📆 Alors oui, le mois d'avril a été calme en monoplace. Mais désormais à partir de ce weekend, on va ENCHAÎNER jusqu'au 5 juillet 🔥 !

Et jusqu'à fin septembre, il y a seulement deux weekends sans F2/F3/FREC/EC3/SFL/F4 France/Italie/E4/F1A ! ON VA SE RÉGALER !

I think if you asked me which tracks generally produce the most entertainment in the US I'd say CotA, Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta, none of which IndyCar shows up to.

some of the issue there is that a lot of IndyCar's tracks are...bad. You can't really pass at most of the street tracks and many of them have the traditional issue of any accident causing a prolonged intervention. IMS-road sucks. Barber is middling. They keep crashing at Laguna Seca for some reason.

"It's like I always say: if you haven't signed too many drivers, you don't have enough"

tbh this article mostly reads like they interviewed Zak Brown and, being the marketing expert he is, managed to say "no news" in the most engaging way possible.

alternative option: record different versions of Also Sprach Zarathustra which hold the final chord for between 4 and 7 seconds or whatever the red light delay is these days.

in practice if you do this with a standing start I think it either gives away the point the lights go out or looks weird.

tbh one of the things I'm surprised about is that they can ever get the timing right. Imola has separate start and finish lines which I think may have been the issue here...

It's occurred to me this morning that I would never have believed that the idea of "race start music" would actually work and yet it absolutely does. Nobody tell any of the other organising bodies though I don't think they'd get it right.

Hydrogen-Powered Engine Corolla Unveiled! [ World's first full test run ] YouTube video by OYS

Toyota's hydrogen-ICE Corollas just sound like normal ICE cars pretty much so they'll probably be fine with that once they hear it. Assuming it happens, Toyota are racing hydrogen in small numbers now but not exactly competitively with petrol... www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dKj...

"the #33 corvette still has Nicky Catsburg in the locker" # this sounds like bullying to me

Switching to catching up on Imola and just got to Fleming's overtake for the lead in LMGT3. One of my favourite moves of the year so far (the GTs are definitely doing a more fun race than the Hypercars, though the Hypercar strategy is still interesting).

Feel like that's giving them too much credit tbh. There wasn't a master plan here, execs and market research types just put "more electrical energy" and "lighter" on the requirements document and didn't care that the combination was impossible.

The airport's next door, mate.

An accident in progress. The camera is looking downhill, which is the direction of travel through the Craners, a pair of fast-ish sweepers. Center shot a car is on the grass and another one is spinning in front of it. A large amount of smoke obscures the picture. Visible through it on the left is a front wing; whatever car it was attached to long gone.

Catching up on the final F4 race from Donington Park. I would say, in general, that the Craner Curves on lap 1 is not the time to be winging it.

surely it would be Not That Troublesome to find such a thing.

Well I mean one good reason would be that Indianapolis clashes with Canada rather than Monaco this year.

It's what you do when you've got no option but to take the next opportunity that comes along.