This is going to be a bit of an abridged column for this week. Unfortunately we suffered a failure of our main hard drive last night, as I was trying to back it up. All of my notes from the weekend, as well as the 95% of this article that was written, was lost. I have to work this from memory, so my apologies if I get some of the numbers wrong.

Delaware Has New Ownership Group

Delaware Speedway in Ontario has announced a new ownership group. The group has a lot of racing experience, which should bode well for the future of the facility. Among the first upgrades the new owners plan include track resurfacing at the end of this season.

The first race of the 2021 season at Delaware will be the APC Late Model opener on July 2, along with the Quickwick Fire Starter Super Stock Series.

Read the full press release about the announcement here

Azerbaijan Grand Prix – Oh So Sergio

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed exactly why Red Bull went with Sergio Perez over Alex Albon in the off season, can anyone see Albon, not only holding off Hamilton all race, but forcing him into a mistake?

And while the votes for Driver of the Day went to Vettel, Perez is my Driver of the Day. I like Vettel and I'm really happy to see the Canadian-owned Aston Martin team score a great result, but Vettel spent a lot of his race by himself, essentially driving to a number. Perez on the other hand was under pressure from Hamilton all race long and didn't put a wheel wrong under all that pressure. Because of Perez and his pressure-packed drive, along with Bottas showing why Mercedes Benz will Albon him at the end of the season, Red Bull was able to leave Baku with a larger lead in the Constructor's Championship, while Verstappen was able to leave with his lead over Hamilton in tact. I can't see any of that happening with Albon in that seat.

Of course, there are two bigger talking points coming out of the race, tires and brakes.

The tire failures of first Stroll, then Verstappen, changed what was a fairly uneventful race into one of the most talked about races of the year. Stroll went out in the biggest way when a tire failed after 29 laps, well within Pirelli's 40 lap recommendation, while Verstappens failure happened at lap 45, on his second set of tires, and still within Pirelli's recommendation. A lot of fingers are being pointed at Pirelli, and we all know, regardless of the outcome, the random sim racers on Twitter will absolutely know better than F1 and Pirelli.

To me, if only 2 tires fail over the course of the weekend I think it's more likely that two drivers ran off-line somewhere, possibly in the same place, and damaged the tire, or went through the same debris. When tires are defective, like F1 at Indy or NASCAR, also at Indy, there isn't a problem with only two tires, there are dozens, and it doesn't only show up in the race, it shows up in practice and qualifying. And those tires weren't defective per se, they were improperly designed and built for the forces the cars were generating at that track. It was like putting a bicycle tire on an F1 car. It will fail, but it's not defective. We'll see what Pirelli says, it's certainly possible there was a defect in the tire, but I will be surprised if that's the case, and not because of some cover-up conspiracy theory, but because two drivers damaging their tires just makes more sense.

The other problem being talked about was Hamilton and his magic brakes. It seems the current Mercedes has a device that will quickly, and exactly, change the brake bias up to the front during warm up laps and safety cars to help keep the front tires hot, and then back again when it's time to race, and from what I've heard at Baku, it was 86.5% front. (normally a race car wants a little more front brake than rear, from 52 to 55%, unless it's raining)

The idea for the increased front bias is to keep the temperature in the front tires by increasing the work the front brakes do, thereby increasing the heat that goes from the brakes, through the wheel rims and from the wheel rims into the tires. It seems Hamilton turned the magic off after the sighting lap before the final restart, but accidentally hit the button on the steering wheel when Perez began moving over on him. So, with 86.5% of the brakes now on the front, and possibly overheated brakes judging by all the smoke on the grid, there was no chance Hamilton was going to make that corner. Hamilton took full responsibility for the mistake, proving that, sometimes, even the best get it wrong.

In the end, Baku was a pretty good race, with no points for the top 2 in the title fight and Bottas, all the championships tightened up, and the next few races should be good.

There is also some talk, with the recent cancellation of Singapore, and both Mexico and Brazil questionable at this point, that there may be room for Canada to find it's way back on the calendar in late September or early October. As Norris McDonald points out in his column here, the race was cancelled out right, and not simply postponed, so he feels there is zero chance of it returning this year. While that's certainly possible, especially if new promoters Bell Media decide they want a full 12 months to prepare for their first race, at the end of the day, F1 needs to put on 23 races to fulfil all of it's contractual obligations and if squeezing Canada into a hole that has opened up works for all involved, it's still a possibility. I would think if both Mexico and Brazil are cancelled, then teams might want a second North American date to help offset the travel.

NASCAR Cup & Xfinity

Both NASCAR classes were on the road course this weekend, although Cup was on the west coast at Sonoma, while Xfinity was closer to home at Mid-Ohio.

AJ Allmendinger staged a great comeback from a pitlane speeding penalty with 25 laps to go to take the win, while Alex Labbe was running in the top 10 when the final green flag came up, but was pushed off the track shortly after the green, falling out of the top 20. A great drive got Labbe to back to 11^th place at the finish, along with points in both stages made for a pretty good day.

In the Cup race, I could almost just cut and paste my thoughts from last race, where Kyle Larson again left little doubt as to who was the fastest out there. It's quickly turning in to the Kyle and Chase show, with another 1-2 finish for the Hendrick drivers.

This was the fourth straight 1-2 finish for Hendrick Motorsports, tying the record of four straight set by the iconic Chrysler 300's of Carl Kiekhaefer set way back in 1956. We'll see if Hendrick can now hunt down Kiekhaefer's record of 16 straight wins.

Canadian Racing

While there still isn't much going on in Canadian racing, an email from Canadian Tire Motorsport Park indicates that the VARAC Grand Prix is a go for June 19/20, although we are still waiting to hear if media will be allowed, fingers crossed, and I would think no spectators still.

On the track, ST Racing's Samantha Tan was in action at VIR where she took her BMW M2 to third place on Sunday in the TCX class, her third podium finish from four TC America starts so far in 2021. You can read the teams race report here.

Sportsnet

Sportsnet was busy doing Sportsnet things again this past weekend. For at least F1 Friday Practice and Saturday Qualifying, the Sportsnet guide had the racing listed as starting an hour later than it actually did, causing many people to miss large amounts of the Friday and Saturday action. This has happened so many times with Sportsnet, showing wrong times or not at all, that I'm getting to the point where I don't believe it's accidental any more.

When you factor in the fact that they are the only major carrier that doesn't carry REV TV and that their own Indy Car coverage has been less than stellar, you have to wonder if some of the people who run sportsnet really don't like racing.

Next Week

F1 is off for a couple of weeks when they roll into France, skipping the Canadian Grand Prix. At least Canadian race fans can comfort themselves with the fact that hockey players can pop back and forth across the border without any issues.

NASCAR has their All-Star race at Texas next weekend, with all 3 national series racing, trucks and Xfinity on Saturday and Cup on Sunday. As usual, Fox Sports Racing has the truck race live on Saturday at 1pm, with TSN carrying the Xfintity race at 4pm. On Sunday, Cup pre-race starts at 5:30, and the racing action at 6pm, also on TSN.

Indy Car rolls into Detroit for their annual double header, and the closest to Canada the series will race this year. And in a surprise to us all, Sportsnet 360 is actually showing both races, at 2pm on Saturday, and noon on Sunday.

Both motorcycle series, MotoGP and World Superbike are off for a couple of weeks.

That's it for this week, hopefully next week I'll have a full set of notes to work from.