A memorable weekend

Missed Friday because I had to work. A delayed flight almost had us missing Saturday - but we got to the track in time for qualifying. For what we missed, what we saw was great. Congratulations are in order to BMW and Robert Kubica. I didn't realize it until we were heading back to the hotel and our driver pointed it out - this was BMW's first win since Nelson Piquet won in a Brabham-BMW at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 1982!

With all the focus on the young guns of Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton, it would have been easy to forget Kubica. Still, he was fast from his first time out and I was among those who felt his day would come in short order.

We had dinner Saturday night with some Panasonic Toyota F1 folks - interesting talk. Of course, "Mad" Max Mosley and the rigged vote of confidence was on the table, but more interesting were the thoughts of mechanics and engineers about today's Grand Prix machines.

The concensus around the table is that the success of today's F1 cars are in the hands of the areo guys and the drivers. With F1 regs effectively locking engine design, gearboxes and major chassis redesigns, its up to the "boffins" working with computers and in the wind tunnel to make any performance gains. Where gains used to be measured season-to-season in hundreths of a second at a time, today it's in the thousandths of a second. It's also the reason the cars this year have sprouted so many winglets, towers, and other such "jewelry." It's also why the cars are so sculpted, to the point that expelling the heat is a major issue.

Drivers, too, are much more important because the only way to get a gain of a thousandth of a second a lap to mean anything is to have a great driver get the best out of the car.

So what's the consensus of the Toyota folks about their car this year? Well, any gains they hoped to make from 2007 to 2008 were lost because they didn't develop their areo package as fully as other teams (read BMW, Williams). They also still have heat exhausting issues that stop them from developing the rear bodywork seen on McLaren and Ferrari. They are working flat out, though, to work on cooling and better areo performance.

It's ironic, but fitting when you are talking about F1, that rules meant to reduce costs and close the competition gap, have the opposite effect. As my dinner companions said, the budgets didn't go down; the dollars simply went from engine development to areo development and wind tunnel time.

Thanks to NASCAR's Nationwide racing going over, we got back to our hotel in time to see the end of the Indycar race at Texas (we're getting too old to party in downtown Montreal!). Second time in as many races that the race ended under yellow, but at least no big injuries.

By a roundabout way of celebrating the success of BMW, in the next few days I'm going to share a story told to me by motorsports writer Alan Henry over breakfast a couple of years back during a United States Grand Prix weekend when they were still coming to Indy. It's about Williams Grand Prix's first experiences with the Honda turbo and shows how far - maybe too far - F1 has gone from the "wild" days of the late 1970s and early 80s. Williams did run BMW engines at one point, BMW was a pioneer in developing turbos, and did win its first race, and both the Williams and BMW have similar paint schemes. Hey, I did say it was "roundabout," didn't I?

Video of the day - a theme is developing. I plan to post a video with, well, each post. They come from my youtube site . Today's looks back at a great IMSA race memory. Enjoy!