Happy Birthday today to Funny Car drag racer Cruz Pedregon (born 9/19/63)

and to Champ Car and former F1 driver Christano da Matta (born 9/19/73) who is apparently on the road to recovery following his recent testing accident. We wish him well and look forward to seeing him back behind the wheel in 2007.

Speed TV is reporting that discussions are taking place betweem tire supplier Bridgestone, the FIA and the eleven Formula One teams about the possible introduction of the “option tire” program that has been used in Champ Car for the last two seasons.

The option program means that Bridgestone (who will be F1’s monoply tire supplier from 2007 onwards) will bering two different compunds to the race  – one hard and one soft (usually marked with a red sidewall) – and that the teams must use both types during the race. This adds an element of strategy back into the team setups which would have been missing with a de-facto control tire.

Personally I think it’s a good idea, and would welcome it, but I think that F1 and the FIA need to focus a little more on car design to allow the cars to run closer together – if the other open-wheel series can get cars to run side-by-side (IRL) of nose to tail (GP2) then I’m sure that the “premier series” could learn a thing or two from them.

The fact that this tire option proposal is coming out of Champ Car, a series often derided by the F1 paddock, could be the first sign of a little common sense beraking out in the rarified air of Grand Prix racing.

Happy Birthday today to Giancarlo Minardi, (born 9/18/47) founder of F1’s prennial underdog team.

and to road course master, the multi-talented Boris Said, (born 9/18/62).

This week saw the announcement of a new $350M speedway complex to be built in the Mobile, AL area. According to a segment on Speed TV’s Wind Tunnel last night, investors for the project include Dale Earnhardt Jr. and other members of the Earnhardt family. It also appears that the facility will start off with a seating capacity of 70,000 which indicates that the owners must be pretty confident of landing some major series dates very quickly. Of course the Earnhardts are close to the France family, who control NASCAR, so a Nextel Cup date isn’t an impossibility.

Then I read at Crash.net that the facility will also include a “road course designed for single-seater racing, including Formula One.“

F1 !!

Now that is a big ambition. Yet The F1 power brokers have shown a recent preference for new purpose built tracks over the traditional natural terrain road courses, and the date for US Grand Prix at Indy is on a year by year basis at the moment – so who knows by the time this new facility opens in 2009 the US GP may yet have another home.

Seems my pick for the “dark horse” for NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Championship was not too far off the mark as Kevin Harvick dominated yesterday’s race with Pole, Most Laps Lead and a trip to Victory Lane. Yet a couple of question marks still hang over the #29 and if he can take it all the way.

Photo credit: Autostock

The first was an on-track move that can only be described as a “rookie move” in which he threaded the needle by pushing through a shrinking gap between two fellow chase contenders, rookie Denny Hamlin, and his own team mate Jeff Burton. Hamlin’s car was pushed up the track and Harvick had a serious “moment” but collected it all together and went on for the win. But it all could have so easily ended in bent sheet metal and three contenders wrecked. He was fast enough to have waited maybe one extra lap and could have easily passed both Hamlin and Burton without drama. As new Indy Car champion Sam Hornish proved last weekend, championships are won as much with patience as with outright speed.

The second question arose after the checkered flag fell and came to light in post race tech inspection. It seems the RCR teams, including Harvick, had been exploiting one of NASCAR’s infamous “gray areas” in the rule book (and more power to them for doing so, after all isn’t that what race engineering is all about) and had engineered a small performance advantage by managing the air pressure in the tires through the use of a laser cut “bleed off” on the wheel rims. This isn’t against the NASCAR rules, but RCR have been told not to show up with it next weekend. The question is, how long has RCR been running this before being “found out” and how much has it contributed to the late season run? I guess we will find out next week.

Harvick may now be at the top of the points standings, but I’m not sure how long he will stay there.