Mysterious scoring and rules oddities are not limited to NASCAR after all. The most technologically advanced, scrutinized and monied racing series on the planet proved that Sunday when Formula One staged the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
F1 officials somehow needed 58 of the scheduled 73 laps to decide that BMW Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya had broken series rules when he jumped from his stalled car before the warmup, then dashed over retaining walls to the garage to get in his backup. Though Montoya relinquished his fifth spot in the grid and started at the back after joining the race from pit road, he had finagled his way as high as second before officials later disqualified him.
Montoya accepted that he had broken Article 85 of F1's rule book in that he had "joined the race after the start in a spare car in circumstances where the driver had not left the grid within 15 seconds of the start." What irritated him was the timing.
"Ask them what would have happened if I'd crashed like Ralf," Montoya told the Indianapolis Star, referring to teammate Ralf Schumacher, who crashed during the race.
"I could be sitting in a hospital right now just like Ralf."
TOP GUN: Jimmie Johnson's fourth-place finish at Michigan - his 10th top five, including three wins, in his 15 races - moved him past Dale Earnhardt Jr. and into the NASCAR Nextel Cup points lead by seven points. The 2003 runnerup ran most of the race without a third gear and appeared to conserve his engine after teammate Jeff Gordon's Hendrick Motorsports powerplant blew on Lap 88 after a dominating start.
Earnhardt, who has led in points for nine weeks - seven consecutively before Sunday - fell to second after sustaining a flat tire with six laps left, losing several positions and finishing 21st.
"Bragging rights is all it is," Earnhardt said of leading in points. "It was good to be in the lead. We may get it again, but not running like this. We're not too happy right now."
WITHIN REACH: Kasey Kahne wishes he had had a chance to pull a little closer to eventual winner Ryan Newman on the final lap - a caution froze the field as they approached the finish line - but his fourth second-place finish put him within the playoff boundary.
The top 10 drivers in points and any within 400 of the leader after 26 races contest the final 10 for the championship.
Kahne, now 11th in the standings, is 399 behind Johnson.
COMING ON: Blown engines scuttled several drivers in a race that again featured long green-flag stretches on a 2-mile Michigan International Speedway that allowed speeds in excess of 200 mph and RPMs in excess of a brutal 9,500. Though Gordon, Jamie McMurray and Joe Nemechek - who was in the top five when his engine gave - were unable to finish, Ford drivers were largely immune. Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler's new Robert Yates/ Jack Roush engines and new cylinder heads provided enough durability and heft to put the teammates third and fifth, respectively.
Jarrett's top five was his first since he won 49 races ago at Rockingham.
He was clearly feeling well Sunday. Television broadcasts captured a team communication in which he instructed Mike Ford to tell fellow crew chief Jimmy Elledge to have his lapped driver, Casey Mears, get out of his way because he, paraphrasing, doesn't have many of these opportunities left.
SPARK PLUGS: Zephyrhills native David Reutimann fell three spots to 10th - 249 points behind leader Dennis Setzer - in the NASCAR truck series standings with a 17th-place finish at Memphis on Saturday. He leads all series rookies. ... With his dominating win Sunday in Portland, Ore., Tampa resident Sebastien Bourdais pulled within seven points of Champ Car series leader Bruno Junqueira. Bourdais, who also won at Monterrey, Mexico, is third with 98 points. Patrick Carpentier is second with 99. ... Takuma Sato's third-place result in the U.S. Grand Prix was the first podium finish for a Japanese driver in a Formula One race since Aguri Suzuki was third in the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix. ... Zsolt Baumgartner's eighth-place finish was historic on several fronts: He became the first Hungarian to score an F1 point and scored the first for Minardi in the constructor's standings since 2002. ... Ralf Schumacher was released from an Indianapolis hospital Monday after suffering only bruises and strains in his crash. Though he will miss two scheduled test sessions in Europe, it is unclear if he will be fit to race in the French Grand Prix on July 4.
