I have to say, for the mechanics not even knowing he was coming in until they saw him out the front of the garage, that was an incredible pit stop. It took them maybe 5 seconds to get out the garage, and it was still a 9 second stop. Impressive.

What?

Especially when you consider that at the point of impact NEITHER car were fully on the line. Long was inside of the line so had no need to whack into O’Connell. If he’d moved out to the line, and O’Connell hit him at that point? Sure. Penalise the Caddy.

I agree. That was what I was getting at when I said “Long created the incident, but O’Connell created the contact by not backing off”, so to me it is a racing incident also. I can’t see how anyone can blame either driver from that.

O’Connell has the inside. He was more than 50% alongside, so Long should have been smarter than to think that the Cadillac could disappear when trying to brake on the dirty side of the track.

I know it is a late apex corner, in which case why is Long drifting in from 150-200 feet early? Because he’s trying to force O’Connell behind him as a buffer to Parente. He never had the corner, O’Connell didn’t lose enough time by dropping a wheel at T4.

Pretty dumb of Long to turn in so massively early. I heard about the incident and had a completely different picture in mind. That is some weirdly excessive defending from Long, and if he was thinking more of the championship he should have let O’Connell go.

So he needs to go and shake the spotters hand? What about the woman who ran to him from the ambulance that he spooned over onto the ground as he ran away? Perhaps a handshake and a little bit of an apology is called for there too...

Is it just my eyes, or did that car just transform into a robot, fart, then transform back again?

I have long been of the opinion that Schumacher effectively died a long time ago, but just has enough life signs left that his wife is refusing to accept it and has the money and facilities to refuse to accept it and cling to the rapidly dwindling hope that he will come out of it.

There is, of course, the argument that Bernie will NOT be ousted by someone else, only by himself. So he may force them into announcing a new deal of such a length so he can walk away ‘on his own terms’ in a few months, citing the incompetence of the new management to keep his ‘Bernie knows all’ bullshit intact.

It doesn’t look badly designed, necessarily, but the absence of any mention of composites in relation to the survival cell strongly suggests it is not a carbon fibre and honeycomb structure, in which case it is just another steel framed car, which are massively outdated in terms of race car safety, and it really is…

Well, I’d certainly not want to go off track with it. For all the claims of a safety cell and crush structures, I’m not seeing much structure at all, never mind crushing.

It has a sand wheel? AWESOME. Can I play with it?

I fly an awful lot and Sacramento is my local airport. It is AMAZINGLY easy to fly in and out of. I have TSA Pre, but it’s main value at SMF is to stop me having to take my shoes off, really, because unless I fly at the 6am prime time I am avoiding a normal security line of maybe 10-15 people.

This is a great example of the much better driving standards in the UK than you see generally in the US. No, not the Cayenne, but the two other cars were very aware of what was going on (especially the blue... Seat? Polo?), neither over-reacted and both made enough room for the extra car in a timely manner. Good…

May I be the first (possibly of many) to say I’d be prepared to bet significant sums of someone else’s money that there is nothing wrong with the brakes. They didn’t ‘go out’ on a newish car like that. It ... just doesn’t happen. I suspect the fog of whatever the driver has been imbibing meant she stamped on the wrong…

No. It’s a known issue with twin engine prop planes, too. If one engine fails, the torque imbalance can cause the plane to bank sharply, which can cause a sideslip/stall and down you go.

Was anybody else yelling “Thumbs out, get your thumbs out the wheel dammit” when he was spinning? Or just me?

“Fuller, a storied racer with credentials in F1, IndyCar and NASCAR in addition to Pikes Peak”