Canadian Conspiracy Theory

The City of Montreal only allows the Ilse de Notre Dame to be used for racing twice a year. Normand Legault has an exclusive lease to promote the races. He signed a five-year extension to his lease last year, with some greasing of the city fathers, and it was apparently contingent on him getting NASCAR into town. No way was the F1 race going to get the axe, so ChampCar had to go. The Frances have been desparate to get into Canada, so this is their first foray into the great white north. I'm sure that Legault got a pretty good chunk of the Frances' political slush fund as well. Legault has had it in for ChampCar since he took over promotion too, not sure why.

 

That's interesting. It's a terrific indictment of the irrelevance of CART right now that they would rather have NASCAR running on an illogical circuit than cars bred for that type of racing. If I was that big of a NASCAR fan, I'd book that trip in a heartbeat. Still might. It could be fun to witness a typical NASCAR fan in Montreal. And spare me the posts about the demographics, etc. I've been to the races and I've seen the faces.

 

with Max slowing the cars down, Bernie doesn't want F1 and Cart share the same track or it can prove that Cart is faster than pinnacle of motorsport.

 

Since you mentioned it, I looked up on F1.com for the times of the 2004 quali and 2006 qualis to compared at Canada.

2004 - JB in the Honda at 1:12.341 (RS was faster, but DSQ because of brake ducts)
2006 - FA in the Renault at 1:14.726 in Q2, which is nearly 2.5 seconds slower with both on low fuel. Terrible.

Btw, the lap record is RB in the Ferrari at 1:13.622 in 2004. I guess they only consider lap times in the race.

I can't say I care much about ChampCar leaving and NASCAR coming in. I guess it will just let some of the F1 guys find another reason to bash the Cup cars (lap time comparos).

 

From
http://www.champcarworldseries.com/Results/SessionResults.asp?ID=1637

Best lap time is: 1:20.005
Do you know if this is low fuel run ?

I am not following Cart, but with new Panoz DP1 will it be possible for them to gain few seconds a lap ?

With F1's controlled tire and homologated engines - i think F1 will loose couple seconds, with all other cost reductions - i think they can be close with Cart in performance.

I think Cart is out of Max's jurisdiction and he can't screw them ?

 

From that website's history, it appears they first started gong to Montreal in 2002. da Matta seems to have set the fastest time back in 2002 from what I saw on the site: 1:18.959. The only driver every in ChampCar to go below a 19 in Montreal if what I saw was right.

 

Exactly, the new chassis could gain 1-2 secs a lap. It's slightly lighter and will have 50 or so more HP.

 

Take a look at the video from the F1 race in June and compare it against footage from an IndyCar event. They need three times the amount of stands to accomodate the number of spectators at the F1 race compared to IndyCar. Surely NASCAR can fill more seats than IndyCar in Montreal. It will be the most unique non-oval race on the calendar - with the largest number of spectators. Montreal is a fantastic city and the Jean Drapeau park and circuit are tops. If they do this it they will never look back until NASCAR is shunned by the masses.

 

It's sad that the difference between pinnacle of Motorsport and off the shelf chassy is 5.3 second currently and will likely to shrink.

I wounder what time MS can get in Champ car in Montreal given enought time to practice. We saw him make outstanding lap in Hungary Q2.

 

seems ya'll are missing the real conspiracy here. the french canadians are the only un- americanised populace on the continent. once they get all nascared up their national identity will be gone and they''ll join in the lock step to mediocrity. they'll be pouring over the border, taking all the waiter jobs in new york away from actors. then all the street signs in the northeast will be bi-lingual. soap and deodorant sales will plummet.

 

By the way, this has nothing to do with the irrelevance of Champ Car. The only thing this has to do with is Legault having a hair up his ass for Champ Car for some unknown reason. He's vindictive enough that he's now not allowing anyone that volunteered for the Champ Car race to come back for the F1 race.

 

Montreal doesn't look to me as a good place to run NASCAR.
Chicanes, hairpins, how the NASCAR cars are going to deal with that?
I hope that I am proven wrong, of course.

 

In actuality there IS no good place to run NASCAR. (maybe Russia?) They can't run those races far enough away from me but the carnage at the hairpin will be fantastic.

 

that is hilarious