What a thrill!

Making it to Talladega for race day was one of the best times of my life, when the energy of the moment dominated my soul and lifted me to a heightened level of awareness. Talladega will forever live in my heart, a moment of time in my life when I was truly alive. The thrill of the sound of a stock car as it roars down the stretch is unforgettable. The smells of the track that at first might overwhelm some but in others it fills them with a memory that will always elicit memories that never die. The sight of the cars flying by at speeds that stiffen the heart and turn the blood cold, yet with a skill in most cases that is amazing to witness.

We stayed in a tent at Talladega, which is the way to take the event in, since you’re so close to the track. If you don’t mind roughing it a little bit, then bring a friend along who is like minded, and it could turn into a weekend both of you will never forget.

Going to another NASCAR event is my next big trip, maybe Bristol or MoSport International Speedway near Toronto, Canada. There are a few excellent choices, so it might take time for me to nail it down, but that’s part of the fun. If you haven’t been to a NASCAR event then you’re definitely missing out on an experience that might turn you into a NASCAR fanatic. There are few other sports that will fill you with an energy that you won’t forget, like witnessing a NASCAR race.

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Talladega Superspeedway Lives in My Mind

Ron Hornaday will be working with a few new team members next year

Kevin Harvick Inc has decided that Dave Fuge and Doug George will be part of their Truck Series program for 2010. Dave Fuge will be in charge of making sure the No. 33 Chevrolet of four-time Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday is ready to go before each race, while Doug George will be the new crew chief of the No. 2 Chevrolet for Kevin Harvick Inc. Rumours have been spreading like wildfire that the No. 2 Chevrolet will feature several Sprint Cup series drivers behind the wheel for 2010, which should make for a few interesting races, when one of them is behind the wheel.

Fuge is from Sumner, Washington, while Doug George is from Atwater, California, and Ernie Cope, crew chief for the No. 33 Nationwide Series program for KHI, hails from Tacoma, Washington. All three of the crew chiefs of KHI will therefore be from the west coast of America, along with Kevin Harvick himself, general manager for KHI, Rick Carelli, and Ron Hornaday himself.

Dave and Doug have proven skills and experience in the Trucking Series which will definitely help the team and bring much needed experience and mental strength to the team. It will be interesting to see if the chemistry between these six west coast boys will work and the team will be even better in 2010, than they have done separately in their careers. In fact, Fuge brings the experience of a two-time Truck Series championship team owner he gained while working with Xpress Motorsports in 2002 and 2003, and the ability to manage drivers like Mike Bliss and Travis Kvapil.

All of these six men have achieved great things on the track and they’ll be looking to do even better together, which will make for an interesting year on the track and should give the other teams and drivers competing in NASCAR’s Trucking Series a little scare. The KHI team and members really only have one way to go and that’s up, so you can expect them to be competitive next year and maybe in the lead at the end of the season.

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Kevin Harvick Inc Hires New Team Members

Jenson Button stops by to pick up his trophy

It was definitely a year that will go down in the Formula One history books as unusual as Button started the year by coming out of the gate and taking hold of the championship by winning six of the first seven races of the year. At the same time Brawn GP became the first team to win the constructors’ title in the first year of its competing on the Formula One grid.

Button stepped up to the podium to grab his trophy with a light step and a smile on his face and immediately located for his name on the trophy. This must have be an amazing day for Button who has been a part of racing his whole life, since he first got behind the wheel of a go cart at the age of eight he has been dreaming of this day and now he has fulfilled his dreams. At the start of the season, they weren’t even sure if he would be able to race in 2009 and if he would make it to the first race. Now, he’s the 2009 Formula One World Champion and sitting on top of the world, baby!

Ross Brawn, leader of team Brawn was there to take the constructors’ trophy in hand, and he’ll be at the reigns of the team again in 2010. He stepped before the cameras to tell the world what a great year it has been for the team and that if you had asked him before the year started if he would be where he is now, he would have checked your temperature. He thanked everyone for attending and his team for the year they had and then stepped back to let others take the limelight.
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Jenson Stops in to Pick up the Hardware

FIM officials were in Geneva though, talking with Dorna Sports and the MSMA about changes to the maximum engine capacity of the MotoGP class to 1000 cc for the up coming 2010 MotoGP season. For next year a limit of 4 cylinders will also be added to the rules and regulations, along with a maximum cylinder bore measurement of 81 mm. This gives manufacturers the base information they need to get to work on getting new bikes ready for the 2010 MotoGP season. There were a few minor change announced but the particulars on these changes have yet to be announced.

These are the basics of the rules and regulations changes that the teams will have to deal with at the beginning of the 2010 MotoGP season and they won’t actually receive their hard copies of the new changes until the beginning of the season. There are still two meetings scheduled to figure out the rest of the changes and specifications of the changes made for the new class.

These changes are going to make the 2010 MotoGP season a different one and should add a little more excitement to the action on the tracks. Seeing 1000 cc bikes on the track is going to make watching a lot more fun because of the power that these bikes have and should give the riders something to keep them busy.

These changes won’t really make that much of a difference to the racers, but they’ll mean lots of testing and tweaking of the new engines and bikes before the season begins. Valentino Rossi will of course be back and you can expect him to be the racer that we all expect to come through in the end, but with so many racers that are competitive, it could be the year that one of the other racers actually beats Rossi once the final results for the year are in.

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The MotoGP will have 1000 cc sportbikes on the menu next year

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MotoGP Rule Changes for 2010

NASCAR has been making changes to the tickets is sells

For many managers and operational directors at the venues of NASCAR, this means examing all aspects of their business, from the price you pay when you buy a ticket to the size of the seat you’ll be sitting upon next season. All of the managers that operate NASCAR’s venues have seen a decrease in the numbers of people in the seats for each race and with the deepening financial crisis in the industry; they’ll have to look at innovative ways to increase their financial bottom line.

Making decisions is a tough business in NASCAR, but somebody has to do it because sitting around and waiting for things to change, just isn’t going to work. NASCAR hasn’t been immune to the financial problems of the world and they have been looking at various ways to increase profits and the number of fans in their seats. They started by taking hundreds of thousands of their tickets and putting a different price on them and they have even taken some of the tickets that they had previously bundled together and created new packages to build interest in their fan base. They have made some of the more expensive seats wider to provide an enhanced level of comfort for fans paying more for their seats, and have been looking at other ways to improve the value of their tickets for their fans.

They have seen an increase of new fans interested in their new ticket prices and packages and this is a good thing that they were hoping to see. In fact, they have seen that most of their new ticket packages and prices have been bought by people that will be coming to a NASCAR race for the first time in 2010.

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New Ticket Prices and Bundles for 2010

Formula one will use a different point system next year

The new system is pretty simple to understand. The race winner for each competition will receive 25 points for the win, with 20 and 15 being awarded for second and third places in their turn. The next seven places will receive 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, 2, and 1 points for their finishing in their respective spots during a race. This will take the place of the current set up for points that saw drives score, 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, 2, and 1 point respectively.

The F1 Commission also decided that the Brawn team will be allowed to make a change to their chassis name to Mercedes for the 2010 Formula One season, but Brawn will continue to receive payment based on their old name. This was allowed because of the long history of Mercedes-Benz has with Formula One and their decades of commitment to the sport.

While the Commission was at work they also took care of putting forward a number of further changes that they would like to see to Formula One next season. The changes they proposed were to the sporting and technical side of Formula One, but these changes have yet to be stated and need to go before the WMSC for final approval, which should be on Friday.
What we do know is that they apparently have strong support for the changes and the Sporting Working Group, a smaller sub-committee of the F1 Commission that is composed of FIA and F1 team members, us leading the charge to implement the changes proposed, which they hope will improve the level of entertainment for the fans coming to the races. We have also heard that FIA and FOM will be working together to increase the communication level and promotion of the Formula One championship for the media and its worldwide fan base.

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A Different Formula One in 2010

Valentino Rossi is busy behind the wheel of a racing car

What kind of competition will Rossi be for racers who have spent the majority of their racing careers racing four-wheeled vehicles? Expect Rossi to hold his own no matter the vehicle he’s driving, it’s really about reflexes and mental acuity, and a host of other qualities that make Valentino a champion racer. Just to be sure someone asked Ford racer Hirvonen about the level of competition that he was expecting from Valentino when he gets him on the track. Hirvonen, who has raced on the type of track that he and Rossi are about to race on, stated that he expects Rossi to be a difficult challenge. Certainly, Rossi will be a racer he’ll remember racing after his racing days end, after all, how many nine-time MotoGP Champions to do get to race in your career? In fact, when you take a look at the racing credentials of the participants, you’ll see that their all talented racers and it should be one hell of a race. Rossi is just having fun, so anything is possible, but don’t expect him to take too many chances. He still has to start training for the 2010 MotoGP season in a few weeks and we wouldn’t want anything to derail the start year when he wins his tenth Premier Class MotoGP title, would we now?

Rossi isn’t the other off season sportbike racer busy behind the wheel of a four-wheeled race car as Mattia Pasini, Andrea Iannone, Andrea Dovizioso, and Loris Reggiani will be competing in the Yokohama Superbikers Drifting contest. This time they’ll be taking Ford Mustangs prepared by Gandin Motors and wearing Yokohama tires around the track as they unleash the raw power of American muscle.

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Valentino Rossi Racing Four-Wheeled Style

Rubens was competing against Felipe Massa on a different stage

Felipe was able to cross the finish line after a total of 644 laps and about 11 hours of continuous racing, with the help of his team mates Lucas di Grassi and Julio Campos. Lucas di Grassi is a tester for the Renault Formula One team and Julio Campos is a Stock Car Lights racer. In combination with his win last week and the birth of his new son Felipinho Massa early this week, he has had a really great two weeks and is probably wondering what is next for him. Felipe did take the time to dedicate his wins and future to his new son and told the world how much he loves his new son in enough ways to get a smile from all on hand.

The win at Granja Viana was is actually his second; he also won this race in the 1997 inaugural race, at the young age of sixteen. This year second place was claimed by former Toyota F1 racer Ricardo Zonta, while Rubens Barricello finished third this year. This win must feel pretty good for Massa, after missing the final eight races of the 2009 Formula One season, and helps to get him ready to try to win it all during the up coming 2010 Formula One season.

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Felipe Massa Racing Again

Jimmie was kind of upstaged by Mark at the Champion's Week ceremony

Mark stepped to the stage and let his charisma and understanding of life and NASCAR come out in words that sparked energy in the crowd and stole the show from Jimmie Johnson. Listening to Mark’s words had me a little misty around the eyes and made me think of other racers who hadn’t quite been able to win it all during their racing careers.

The week long celebration begins on Monday as Jimmie Johnson and his wife Chandra will handing out about $1 million in donations to various schools around California, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, and giving something back to their fans.

On Tuesday Jimmie will show up at the Auto Club Speedway to have breakfast with and answer and ask a few questions with about 700 fans and friends.

Wednesday Jimmie is scheduled to take part in a photo shoot as he travels around to various spots along the Las Vegas strip. Jimmie will then spend a little quality time with the other racers he was competing against during the year and I bet he can expect a little fun pay back for his four years of making them second best.

On Thursday Champion’s Week heads to the real celebration and the official crowning of Jimmie Johnson as a four time Sprint Cup Series Champion. They’ll be having a parade where Jimmie’s fans can watch him come down the street and wave as he heads toward a strip where they’ll be a few burn outs planned, before they head over to have lunch.

On Friday they’ll bring the affair to its pinnacle with the annual Sprint Cup Series awards show at the Wynn Las Vegas and this is when the party will reach its peak and they’ll start to head off to their private parties.

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Jimmie Johnson at Champion’s Week

You can race as Casey Stoner in the newest MotoGP video game

Pulling their chairs up to the screen and turning on the game, they quickly discovered that they could race as any of the current racers competing in the MotoGP and a total of 17 circuits were available for them to race on and the newest video game even has a new feature for this year, an all new Arcade mode. In this mode they were able to take part in different types of race challenges, before giving the Career mode a try. In this mode you can compete in all of the races and manage your team as you try to build up your reputation as a two-wheeled racer both on and off the track. They were even told that when the game releases later in the year, players would be able to access free downloadable content from the real 2010 MotoGP season as it unfolds in real time, and keep their virtual 2010 season up to date with the happenings in the real season. You’ll even be able to compete in the different classes of the MotoGP, the 125 cc, 250 cc, and even the Premier class, and take your bike online to compete around the world against the best virtual two-wheeled racers on the planet. This game will be realised later in 2010, probably about March and is being developed by Monumental Games and published by Capcom, and should be a riot for any fan of the MotoGP.

In other news, the Moto2 prototype bike of Monster Tech3 is being tested for the up coming 2010 MotoGP season, and apparently the first tests have been going pretty good for the team and they expect to compete for the 2010 MotoGP title. French rider Florian Marino was testing the bike this week, before the real racer Raffaele de Rosa gets on the bike later in the week in Valencia.

The testing of the bike went pretty well and they ran some pretty good times, despite just taking the bike through its first test run, and if they can get it running a little better, this sportbike might have enough speed to compete. Of course tests don’t always tell you everything you need to know about a bike and its ability to run fast and win. The bike will have to be tested under all different weather conditions and running conditions yet, but so far, things are looking good for the team.

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MotoGP 2010 is a Virtual Adventure