24 hour Mountain Bike race -- circ polarizer?

[yellowmr]

I just got back from a 24 hour mountain bike race up at Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey, ca. My dad actually raced solo, I was his crew chief. Between pit stops, i went out for some pics. I recently picked up a circ polarizer for my 70-200 f4 since the shots will mostly all be outside in the sun and a blue'er sky would be nice. Also, the f stop reduction can make for some nice panning shots in daylight. Some of the shots came out nice, but i did have some issues. Some are way underexposed, as seen below. (maybe it was just metered wrong)

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c84/gregprofeta/IMG_6574.jpg

I like this one.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c84/gregprofeta/IMG_6589.jpg

night shot with kit lens. 1.3 sec exposure f16 hand held pan.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c84/gregprofeta/IMG_6536.jpg

it got interesting just as the race was finishing.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c84/gregprofeta/IMG_6629.jpg

I also took some shots with the kit lens and a UV filter and the sky seems just as blue as the shots with the circ polarizer? Also, what bothered me was that i couldn't use the 70-200 hood with the polarizer. I wasn't able to stick my fingers inside the hood to turn the polarizer without smudging up the filter. I adjusted the polarizer between shots to make sure it was "polarizing", but the results didn't come out as expected. Do polarizers work better at shorter and wide focal lengths? I almost feel like I wasted $75 and should just spend the time in Lightroom to make the sky more blue and increase saturation. Any tips?

[Big Hands]

The first shot is backlit. You should have either set up on the other side of the rider with the sun more at your back, or possibly used some fill flash...... the same as you would have had to do without the CP.

As I understand it, CP's do not work so well with wide angle lenses, but I'm not going to embarrass myself by attempting to tell you why :) .

Regards,
Jeff

[gkwood]

Hi there Mate really like number two it really looks like something you would see in a magazine a quick fix for the underexposed first one , the last one is really dramatic :)

[yellowmr]

Yeah, i'm sure I can fix the backlit one with some curves adjustments. Just don't really want to spend so much time when there are some other good shots to spend my time on.

The fire on the hillside was about 1/4 mile away. there was 1 helicopter that kept dipping into a small lake in the infield of the race course to get water. Then there was 4-5 water dropping planes that kept circling overhead. Very cool.