SILLY SEASON pt.7 ?!?!

[indycool]

Could be structured that way, enemy-ace. I agree....a lot of them do it.

Dov, all I saw at the end of your post was a stray "v." I don't care to comment on your preferences and desires about my participation here.

[Dov]

I was talking about my previous post before that one...

[Dov]

From Champweb.net:

Rumor False: Tecate Leaving posted on 01-31 13:35

A rumor was beginning to spread on various message boards that Tecate has not re-signed with Adrian Fernandez for the 2004 racing season. That rumor is totally false. Tecate has resigned, and is even looking at an associate sponsorship role for a 2nd car.

[f1manoz]

*mod-hat on*

Let's stick to ChampCar/OWRS talk people. If you want to discuss IRL without it being DIRECTLY related to ChampCar, I suggest you visit the IRL forum.

Ben

[Dov]

It looks like Townsend Bell will race in the ALMS series if he can't find a seat in F1. From Autoweek.com: http://autoweek.com/cat_content.mv?p..._code=06672056

(08:30 Jan. 30, 2004)
America's Latest, Best Hope: With an eye on Formula One, Townsend Bell feverishly works the phones

By MARK VAUGHN

When we first showed up at his father-in-law’s house, where Townsend Bell is living while working day and night on the next big stage in his life, Bell was working the phone. He has been working the phone nonstop since the end of last year’s racing season, indeed, he’s been working it pretty much the last few years of his life. You could look at this as a pivotal point in Bell’s career, a make-it-or-break-it point where he either rises to Formula One or retreats to something like the ALMS forever, but Bell does this mad scrambling all the time. He has to.

Unless Bill Gates just dropped a huge pile of cash in his lap, Townsend Bell is probably working the phone right this very moment. To get an F1 ride takes either an obscene amount of money or a lot of talent, preferably both. If you have just the talent, you work the phones to get the money.

But this is not just about a guy trying to climb the racing career ladder. Townsend Bell was born and raised in California. He represents America’s first real hope for an F1 pilot to call its own in a decade. There hasn’t been anyone from our shores in the game since Michael Andretti’s difficult season in 1993. Granted, before that we had a good, long run with Eddie Cheever, though the Roman-raised Cheever was so European he almost qualified as an Italian. And before that, well... it’s been a long time.

Why America has no F1 representation is the stuff of letters columns and website chat rooms: national and corporate disinterest in any series except NASCAR; the well-publicized problems of open-wheel racing in America; the vast cultural gap between American bullrings and European road courses; it goes on and on. Log on to your favorite website now and start arguing.

But a number of racing purists see F1 as the pinnacle of automotive competition, the highest technology, the best engineers, the best drivers in the world, the greatest circuits, the best way to reach a worldwide market. If you are one of those, and if you have the corporate or other financial wherewithal to do something about it, chances are you’ve gotten a call from Townsend Bell.

And Bell knows not only how hard it is to get there, but how tenuous one’s position is upon arrival. When he got off the phone and we retired to the living room of this very nice house overlooking the ocean in Malibu, Bell pulled out an F1 yearbook from 1998 to make that point. He opened it to the annual group driver photo. “Look at this: Frentzen, Herbert, Villeneuve, all gone; Hill, well, he retired, but these people fade out of memory so quickly.”

He pulled out the 2001 book. “Heidfeld, struggling and probably out, Burti, Bernoldi, out, Mazzacane, out, Alesi, retired, Frentzen...”

He pulled out the 2002 book. “McNish, Salo, Yoong, de la Rosa, Wilson; that’s a pretty good little list of guys, some of them have even won races.” And all of them seemed promising at one point, perhaps even more promising than Townsend Bell seems now.

“It’s a tough business,” he says, more with scientific deduction than with any kind of resignation. “There is just no guarantee. And if you’re a guy in my position, you just have no leverage. Unless you have a pile of money, which I don’t... We’ll just have to wait a little longer.”

The question is how much longer the 28-year-old Bell can wait. By 28, you’re supposed to have it all figured out. Bell needs more of it lined up.

He came to the sport relatively late. He raced karts in 1987, ’88 and ’92, at ages 12, 13 and 17, then did a three-day Skip Barber course in 1996 at 21. It wasn’t until he was 22 that Bell got more or less serious about racing, an age when some drivers are already in F1. From then on he went into it full time: fourth place in the Formula Dodge Western Championship in 1997 followed by two years of the Barber Dodge Pro Series where he took third place in 1999.

The next two years he shined, second in Indy Lights in 2000 and a dominant, championship-winning Lights season in 2001. He did so well in Lights in ’01 that he drove two CART races for Pat Patrick that year, moving from 27th to 13th at the Lausitzring in Germany and then from 26th to 12th at CART’s race in England.

Those two CART drives landed him a seat with Patrick’s Visteon team for 2002. The ’02 season could have been his springboard to F1, following in the footsteps of Juan Pablo Montoya and Alex Zanardi. If he had simply driven well and finished near the top, F1 teams might have noticed. But Bell wanted too much too soon. He crashed at five of the first nine races in the first half of the season and four of them were pretty much his own fault. You could say he was an anxious rookie trying hard to win, which is what race car drivers are supposed to do. But better judgment and a little more patience would have served him well. He did have a fourth place at Portland, which he almost turned into a third, and a seventh at Laguna Seca.

So he was improving the whole time. Regardless, he was replaced in the Patrick car by Spaniard Oriol Servia at the Molson Indy Vancouver and his 2002 CART season was over by July.

A defeat in one area is just an opportunity in another. Bell got back on the phone, and back in a few more meeting rooms, and landed a ride for 2003 with the Arden International F3000 team, which had won the championship the year before. Bell had a respectable performance with Arden last year, starting 10 races, finishing as high as third and taking ninth in the championship. That led to tests with two F1 teams, BAR-Honda and Jaguar.

“The BAR test was just straight- line,” he said of the September run in France. “They needed someone to drive to verify their aerodynamic figures. It was on a runway, just a straight line, 185 mph, through a chicane, 90-degree right turn, back down the straight; it was not a real test.”

But he did it for almost 1000 miles and did it well.

Bell’s first test on a real road course came in November with Jaguar at the Valencia circuit in Spain. He was there with his Arden teammate Christian Klien and Jaguar’s lead driver Mark Webber. Though he is quick to point out that no two cars are ever set up the same on a test day, Bell’s lap times were four-tenths of a second behind Klien and five-tenths of a second behind Webber.

“In half a day, you cannot master an F1 car,” Bell said. “It takes a little time to improve. You learn.”

He was realistic about what might have come out of his Jaguar test.

“Today in Barcelona, BAR is a half- second ahead of Ferrari. What does that mean? Nothing, you don’t know. It means something when you get to [the season opener in] Melbourne.”

He did fine in the tests but wasn’t offered a ride just then, which isn’t to say he is out of the picture for a Jaguar test-driver contract.

“There was no illusion on my part that I was going for the seat. If I showed up for a Grand Prix tomorrow, would I be able to get the most out of the car? No. If I was going to be racing in 2004, I’d want to be testing for at least three or four months. The most realistic goal is testing.”

Does being an American help?

“I think it helps right now. It’s not a handicap, it’s a benefit, it’s novel. It’s the biggest market in the world. It would be incredible to be successful as an American. I’d be proud and humbled at the same time. [But] I don’t just want to be the fastest American. The goal is to be the best in the world.”

Another thing that might be in Bell’s favor is the FIA rule stipulating a team’s third-car driver must not have driven more than six F1 races in the past two years. Bell fits that bill perfectly, but Jaguar has until two weeks before Formula One’s Melbourne season opener to nominate its third driver. For now, Bell will have to wait a little longer.

[macdaddy]

...You should give the link and highlight the highlights?
That's alot of reading!

[BobbyB]

Dov,
Thanks for the update on Townsend. I've been hoping to hear something about his future plans since the seat at Jag went to Klien. Tumultuous times right now for him, for sure. Lets hope he lands something to further his career.

[BootsOntheSide]

Bit of a needless post there Dov - ChampCars and Townsend Bell have little in common right now.

Someone needs to help him on his F1 history. None of "McNish, Salo, Yoong, de la Rosa, Wilson" won races - Wilson didn't even race in 2002.

Townsend should've stuck to the Arden F3000 drive. He'd showed some potential considering his lack of European experience, and could've challenged for the title this year. On top of that, he left the team in the lurch by reneging on the contract, which won't help his reputation.

[Dov]

How is it a needless post when he (Bell) last raced in CC in 2002 and could in the future!? Hell, people still think that Villeneuve may return one day! Btw, this is the 'Silly Season' thread...isn't!?

[gi_gav]

Originally posted by BootsOntheSide
didn't even race in 2002.

Nissan World Series and Sebring 12hrs.

[BootsOntheSide]

I meant he didn't race in Formula 1. Apologies.

[gi_gav]

Just me being pedantic!

It's actually obvious that you meant F1 now that i look again!

Is there any chance of seeing Wilson in a Champcar anytime soon?

[Tailwind]

gi_gav you made me look up a word. I learn all kinds of things from you folks.

[SurfaceUnits]

Players won't be the sponsor for Forsythe racing.. We are hearing from a source that something else is up.

[zerO]

Originally posted by SurfaceUnits
Players won't be the sponsor for Forsythe racing.. We are hearing from a source that something else is up.

Please read the following very carefully:

The Players-Forsythe® Racing team will have an American brand name as the primary sponsor - Gerry Forsythe had stated it in October, November, December, and January - and most likely it will be Pizza Hut ?!?!

btw, see www.seventhgear.com "Rumors" dept. ?!

zerO

[BootsOntheSide]

One of my old uni flatmates didn't know the word pedantic either. Once I explained it to him, he used it regularly, usually to describe me.