Having blogged before about the American racing I was managing to catch on TV recently it only seems right to report back on how it all went. The NASCAR Nationwide Series at Richmond and shown on MOTORS TV was really good and probably because in the last 60 odd laps or so there wasn't a yellow flag period at all. This meant that the drivers all had to make green flag pit stops, almost unheard of in NASCAR. The result was a real race to the finish which saw Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin neck and neck to the line and which Kurt won by half a cars length. Even my wife got mildly excited by the dash to the flag!

The Indycars at the Sao Paulo street circuit was also good until we had a spate of yellow flag restarts. I don't know why the Indycar officials insist on a side by side restart because they must be aware of the mayhem it will inevitably cause and it detracts from the racing. Anyway Will Power won again from Ryan Hunter-Reay and Takuma Sato. In a 26 car field there were only 7 American drivers. I don't much like the look of the cars either even though I know it's a response to Dan Wheldon's crash and the causes which led up to it. The Indianapolis 500 is next.

The GrandAm race at Homestead was one of the wettest races I've ever seen. The rain was torrential with flooding all around the circuit. Now I can remember being at Brands Hatch in 1982 for the final round of that year's World Endurance Championship which saw a titanic battle between the Rothsmans Porsches and the Martini Lancias in the pouring rain. I was also at the 2005 Silverstone LMES race which was a bit of a farce because of the weather and didn't really improve until at least three hours in. Homestead was a grim battle between the organisers determination and the weather's persistance and in the end the weather won as the race was red-flagged two thirds of the way in. There had been several long yellow flag periods as well. The drivers tried hard and the racing was quite good but, the 'rooster-tails' when cars went off were a sight to behold. The Suntrust Dallara might have hit the front at just the right time but I was quite pleased as they have the best colour scheme of all the DP's in my opinion.

I've also just watched all six hours of the Spa WEC race and thoroughly enjoyed that as well. The Audi diesels are still way ahead of all their petrol rivals and were destined to run out as winners and in fact did a whitewash, 1, 2, 3, 4. A bit of a surprise was the fact that the new for 2012 E-tron Quattro didn't take the win but the older Ultra with new boys Dumas, Duval and Gene on board did. The battles in LMP2 and GTE Pro were excellant with the GT top two being neck and neck for the last two laps and the Felbermayr Porsche 997 just beating the AF Corse Ferrari 458 by half a second. The commentary team were the Radio Le Mans duo of John Hindhaugh and Nick Damon and Graham Goodwin of Daily Sports Car (an excellant website) and thoroughly enjoyable and informative they were. The Le Mans test day and the race itself is next.

Remember, life doesn't always revolve around Formula One.