A surprising race in Melbourne

If you didn't watch the opening race of the F1 season, I feel bad for you. It was the most exciting race I've seen in a really long time, and Sebastian Vettel lived up to his 2010 F1 Champion title by taking first place and blowing everyone away in qualifying. Lewis Hamilton's second place victory was not as surprising (unfortunately) as Russian, Vitaly Petrov taking third place. This was the first podium victory of his career and it surely wasn't expected by many. All in all, while my main man Seb took first place, I was most impressed with Petrov! I'm excited to see how the rest of this season plays out. I can't wait for the April 10th race in Malaysia!

Ebisu Circuit

Ebisu Circuit in Japan is surrounded by the area of Fukushima, which was hit hard by Friday's earthquake and the town North of Ebisu was wiped out by the tsunami. Ebisu also faced a great amount of damage. The garages are sliding down the side of a cliff and even the track has some damage. Here's a link to an article about Ebisu with some pictures of the damage. Lets all pray for Japan!

Ebisu Circuit Article

A countless number...

of heart wrenching images of the devastating results of Friday's earthquake and tsunami in Japan have been circulating throughout the media. Many car manufacturers have stopped production to conserve electricity in a time of rolling blackouts and shortages. Since 80% of the Japanese cars sold in America are manufactured here, the US imports aren't really affected. However, with some companies like Nissan and Mitsubishi there are some parts that are imported from Japan so that may set some of the production back, but not a great deal. Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota plan to continue manufacturing by Wednesday. Suzuki and Honda are assessing the affect of operations and have not yet confirmed when they will begin production again. Overall the manufacturers were lucky enough to not suffer extensive damage under the intense circumstances.

Red Line Time Attack

I try to go to a car related event at least once a week whether it be an auto cross, car show, track day, or race event because they're usually a lot of fun and I get to see a lot of awesome cars in person. So this past Sunday, March 6, I went to the opening event of the Redline Time Attack series at Wilow Springs in Rosamond. This was the first time I had gone to a Redline Time Attack event outside of the AAA speedway in Fontana, CA, so I was looking forward to it. I've been to several of their events in the past and they were a lot of fun. Sometimes Paul Walker showed up with his right hand drive R34 Skyline. I had high hopes and expected a lot out of the event, especially with the hour and half drive it took just to get there. Unfortunately, since the event is now under new management a lot of my favorite teams were nowhere to be found, such as Sierra Sierra and Stoptech. The website claimed there would be wheel to wheel racing, but there was none. Overall, the new setup of Redline Time Attack gets a big thumbs down. I still had fun because I went with a big group of friends, but if I would have gone alone and specifically to see the cars and racing it would have been a big disappointment.I will check out the Redline Time Attack at AAA just to see if it was just because of the location that the event bombed, but I don't have high hopes for that event at this point. But if you want to see some of the cars at the event, check out the link below for Redline Time Attack's coverage of the event.
Redline Time Attack

Only 21 days...

Until the first practice of the 2011 Formula 1 season! Now I know this may make me sound crazy because on February 17th I said there was only 21 days left. But due to anti-government protesting in the Gulf Kingdom, the first race of the season was supposed to take place in Bahrain with practice Friday, March 11th, qualifying Saturday, March 12th, and the actual race on Sunday, March 13th. Now, the first race is going to be held in Melbourne, Australia March 25-27. The race had been in doubt because of the deadly uprisings, but it wasn't until February 21st that the plug was officially pulled. Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, current prince of Bahrain claimed that the priority of the nation is to overcome the tragedy and that they do want to hold the race at a later date. Bahrain has been on the F1 race set since 2004 but at this point there still has been no new date set. Hopefully everything will eventually settle down and a new date will be set, considering the Bahrain circuit is definitely one of my favorite and will be missed by many if there isn't a new date. More information regarding Bahrain to come as soon as there are any new announcements!