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If you have been checking my Photography page recently, you'll notice some new photos. Those are from my trip to Italy last year. Yes, it's been a while. Yes, I should have gotten around to editing them earlier, but Junior year took priority. 

For those unaware, Stanguellini was a small volume racing chassis manufacturer that sometimes did contract work for companies like Ferrari (same town of Modena). With incredible success in racing for the years they competed, along with a storied history in show races like the Mille Miglia They died out in the 70s under the volition of the founder, stating that he would rather close his company than water down his cars for the American market. 

Wow. Senior year started! My internship is over! In other news I just watched the Lime Rock Park Historical Festival 43! Pictures are up in the photography section. It was so much fun. The paddock was incredible, filled with classic Formula cars, IndyCars (as pictured), Group C and IMSA racers, and generally historic touring vehicles. It was incredibly entertaining to see the racecars much older than me being piloted by drivers much older than me on a track that is definitely much older than I am -- the sounds, the smells, the general experience was astoundingly different to every other motorsports event I had been to in the past. LRP does a great job of providing access to every single part of the track, so the views you can get are unparalleled -- battles on the straight, passes and people hanging around the outside, a far view of the first 4 corners and all the overtakes and incidents, the run up the hill, the downhill section, even standing over the track on a bridge. If I wasn't in love with racing before, I am now. I still really want an Alfa Romeo.

F1 is finally back and we are in Spa this week! Belgium has been getting a lot of flak recently due to the less-than-entertaining racing it has been producing the last few years (since the regulation change), and it has already lost its spot on the schedule to be consistently race at each year. Personally, I think Spa is by far one of the best tracks on the schedule, atmosphere and all, with it not only being a historic track but being incredibly technical and rewarding as well. I watched the F1 race at Spa in-person in 2019 (Leclerc's first race win) and it was an incredibly wonderful experience being at one of the great legacy tracks of the F1 era. This year's race was the opposite of interesting as it was rain delayed and then, as usual, a McLaren dominance show. Very boring. I wish Ferrari was actually a good team and could consistently perform. Leclerc started P3, Hamilton started P16. Hamilton was so apologetic to the team but the car itself looked nearly undriveable either way. Hamilton initiated another one of his insane comeback drives and made his way up to 7th, using his incredible expertise of wet-weather driving to make possibly the only on-track action occur at all. It's quite unfortunate that the series has decided to alternate Spa every other year, but with the smaller cars in the upcoming regulations, I hope to see better racing. Onto Hungary. And my internship!

Chevy finally won something in IndyCar this year, and they managed to sweep the whole podium in race one! Pato O'Ward came home in P1 in race one, with a long awaited win for him and the entire Chevy camp as the Hondas have absolutely been dominating this season, specifically the CGR and Andretti cars. Penske has been in the back of the pack for the majority of the reason but here at Iowa they really showed pace, coming home in race one in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place positions. While quite an impressive turnaround for race one, race two was the Alex Palou show yet again, with him coming through to win at the Iowa short oval. Palou has really had a big shift in oval form this season, winning the Indy 500 and the second Iowa race. A big shocker for me was David Malukas and Pato O'Ward in race two at the final restart, and the immense pace they both showed to the very end -- I can see Malukas scoring a win by the end of this season, as he came ever so slightly short at Iowa. I'm eagerly awaiting the road-course chaos at Arlington, and I hope to hear from you readers then!

I'm not going to sugarcoat the fact that it has been much, much longer than a minute since I wrote on here, so let me be clear that there is a lot I have missed talking with you guys about! Mainly, my model rocketry team did its first flights in competition, a huge accomplishment for me because of the work done from inception to completion. More on that in the portfolio section of the website! As the competition is complete now, I have some fun stories to talk about. In the testing of our reloadable solid motors, we ran into an issue where the upper sealing would cause the motor to undergo "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (i.e. the thrust from the motor would exit upward and detonate the ejection charge, thereby disassembling the entire lower section of the rocket) -- quite annoying, I have to say. In our testing, we wanted to see if it was possible to set up the motor in a way where the ejection charge wasn't usable at all. We placed a small, metal disk inside the motor casing in order to create a boundary between the ejection charge and the main motor area -- this disk, once the motor was ignited, was bent in half and cracked on ignition. This was a 1/20th of an inch thick piece of metal that was melted with barely any effort. Quite impressive, I must say. More on my rocket project in the Portfolio page. Along with that, there have been a ton of new motorsports events -- the IndyCar season is well underway (and actually halfway done) with Alex Palou absolutely running away with the championship lead. A rising favorite for me has been David Malukas, doing an incredibly consistent job in the AJ Foyt Racing car, and his social media presence is quite funny as well.  F1 has been F1 -- not personally a McLaren fan but Piastri is one heck of a driver, and his consistency weekend after weekend is incredible to see. Quite sad that Max is not doing well but that's not to say there isn't another team I like more that is doing worse... Ferrari. I also had my own race recently where (with 0 practice at all) I jumped in and finished P11/20 in a complex wet-dry race weekend. A lot of things I have missed, as already stated.

You'll all be seeing more out of me as summer is only a week or so in! Decently regular writing coming up, starting soon-ish. I know this blog post is in a lot of places at once, but each new post I will have written in a timely and organized manner about more specific topics. Hope to see you all again later this week!

The first two hours of the race being the longest green-flag period in Daytona history should be enough of a marker for how entertaining this race was going to be. Literally right after the commentators made that note (commentator's curse, perhaps) the turn one chaos began and really never stopped -- I guess removing LMP3 didn't really end any issues. The GTP cars were driving like they were the only people on track -- like usual -- and they were using some of the GTD/GTD Pro cars like walls and brakes -- like usual. 

I was mostly keeping track of the #21 Triarsi car as my racing coach -- Stevan McAleer -- was one of the drivers for them. They ran a great race showcasing the pace of the four drivers and how they played off of each other -- leading the race for a bit and holding near and in the top 5 of the GTD class for the majority of the race. A late pitstop forced the team out of the top 10, but due to a luckily timed safety period, the team were able to get the car into a competitive position. Until, of course, a GTP used them as a braking wall (the BMW fighting for the lead, no less) and they were forced back into the pits, this time for good, putting them last in class (as an obvious DNF due to them being out at 23hrs, though still P11). At least we had a Porsche 1-2!

Hold on -- can we talk about the Corvettes and the BMWs though?

Chaos, chaos, chaos! The lapped BMW working with the leading one to block the Pratt-Miller Corvette from passing and giving it bumper damage -- then, nearing the end of the race, the Corvettes work together to box the BMW and then pit him (with a gratuitous flipping-of-the-bird. of course). If there was any more cinema that the race could have, this would be it -- I would definitely be supporting the Corvettes in this situation, though I'm not sure how biased I would be here since those Corvettes are super cool, super quick, and also Jan Magnussen has made me love those Corvettes more than anything else ever.

Onto the future for IMSA this year -- Aston is joining with a non-hybrid, which, hot take, looks like its going to just be a Lamborghini situation where it is chronically 15 laps down and behind because that hybrid system is going to be dearly, dearly missed. Sebring will tell us -- can't wait to see my guys and gals at Triarsi show off their pace and hopefully get us a class win! Sebring is going to give us some awesome battles, just like Daytona.

I've been keeping up with the Dakar recently and, compared to last year (when I watched all the stage highlights, because I honestly can't sit through a live Dakar event when I have to skip through Rally2 in the bikes category every time I pull up a highlight), it has been HECTIC. With Audi out of the competition and Sainz switching to the more multi-car Ford, there was a lot more similarity in car performance field-wide -- and we had a hungry Sebastian Loeb fighting for the overall win. Yet, 3 days into the Dakar, both Sainz and Loeb were out, and now, we have lost another GR team car, Dacia has actually managed to win a stage, and the fight for the overall lead (at least as I had last seen it) was within 10 minutes.  The Rally1 category has whittled itself down to 10 riders. It is incredible how the few that have managed to stay in are surviving but I have to say, I have no clue if I would survive even a day of the 48HR Chrono. 

Coming out of the major drought period Dakar had with very few manufacturers and even fewer cars, seeing upwards of 10 teams with 2-3 cars each along with all the other classes (buggies, bikes) gives hope to fans of offroad racing, like WRC or even the just the main W2RC series, or even World Rallycross, if they get out of their NitroRX publicization slumber. The 2027 WRC rules might bring a Dakar-like populous of manufacturers but that's still a ways away.