Brands Hatch Race Over!

[mandretti39]

Sebastien Bourdais won the race and Bruno Junqueira came in second. Only info given by CART.com. You can click on the Live Timing and Scoring for the final running positions. They probably won't give much more away until after Saturday after the race is shown on CBS here in the states.

[Lee Janotta]

http://www.crash.net/news_detail.asp...5&language_id=

Tracy's engine blew. Too bad. But good for Bourdais.

[paul-collins]

You can also check LT&S commentary for a lap-by-lap script of what happened.

[botsquad]

Originally posted by Lee Janotta
http://www.crash.net/news_detail.asp...5&language_id=

Tracy's engine blew. Too bad. But good for Bourdais.

yes....that messed up a potential dual...but
it did seem that....

bordais had beaten tracy on fuel mileage..and
was able to crank a couple extra fast laps...before
tracy's engine let go.

[macdaddy]

Tracy didn't have the legs to overtake Bourdais anyway. His only hope was a mistake from the Frenchman, something that never happened. Bourdais was flawless.

I saw a waft of smoke from PT's car as he left his pitbox on the last round of stops. (Commentators didn't notice for another couple of laps). I was thinking gearbox... I wanted Tracy to join the four-in-a-row club, but at least it tightens up the points race.

I loved this track. Can't wait until they run the full circuit next year. (They will). I can understand now why Paddock Hill is so infamous. Although I must admit that I thought the race would involve alot more lapped traffic and alot more on-track passing for position.

Dominguez was tres-impressive. Again. And good to see Moreno make up a few spots from his starting position. Good run by Tags, I'd love to see Gentilozzi's team take a victory this season. Likewise Servia and Patrick. I noticed how Fernandez really poured it on at the end, after his unscheduled stop to replace the nosecone. Fastest lap.

Couldn't follow it from the camera coverage, but watching the leaderboard it seemed Monteiro had a rather eventful race. His position seemed to rise and fall with every lap. Can't seem to find the lap-by-lap chart on CART.com, because I'm curious.

Looking forward now to Germany. Their aero package on the superspeedway will be nearly identical to what they ran at Brands. Should be interesting.

[pirenzo]

Originally posted by Lee Janotta
http://www.crash.net/news_detail.asp...5&language_id=

Tracy's engine blew. Too bad. But good for Bourdais.

Gearbox actually.
But boy did it go in style!

[Jack Man]

Not a bad race overall. But i just hate it when everyone is in fuel conservation mode. Always a better race when the drivers are going full out. They even mentioned maybe some rule changes at the next race (mandatory pitstops) to help. Congatulations to Sebastien.

[Jay]

No, it wasn't that bad.

The TV coverage we got was the worst I've seen in ages though! We had Jeremy Shaw and some American guy calling the race and they just didn't know when to shut up. I think they discussed everything about Cart, except the race that was going on. They just spent the entire race blabbing on about Brands, Cart, the drivers, etc and pretty much overlooked everything that occured on track. They hardly even mentioned that there was a race going on.

The cameras were almost as bad...almost the entire race was from onboard cameras, which while they do show spectacular shots do not show any of the action. There were passes for position according to the timing screen, but they were never shown on TV. Instead, they'd show 50 replays of Manning getting it onto the gravel, Paul blowing his engine and Adrian's wing being clipped. They never even showed what happened to Alex Yoong! He ended up in the tires, but we never saw how it happened. And they seemed to think the best opportunity to take a TV break was when Carpentier was on the inside of Fernandez heading into the first corner.

The good news is, I believe the CBS broadcast is completely different. Different cameras, different commentators. Perhaps Cart intentionally made this coverage really really bad to encourage people to watch the CBS broadcast....I dont know. I just can't find any other explanation.

[BobbyB]

All I can say is... next year Mr. Pook better get the message. Accomodating the Brits on their "Bank Holiday" and shoving the race to Monday is the absolute worst thing CART could have done for TV coverage in their home market- North America. CART must dictate the terms on this issue, not the other way around. I still can't believe this Monday race was ever allowed to go forth! Blunders such as this certainly don't help a struggling race series.

[racer69]

On the other hand, maybe Brands said 'race monday or no race meeting'?

Jay - I agree about the coverage, we get that coverage all the time, it's shocking. At least we got to see the race close to live though.

[BobbyB]

Originally posted by racer69
On the other hand, maybe Brands said 'race monday or no race meeting'?

Then simply pass Brands by (or England if necessary), and look to another venue that is willing to play ball on Saturday or Sunday so it doesn't do harm to CART's reputation here in North America. This was BALDERDASH!

[DavidStHubbins]

Did anyone else find it boring? I switched off near the end - F1 has more overtaking than that. Maybe it will be better if they do the full circuit next time.

[Jay]

I found it mildly entertaining...but not really exciting. I think I found it more entertaining because I was very interested in the circuit and surroundings...if the race was at Laguna or Mid-Ohio I would have fallen asleep.

Anyway, hopefully next year, if I can make it, they'll be running on the GP circuit.

btw, look for Germany too be more 'exciting'...it'll look like an IRL race...lol. Just hope nobody gets hurt.

[Rob29]

Not sure how racing on monday affects TV audience 'across the pond' Race would have been at breakfast time due to the time difference anyway,would people get up early on a Sunday? It was originally scheduled for Rockingham -race Sunday,Monday in the event of rain.Crowd was small when it was on Saturday in 2001 & 2002-almost no major motorsport events take place on Saturdays nowdays in England..

[tanalised]

The Brands Indy circuit didn't help any on track action unless someones tyres were cold. Has the full circuit got any passing spots cause from what I saw on TV today the short track had none. I'm sure it would be great to watch live but as a tv spectacle it sucked

[manicmarshal]

Originally posted by BobbyB
All I can say is... next year Mr. Pook better get the message. Accomodating the Brits on their "Bank Holiday" and shoving the race to Monday is the absolute worst thing CART could have done for TV coverage in their home market- North America. CART must dictate the terms on this issue, not the other way around. I still can't believe this Monday race was ever allowed to go forth! Blunders such as this certainly don't help a struggling race series.

CART seemed to do plenty of dictating and not much communicating but those sort of issues would not interest you I am sure. The idea of bringing it to England was apparently to try and interest the British public, raising the profile of a struggling race series, in which case holding the race on our bank holiday makes perfect sense and not putting it on a sunday just to appease an armchair enthusiast back home. I was not impressed at all with the race and was thankful that our own championships which were providing support were worth watching and produced some excellent racing.

[Snapper Baz]

Your right, for some reason many of the happenings (and there wasn't that many) were missed-the camera man at Druids-who seemingly missed Yoong must have been asleep! Nobody seemed to be trying untill the last half hour which was a bit tiresome...the grid girls were not bad though!

[mac]

I think Brands is a lot like Laguna. Awesome track, nut very little in the way of passing spots. The GP circuit has a half chance at Hawthorne. It's the best on the track, but still pretty hard to pull one off, unless a biggish mistake is made.

[cybersdorf]

Originally posted by BobbyB
Then simply pass Brands by (or England if necessary), and look to another venue that is willing to play ball on Saturday or Sunday so it doesn't do harm to CART's reputation here in North America. This was BALDERDASH!

It's just too complex I guess.

[Snrub]

I taped it and only got to watch the first 1/3, then the tape ended. I'll watch the rest on saturday. There was a real problem with passing. They've got to address that if Brits are to see what CART is all about.

It was nice to see PT not win and Bourdais to finally have some success. However, I'm not glad that Junky is now within spitting distance of PT. The points do not reflect PT's dominance and Junky's mediocrity. Unfortunately he's been very consistant.

On CART's website they make it sound unlikely that they will race on the GP circuit due to the improvements required for safety.

[GP Racer]

I didn't get to see the Brands Hatch race yet, but it sounds as if it was rather dull. If thats the case, I have to say,(and I hate to!) that all of the races, besides maybe St. Pete, have been sleepers. I mean there has been very little action on the track, all the races seem to be won or lost on pit strategy or fuel strategy.

Mexico and Long Beach put me to sleep, and now you tell me the Brands race was not only dull, but the TV viewing was terrible! Geez, I don't even know if I should watch it!(I will)

I know I'm committing heresy here, but the Trans Am races that followed the CART race were full of action and good racing. Very exciting! So you can't blame the tracks.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Is there a competitive CART event coming up this year that is a must see?

[Jay]

You know, there were actually a number of passes for position during the race, but I don't think a single one of them was shown on the international (Jeremy 'There's a race going on?' Shaw).

see the lap chart:

http://www.champweb.net/phpstuff/index.php?id=1514