2010 Ricardipus Racing Awards

Once again, in what is becoming an annual tradition around here, I give you:

The Third Annual Ricardipus Racing Awards!

[cue sounds of crickets chiriping]

Well, these may not be as exciting as the official series awards, but in late August I again trekked out to Mosport International Raceway for the 2010 edition of the American Le Mans Series race weekend, the Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport. History will record that the race was won by a rather speedy Porsche RS Spyder, at the hands of previous Mosport Trans-Am winner Klaus Graf and 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans champion Romain Dumas, on loan from the factory Audi team, more or less.

But, once again, the Ricardipus awards are emphatically not about the race winners - they're about silly things not related in any way to the podium.

So - here we go:

Loudest Vehicle: #3 and #4 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R (tie). The two 'vettes rumbled their way to a win in this category, for the third year running. Nothing else came close, although the Lotus and one of the Porsches from the World Challenge race earlier in the year would have given them a run for their money.


The noisy end of the Corvette.

Friendliest Drivers: Patrón Highcroft Racing - Simon Pagenaud, Marino Franchitti, David Brabham. Truth be told, most ALMS drivers are pretty friendly, but this crew just edged the competition slightly (Romain Dumas from the Cytosport team losing a point or two for talking on his phone a lot). Pagenaud was a co-winner of last year's "Most Cheerful-Looking Driver" award, so this is kind of a double for him. Honourable mention to Paul, Lord Drayson for being generally friendly, cheerful and a lot more available than your average member of the British Peerage.


Brabham (foreground) also wins for "silliest sunglasses", in a tie with series rookie Frankie Montecalvo.

Best Livery Featuring Teeth and Mermaids: Green Earth Team Gunnar. In a surprising development, there was only one entrant in this class, which replaces last year's "Nicest Paint Highlights" category, ably taken then by Melanie Snow's pink-detailed Porsche.


It's also got seashells and fish on it.

Silliest Doors: Drayson Racing Lola B09/60. Just edging out last year's winner, the attractively re-painted Dyson Racing Lola (see below), the Draysonmobile wins by virtue of its reflective silver window coatings - attractive, but undeniably silly.


Also the unofficial winner in the "looks like a space-ship" category.

Special Award: Best-looking Car That Tested on Friday, Crashed on Saturday, and Didn't Race on Sunday: #61 Risi Competizione Ferrari 430GT. Last year, they managed to crash the sister #62 in qualifying, but started the race after an all-night rebuild. This year, although the #62 raced, they weren't able to put Humpty Dumpty (below) back together again in time.


Fun trivia - the driver who crashed this car was Pierre Kaffer, who had trouble with the same turn in a Porsche two years earlier.

And, finally:

Special Award (Public Relations and Marketing category): Best Job of Re-Painting a Car in a Popular "Classic" Livery to Avoid Association with a Company that Just Flooded the Gulf of Mexico With Crude Oil: Dyson Racing. Last year's green-and-white BP livery mysteriously disappeared earlier in the season, in favour of the perennially-popular Castrol colours. The cognoscenti were not fooled - Castrol is, of course, a BP brand.


Great-looking vehicle, in any colour scheme.

So there you go. I'm slightly heartened by these awards being only marginally sillier than the ALMS's "Tightest Firesuit" and "Mr. Modesty" awards, which you can read about here. And, as always, you can see more of the race weekend by heading over to Flickr for the full set of photos.

See also:

2009 edition, featuring loud Corvettes, Gil de Ferran driving through the grass, and pink details on a Porsche.
2008 edition, with a smiley Aston Martin, some horrid day-glo yellow paint highlights, a Ferrari hiding behind a post, and a slightly bent Porsche.

Second Annual Ricardipus Racing Awards

One advantage of being settled in a state of more-or-less Status Quo is that it becomes very easy to recycle blog posts from one year ago. In the spirit of which, I give you the Second Annual Ricardipus Awards, for participants in the 2009 Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport. Once again I refer you, if you're actually interested in the race results that is, to the official document. For the record, the Patron Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-02a, piloted by drivers Scott Sharp and David Brabham, won outright, and in the next class down, the rather pretty Acura ARX-01b of Luis Diaz and Adrian Fernandez clinched the season championship.

But these awards aren't about the race winners. They're about other silly categories that I dreamed up last year, and maybe a few new ones to boot.

So, with no further ado, here they are:

Loudest Vehicle: #3 and #4 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R (tie). In a repeat of last year's performance, these two shook the ground when they went by, despite having significantly less horsepower than last year.

There was lots of local interest, with a GM plant nearby.

Honourable Mention: de Ferran Motorsports Acura ARX-02a. Although various other cars were nice and loud, this one gets the nod for a divine combination of engine noise and ridiculous backfires into turn three, all day long.

Simon Pagenaud, going really really fast.

Most Cheerful-Looking Drivers: Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud. An honourable mention goes to Gunnar van der Steur and Adam Pecorari, whose rather pretty car was eventually excluded (disqualified) for a technical infraction. They looked happy before the race, though.

They weren't smiling like this when they signed autographs for me...

Nicest Paint Highlights: Melanie Snow's #56 Porsche 911 GT3 from the GT3 Challenge support race. There really just isn't enough pink in car racing.

Melanie Snow is very fast, but Simona de Silvestro is even faster.

Friendliest Driver: Barrie, Ontario native Kyle Marcelli, who tore up the track in the IMSA Lites support races. I suspect it was the nice chat he had with my brother and I that inspired his performance.

He came second in this race, and first in the previous one.

Silliest Doors: Dyson Racing's Mazda-Powered Lola Coupes. These cars probably also win my awards for "Best Looking" and "Hardest to Photograph at Speed".

This car would have a bit of a crunch in the race.

Best Save: Gil de Ferran. Gil fell off turn two while leading the race, put his foot down, and drove around the corner through the grass. Most people would have spun and crashed. Olivier Beretta gets an honourable mention for doing exactly the same thing later in the race.

He's probably still doing well over 100 kph.

Special Award: best-looking car that spent last year in the shed: Robertson Racing's Mark VII Doran Ford GT-R. Last year, they blew up the engine in testing.

What a looker.

And, finally:

Best Performance Rebuilding a Car to Race on Sunday After the Driver Smashes it up on Saturday Afternoon: Risi Competizione. The team stayed up all night, rebuilding the left side of the car, which ultimately finished second in its class after starting from the very back of the grid.

Sleep? Who needs sleep?

So there you go. As before, lots more of this kind of thing over in the relevant Flickr set.

12 hours on Saturday

Question: Is it possible, being a member of a family of four, each with busy schedules, as well as being piled under a variety of different work assignments, to watch or otherwise pay attention to almost all of a 12-hour car race on television on a weekend?

A: Apparently yes, but it requires the use of multiple technologies.

And so the 57th running of the American Le Mans Series Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is over, having occupied most of Saturday's daylight hours and a good chunk of the night as well. And yes, by employing a complicated dance involving running up and down the stairs, laptop in hand for the live scoring and timing updates, and switching to internet radio feed when necessary (like, for example, when Speed TV inexplicably saw fit to go away from coverage for a couple of hours of NASCAR qualifying in the middle), I actually managed to stay in touch with almost all of the race.

Which, as it turned out, was epic. The new LMP1 class Acura prototypes were fast, but had a number of reliability issues resulting in them falling out of contention, whereas one class down in LMP2, last year's Lowe's Fernandez Acura ARX-01b was reliable, steady and fast, finishing first in its class and beating the pants off a couple of also-unreliable Mazda/Lola coupes fielded by Dyson Racing, who have switched from the Porsches they ran last year.

But the real drama was up in LMP1, a battle royal between the new Audi R15 and updated Peugeot 908 turbo-diesel monsters, with the veteran Audi crew of Dindo Capello, Allan McNish and "Mr. Le Mans" Tom Kristensen eventually prevailing.

And, as in previous years, down in the GT2 class there was another battle shaping up, with the slightly updated red Ferrari F430 eventually walking away from the Porsche teams, and the five-year-old Panoz Esperante fending off a late Porsche challenge to grab third in class.

It's the first time I've watched this race around what is essentially part of an airport in Florida, and it was hugely entertaining - very high cornering speeds, horrendously bumpy track, and most importantly, a good, solidly-contested event with no dirty business at all (although one of the Flying Lizard Porsches might disagree, having been slightly punted by the Panoz with an hour or so left to race). Congratulations also to the Robertson Racing Ford GT in its attractive new red-and-gray livery, which qualified a very respectable fifth in GT2, finally finishing in seventh after being collected in a collision partway through the race. A much better result than last year at Mosport, where the car unfortunately spent most of the time relaxing with its feet up.

And so, where does this leave me? Well, I did manage to get some work done on the laptop during all of this, and didn't totally abandon my family. Now Sunday's here, I've still got lots to do, the weather's a bit chilly for yard work, and because I wasn't in Florida yesterday I don't have a raftload of photos from the race to edit, like I did from the race in late August last year.

Next up: St. Petersburg, on April the fourth. I'm already planning my viewing strategy.