I almost danced for joy when I read the report on the Autosport website earlier today that Dario Franchitti is to return to IndyCar racing with Chip Ganassi’s team.

I never really understood his move to NASCAR and while I wished him the best, I am overjoyed to see that he is returning to open wheel racing.

So how about Juan Pablo Montoya coming back to run in a third Ganassi car? Or A.J. Allmendinger and Scott Speed in a Red Bull sponsored IRL team alongside a returning Sebastian Bourdais?.  – Ah…  I can only dream.

It seems I have landed a new gig as the the writer for a new comic book series to be based on the Disney-Pixar movie CARS.

This is the first time that Disney-Pixar has allowed anyone outside the studio to create original stories using their characters, and I’m looking forward to playing in their toy box.

And of course, I’ll be trying to sneak in as many motor sports references as possible as I go.

No official launch date yet, but it is most likely some time in early 2009.

Radiator Springs – here I come…

Last Thursday when I first heard of the passing of Phil Hill, the first American to win the F1 World Championship, I posted a quick note of appreciation on my personal blog, in which I said I’d write a fuller tribute later.

I’ve sat down to write that entry here on The Speed Blog at least three times over the weekend since, and never managed to get it to say what I wanted.  As usual in cases like this I went of and did some research, checking out Phil Hill’s official website, his wikipedia entry,  obituaries, a variety of F1 history sites, and pulled various reference books off my book case.  They all told the same basic story of dry facts about the man’s career, but little about the man himself.

Part way through the weekend I realized that my “memories” of Phil Hill were all retrocative, based on what I’d read or heard. I was only 3 years-old when we bacame World Champion, and I really didn’t become fully aware of Grand Prix racing till I was around 6 or 7. I recall that I did have a toy model of his famous shark-nose Ferrari and often raced it against my model Vanwalls. Lotus’s and others in my living room GPs. But that was about it.

Phil Hill is one of those icons that while being around during a large portion of my own life, is in some ways a figure from history. I never got to see him race, either in person, or on TV. His is a name I became familiar with through the printed word and photographs of an era I never knew.

Others can honor his memory and achievements better than I.

All I can add is rest in peace Mr. Hill – your place in auto-racing history will never be forgotten and every time I see a picture of you at speed in that beautiful Ferrari, it will always bring back some of my most cherished childhood memories.

So there I was transferring files for both the 2008 Driver Rankings and my own devised alternate F1 scoring scheme from my laptop to the family room iMac, updating them, and transferring them back to the laptop. It all seemed to go really smoothly.

Until I went to add in last weekend’s IRL results. – Sure I had two seperate files named “Alt-F1″ and “2008 Driver Rankings” but they both had the same content. Content that showed me the results of all this year’s Grands Prix – but nothing else.

Yes I’ve accidently overwritten and blown away all the race results and driver ranking calculations for the last seven months!!

So I guess the posted July rankings will be the last ones for this year…

The race that would become known as the United States Grand Prix was known for the first six years of its existence as simply “The Grand Prize.” The first race took place just over 100 years ago, on March 18th 1908,  in Savannah, GA, in front of a crowd of 5000 excited spectators. It was won by French driver Louis Wagner in a FIAT at an average speed of 65.11 mph. Wagner also holds the distinction of winning the first ever British GP

Louis Wagner crossing the finish line in Savannah to win the first American Grand Prize race.

After a year’s break the race returned to Savannah in 1910 and 1911 and on both occasions was won by American David L Bruce-Brown, first in a Benz and then in a FIAT by which time average speeds were up to 74 mph. The 1910 event holds the distinction of being the longest US GP on record with a race distance of 415.2 miles.

In 1912 the event was moved to a new home (starting what would become something of a tradition for the USGP over the next century) with the race taking place in Milwaukee. A FIAT once again lead the field, this time piloted by another American, Caleb Bragg. Two time defending champion Bruce-Brown was killed during practice for the event.

There was no 1913 race, and in 1914 the race for the Grand Prize moved to Santa Monica, CA where the streak of victories by home drivers continued with a win for Eddie Pullen in a Mercer.

1915 saw the first British winner of a US GP when Dario Resta took the win in a Peugeot. (He also went on to win the Indy 500 the following year.) This time race was held in the San Francisco area.

British driver Dario Resta – Winner of the 1915 American Grand Prize race

The race returned to Santa Monica in 1916 where Peugeot once again took the victory, this time with the car being shared by American drivers Howdy Wilcox and Johnny Aitken.

The 1916 event would be the last “Grand Prize” race and the US racing community would have to wait another 42 years before the arrival of the first true United States Grand Prix.