WRROooooooowwww

Houston Grand Prix 2007. The American Le Mans series. Cool, actually innovative cars going ripshit fast for two hours and forty five minutes. The race was preceded by hours and hours of ancillary activities - celebrity go kart racing (predictably enough, a Shuttle pilot won), driver signings (I got my hat signed by all four Audi drivers) and more junior racing series races. Hubbie and I went for all three days and got pit passes for the Champ car race today.

Now, let me tell you what my problem with Champ car races - one company makes
all of the engines. Likewise, one company makes all of the chassis. Where's the innovation? No incentive exists to push technology further in races like these. Bah, humbug.

Give me the ALMS! Each team has a different ride using different technology. And the technology makes a huge difference. Audi runs a twelve cylinder diesel. (Diesel! In a race car! How cool!) Mazda has run a rotary Wankel engine in the past. Acura (Honda) just entered the series this year - and unfortunately they beat the Audi team. My boys - Dindo Capello & Allan McNish - came in third. The second Audi team came in something like fifth.

Anyway, I loved the races. Fun fun fun! Some pictures below:


The Audi drivers. From back to front - Allan McNish, Dindo Capello, Emanuele Pirro & Macro Werner.
The diesel Audi (aka the TDI) and the Acura. The Acura eventually won. Bastards. The TDI is eerily quiet - like a whisper compared to everything else out there. It reminded me of a ghost... gliding by on a whispery cloud of air. So cool.


The Corvettes were the meanest sounding machines. Meaner than the Panoz, who took the cake last year. Last year's Panoz still sounded cooler than the 'Vette - deeper, angier, more thuddy.

Pit lane as set up for the Le Mans series. See, the gas caps were on the wrong side of the car for the Houston race. They're on the correct side of the car for 24 hours of Le Mans... just not Houston. (Houston's place on the racing pecking order is fairly clear - WAY below the 24 hour races.) So the teams have these long arms to refuel the cars. Pretty cool, huh? And a nifty picture.