After being released from his McLaren F1 contract in the middle of last week, Jaun Pablo Montoya is scheduled to take his first run in a stock car today (Monday 25th) during a test session at Talladega.

Reports suggest that his initial tests will be in an ARCA style stock car but that some Busch series and maybe even a Nextel Cup race are possible before the end of the 2006 season.

 Katherine Legge’s 180 mph crash during the later stages of yesterday’s Champ Car race at Road America was one of the most violent looking accidents I have ever witnessed. But in many ways that was a good thing. The visual ferocity of the images we saw on TV was in fact a testament to the safety of a modern race car that is designed to shed and dissipate energy away from the car. The shunts with little apparent damage to the car are invariably worse than the spectacular ones. A few years ago it would have been inconceivable that someone could walk away from an impact like we saw yesterday, the fact that Katherine Legge was able to calmly walk out of the medical center and wave to the crowd and conduct interviews afterwards was a massive relief all around. While we know the cars are safer than they have ever been we still can’t afford to take that safety for granted.

(Just as a side thought – just imagine how much press and TV coverage that crash would have got if it had been Danica Patrick in the car??)

While the race was overshadowed by the crash, it was a solid result for A.J. Allmendinger over a seemingly petulant champion-elect Sebastian Bourdais, who judging from a few post-race comments needs to learn the meaning of the phrase “that’s motor-racing.”

 I sat down to watch the NASCAR Nextel Cup race from Dover at the weekend expecting to watch a lot of tactical maneuvering by the ten teams in the Championship chase as they did everything possible to keep their guys in the top half of the field, even if it meant sacrificing a win.

What I didn’t expect to see is what we got for the last twenty laps, a full on honest to goodness motor race for the lead between tow of the top contenders. I can’t say I’m a particular fan of either Matt Kenseth or Jeff Burton, I count them as good solid racers but without that extra special “something” that makes you a great racer. This weekend my opinion of them was raised a couple of notches. I still don’t count either of them as championship material, but they could prove me wrong.

Congratulations to Jeff Burton on his win it was well deserved.

As for my own championship pick, Kasey Kane, being collected by the spinning Tony Stewart as probably knocked him out of the hunt, I know he is still mathematically in with a shout, but his body language as he sat waiting for his bent car to be repaired projected his resignation at a championship lost.

Happy Birthday today to ex-Formula One driver, sports car owner-driver and occasional rally driver Henri Pescarolo. (born 9/25/42)

and sports car racer and Speed TV analyst Dorsey Schroeder (born 9/25/52)

A quick round up of the news items from the last week that caught my eye but didn’t get a full post.

FORMULA ONE

• Veteran driver Oliver Panis retires from F1 for a second time as he steps away from his testing role with the Toyota team.
• The newly renamed Spyker MF1 team will roll out in a new livery for the remaining three GPs of the season, replacing the old Midland team’s red white and grey with orange to reflect the new Dutch ownership.
• The stars of this year’s GP2 series make their F1 debuts at the Silverstone test to impressive results.
• They may no longer be racing but Minardi continue to promote F1 with a demonstration run in Bulgaria and the return of their 2-seater F1 cars at Donington Park’s GP Live event.
• The highly impressive Sebastian Vettel has retained his seat as third driver for the Sauber-BMW team for the rest of the season.
• After a run of 20 years the Honda owned Suzuka circuit will no longer host the Japanese GP, from 2007 the event is being switched to rival Toyota’s Fuji circuit.

CHAMP CAR

• Mario Dominguez swtiches to his third team this season as he joins Rocketspsort.
• Christiano Da Matta is well on the road to recovery and SPEED TV reports that he is flying home to his house in Miami today.

ALMS

• Champ Car star Sebastian Bourdais joins the Panoz team for the Petit Le Mans event at Road Atlanta.

A1-GP

• Former F1 star turned TV commentator John Watson is to give the Irish A1-GP team car a run at Zandvoort.