The SpeedGeek's MotorSports Blog

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2011-01-10T23:17:00.005-05:00

Hey, kids. For all six of you who may still be checking this site from time to time and who may not have had me personally tell you either in person or over the phone, I'm now appearing elsewhere. Thanks to the good folks (and hosts of the World Renowned Blogathon! Which is happening! Again! In a couple of weeks!) at GrabBagSports, I've got a far classier (read: we've got graphics and working sidebars and stuff) place to pour my prose all over like so much sugar-free imitation maple syrup. So, if you've really got a hankering to see what I'm thinking about, or more accurately, to see what Allen and Mike are thinking about, since I still blog about once every Mayan calendar cycle, head on over there. I mean, here. Thanks.

The ICONIC Decision - From the Guestroom

2010-07-21T09:46:00.003-04:00

Hey, everybody. I've been meaning to write up a full breakdown of how I feel about last week's ICONIC panel announcement about the new-for-2012 IndyCar. Instead, my buddy Rick (who you'll all know from the last two posts here) and I have been e-mailing (the venue where we solve all of life's problems) non-stop about it. This is a few days belated, but a few days ago he sent me an e-mail that sums up my thoughts about the whole matter 100%, down to the last word. So, with no further ado, here's Rick's take. I'm The Speedgeek. And I approved this message.

My take on 2012:

Ok, what does everyone want?
Competition. Innovation. Close racing. Safety. Speed. Different looking cars. Multiple manufacturer involvement.

What is the ultimate goal?
More fans in seats to get more corporate involvement and interest to get more fans in seats to make the sport bigger and more popular and more successful with more teams and drivers.

What do we have so far?
Engine specs friendly to multiple manufacturers with present or higher power outputs.

What is the worst case scenario?
Another ugly spec car and engine.

How does that prevent reaching the ultimate goal?
Indycar racing continues on its same staid, stagnant path with no new interest from any comers.

What is the best case scenario?
33 different car and engine combinations on the grid at Indy that show off the talent and ingenuity of mechanics and engineers as they try to capture the biggest trophy in sports.

What’s wrong with the best case scenario?
It’s cost prohibitive, especially in today’s economic environment, and prevents the reaching of the ultimate goal because no one, or very few, would be able to compete in that environment. Further, racing history has shown again and again that open-rules formulae tend to favor the team with the most resources, who will eventually dominate to the exclusion of everyone else.

Here we have the crux of the issue. I think everyone thinks the “best case scenario” (bcs) is pretty darn cool. Some of us understand that, in the long run (or the long short-run), such an approach is actually detrimental. The opposite approach results in the “worst case scenario” (wcs). A spec series that no one is interested in dominated by the teams with the most resources-because they are the only ones who can afford to spend the money on those diminishing returns. What to do? The answer here, as in much of life, is compromise. Yes, the c-word. Well, not that c-word, but a slightly less offensive one. Slightly.

Compromise is necessary in racing. For example, the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race is won by the car that first completes the 500 mile distance. Simple in theory, right? Unfortunately, sometimes a car will crash or break on the track during the attempt. For the safety of the driver or drivers involved, a caution period is invoked. All of the drivers competing to finish the 500 miles first reduce their speed and bunch up so that disabled vehicles and debris can be removed and involved drivers attended to safely. Slowing a race is a compromise. A necessary compromise in the interest of safety, but a compromise nonetheless. This week we are talking about necessary compromise in the rules that shape the car itself. With unlimited specials out of the question, the next step is to determine where on the spectrum of “Spec engine and chassis to Unlimited Special” the car should land. Or, the degree of compromise. With teams and sponsors hurting for money because of the economy, NASCAR, poor management, etc, it will probably have to be towards the spec end of the spectrum. But we want to see what we can do. What do we know about the proposals?

- BaT, Swift, and Lola simply had to be sole suppliers.
- Dallara has lots of experience and the existing capacity.
- DeltaWing is more a theory or philosophy than an actual car. It was not specified who would actually build it.
- BaT is another start-up, with unproven and nonexistent manufacturing capability.
- Swift would build in California.

Let’s add in some more relevant factors.
Local and state government is involved with tax breaks for Indiana-manufactured and -based entries (this is HUGE. PUBLIC money going towards racing??? This isn’t even building a football stadium that will be used 16 times a season or a baseball or basketball stadium used dozens of times a year. This is teams. This is HUGE and unheard of. I don’t know if I would have been politician enough to suggest this! Big, big, big. I don’t think this can be understated.)
Teams are generally strapped for cash.
There isn’t much time before the start of the 2012 season.
Engine manufacturers have yet to be nailed down.

With our bcs, wcs, and all the factors in mind, let’s start eliminating. BaT, Swift, and Lola are out if we want avoid having a de facto spec series. BaT is unproven and Swift would build in California, earning more strikes against them. The DeltaWing concept realistically has a long, long way to go before it sees the track. What will the car itself look like? Who will build all the parts? Where? The safest bets to exploit all the economic advantages and get the things built in time look to be Dallara and Lola. And, frankly, between the two, Dallara’s openness to competition and track record work in its favor.

We’re still not that far from a spec series(If Dallara and Lola are chosen, then Dallara says “ok”, Lola can’t make the price point and begs off. Back to one.). So what do we do if only one manufacturer is going to work out? Where can we get some innovation? Well, everyone wants a “Safety Cell”, so lets make that spec. Fans (average and avid) –who pay the bills directly and indirectly- can’t see or tell the difference between all the dirty bits, so let’s make those spec. That leaves all the aero stuff. We can leave that open. To prevent the gorillas from dominating, we’ll cap the price and limit the number a team can have. Since Dallara isn’t in the business of selling consumer products and really isn’t advertising (their final customer is the race team or sanctioning body), they don’t really care how the cars are badged. So anyone else can fund an aero package and brand it. And a compromise is struck.

Let’s see what we have here-Competition (aero and engine manufacturers), Innovation (ditto), Close Racing can be dialed in with regulations (see last year vs this year), Safety (common safety cell), Speed (more power, less weight), Different looking cars (aero kits), multiple manufacturers.
I think we have a win-win-win situation here. Is it ideal? No, but we’ve already established that the bcs is unfeasible, so a compromise was necessary. Is it exactly what I wanted? No, but I think it’s probably better in that it’s more realistic. I was, honestly, taking Ben Bowlby’s word for a lot of it. The concrete facts seem to favor this concept a bit more.

The 2012 IndyCar Chassis - View From the Guestroom

2010-07-01T17:25:00.003-04:00

Hey, everybody. Still trapped under the boulder. This doesn't mean that I can't still keep this space open for our outstanding guest poster Rick. This week, in advance of the rapidly approaching announcement by the ICONIC panel on the chassis that'll be used by the IndyCar series in 2012, Rick's got his take on what he'd do if he were in their shoes (or boots, in Randy Bernard's case). To disclaim a bit: Rick's views on the chassis selection do not mirror my own 100%, but I think that his take is pretty interesting and I would not be at all disappointed if what he wants came to be in 18 months from now. With that, here's the floor, fella.

Over the past 15 years, a division of resources, poor decisions, and a burgeoning rival have conspired to move American open wheel racing and the Indianapolis 500 from national prominence. 2010 has seen new life breathed into the series. A new CEO, reinvigorated racing, and an enthusiastic title sponsor promise to bring Indycar racing back to a place of interest for fans, manufacturers, and sponsors. With the decision to retire the long-in-the-tooth Dallara chassis made, a unique opportunity presents itself: Reinvent the Indy Car. A new design could hold a number of advantages that could be exploited to fuel a new era of growth in the sport. The best way for this to happen would be to adopt a radical solution like the DeltaWing concept.

First, a radical new car will draw attention. Race fans, laypeople, and journalists alike will talk about the new shape of racing and what the future of racing will look like. That kind of press and buzz is essential to any kind of growth.

Second, redefining what an "Indy Car" is will separate the series from other forms of racing competing for the fan's ticket dollar and the TV channel's ratings point. Create a shape that differs markedly from what has been the norm for nearly 30 years and casual fans will no longer refer to Indy cars as "F1s".

Third, a radical change lends credibility to the technology leadership platform Indy car racing has long held. SAFER Barriers, HANS devices, ethanol fuel, attenuators, and other advances only mean so much when tacked on to the same old tired machine.

Fourth, the safety progress of the last decade can be taken even further. At the forefront is preventing wheel-to-wheel contact. Mike Conway's wreck at Indianapolis was only the latest hint of what catastrophe might come about if wheels remain unshielded.

Many of the complaints I've heard revolve around the DeltaWing concept's aesthetics. I shared many of these concerns until seeing the mock-up in the flesh. The distortions of two dimensional images and unusual viewing angles don't do this car any favors. I've also been told that it looks even better decorated in sponsor livery.

One complaint is that it "doesn't look like a car". To that argument, I'd say that it's been a very, very long time since what raced at Indianapolis bore any resemblance to street cars of the day. Why must Indy cars resemble street cars now?

To those that say the DeltaWing concept "doesn't look like an Indy car", I'd suggest that it doesn't have to look like an Indy car, and maybe it shouldn't look like an Indy car. (See above.) Further, after a closer look, I'd say that maybe it's not so far off. The modern Indy car includes a long, narrow "fuselage" containing the driver. The front wheels are widely spaced and joined to that fuselage only by long, spindly suspension members. The DeltaWing concept has the fuselage and just eliminates those suspension members and moves the wheels to the naturally resulting locations.

It's human nature to react to the new and different with reluctance and trepidation. In this case, I think the new and different must be embraced to give Indycar the best chance possible to return to its once-lofty status.

The Next IndyCar Engine Formula - A Guest Poster's View

2010-06-18T17:46:00.004-04:00

Hey, everybody. I've been trapped under a rock, yet again, but I've managed to maneuver my arm out from under this thing just enough to operate the keyboard and mouse. Until I can get around to putting together some time to write up some very random thoughts from some days at the track that nobody's thought or cared about in almost a month now and until I can send up a flare to get a rescue party over here to get this boulder the rest of the way off of me, I've got a guest poster for everybody to enjoy. So now, ladies and germs, introducing my friend, occasional drinking buddy and longtime race-going companion Rick (and do not dare call him "The Rick", thank you very much, or you will be escored from the premises forthwith) with some thoughts about the next IndyCar. Enjoy.

Like most Indycar series fans, I have some opinions about the direction the upcoming formula should take. In short, I’m in favor of a radically different chassis powered by 4-cylinder turbocharged engines.

The engine formula must, first of all, attract one or more manufacturers to the series to assist with advertising, promotion, and development. At the same time, it must provide the chassis with sufficient power to achieve the desired performance (at or above current levels). Cost, durability, parity, and adjustability are other considerations.

In the current automotive market where fuel economy and emissions are key selling points, the four cylinder engine is experiencing a resurgence. Vehicles of all categories are or will be powered by four-cylinder engines, often with technologies like turbocharging and direct injection to assist efficiency and output. Indycar vehicles powered by similar engines give an immediate incentive for marketing and development. Even if the idea that modern race engine technology can actually relate to street car engines is laughable, the manufacturer can find immediate returns through marketing value and developer training.

Four cylinder engines offer the advantage of relative simplicity. Fewer cylinders means fewer pistons, rods, valves, and parts overall. Fewer parts translate directly into lower costs at all stages of the engine’s life, bringing value to every party involved. Simplicity and lower parts count also contribute to durability, which feeds back into the cost equation.

Many suggest that four-cylinder engines are inferior or undesirable. First, the value to a manufacturer that wants to change this perception would be considerable. Second, a shift to smaller engines could precipitate a marketable focus on efficiency and environmental concerns. Power levels of four cylinder engines should not be a concern (especially with turbocharging), as history is full of racing and street vehicles capable of impressive performance numbers with four-cylinders. Finally, the storied Offenhauser engine (owner of more than one quarter of all Indianapolis 500 wins) is a four cylinder engine. If a new engine is aesthetically similar, this could be a source for a heritage marketing campaign.

The primary advantage of turbocharging in this engine formula is power. A boosted engine’s output is largely dependent on manifold pressure. Even a small displacement engine is capable of very, very high power levels if pressure is sufficient. Further, this power level is adjustable. Engines of varying designs from different manufacturers could easily be equalized through management of their allowed boost pressure with the use of pop-off valves. Different power levels could also be specified for different types of tracks, again by managing allowed boost pressure.

I believe that an affordable manufacturer engine lease program is probably the best path to take. While individual engine builders may want to experiment and innovate to find an advantage, removing this possibility works to the advantage of all of the teams on the grid. Centralized test and rebuild services would keep prices for everyone down, and small teams would not have to be concerned with excessive costs, testing time, or being financially responsible for the destruction of an engine.

The Last Minute Pick

2010-05-30T02:50:00.002-04:00

I'm going with.......

Dario. That is it, that is final. Full reports from the whole weekend and much, much more to come after the race. Enjoy, everybody!

Carb Day...Lights

2010-05-28T23:58:00.007-04:00

The title of this post was going to be "Carb Day Highlights", until I realized that some of the things that I saw were not highlights at all, but were instead either lowlights or just...lights. Something in the middle. With that, and with the thought in mind that I need to wake up in a little under 7 hours if I'm going to make tomorrow's (what? After midnight? Damn. Then it's today's) Planet-IRL.com First Annual Blogger Summit.

- The day started off on an up note for me when I, running late because I failed to realize that the North 40 Lot would be a vortex of parking insanity on Carb Day, ran into a buddy of mine on staff after I'd only gotten about 200 yards inside the north end of the track. He charitably let me catch a ride on his golf cart over to Pagoda Plaza, where I just made it in time for the daily 15 minute live version of the "Cavin and Kevin Show". Nice. Very nice.

- I spent about four minutes gawking at the Delta Wing prototype. I firmly believe that the car should be shown in pictures with a banner hanging behind it that says "Delta Wing: Better In Person".

- Then, it was cars on the track. Actual IndyCars on the actual Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. I think I spent the hour of practice switching between Tweeting strings of unrelated consonants and blacking out. I can't really remember what happened here.

- The Lights race. Too bad for Pippa. Too good by Wade Cunningham (again, yawn). Too weird by JK Vernay, who ground to a halt right in front of me in the pits with an apparent locked rear end after one lap, then whose crew got him going again after six laps (aided by Pippa's and Jeff Simmons' second lap crash and caution), and who then spent the race carving up through the field until he threatened (repeatedly and forcefully) to reclaim one of those six laps from the leaders.

- Spent some nice time meeting and catching up with Allen Wedge from Furious Wedge and his wife Kelly (who my wife would say spells her name wrong). Actually, this time alternated between "nice" and "infuriating", as Allen appears to have far better formed opinions about most things IndyCar than I do. Me? I just like watching cars going fast, I guess. Anyway, it's never exactly fun when you figure out you're not only not the smartest person in the room, but you're also not the second smartest. In a room containing three people.

- I had the brief chance to meet face-to-face with the Incorrigible Roy Hobbson from The Silent Pagoda during the ZZ Top concert. Actually, it wasn't a "meeting" so much as just a "receiving a high five from somebody running past me who is wearing one of those 'beer can helmets' that's been modified to carry two pony kegs of Hamm's". Anyway, I'm certain that was Hobbson, and I'm certain that right now he's either half-buried in one of the infield's sand traps or all-incarcerated in the infield pokey.

- I did actually see a couple of guys on Hulman Blvd. who were being shaken down by the infield cops. It took everything I had not to go over and recite entire sections of the famous Bob and Tom bit, "Sid Gurney: Infield Security", just to rub it in.

- Oh, back to the fifth circle of hell, aka, the North 40 Lot. 800 feet in 40 minutes, you say? While 75% of the day's total crowd is still shotgunning Miller Lite inside Turn 3? Sure. That sounds reasonable.

- From the ridiculous to the sublime: The Carb Night Burger Bash! OK, to be serious for one second, I look forward to the Burger Bash as much or more as any other event that happens during my calendar year that doesn't have the words "Race" and "Day" attached to it. This year did not disappoint. I met up with fully 4/11ths of the rest of my intrepid All Racing Fantasy League team owners (Craig, the aforementioned Allen Wedge, and the brother assassins, Jesse and Ryan; good fellas, all), hammered down a burger, a bushel or so of fries and roughly a gallon of vanilla milkshake (I'm bringing plenty of souvenir cups home, honey!), threw empathetic vibes toward a clearly downcast Pippa Mann, who stopped by to chat with Curt, Kevin and the crowd for a few minutes, basked in the aura of one Tony Kanaan for about a half an hour, spent a good 20 minutes holding my hands to the sky during Randy Bernard's brief Q&A session like those snake-handling churchy people you see in certain movies, and was, of course, thoroughly entertained by Curt Cavin and Kevin Lee. The bar has been raised yet again by those guys. If you did not make it this year, you made a grave mistake. Rectify that next year, for your own sake.

- A lowlight: many, many bloggers and Twitterers in attendance at the Burger Bash. Alas, I and my ARFL chums spent so much time busting on each others' teams and generally busting on whatever happened through our stream of consciousness that I didn't get a chance to make a full set of rounds. That's a bad job by me. So, my work is cut out for me at the Bloginator Conference tomorrow (dang! Today!).

OK, you'll all have to excuse me for no pictures for now, as A) it's nearly 1:00 AM now, and B) I'm dumb, and forgot my download cable in Nebraska. There is more, more, more to come from Indy! We're just getting started!

Midway Mutterings

2010-05-28T01:47:00.002-04:00

Some quick thoughts in advance of this year’s Indy 500, scribbled down while shanghai’ed (briefly, and only because President Obama was allegedly flying through at the time, but still) at Chicago Midway International Airport, on my way to Indy for the weekend:

- “Red” cars almost locked out the first two rows in qualifying. However, other than Helio’s pole speed, the entire bulk of the field is covered by less than 4 MPH. With the draft supposedly making more of a difference in traffic this year, and the addition of the “push to pass” button, we might be in for a decent race on Sunday. Well, at least among the “red” cars at the front, and then another decent race for 6th through 10th for the entire rest of the field.

- Bruno Junquiera ran the seventh-best speed of the entire field, in worse conditions than the Pole Day qualifiers ran in, and after only seven laps of getting up to speed. Um, I think he’s going to be fast on Race Day.

- Andretti Autosport was out to lunch on qualifying weekend. I don’t think that will hold come race day. TK will be doing a patented Derek Daly “burn from the stern” (that’s the phrase patented by Derek, not the actual act) from his 33rd starting spot, Marco and Danica will be able to hang in there in the mid-pack, and move up with other peoples’ mistakes, John Andretti will be doing his thing of being completely invisible until you read the race rundown in the paper in the next day and you find out that he finished 12th, and RHR will be doing RHR things all day (that’s “passing people” and “being a general nuisance to people in theoretically superior equipment” to the uninitiated out there).

- The KVRT drivers will probably continue to damage equipment, both theirs and others’. Sorry, Jimmy. I love ya, but you’ve got a team full of crashers there.

- Alex Tagliani will hang with the lead pack until the first round of stops, have a slightly slow pit stop that puts him between the leaders and the midfield, and will drive around by himself until he falls afoul of some nonsense. Sorry, Alex, but the fairytale is going to end around lap 80, and probably at the hands of one of the aforementioned KV guys.

- First out? Sebastian Saavedra. Sorry, kid. Your gearbox is gonna give up on lap 14.

- Speaking of 14…Vitor…get comfy in the 10th through 15th range, and then be ready to move up late in the day. I’ve got you pegged for a semi-out-of-nowhere 9th place this year.

- The “New” Snake Pit will be derided by the oldtimers as too tame and by the family crowd (which, who am I kidding? I’m probably a member of now) for being inappropriate for any year post-1983. My opinion? If you have to start a Twitter campaign to publicize your “drunken outsider festival of alcohol-laced debauchery with extra booze on top”, that's not a good sign. Um, you know who else uses Twitter to disseminate PR material? Scott Dixon. You know who else? CNN News. You want to be associated with the wild and crazy likes of those folks, “New” Snake Pit? Didn’t think so.

- I will quadruple my all time record for money spent on merchandise in one weekend, between the new Izod throwback t-shirts, some great looking new team and driver hats, and my sudden compulsion to buy a diecast to put in amongst all the butterflies that adorn my daughter’s room.

- Between Izod’s publicity campaign (including getting Mark Wahlberg and Jack Nicholson to be front and center on Sunday), some great potential stories on Race Day, and some potential history in the making (Helio matching Mears, Foyt and Unser), the 500 will be in the top-3 stories on Sportscenter on Sunday night. And we were all here for the comeback. Bask in that.

No Paternity Test Necessary

2010-04-22T16:42:00.003-04:00

Yep, she's my daughter, all right. You can take Maury Povich off of high alert.

Stepping Out for a Bit

2010-02-18T13:28:00.006-05:00

Hey, readers (that's all fourteen of you),
I'm not usually somebody who's given to gloom and doom, especially when it comes to motorsports. The sport has been through tough times: the World Wars, the 1955 Le Mans disaster and its fallout, the 1970s fuel embargo, the 1996-2008 open wheel split, economic recessions, both past and present, but people always come back to racing. It's in peoples' blood. It's a part of peoples' identities. For a lot of people (myself included), giving up racing is similar to giving up breathing. It's something that can be attempted, but something inside you makes you start again.

Let me be clear here. I am not giving up on racing. I'm still going to watch a slew of races this year, and I'm going to be more than happy to discuss racing with people, here, on other blogs and even in person, very soon. This isn't my attempt to say goodbye to the sport.

What this is, though, is a brief embargo on my following the minutiae of the sport. Over the last two weeks, four different manufacturers have unveiled their suggestion for the next generation of IndyCar, slated to begin racing in 2012. As a car nerd, I have loved looking at the different concepts, and I've enjoyed (to an extent) hearing peoples' opinions on the cars as people have debated which might be the best path forward. It's still very, very early in the process of deciding what the new car is going to be, though, and there are many missing details for all of the designs. I can't wait for those details to come out (engine format, aesthetic revisions, wind tunnel models and numbers, etc.), but I am happy to be patient. Rome was not built in a day, and nine different IndyCar concepts will not be transformed from foam models and CAD sketches to running cars in a day, either.

However, all of the "debate" surrounding the new cars has completely sucked the fun out of following IndyCar racing (and most other racing, where there is precious little in the way of good news lately) for me. I've enjoyed doing some doodling on scratch paper, trying to figure out how the Delta Wing chassis works. I've enjoyed attempting to answer peoples' questions on this same topic, though my attempts are simply guesses, because even as a trained engineer, I have not been sitting next to Ben Bowlby as he fiddles with his design programs. I've enjoyed dreaming up "improvements" to the cars' appearances, specifications and concepts. I've enjoyed daydreaming about what IndyCar could become in the future, and a posible return to prominence in the American (and worldwide) sporting scene.

I have not, however, enjoyed having my comments answered with "That car looks like it should be called the Delta Wang!" I have also not enjoyed reading comment after comment, blog post after blog post and e-mail after e-mail to Robin Miller that fall in the two camps of "If they pick such-and-such car, I'll never watch another race!" or "The IRL are a bunch of idiots if they don't pick the car by so-and-so!" I have had enough of the pithy, one-line comments making fun of a car, or a person, or an entire sanctioning body. Nobody is listening to each other. Everything is a quip- or rant-contest.

I hear you. "It's the internet, dude! That's how people interact out here! Lighten up!" Look, I get that. I've been writing here sporadically for almost four years now, and regularly reading other folks' blogs for almost as long. It's just...sometimes you get a gut full of something and you lose your taste for it. I know people who worked at Pizza Hut, for instance, and say that after they'd been there for six months, they couldn't stand to eat pizza for a really, really long time. That's about where I am with internet discussion about IndyCar racing. It's not fun anymore, and I can't stand how depressed it all makes me feel about the sport I love.

I'll cut the melodrama right here. I'll be back. Remember, I can't quit racing same as I can't quit breathing. Just don't expect much in the way of posts here for a while (yeah, yeah, you didn't expect any, anyway) and don't expect much in the way of my comments elsewhere for a while. I just need to cleanse the palate for a week or three. Not that things are going to be any better by then, but I'm going to be ready for some actual racing by the time the transporters are unloading in Sao Paulo (and Melbourne, for F1 that same weekend), as opposed to faceless internet bickering, which is the only thing going on right now.

OK. Take care, everybody. Back soon.

Standing United

2010-02-09T20:55:00.006-05:00

It's been a hot topic for quite some time, and looks like it'll continue to be a hot topic for some time to come for the IndyCar series: how do we draw more eyeballs to our on-track product?

One idea that's been kicked around in the blogosphere and in multiple calls to Trackside over the last year or so is that of trying to get an IndyCar race on a common weekend with a NASCAR Cup race. This idea has been floated about several tracks, but the one that seems to come up the most often is the spring NASCAR weekend at Phoenix. Curt Cavin has said that he understands that the IndyCar series has been offered by Phoenix International Raceway (a track owned by International Speedway Corporation, a sister company of NASCAR) a Thursday race day for that weekend, and that the IndyCar brass have turned down this option. I can't say that I blame them, as Cup team haulers are barely arriving in town by Thursday, much less any race fans. The majority of the attendance for such a race would have to either be local or willing to spend the entire week in the area, and anybody who wanted to come in for just the weekend and catch the IndyCar race would be out of luck.

I do not believe that NASCAR has any intention of helping the IndyCar series in any way, as any extra attention paid to the IndyCar series by fans, the media or sponsors could be taking away from the attention that all of these parties pay to NASCAR. I've said in the past here that NASCAR treats GrandAm, another sister company to NASCAR, as a third rate citizen when they share a track, making GrandAm race hours in advance of any other NASCAR action or even days before the headlining race. They would treat IndyCar no better should they ever decide to share a race weekend with IndyCar.

So, in order to get more eyeballs on the IndyCar series, are there any series out there that could team up fanbases? The obvious (I would hope) answer here is the American Le Mans Series, a series that already shares a couple of weekends per year with the IndyCar series. Things have not always been happy in that partnership, from what I've heard, with the two sides tussling over who headlines at what race and which series gets what amount of track time. The time for this ego-driven bickering to stop is right now.

The IndyCar series does not appear to be as healthy as many people would like. Several top line drivers, including Graham Rahal, Oriol Servia, Bruno Junquiera, J.R. Hildebrand and Buddy Rice are currently without rides, and Ryan Hunter-Reay, who is sponsored by the series title sponsor, Izod, lacks the sponsorship dollars for an entire season. By all accounts, car counts will not top last year's, and there's a good chance that some fields will be back down to the 20-21 car range. Meanwhile, the ALMS has had to consolidate its prototype classes and introduce two "spec" classes, one prototype, one GT, in order to boost car counts beyond 20. For either of these two series to categorically say that they are in superior enough shape to dictate terms of race weekends to the other is absurd at this point.

I wrote here about going to a joint ChampCar / ALMS weekend at Road America a couple of years ago. It remains one of the best race weekends that I've ever attended, even though we skipped out on the Sunday ChampCar race (I had little interest in flying home at midnight after watching only 17 cars race, and with a couple of those occupied by the immortal Tristan Gommendy and my personal favorite, "Bleepy" Dan Clarke, who actually posted one of his two career ChampCar podiums that weekend). I can tell you from my personal experience that that weekend was by far the most crowded non-Indianapolis USGP road race that I've been to, far beating out events that I've seen at Cleveland and Mid-Ohio.

IndyCar and the ALMS share weekends this year at Long Beach and Mid-Ohio, but this could be much, much better if IndyCar's new management and ALMS's long-standing management could put aside their egos and work together on their 2011 calendars. With few exceptions, IndyCar and the ALMS should race together just about every time IndyCar takes to a road course. With a couple of IndyCar's current road races possibly going away for next year (Edmonton is rumored to be on the rocks, and Sears Point seems to be universally reviled by the fans, if not team sponsors), IndyCar could even add a couple of ALMS events to its calendar without upsetting the balance of ovals / road courses.

I don't mean for this to turn into a "if I could run the racing world and construct my favorite calendar" exercise. I want this to represent what the IndyCar calendar could look like, if they were to sit down at the table with the ALMS and tweak their schedules to dovetail one another's. Here goes:

March 5, 2011 - Homestead (an oval-based series ought to start on an oval; this is a separate blog post, I think) - IndyCar only

March 19-20 - Sebring - ALMS 12 Hour race on Saturday, IndyCar 200 Mile race on Sunday, or they could swap the order to maintain ALMS's headliner status (Sebring would be great for IndyCars: long straights, wide, plenty of passing; this would replace St. Pete, which I wouldn't miss much)

April 2-3 - Barber Motorsports Park - IndyCar on Saturday, ALMS on Sunday

April 16-17 - Long Beach - ALMS on Saturday, IndyCar on Sunday

May 7 - Kansas Speedway - IndyCar only

May 21 - Indy Pole Day (assuming that the current qualifying rules stand next year, not that they should)

May 28 - Indy 500 - IndyCar only

June 4 - Texas Speedway - IndyCar only

June 19 - Iowa Speedway - IndyCar only

July 3-4 - Watkins Glen - ALMS on Sunday the 3rd, IndyCar on Monday the 4th (this is tricky; the ALMS teams will be back from Le Mans by now, but will ISC be willing to allow this to happen at one of their tracks?)

July 17 - Toronto - IndyCar only (unless ALMS wants to come play)

July 30-31 - Mid-Ohio - IndyCar on Saturday, ALMS on Sunday (giving a nod to ALMS headlining a weekend; ALMS usually puts on a better show at Mid-Ohio, anyway)

August 13-14 - Road America - ALMS 500 Miler or 6 Hour on Saturday into the evening, IndyCar 200 Miler on Sunday (this needs to happen, and I will not argue about it)

August 27 - Motegi - IndyCar only (if it must stay on the calendar for now...)

September 4 - Kentucky - IndyCar only (a quick turn around from Motegi, but it's close to most teams' shops)

September 17-18 - Road Atlanta - IndyCar on Saturday, ALMS on Sunday for Petit Le Mans (changing Petit from Saturday to Sunday to maintain ALMS headlining status for their season finale)

September 25 - Chicagoland - IndyCar only (the season finale MUST be at Chicagoland)

The ALMS will have to make a couple of concessions with this schedule, namely shifting their Miller Motorsports Park date back to May and moving their Lime Rock date to coincide with IndyCar's Toronto date or one of the oval weekends. But, they also have some latitude to fit in a race at Laguna Seca, six-hour, sprint or otherwise, possibly in late August. The ALMS might be upset that they're not headlining more dates than they are, but if you're only fielding 20-25 car fields over four classes, can you really call yourself much of a headliner?

Anyway, how's that for a schedule? Eight ovals, three street races (if you include Sebring), and five road courses, including the triumphant return of Road Atlanta and Road America. We lose St. Pete for Sebring, Sao Paulo goes away (it sounds like it's on somewhat uneven footing this year, but if it turns out to be a success, maybe we can slide it in by moving up Homestead one week and putting it before Sebring), Edmonton drops off (as it might anyway), and Sears Point goes the way of the dodo. IndyCar and ALMS fans both win because now they get fantastic value for their dollar at SEVEN different tracks, and every non-NASCAR fan in the country has those dates all circled on their calendars. I don't know about you, but I'd be seriously tempted to turn in my Indy tickets in exchange for weekend passes at Sebring and Road Atlanta. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but you get my drift.

The era of insisting on standing and succeeding on one's own is more or less over for both IndyCar and the ALMS. It's time to put away the egos, embrace what the fans have been asking for and stand together. It might be their last chance.

Sitting Up and Listening

2010-02-02T21:50:00.008-05:00

The winds of change are blowing, all across American motorsport. IndyCar has got a new CEO, introduced earlier today. Sports car racing is scrambling to reposition itself within the entire scene as a whole, just in order to stay alive. NASCAR, as documented here and in many other places, is trying to reconnect with its hardcore fanbase, after a couple years of dwindling attendance and television ratings. IndyCar is grappling with its next generation car, apparently picking between two fundamentally different designs, one of which will be introduced in 2012.

These last two items sound basically unrelated, but in reality, they’re pretty closely linked. NASCAR has angered a large part of its classic fanbase by making all of their cars nearly identical with its Car of Tomorrow. Meanwhile, many existing and past IndyCar fans have become frustrated with the spec car racing that the current formula has resulted in. Other writers have tackled the issue of whether or not IndyCar should be looking at using more than one chassis going forward from 2012, in order to create technical intrigue. Curt Cavin, on Trackside a couple of weeks ago and in a couple of his Q&A columns, has said that the two potential new cars, the Delta Wing and the evolutionary Dallara, will be cheaper than the current cars, but also that their business models are based on the assumption that they will be supplying the whole field, creating another spec car situation unless multiple engine manufacturers come on board.

I have been vocal, both here and in my comments on other blogs, that it is most important that the cost for the next car to come down so that more teams can afford to come compete in the IndyCar series. This is important because if the costs creep up and the teams go away because they can't afford to run anymore, you’ll no longer have a series. Given a few weeks of reflection, now I also feel that it is very important that the IRL investigate using more than one chassis manufacturer. It appears that even the most staid and change averse sanctioning bodies are capable of sweeping change, if the fanbase and environment dictate them. In this linked piece, Peter M. De Lorenzo (a fantastic automotive and motorsports writer, who tells the truth, even if it’s uncomfortable) talks at length about changes that are likely upcoming in NASCAR over the next 2-3 years. Stock-based, manufacturer identifiable bodies. Direct fuel injection. Bio fuel. Sequential shift gearboxes. An extra road course race, likely during the “Chase”. For a series that uses 3400 pound, carburetor-engined cars as they have since the 1940s, this is nothing short of earth shattering.

Some of those changes are a nod to shaking things up and increasing competition. Some of them are a nod to the manufacturers, who are clearly not happy that the cars on the track bear very little resemblance to what they sell to consumers. Some of them are a nod to the fans, who are clamoring for the “old days” of when they could tell the brands apart, and could pull for the make of car that they’d driven to the track. In any case, all of these things are a nod to the idea that it’s not 1958 anymore. This is a great thing. I wish that NASCAR would also address their spotty attitude on safety, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

OK, back to my point: what does this have to do with IndyCar? What all of this tells me is that sometimes you HAVE to listen to the fans. Sometimes you HAVE to embrace some things that are kind of scary in order to evolve for the future. Sometimes when the playbook is all used up and not working anymore, you HAVE to try something new to get things jump started again.

This is why IndyCar needs to attempt to have multiple manufacturers again, both engines and chassis. If Delta Wing and Dallara have staked their business cases on selling 50 chassis per year, then ask them to re-do their spreadsheets for a scenario where they’re selling 25 per year, or roughly half the field (that’s for primary and back-up cars). Do whatever it takes to get multiple engine manufacturers back to the table. Tell them that you want to use an F1-style common engine control unit to control engine revs and turbo boost and outlaw traction control, but that you want their input on how they’d like to display their proprietary engineering in the IndyCar series. Biodiesel? Cellulosic ethanol? Hydrogen? For the sake of getting cars on the track in two years, you’ll need to limit the ideas to internal combustion engines, but no idea is too crazy. There is plenty of good engine simulation software out there that you can use to come up with equivalency formulas among engine types and configurations. It’s not the ‘70s or ‘80s anymore, when the FIA made wild guesses as how to best balance turbos versus normally aspirated engines in F1. It’s possible, you just have to give it a try and then work through the data. Once you’ve got the basic engines specs sorted out, then you can work through a similar program of balancing the performance of the Delta Wing and the Dallara. Turbo boost levels, engine revs, ballast weight, keep everything on the table for now.

There is plenty of time to get new, varied cars on the track in time for the 2012 IndyCar season. The IndyCar brass needs to sit up and listen to the fans and manufacturers, then get started right now. After all, if NASCAR - the sanctioning body that seemingly hasn’t changed the way they race or do anything else since the ‘50s - can make sweeping changes to its formula in order to stay relevant with fans and manufacturers, there’s no reason that the folks in Indianapolis shouldn’t be able to do the same.

Blogathon 2.0!

2010-01-30T15:00:00.002-05:00

For anybody who reads my blog who might not be aware (this might be about three of you), the guys at Furious Wedge are running another edition of their 24 Hour Blogathon today. The main thing they're covering is the 24 Hours of Daytona, but they're also going to be touching on the Australian Open Men's Singles final, the X-Games, college basketball, and just about anything else you can think of that's going on right now. It was a ton of fun last year, and this year they're going bigger and better. I'll be back again to lend my "Geeky Thoughts", but there'll be a cast of thousands from across the blogosphere there as well. In addition, there'll be a live chat going on during the last hour or so of the TV coverage on Speed, which will be followed up by some international Mario Kart Wii. It's going to be a blast. Anyway, I'm signing off from here for the next 24 hours, but I'll be posting over there as much as I possibly can between all my other obligations at home.

See everybody at Furious Wedge!

Should Fans Call the Shots in Daytona?

2010-01-10T15:35:00.011-05:00

I am at a loss.

NASCAR, after years (specifically, 2001 through 2006) of research, introduced a new specification car in 2007. This car, dubbed the "Car of Tomorrow", has undoubtedly improved the safety of the sport through the introduction of new thinking and new technology. The CoT moved the driver's seat inboard and added additional crush structures to the sides of the car. It also made provisions for larger window openings, in order for drivers to get out easier in the case of fire. There could be no question from any halfway rational fan of racing that any of these developments were positive.

However, the CoT has come under fire from many camps because of the way they look and the way that they race. The question of aesthetics is simply that, a question of what one individual thinks is attractive and what another doesn't. I, personally, am in the small group of fans who don't mind the new car. Frankly, the old car had morphed from something that very closely resembled machinery that you could buy in a showroom to a car that was unlike anything seen outside of a local short track. People have derided the new car for the same reason, but the people who want to go back to the old car constantly ingnore the fact that the old car didn't look anything like their street car, either. The new front splitter and new rear wing have also been derided, but as somebody who also likes sports cars and touring cars, both of which have carried splitters and wings for years, I actually sort of like those things.

As an additional factor, the wing was also introduced as an easy way for NASCAR to better adjust (and lessen) the rear downforce of the CoT and a way to better manage the air that flows over the car in the instance of the cars spinning and travelling down the track backwards. In short, when turned backwards to the direction of travel, a wing will allow some air to flow underneath it (this is how a wing works, with airflow over both surfaces) and escape over the roof, whereas a spoiler will not. This escaping air would lower the pressure under the rear of the car, thus lessening the tendency of the cars to flip over, and thus making the racing safer. Additionally, the wing end plates would spoil some of the air flowing over the rear of the car, where a spoiler has no end plates.

As for how the new aerodynmics have affected the way the cars race, this is an ongoing source for debate. Many people bemoan how the cars can no longer run nose to tail, and the preponderance of "aero push", caused by air no longer reaching the front of a trailing car. What people forget is that the old cars also had terrible aero push. The new cars are also more dependent on mechanical grip for their overall balance (due to NASCAR reducing the overall level of downforce on the CoT), and so teams have been experimenting with radical suspension geometries and setups: coil-binding, sway bars, and the like. What people easliy forget is that teams had already been experimenting with these things before the CoT was even introduced, so the CoT has actually changed this aspect of the sport very little.

This week (and before), there has been much talk of NASCAR getting rid of the wings and front splitters, probably because of input from the fans. I've read hundreds of comments and blog posts and dozens of calls into Wind Tunnel over the last two years to the effect of "the cars are ugly! The wings look stupid! Bring back the spoilers!" Look, folks. Those splitters and spoilers were introduced for a reason. Can any of these commenters or bloggers please do some lateral thinking and then tell me what will happen if the spoilers are brought back? I'm thinking not, mainly because the CoT has never been fully tested with spoilers instead of wings and splitters. Jimmy Spencer (in the first of those two columns I just linked to) spent an entire column saying that wings are terrible and are causing all sorts of problems. However, he presented no evidence of what the wings are actually doing, and showed absolutely no awareness of how the wings even work. At one point, he even blamed the wing for Joey Logano's flip at Dover, a flip that occurred at far below normal racing speed (he'd already hit the wall and slid along it for a couple hundred yards before flipping) and with two cars piledriving him into the wall. Yet Jimmy, who admits in his column that he is not an engineer though he certainly pretends to know better than those of us who actually are, claims that the flip would never have happened if there'd been a spoiler on Logano's car. OK, Jimmy! Got some wind tunnel data to back that up, then? No?

I only hold up Jimmy Spencer's column because it has been so symbolic of what I've heard so much from many NASCAR fans in the last year. Many of these opinions are not based in any sort of reason, and many of them have not taken into consideration the effects of what they've suggested. So, then, should NASCAR use these comments and complaints to change what they're doing on and off the track? I'm going to sound like an asshole here, but who should be designing the aerodynamics of a race car, a group of aerodynamic engineers with a wind tunnel at their disposal or a high-school educated backhoe operator who calls into Wind Tunnel every week to bitch about how bad the new car sucks?

In a similar vein, NASCAR appears to be considering wholesale changes to the way they police their races at the restrictor plate tracks at Daytona and Talladega. Among other things, they may be bringing back allowing bump drafting in the corners and opening up the apron to allow cars to race below the yellow line. I'm sorry, but I thought that those two rules were introduced in the effort of improving safety. People seem to be claiming that passing will be improved and increase if those areas are opened up. You know what will definitely increase if they allow those things? Giant wrecks that knock peoples' favorite drivers out of races and reduce the spectacle of racing through increased yellow flag laps. You know what will increase passing? BANNING BLOCKING!

Getting rid of a no-talent tactic that decreases passing and makes the sport more dangerous? What a revolutionary thought.

Michael Waltrip went even further this week in suggesting that each lap led at the plate tracks should be worth one point. Sure, this may encourage people to try to get to the front of the pack instead of riding around in the back like Jimmie Johnson did this fall at Talladega (though his goal was not to lead but to survive until the end), but what happens for the people at the actual front of the pack? Leaders are apparently already allowed to do whatever they like to keep cars behind them, but if you start rewarding laps led with extra points without also banning blocking, you will see a huge increase in blocking and possibly even less passing. And that's fun to watch, right?

This may be a bit presumptuous, but I thought that Brian France, Mike Helton and Gary Nelson were each getting paid millions of dollars per year to make tough decisions about the safety of their sport. In fact, they're all getting paid to think about these things as their full time job. The fans, though? Many of them do not understand what actually happens on the race track. Watching Wind Tunnel for a week or two should illustrate that point quite nicely. So, why are they potentially putting the safety of the drivers (and fans) in the fans' hands?

Look, NASCAR can do whatever they want, and they certainly don't have to listen to me. Lord knows they sure haven't so far. But the idea to allow the fans to dictate what they do, either for aesthetic or un-thought-out emotional reasons, is a terrible precedent to make. If you need to make concessions to the fans (as some folks, drivers included, are saying), then reduce ticket prices or give away free t-shirts. But, if this is what NASCAR is going to resort to, allowing the fans to make new rules and decrease the safety of the sport, then they better be prepared to install torture racks at every track, for whenever Kyle Busch makes contact with Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

An Introduction's In Order

2009-12-18T19:19:00.004-05:00

World, meet Senna Renee Miller, the newest of the Speedgeek Clan.

Born December 18, 2009 at 4:47 AM, 7 lbs. 9 ounces, 20 inches long. Coming soon to a racetrack spotter's stand near you!

Indy's New Schedule - Nice Try, Better Luck Next Year

2009-12-16T12:16:00.003-05:00

Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced yesterday a raft of changes to the Month of May. You can read about the particulars elsewhere, but here’s a quick summary of what they announced:

Opening Day – Saturday May 15 (includes Rookie Orientation somehow, it’s unclear how at this time)

Practice – Sunday May 16 through Friday May 21

Pole Day – Saturday May 22

Bump Day – Sunday May 23

Carb Day – Friday May 28

Race Day – Sunday May 30

First, I’ll give them props for moving Opening Day from a Tuesday to the weekend. That was a no-brainer, in my opinion, and something that should have been taken care of this year.

I’m going to keep the criticism very short and sweet, due to some severe time limitations on my part that’ll keep me out of the loop for several days here. In my opinion, this is not the most thought out schedule that IMS could have come up with. What we got is seven days of practice and two days of qualifying, way more practice than what’s needed for two days of qualifying. To boot, any team that would have been prone to doing a “second week” program for additional car or cars after putting a primary car or cars into the race on the first weekend will no longer have that option. With the new schedule, they will be trying to get their primary cars into the race early on Saturday, and then they’ll have a matter of mere hours to put together additional efforts, where before they had several days.

Here’s the schedule I would have gone with, as I wrote in to Trackside’s website back in May of this year:

Rookie Orientation Program – Thursday May 13

Opening Day – Friday May 14 (perfect for folks looking to play hooky)

Practice – Saturday May 15

Pole Day (first 21 grid slots) – Sunday May 16

Track Closed – Monday May 17 through Wednesday May 19

Practice – Thursday May 20 and Friday May 21

Day 2 Qualifying (positions 22 through 33) – Saturday May 22

Bump Day – Sunday May 23

Carb Day – Friday May 28

Race Day – Sunday May 30

You want days on track cut back, so that teams aren’t spending as much money on track time? My pre-race schedule has seven total days of pre-Carb Day track time, eight if you’re doing ROP. The actual new schedule has nine. Mine’s one better. When are the fans most likely to come out to the track? In my opinion, that’s for qualifying, since not too many people are liable to come out for just practice. My schedule has three days of qualifying, as opposed to the actual schedule’s two. Again, one better. Less practice, more qualifying. With my schedule, there can be “second week” deals aplenty, as the teams that qualify on the first week have plenty of time to work out terms and then try to get up to speed. The actual schedule gives you less than 24 hours, from “ink drying on the contracts” to “in the qualifying chute”. My schedule is short of pre-Pole Day practice, but really, any team that’s trying to get into the first seven rows won’t need seven days of practice to tune and tune and tune (as the actual schedule has). Both schedules have days built in for weather delays, though I prefer where mine fit (Pole Day can be Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and still leave time for second week deals).

Again, props to IMS for trying something to save the teams (and themselves) some cash, but this could have been better executed.

A Tale of Two Drivers

2009-12-10T18:12:00.006-05:00

Two stat lines:

81 career starts; 1 win; 3 poles; 5 podiums; 13 races led; best season points finish of 5th

84 career starts; 1 win; 2 poles; 6 podiums; 13 races led; best season points finish of 6th (twice)

Startlingly similar lines there, huh? Who can tell me who those lines represent? The first one might be familiar to anybody who’s been paying attention to IndyCar news, and all of the IndyCar blogs with their chatter about this week’s JR Motorsports announcement. That’s right, the first line is the summary of Danica Patrick’s career IndyCar stats, from her debut in 2005 through now in 2009. Her level of success to date and her potential for future success have been hot topics ever since…well, right about the time she strapped into one of Bobby Rahal’s Panoz-Hondas. And now, she’s going to be tackling NASCAR in a limited format next year, with a debut in February’s ARCA race at Daytona, and then a slate of races in Dale Earnhardt Jr’s Nationwide car, whenever it doesn’t intrude on her IndyCar duties with Andretti Autosport.

Danica’s place in IndyCar and motorsports history is far from determined. People struggle on a seemingly daily basis to figure out where she stands in today’s driver hierarchy, and therefore what her projected success rate might be in NASCAR. Most people would agree that she has not been as successful as Dario Franchitti has been in IndyCar. Dario had a horrible time in his brief NASCAR career in 2008, but most people can also agree that he was not in very good equipment, nor on a particularly competitive team. The same can be said all the way around for Sam Hornish Jr. Danica is likely to be given moderately better equipment, relatively speaking, than Dario or Sam, given that JR Motorsports is basically an offshoot of the dominant Hendrick Motorsports. But, what is she going to do with that equipment?

It’ll be a tough row to hoe for her, as her complete prior experience in race cars in excess of 2200 pounds is limited to one start in an ALMS-spec Ferrari 550 Maranello in 2003 and two starts in the 24 Hours of Daytona in a Daytona Prototype in 2006 and 2009. That’s a pretty limited roster of experience in relatively low-downforce, heavy cars. It’s not going to be an overnight transition for her to get up to speed in any kind of stock car, ARCA, Nationwide, or otherwise. Nobody should expect any wins from her in a stock car in 2010, or probably even in 2011, given that she’s only making a dozen or so starts this year.

To complicate matters, she is also planning on maintaining her “day job” in the IndyCar series, which means that she’ll be doing a fair amount of jumping back and forth between a high-downforce 1600 pound car and a low-downforce 3400 pound car. Is that going to help her case in IndyCar? I’m…more than a little dubious on that.

Let me get this out there now: I am not a Danica hater. I’ve actually been a fan since her Barber Dodge days, though I’ve sure wished that she’d won more races (of any type) by now. This piece is not meant to be a demolition job on her career thus far, nor should it be taken to mean that I’m either guaranteeing or rooting against her success in NASCAR. It’d be nice if she could win some races over there, and show that an above average IndyCar driver can be competitive, given top-line equipment. However, I remain unconvinced that Danica Patrick is going to be a breakthrough star, transcending gender and sporting lines, and draw more fans into NASCAR or even into IndyCar (though she remains one of IndyCar’s marquee names).

Why is that? Well, let me get back to those two original stat lines. I’ll admit, I cheated just a little bit when I came up with the second line. That’s not representative of that driver’s complete career, though it does only omit two top-5 finishes that came in that driver’s last five years in CART. The years that those stats call out are 1981 through 1987, and the driver’s career that they represent is Kevin Cogan’s. That’s right, THE Kevin Cogan, who is largely known as something of a punchline nowadays, and who Robin Miller regularly refers to as “that damn Coooogin,” as A.J. Foyt allegedly called him at Indy in 1982.

Let’s have a closer look. Cogan burst onto the IndyCar scene with a spate of good finishes in 1981 and 1982, including a 4th at Indy in 1982 in his first full year in an IndyCar. Danica burst onto the IndyCar scene in 2005 with a couple of good finishes, led some laps at Indy, the first ever by a female, and finished 4th at Indy. Cogan made an early signing to a top team, Penske, for 1982. Danica signed on to a top team relatively early in her career, Andretti-Green, for 2007. Cogan made a high-profile, possible “rookie mistake” crash at Indy in 1982 that took out several drivers, including Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt. Danica made a high-profile, possible “rookie mistake” at Indy in 2005, taking out several drivers, including Tomas Scheckter. Cogan nearly won the Indy 500 in 1986, but was passed by Bobby Rahal with less than ten laps to go. Danica nearly won the Indy 500 in 2005, but was passed by Dan Wheldon with less than 10 laps to go. Cogan followed up a long debut period of no wins by winning his 54th IndyCar start in his 6th season. Danica followed up a long debut period of no wins by winning her 50th IndyCar start in her 4th season.

Where did Cogan go from his strongest season in 1986? That season, he won the first race of the season at Phoenix, nearly won Indy, and finished 6th in the points. From there, Cogan never finished in the top-10 in IndyCar points again, though he was still driving for Pat Patrick’s team in 1987, as he had in 1986. Thereafter, he drove for smaller, less competitive teams, and never really had much of a shot at the top of the sport again. He had a solid career, all in all, even if his early promise never really panned out.

Danica’s career is far from over at this point, but her results have not really backed up the amount of attention that she’s received. The question is: how can she avoid becoming this generation’s Kevin Cogan, a driver who possibly commanded more attention than his results really warranted? A good start for Danica would be to ensure that she stays in a ride that’s capable of winning races. As long as she’s at Andretti, that will be the case, but if she starts to seriously sniff around at running NASCAR more than a dozen times per year, no front-line IndyCar team will want to put her in their car. Top (read that: championship- and race-winning) IndyCar teams are generally only interested in drivers who can compete for championships. If Danica starts to run NASCAR races during the IndyCar season, her chances of winning an IndyCar championship will be over, even if she might be able to score an occasional fluke-y win for a smaller team. Nobody has been able to successfully switch between an IndyCar and a stock car on a regular basis since Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney did it in the 1960’s, and Danica’s far from the level of those legends of the sport.

Danica can do whatever she wants, clearly, but if she wants to be remembered as a racing driver who could do more than just win a race once in a blue moon, she’s going to have to concentrate on one thing. And if NASCAR doesn’t pan out, sooner rather than later, that thing that she’ll need to concentrate on should be IndyCar, the type of car that she’s been training to drive since she was a small girl. Otherwise, 20 years from now she’s liable to be largely remembered as a novelty racer who appeared in some commercials and couldn’t deliver the goods. A lot like Kevin Cogan.

Note: Huge thanks to Sean at Race-Database.com for the fantastic one-stop racing statistics shop that he's built. I couldn't have written this without it. If you haven't seen his site, head over there now. Just make sure you've got a couple free hours to spend.

An Open Letter to Trackside

2009-10-30T10:41:00.006-04:00

For last night’s Trackside show, Curt Cavin and Kevin Lee solicited ideas for increased visibility for the IndyCar series. What they asked for were quick, sound-bite-y ideas, but anybody who’s read even one of my posts knows that brevity is not my strong suit. Big thanks to Cavin and Kevin for reading the Cliffs Notes version of my ideas on the air, but for anybody who might be interested, the full text of my letter is below.

Kevin,
Many thanks to you and Curt for opening up the “what does IndyCar need to do?” debate for your show listeners. Hopefully, we’ll get some good ideas out there, and maybe some high-up folks will get something to carry forward. I’ve banged on about some of this on both my blog and others’ blogs (George Phillips’s Oilpressure blog, for instance), but I’ll try to do some show-friendly nutshell ideas here:

1) Possibly the most important: increased driver visibility. The most visible people associated with the League are the drivers, so let’s get them out there more. Autograph sessions and Tweet-ups at the tracks are a good start, but the people attending those are likely already fans, so that’s not necessarily enough to bring in new fans. What’s needed is getting the guys (and girls) out in front of some new eyes. There’s plenty you could do here, but I’ll confine my idea to just the following. As an example, the late Stan Fox came to my high school in Wisconsin back in the early ‘90s (’92 or ’93, I think) to speak about highway safety. I’ll not elaborate on the horrible, horrible irony involved there, but I know for certain that between his visit, the short IndyCar video that was played before his speech and the Menard’s show car they displayed outside the gym, there were some very interested (impressionable) minds turned toward the 500 and the IndyCar series the next season. What I’m suggesting is an IRL-sponsored highway safety campaign, done in cooperation with high schools who are either local to IRL races or just scattered around the Midwest, for ease of displaying a show car along with the driver’s speech and Q&A. If every driver could be required to do five of these per season, that’d be 100 or more events per year, times several hundred kids per event. I’m sure that somebody could work up some quick numbers for the break-even point of appearance costs versus additional ticket sales, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t be more than a couple thousand extra seats total for the whole year (and this doesn’t even include the potential increase in TV viewership, since that’s harder to nail down). As a residual effect, sponsors would also be displayed to new audiences, through footage on an associated video and through what the drivers wear to the event (be it race suit, polo shirt, Geico gecko or Ronald McDonald costume [ha!], or whatever), so there is value added for them as well.

2) Holding down costs in order to attract more teams and potentially increased competition. The next generation of cars needs to be made cost effective so that existing teams can afford to ante up for new equipment and so that new teams can be persuaded to come over from other forms of motorsport (Lights, Atlantics, GrandAm, ALMS, etc.). This can be done by standardizing the design of the carbon fiber tub among the chassis manufacturers, but also by limiting the amount of carbon fiber that’s used through the rest of the car. Aluminum and aluminum honeycomb are nearly as lightweight as the carbon equivalents, but less than half the cost. And, as carbon is used more and more in other areas (aeronautics, mainly), it’s not getting any cheaper. Limit the use of carbon fiber to the tub, the sidepod covers and the engine cover, aluminum for everything else (floor, wings, etc.). More teams in the series and the reset in chassis data for all teams (especially Penske and Ganassi) that comes with a new car means more teams that are potentially able to compete at the top of the leaderboard. That’s good for fan interest.

3) New manufacturers will bring more eyeballs to the series, through increased interest from domestic ALMS and F1 fans, and through the increase in advertising that the new manufacturers would likely bring (newspaper ads, TV spots, etc.). There does not need to be a huge escalation of cost with the addition of new manufacturers. First, and with the consultation of the potential new manufacturers, commission a standardized engine control unit with a limited scope of engine control. F1 has recently done this with McLaren Electronics and GrandAm recently accomplished this with Bosch. In both of those cases, the standard controller effectively outlawed traction control, so this would achieve the same for the IRL, along with a turbo boost limit, a limit on the number of engine maps (thereby ripping out the fuel knob, as Pressdog likes to say), etc.. With this in place, engine manufacturers can still attempt to show their technological superiority through means that are expanded from the current spec-engine format, but in a more limited manner than the wide-open late-‘90s. As a side note to this, I understand that a full-season engine lease deal for a Mazda 2-liter turbo engine for the ALMS is under $100,000, and that’s with them using their own ECU and only two cars in the series (i.e. basically no economies of scale). If that’s the case, then why can’t IndyCar set a target for a season lease for a similar engine with a standardized ECU from all of the new manufacturers at $500,000-600,000? That would be 50-60% of the current one, wouldn’t it? Between this limit and making the chassis more affordable (see item #2), you encourage new teams to enter the sport while addressing the financial concerns of all of the current teams by bringing down the price to play. Meanwhile, new manufacturers bring their advertising budgets to the table, along with their activation and increased fan interest.

There’s plenty more that can be done, I’m sure, but these three things are my pet ideas. Upon re-reading all of that, it looks a little long-winded. Please feel free to edit as necessary for brevity, or simply hang onto all of that for posting on The Fan website if you prefer.

There you have it. Any thoughts on any of this? Anybody?

NASCAR = Nitwits Against Safety; Crashes Are Rad!

2009-10-25T18:16:00.009-04:00

Is there a faction within NASCAR who have decided that safety is about the sixth or seventh priority for their drivers, crews and fans? That would be sixth or seventh behind profit, "entertainment" value, profit, column inches written, profit, and maybe t-shirt sales?

Five weeks ago at New Hampshire, A.J. Allmendinger spun out of turn four when coming to the white flag. NASCAR allowed the entire field to run nearly the entire lap before half-heartedly throwing a caution flag when the leaders were coming out of turn four. The "reason" given for doing what they did was that NASCAR wanted to give Allmendinger a chance to restart and get going again. This is absurd. The leaders were all separated by several carlengths, and Allmendinger getting restarted would likely have given very few drivers a chance to take a shot at the driver in front of them on that last lap. Meanwhile, Allmendinger barely got rolling again amid a huge cloud of tire smoke, the field packed up accordion-style coming out of turn four and NASCAR got away lucky with just a couple of cars with bent sheetmetal. Let me repeat that: NASCAR got lucky. Can you imagine what the result would have been if Allmendinger hadn't quite gotten going, then somebody had come down the front straight, unsighted by the cars in front of him, and plowed at full speed into Allmendinger's driver side door?

After the lessons "learned" at Loudon, I'd have thought that that scenario would not play out again for quite some time, if ever again, even if NASCAR seemed to fail to understand that they'd done something wrong when they made statements about the situation in the press. I was wrong. For the second time in the last six races, NASCAR failed to throw a caution flag on the last lap of a race while a car sat stationary on the front straight, boradside across the track. This week at Martinsville while coming to the white flag, John Andretti spun coming out of turn four with a little help from a couple of other cars. Yet again, NASCAR allowed the entire field to run the full lap, at a track where the leaders would be arriving on the scene in 10-15 seconds. This is not a time or a place to trust that a driver is going to get a hot race engine restarted in a time-effective fashion. The only difference this time is that NASCAR never did throw a yellow flag, though they yet again got lucky in that the only result was some bent sheetmetal by cars packing up while trying to avoid the stationary Andretti.

I am certain that the "reason" that will be given for both of these events is because NASCAR wants races to finish under green flag conditions. I understand that, though I've made it patently clear in this blog on several occasions in the past that the desire to finish the last lap, or last half of a lap, or last turn at the expense of drivers' safety is idiotic. I remain convinced that a Green-White-Checkered finish will kill a driver, or worse yet, a fan or several fans, at a restrictor plate race sometime in the near future. We have had huge accidents on the last laps of the last two restrictor plate races at Talladega and Daytona this year, one with a car getting up into the fence and injuring several fans and the other with a car coming dangerously close to doing the same.

What has been NASCAR's response to these accidents? Nothing. Not "no more black and white decisions about yellow line infractions" and not "no more blocking allowed". Nothing. NASCAR is simply crossing its fingers that the accidents that we've seen are the absolute worst case scenarios and that nothing bad will ever happen again.

There is no question that the first priority for racing sanctioning bodies should be the safety of the fans, followed by the safety of its drivers. Failure to ensure that your fans are safe from flying race cars is an invitation to be bankrupted by a litigous group of families who have had family members who have been killed at one of your events. No disclaimer that's printed on the back of a ticket stub will prevent a talented prosecutor and a sympathetic jury from relieving a sanctioning body of tens of millions of dollars. Or, prevent congress from instantly stopping all of your activities, should they find that there was something that could have been done to prevent the massive loss of life of patriotic taxpayers.

It's not 1950 anymore, NASCAR. It's not enough to put SAFER barriers on all of the walls of your tracks and come out with a car that's marginally safer than your last one and then call it a day. Unless you continue to take action to ensure the safety of all of your participants, you deserve any bad things which come your way in the future. Here's hoping that I'm wrong and that you're right in your inaction, but I doubt it.

Let's see what happens at Talladega next weekend...

Why GrandAm Shouldn’t Race at IMS

2009-09-03T13:01:00.002-04:00

GrandAm is testing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway today, and circulating rumors (including those mentioned by Curt & Kevin on Trackside this week) say that there could be a GrandAm endurance race at IMS in 2011. People will tell you things about how endurance racing won’t work there, because the track doesn’t want to release fans into the surrounding neighborhood late at night, and things like that, but let me add some more points to the list of why GrandAm should not be let onto the grounds to stage an actual race.

1) The cars are not viewed by ANYBODY as the most sophisticated in their field. IndyCars are the fastest single seater cars that run anywhere in the US. Formula 1 are the fastest cars that turn right and left anywhere in the world. MotoGP bikes are the motorcycle equivalent of F1. NASCAR Cup cars are the fastest “stock cars” anywhere, and the top-drawing form of motorsport in the US. These are the types of events that belong at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. GrandAm cars are not the fastest sports cars in the world, and are not even the fastest sports cars in this country. The Grand Am GT cars are basically at the same level of speed as the newly introduced GT-Challenge class in the American Le Mans Series. This GT-C class did not even run at Mosport last weekend, because the closing rate between it and the cars in the prototype cars was judged to be too great to be safe. That does not sound like the sort of car that should be on the track during a “feature” race.

Similarly, the GrandAm headlining Daytona Prototype cars are only marginally faster than the GrandAm GT cars, and in fact, sometimes struggle to get through slower GT traffic, due to insufficient straightaway advantage and microscopically better braking. If your headlining cars are only 1-2 seconds per lap faster around the track than the under-under-undercard Porsche Supercup cars that graced the Speedway back in the USGP years, then you probably ought to stay home.

2) There is no proven fan following of the GrandAm series, either in Indianapolis or anywhere else in the US. When NASCAR arrived at the Speedway in 1994, it was obvious that there would be a sell-out, as NASCAR’s popularity was clearly in the midst of a 20+ year upswing. When F1 arrived in 2000, there was no question that well over 100,000 tickets would be sold, since American F1 fans had gone without a US Grand Prix for eight seasons, and were starving for a chance to see F1 cars on home soil again. Add to that the factor that tickets would be far cheaper than tickets for any of the European rounds, so there would be many fans coming over the Atlantic for a relatively inexpensive racing weekend in Indy. On the other hand, can anybody tell me what the biggest crowd has been for GrandAm during the entire Daytona Prototype era (2003-now)? 25,000? 20,000? Possibly far less? Why should anybody expect that GrandAm at Indy would draw well in excess of double the largest previous crowd in series history? Even if they did draw 50,000 people to the Speedway somehow, how embarrassingly empty would the grounds look, at only 15-20% full? And would even 50,000 ticket sales be enough to justify all of the costs incurred simply by opening the gates (yellow shirts, security, EMTs, concession workers, clean-up crews, the electric and utility bills)? Unless your face values start at $200 a piece, then I’m thinking probably not.

3) When GrandAm shares a track with NASCAR for a weekend, it is always treated like a 4th class citizen. At Daytona this year, during 4th of July weekend, the GrandAm cars had to practice, qualify and race all in one day, with the two hour race itself starting SIX hours before that night’s Cup race. How many Cup fans do you think came out to the track six hours early watch a bunch of guys they’d never heard of driving cars that don’t appear to be going as fast as Cup cars? I’m thinking not too many. At Watkins Glen last month, the same sort of thing played out, with the GrandAm race starting two full hours after Cup qualifying had wrapped up. Given the choice between staying at the track for 2-4 extra hours to watch GrandAm and going into town to get dinner, how many NASCAR fans do you think chose the former? Just last weekend, when sharing the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with NASCAR’s #2 series, GrandAm was relegated to running its race on Saturday, so as to not impede on the “fantastic” “racing” of the Nationwide series (material for another blog post sometime, though you should check out Declan Brennan’s take on the weekend). Anyway, if NASCAR, whose parent company ISC also owns GrandAm, doesn’t see fit to bill the GrandAm series at least as highly as the Truck or Nationwide series, then why should such a clearly lower run series be allowed to be a clear #1 for a whole weekend at the Speedway?

4) GrandAm does not appear to be a series on the rise, but in fact seems to be a series that’s withering away. Let’s look at average car counts in the headlining Daytona Prototype class:

2006: 26.1 cars entered per race
2007: 19.9
2008: 18.9
2009 (so far): 16.9

The current rumor is for a GrandAm race to run at the Speedway in 2011, as part of the Centennial Era celebration. Are we so sure that the series is going to be around that long? If it actually makes it two more years but the trend continues, who is going to come out to watch 10-12 DPs and a dozen or so GTs run around for 6-12 hours? Won’t that look kind of silly?

Look, I love racing. The more, the better, as far as I’m concerned. However, there is something special about Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For 83 years, only the Indy 500 took place there. For the last 15 years, only top-level motorsport events have come to town. But, once you open the gate to clearly inferior forms of motorsport, then where do you draw the line as to who to let in and who gets shut out? If GrandAm gets to run, do you also kowtow to future overtures from NASCAR to run Nationwide and the Trucks there? Does the Speedway circle a date for Indiana Sprint Week? How about karts or quarter-midgets? They’d be cute to watch there, right? On the other hand, if they’re going to start running autocrosses on the front straight, complete with a Chicago Box on the yard of bricks, maybe I should shut up and start thinking about booking my hotel room for 2015…

Elaboration

2009-07-06T23:11:00.005-04:00

From the Watkins Glen IndyCar lap chart and memory:

Lap 41: Justin Wilson and Mike Conway stop, pitting from first and second, respectively. New leaders are Helio Castroneves, Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon, all covered by roughly a second.

Lap 42: Helio stops. ABC cameras show the stop, then show Helio cruising down pitlane. The Turn 1 camera picks him up, pans back to allow Wilson into the frame, both cars are approaching Turn 1, but it’s not clear who’s going to win the race to Turn 2, or how far back Conway might be. Our screen cuts abruptly to Briscoe and Dixon back at about the outer loop, separated by roughly 4 car lengths.

Lap 43: Having followed Briscoe and Dixon around to the pits, and Marty Reid/Scott Goodyear having not even speculated on who might have won the race between Wilson and Helio to Turn 2/3 or the bus stop, Briscoe makes his stop. ABC cameras show the stop, then show Briscoe cruising down pitlane. The Turn 1 camera picks him up, pans back as if to show Wilson and/or Helio running parallel to Briscoe on the track. We never get there, because the screen cuts abruptly to Dixon negotiating the outer loop BY HIMSELF. The cameras follow Dixon all the way around to the pits, while Reid/Goodyear continue to crow about how this stop is the deciding factor of the race. Well, guys, there have already been four stops made that were just as decisive, and we got to see exactly zero pit exits. Oh, also we haven’t actually seen Justin Wilson on the screen for roughly three minutes now.

Lap 44: Dixon pits and exits, and we finally get to see where all of the cars are relative to each other, while Reid/Goodyear utter the name “Wilson” for the first time since probably Lap 42. We’ll have to wait another 5-6 laps to hear the name “Conway” again. Thanks, ABC. The most riveting four lap sequence of the entire season to date, and you got roughly 10% of it right (showing the pit stops themselves).

That, friends, is a master class on how to ignore everything that everybody has learned about how to cover road racing in the last 20+ years, and how to unnecessarily infuriate every single knowledgeable fan who has managed to find the race on your network. As mush as I and my blogger brethren have railed on the IRL about the need to fix the current generation of racecar (which they are already taking some baby steps toward doing), they absolutely MUST sit down with their long time broadcast partner and lay out what is expected of them. No more brain dead directing, and far less comatose commentary, at a minimum. If they can't deliver these things, it's time to start looking for escape clauses in their network TV contract.

Two Quick Post-Glen Thoughts

2009-07-05T22:56:00.003-04:00

1) If a race has come down to the last round of pitstops (as it appeared to have done today), and how the cars come out of the pits relative to one another, it might be a good idea to see where the cars, you know, actually come out of the pits. Watching the cars exit their pitboxes, get almost down to the pit exit and (with the other direct competitors also on screen, just the other side of the pitwall), then cutting abruptly away to cars that are on the complete opposite side of the track and who are either not vying for position or running along by themselves...maybe not such a good idea. Doing this on consecutive laps, leaving us to wonder for a solid 3-4 minutes who is ahead of who among the cars who have pitted? That is very, very not cool...ABC Sports.

2) Yeah! Big, huge ups to Justin Wilson and the entire Dale Coyne Racing team! As a guy who thought very strongly about buying into Justin's career when he was in F1 (and which I would have done, had I not been flat broke at the time), this was probably the best thing I could imagine happening in today's IndyCar scene. As you can imagine, I'm biased there, but I defy you to find me anybody who's ever said anything bad about the guy, or anybody who was pulling against Coyne, 558 races deep into his IndyCar career without a single win. Just awesome, and I hope that all of the warm fuzzies generated this weekend can last us for several weeks. Hey, we'll probably all be bickering about the downforce levels of the cars again come Kentucky, but a guy can dream, can't he?

What to do?

2009-06-18T18:59:00.003-04:00

OK, I’ve been sitting on this post for quite a while now, probably too long, since the uproar after the non-race at Texas has been somewhat forgotten and died down by now. But, I wanted to get some thoughts out there before this weekend’s race at Iowa Speedway and before tonight’s Trackside with Cavin and Kevin show, when they’re going to be tackling this same subject with Larry Curry of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

To briefly reiterate the point that I’ve read and heard all over TV and the blogosphere since the Texas IndyCar race: IndyCar’s current oval racing largely sucks. There is very little side-by-side racing, no pack racing, and basically no passing is possible unless you have a huge performance advantage over the car in front of you. Two of those things, the first two, I don’t necessarily think we need to have in the sport. If we wind up with side-by-side or racing in packs, that’s fine, but the thing that I think is potentially lethal to the series as a whole is the inability of cars to pass each other.

It’s been well documented that Ryan Briscoe led roughly 518 laps at Texas and at one point held a 96 second lead, however, once he was passed by Helio Castroneves in the pits, he was unable to find a way back by. Fishy, no? Seems like somebody who is able to pull away from the entire field while supposedly still conserving fuel should be able to complete one pass (even if it’s one on his teammate for the lead) in the final 30 laps of the race, especially if it’s on a track that has long been renowned for its spectacular competition. It was the same sort of thing that we saw at Kansas, and most of the day at Indy: you make a pass in the first lap or two after a restart, or in the pits, or you’re cruising around holding your position, unable to make much of an impression on anybody in front of you. There were a few exceptions to this rule (Oriol Servia and Townsend Bell at Indy, Marco Andretti at Texas), but nothing like the ability to pass that we’ve seen at any other point in the history of the series.

What do we do? First off, let me say that something absolutely must be done. The next generation of cars are not due to appear until 2012, or maybe even 2013. That is a long, long time from now. Judging by the discontent in the blogosphere, among people who are long time hardcore proponents of the sport, people are going to start walking away or turning the channel. (Personally, I'm going to skip Iowa this weekend, even though the fact that it's a short track means that the racing might be better. If it turns out to be another woofer, I don't feel like going to my third sub-par oval race this season.) If TV ratings do not increase past where they are now (and if the racing continues not to inspire fans, they won’t), there will likely not be a 2013 for the League. Sponsors will evaporate, teams will close their doors, and then we’ll wind up with four red and white cars driving around with 5-6 guys following them around, laps behind.

For starts, I’d like the League to acknowledge that we have a problem. It’s pretty clear that nobody, not myself, not Robin Miller, not Jack Arute, not Andy Granatelli, knows of a silver bullet that will fix the racing overnight. An overnight fix is probably not even possible. But, I’d sure hope that Tony George, Brian Barnhart, Tony Cotman, Terry Angstadt, and whoever else at the IRL is ordering food in every night, locking themselves in a conference room on 16^th Street, sleeping under their desks, calling every technically minded person they know and burning the midnight oil, until they can hatch a plan to make next year markedly better than this year.

Let me get them started: aerodynamically-induced understeer is keeping drivers from getting close enough to the car in front to attempt a pass. OK, where does most of the problematic turbulence come from? The wings. Get Dallara started on making smaller, less effective wings, right now. Hey, Dallara, you got an exclusive contract to build the next generation cars, right? You wanna see that next generation actually come to light? Then help fix the one we’ve got now. Cut the wing-produced downforce by 10-20%, and work on instituting ground effect tunnel blockers to cut another 10-15%. You need some help on that? OK, here you go. I found that on The Google in 0.25 seconds. Search “cart+tunnel+blocker” for more info there, or ask Adrian Reynard. There, it’s a front wing, a rear wing and some underbody parts. You’ve got about four months to do the design work, and then a further 5-6 months to crank out enough parts for all of the teams.

What is all of that going to fix? Drivers will be able to follow closer than they can now, and the good ones will be able to set up and complete passes like they could before the days when the cars were pinned to the track by over a ton of aerodynamic assistance. It’s true that it’ll probably be even harder for people to go side-by-side than it is now, but I think all we’re really asking for is passing. Side-by-side for lap after lap after lap isn’t actually all that fun, really. Watch NASCAR at Talladega this fall. Is it thrilling? Sure, but only because you’re waiting for somebody to do something dumb and spark a 30 car pileup. We’re looking to avoid that in the IndyCar series, since a multi-multi-car pileup would likely result either in a car getting in the grandstands, or a team going out of business due to a huge repair bill.

Next, most folks think that the current cars don’t have enough power. Well, Honda has a perfectly good 4.0 liter V-8 engine that they’re using in another series right now, but rumor has it will be on a shelf collecting dust next year. Some minor tweaks will make that compatible with oval racing, given that it’s a development of the 3.4 liter LMP2 engine, which was in turn a development of the Honda IndyCar engine. Some sources say that the 4.0 liter is good for “620+ HP” breathing through restrictors, so taking the restrictors off should be good for at least 700. 50+ extra horsepower over what we’ve got now is a good start. Plus, that engine is designed to run for 12+ hours, so reliability shouldn’t be a problem. Swap the 4.0 liter in for the current 3.5 liter, and let’s see which drivers can handle the extra power. Also, with all of that reduced downforce from above, we’ll be looking at straightaway speeds of at least 5-10 MPH more than what we’re currently getting, plus visible acceleration out of corners. Fast is good, right?

OK, next, get Firestone on the line, and tell them to make the tires softer, and maybe even a little wider. Reliability problems, you say? Well, three paragraphs ago, I took 20-35% of the downforce off of the cars. That’s a lot less vertical force on the sidewall, and subsequently, a lot less horizontal strain on the tread in the corners. Soften up the tires and we might get some side-by-side back, plus it’ll force drivers to be careful about abusing their rubber. Beat on your tires too much, and you’ll be vulnerable to the smooth guys (and girls) before your next pitstop, just like with the current option tires on the road courses. I’ll hear no talk about “marbles” here. They’re already a problem that is getting no better, even with Firestone making harder tires every year, so you might as well go the other way and see if you can improve the show.

There you go, the entire Dallara-Honda-Firestone package re-imagined in under a dozen paragraphs. It’s possible that this formula would produce racing that’s no better than the 2009 product. But, can we really afford to knowingly accept two more seasons of what we’re currently getting?

Quickie 500 Predictions

2009-05-24T08:11:00.004-04:00

After some troubles with Blogger yesterday (i.e. trying to reload it for 45 minues, while it simply refused to work), I've only got time for a couple of quick race morning Indy 500 predictions.

Obvious Pick: A red and white car. OK, you want more specific than that? Well, Penske had three of the top five cars on Carb Day. That said, I don't think that Will Power is quite as quick (or experienced at avoiding trouble) as the other two guys, so he's out. That leaves Helio and Ryan Briscoe. Helio's having a dream month: stayed out of jail, won the pole, fastest on Carb Day, won the pit stop competition. Seems like a good time for a clean sweep? I say no. The fairy tale ends here, though he's likely to still finish top-5. I'm taking Briscoe. Nobody's been better since mid-season last year, and he's ready to take home the big one.

Dark Horse Pick: This one, I always wait on until race day. This year's pick isn't maybe quite as dark as my usual dark horses, but I'm taking the kid that's starting 4th. I clocked Graham Rahal with my stopwatch doing mid-221 mph laps for four consecutive laps on Carb Day, even in light traffic. The kid is ready to win another race, and I think he's just fast enough to win the 500.

Any way you slice it, it ought to be a good day and a great race, even if the odds are that one of the guys below will wind up being the one ultimately smiling...

Enjoy the race, everybody!

Good Call / Bad Call

2009-05-05T21:41:00.004-04:00

Good day, everybody, and I mean that in the most literal sense. Cars (IndyCars, thanks very much) ran today for the first time in the Month of May 2009. That means that it's time for me to hum "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" over and over in my head for three and a half straight weeks. And it doesn't get old, either.

I've decided to introduce a new periodic entry here on my corner of the Interwebs. It's a little something that I'd like to call "Good Call / Bad Call". Bear with me and I think you'll get the hang of it.

Good Call: The FIA hands down a "suspended penalty" on McLaren for Liegate.

As I covered here earlier, McLaren had done several things to atone for the "sin" of lying about something that happened during the Australian GP.

1) Given up the six points Lewis Hamilton had theoretically scored for third place in Melbourne.
2) Fired Team Manager Davey Ryan.
3 (unofficially) ) Declared the effective resignation of Ron Dennis from the F1 team.

That's plenty. No need for a three race ban, or a 30 point constructor's championship penalty. McLaren's already in rough shape this season, and plenty of teams have gotten away with taking liberties with the truth in the past (like when Felipe Massa lied to the stewards at Monza in 2006 about getting held up by Fernando Alonso in qualifying, and Fernando got penalized grid positions in the race). Let's get on with the racing.

Bad Call: The opening two days of practice at Indianapolis are on a Tuesday and a Wednesday.

Huh? I realize that they're trying to condense the schedule for the month of May, thereby limiting the amount of mileage (and expense) that the teams pile up, but...wouldn't it make more sense to have opening day be on a weekend (Sunday, let's say), then you have a couple of days off, then a couple of days of practice, then Pole Weekend? How many spectators were at the track today? 30? 40? How many are going to be there tomorrow? About the same? Meanwhile, how many people were forced to watch the proceedings through live timing and scoring and Twitter while at work, when they'd have gladly shown up in person if that whole nasty "job" thing didn't get in the way? I'm guessing the answer to that is "more than 40".

Good Call: The triumphant return of Johnny and The Duke on the Live Fast Racing Podcast.

I Twittered about this a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating: go download their latest show from April 9th, right now. They pull no punches, put up with no BS, and tell the truth, always. Let me say it again: go download their latest show. Now.

Bad Call: Widely respected and revered (by me, as well) PR Supremo / Motorsports Writer / Blogger Michael Knight going "full coot" about Twitter.

Dude, there may be a lot of imposters on Twitter, but...what's the harm in that, really? Nobody's selling illegal merch or asking for credit card numbers on there, or really sullying anybody's name for real. Besides, most of the dumb ones are pretty easy to sniff out in a few posts. On the other hand, getting live, real time Tweets from race teams from trackside, and being able to chat with all of your online "racing buddies" during races...that's really cool. Besides, the Real Max Papis is, like, always on there.

Good Call: Some amount of variation in the car paint schemes at the Speedway.

Yes, some of them look like they're advertising for Pepto, and some may look like they're going to be REALLY trying to sneak up on people on race day, but at least we haven't had announcements for 15 new red-white-blue or red-white or all-black cars in the last week. Danica's at least staying distinctive, with her splashes of orange, even if I still stand by my statement that her teammate Marco Andretti is going to look pretty anonymous in an almost all-black car. A few more cars are yet to be announced, but there are quite a few folks who are tracking the paint schemes. Keep an eye there for the new stuff.

Bad Call: IndyCar.com, for not turning over all website decisions and content editing to the good folks at The Silent Pagoda.

The Silent Pagoda crew are the only people out there who are willing to print the real behind-the-scenes stuff that we all want to read. Like the conversation that would have happened between EJ Viso and Ryan Hunter-Reay, when they were slated to share a car at the barber Motorsports Park test.

Awful Call: "We are constantly evaluating safety initiatives."

This was the line from NASCAR VP of Communications Jim Hunter put out there after Carl Edwards almost wound up in the laps of 200 of his closest friends at Talladega a couple of weeks ago. The basic reaction that I've read from NASCAR and a lot of NASCAR-focused media is that "a car knocking another car up into the fence is basically the worst-case scenario, the sport is dangerous, people come because it's more dangerous than baseball, and there'll never be a way to make the sport perfectly safe". Some of those things are true, but I would say that one car getting into the fence is not even close to the worst-case scenario. It's not 1955 anymore. If a car were to get into the stands nowadays, on national TV, and in our litigious society, there wouldn't be much in the way of talk right now about Darlington or Indy. There would be talk about who within NASCAR is slated to be appearing in front of Congress this week. This is not worth tempting fate over. Something must be done, even if that something isn't exactly clear, but motions must be made to at least look into what could be done to improve the situation. A couple of other people have tackled this topic as well (and much better than I have or will), but the fact that we haven't seen NASCAR make promises that they are locking people inside their multi-million dollar tech center to try to figure out how to make the sport safer says an awful lot about where the actual priorities lie with that sanctioning body.

What could they do? Let me get them started:

1) Cut 500-600 pounds off of the minimun weight of the cars. Race cars do not need to weigh 3400 pounds, and material science has proceeded past the days when chrome moly steel was "high tech". 3400 pounds worth of steel carries a lot of energy, and therefore can deliver a lot more damage than a 2800 pound car can. Cut the weight of the cars and then work on dialing back the speed so that lap times are roughly what they are today.

2) BAN BLOCKING. NOW. The culprit of the Edwards Talladega accident is not a product of the yellow line rule, or even restrictor plate racing. It's a product of the attitude that NASCAR has fostered for the last 10-15 years that it's OK for a driver to do anything to protect his position, even if it's weaving down every straightaway, cutting up or down in the middle of turns, or trying to stuff other drivers into the infield on the last lap. That must end. Write a rule that says: if you make more than one move per straightaway to change your line, you will get an immediate drive through penalty. Do it on the last lap of the race, and we're docking you three laps in the scoring. Do it three times in a season, and you're sitting out a race. The racing will improve because people will be able to complete passes, and safety will improve because people won't be actively trying to stuff other people into the wall every chance they get. In fact, if NASCAR were to introduce such a rule, I think that many other sanctioning bodies worldwide would follow suit, and the racing world would be better off for it. Blocking rant over.

Great Call: It's the month of May. Go see a race. Enjoy it.

Wrappin' Up Kansas

2009-04-28T21:49:00.008-04:00

I hope that everybody enjoyed their weekend, and that the Versus coverage of the Kansas IndyCar race was as good as it has been for the first two rounds of the season at St. Pete and Long Beach. From what I read, it sounds like it probably was, though I haven't had the chance to go through the DVR and see for myself. For now, I'll trust what I've read and heard.

As for me, I had a fantastic weekend, getting to my first in-person race of the season. Mrs. Speedgeek and I headed southward on Saturday at about noon. The plan for us all along was for just Sunday at the track, as the Mrs. is OK with one day at the track, but not so much with two days. Fair enough. In the meantime, we figured we'd go hang around The Plaza, do some serious posing with the glamorous types down there, and get some fantastic barbecue in the bargain.

About that last part, if you haven't tried Kansas City barbecue, or if you have and think that the "original" dive-y places are the only spots where you can get some serious quality meat 'n' sauce...I must heartily disagree. For my money, Fiorella's Jackstack is where it's at. Their meat is incredible (I love the pork burnt ends), the sides are out of this world (especially the Hickory Pit Beans), and the atmosphere is upscale-ish, but not snooty (jeans and such are welcome; there were a dozen guys there on Saturday night in Chiefs jerseys, celebrating NFL Draft Night). All of that and more, and for around about Famous Dave's prices. It can't be beat.

With that plug out of the way (thanks for the free rack of ribs! I wish...), the Mrs. and I had to head down to try out the new Fiorella's branch down on the Plaza. As we were walking in the door, I saw a group of three people coming up behind us, and one of them looked vaguely familiar, as far as I could tell out of the corner of my eye. We put our names in at the hostess's stand, and started to get out of the way for the folks behind us, so that they could do the same. This time, I heard the guy behind me say, "Table of three please. Name? Dan." in a nice, thick British accent. Uh, I think that guy might be famous.

Yes, 2005 Indy 500 champion Dan Freaking Wheldon representing, and here to enjoy some of the world's finest barbecue! I wish I could say that I played it cool, said a quick hello and good luck, but after 10 minutes of sitting across the bar and listening to Mrs. Speedgeek telling me to just go over there, I couldn't resist. As a guy who grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, where the biggest local celebrity is the Pure Water Days Festival Princess, I have a tendency to turn into Chris Farley on "The Chris Farley Show" around actual celebrities. This day would be no different. I don't think I sounded like too much of an idiot, and I think I limited my stammered pleasantries to 15-20 seconds worth, so I suppose the encounter was a success. Oh, also he signed my race ticket.

I have to say, Dan is very pleasant, has a very firm (dare I say, Danica-esque) handshake, and his teeth are slightly less dazzling than they appear on TV, but still made me want to go buy a case of whitening strips. No, I did not notice his shoes. Sorry.

OK, barbecue and pleasantries out of the way, on to Sunday morning. We were enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning, chillin' at the breakfast buffet at the Hampton Inn, lounging around our room, etc., when I took a second to see if the Pressdog had posted any updates from the track yet that day. He had. Off to the track we go, honey!

We arrived to the Speedway around about 10 minutes after the Indy Lights were to take the green, but things seemed eerily quiet. As I'd find out later, the race had been stopped in order to clean up a particurlarly nasty wreck early on in the race. As a result, I cruised into the track just in time for a restart on around about lap 20. Not bad. Meanwhile, Mrs. Speedgeek was happy to let me run ahead (which I did, and I'm probably still a little winded for it), and she'd catch up with me later. As it turned out, she'd get turned away at the gate a little later for trying to bring in a couple of mini-umbrellas, and so she went back to the car to nap and read for a bit. Don't worry about her, though. She was OK with that.

Anyway, the Lights race wasn't a whole lot to write home about. The wind seemed to really play havoc with a lot of the cars. There were a couple of pretty big hits in turn 3 and 4, as the wind was pushing the cars up the track there. Ana Beatriz made a great save while attempting to make a pass for the lead with 10 or so laps to go, and only lost two positions, though she ran out of time (and handling and/or confidence in the car, it looked like) to make either of the places up. Sean Guthrie got parked for coming out of the pits on cold tires, catching up to the pack in turn 3, where there was a clean up effort in progress for Pablo Donoso's accident, locking up his brakes and barely (like, I mean, by a matter of inches) missing a safety truck. He complained loudly about "another dumb IRL decision" on the PA, and is currently doing the same on his team's website. Sorry, Sean, but cold tires or not, that was dumb. Nice win for Sebastian Saavedra, though.

IndyCar practice started shortly thereafter, and it was fantastic to get a good look (and listen, and smell) at the cars for the first time in 2009. The cars, I think, maybe don't look quite as zoomy as the Panoz DP01 did, but I'm really not complaining. Time has been fairly kind to the Dallaras, though I certainly wish we were getting new cars before 2012. The new mufflers are great. The cars are noticeably quieter, and the sound is a little higher pitched than it used to be. Not exactly like what a lot of us grew up with in the '70s and '80s, but not too far off. I'll take it. And the smell of the new sugar-based ethanol...it gets me going, and I think it's a little more pleasant than last year's corn-based stuff was. We'll leave it at that.

Oh, also I took pictures.

Welcome back, Sarah. Here's hoping we see a lot more of you from here on out.

Marco's new paintjob. I'm sorry, but that's some weak sauce, bro. Another black car? It's going to be rough at Indy telling his car apart from Will Power's and Danica's.

On to the race. About an hour and a half before race time, as the Mrs. and I sat in the car (there was a three hour break between the end of practice and the start of pre-race festivities; there aren't nearly enough merch trailers to fill three hours), I noticed that the wind had changed from a southwest-to-northeast direction to a south-to-north direction. This gave me hope that we'd at least get some laps in, if not the whole race, as most of the storms in Kansas were to the southwest. As it turned out, we got the whole thing in. Hooray for changeable midwestern weather. I don't think any of us expected that on Sunday morning. I'm sure that this is what held down the crowd, and I hope that that doesn't get held against the place in the future. I'd have put the place at about 20-25% full, with sections near start-finish pretty full, and sections by us near pit-in about 5% occupied. With the weather being what it was, including nearby tornados on Saturday, I don't think we could have expected any better.

This recap is stretching to novel-length, so maybe I'll just hit some high points from here on out. The first half of the race stayed pretty interesting, with Dixon making his way forward, a couple of teams doing a minor variation on pit strategy (if you can call going five laps off sequence a variation), Dario and Helio making their way forward, and Graham Rahal looking reeeeeealllly racy, given his very limited background on ovals. That kid is good, and he's going to be around for a long time. I like it. Someone who I have decided I do not like (again) is...Milka. That woman was in the way all day, and did not seem to be able to keep to a single line. Big surprise there, I know, but I guess I was hoping she'd have learned something by now. I think that Dario was hoping for the same, since I saw him give her "the wave" as he lapped her once, after she'd held him up for a couple of laps. This same actually can't be said for the other "differently speeded" driver of the series right now, Stanton Barrett. I didn't see anybody struggle to get by him all day, and that's good. He can stay.

The second half of the race, though... Let me refer to last week's post: I'm not somebody who requires every race to be a "Chicagoland in 2007 or 2008" instant classic, but...that was pretty boring. I know that there were extenuating circumstances (20-40 mph wind gusts) and that everybody was just hoping to survive the day with an intact car, but there really wasn't a whole lot to watch in the last 40 or so laps. I even resorted to getting the stopwatch out to check gaps between cars (most gaps were getting bigger, constantly), and other than one or two passes, not much actually took place. Things got pretty passive-aggressive at times, like when Helio spent 5-6 laps trying to get around the outside of Tony Kanaan, only for Tony to ever so slightly edge up the track every time at the entrance to turn 1, thereby foiling Helio's moves. A couple of other folks did some similar things (Danica, Dixon, probably just about everybody else), nobody really doing much blatant blocking that I could see, but what did transpire didn't make for very compelling watching. I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just hoping that this isn't a harbinger of what's to come later in the season on the other mile and a half tracks.

All in all, it was a good weekend. We did get 200 laps of racing in, when I woke up hoping to get maybe 40. I did get to hear Sean Guthrie taking the IRL to task for parking him when just about everybody else on the grounds agreed with the IRL folks (believe me, that was the consensus near me in the stands). I heard the phrase "Enjoy the race" from more track personnel (vendors, concession folks, ticket takers) at Kansas than I think I have at every other race that I've ever been to, combined, and as corny as that sounds, it actually made an impact on me. Everybody there wanted us to come back in the future, and to bring all of our friends. That's cool. I'll be back, and I hope to see a lot of familiar folks there in years to come. If you treat me nice, I'll even introduce you to Dan Wheldon.

Goin' Way Down South

2009-04-23T21:14:00.004-04:00

...to Baltimore...Virginia...and with apologies to Wyclef Jean (and all of you who might not have gotten my 1998 reference joke, which would be...probably all of you), now also Kansas. That's right, as much as I've truly enjoyed watching Versus' excellent coverage of the IndyCar series so far this season, it's time to get off the couch and go to my friendly neighborhood super speedway and catch the big boys (and girls! plural!) doing their best high-speed work. More on that in a second.

First, the Versus coverage. As I mentioned in my last post, I thought the coverage from St. Pete was fantastic. Long Beach was more of the same, I thought, though since the actual...racing wasn't quite as good (read that: less passing), the show didn't seem to have quite the same zip as at Round 1. Others have pointed out that the coverage thus far has been a tad "package heavy" with a lot of pre-prep "who are these people and what are they doing here" types of stories, but I think that that's sort of a necessity at this early stage in the Versus Era. If we are, as I think we're all hoping, getting people over from Versus' many, many other sports (hockey, bull riding, MMA, cycling, full-contact badminton), a lot of folks aren't going to know who most of the drivers are, outside of Danica, that Dancing With the Stars guy, the guy who's married to Ashley Judd, and maybe that quiet guy who won the Indy 500 last year. If packages are what it takes to draw people into the coverage and give them a vested interest in what's going on for the next three hours, I'm all for it. If you find them boring (and mind you, I kind of do), that's what pause buttons on DVRs and refrigerators containing chip dip and beer were invented for.

The booth guys and the rest of the on-air crew, as I also touched on in my last post, are all doing top notch work. I've read many people who say that Bob Jenkins's style is sleep inducing. I personally disagree, but the main job of the play-by-play person in the booth is not necessarily to have you jumping out of your seat ever 30 seconds (that's Jack Arute's job, whether it's on purpose or not). It's to make sure that the other guy (or guys) in the booth are getting all the way through their points, everybody stays on topic, and nothing major (cars stopped on track, EJ Viso threatening other drivers with a 20 foot snake) gets missed during the telecast. Bob's great at all of that stuff. Good. That's what they're paying him for. Robbie Buhl and Jon Beekhuis both bring their assorted backgrounds to the table, and both do a good job of interjecting their viewpoints into the flow of the telecasts. Buhl is a relatively recent driver, and now that we're getting into territory that he knows better (oval tracks), I think he'll be quite good at telling us what it's like out there. I believe someone also mentioned that he's a car owner or something, so maybe he'll talk about that down the road, maybe if his driver hits anything. Meanwhile, Jon is a student of the sport, in addition to his being an ex-driver as well, and does a nice job of keeping up with the technical and strategic developments, which are things that other people who have been in his chair in the past (naming no names, but there have been many) have been...lacking in grasp on. That's perfect. Three guys, three viewpoints, and all well spoken. Don't change a thing.

As for the pit reporters, other than the usual occasional non-sequitur by Jack Arute (like last week where he was talking about the "Late" Stirling Moss, when Stirling is very much alive and the anecdote was probably not about him in the first place), those three are doing a great job so far. Really, the pit reporters are kind of like referees in other sports: if you can't remember any major screw-ups, they probably did their job correctly. Through two races, other than a couple of word fumbles, I can think of no such problems with Lindy Thackston or Robbie Floyd.

Now, with all of the television stuff out of the way, it's time to talk racing. So far, the racing hasn't exactly been riveting, but it has been interesting. I'm one of those nut-jobs who actually think that street racing has its place in the sport, and not just from a sponsor entertainment standpoint. As a few people have written, minute car fine-tuning is not so important on street courses, and so a good driver can throw a mediocre car around and make it punch well above its weight. This is well worth something, as we've seen Justin Wilson, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Will Power on the podium, three guys who barely got a sniff of a podium on the ovals last year (though Ryan got close, and Will was driving for Penske last week). Also, I'm a firm believer that not every race has to feature tons and tons of passing, though race after race of no-passing-at-all will almost certainly kill a series (see F1, back around 2003 or 2004). The occasional race that turns into a high-speed chess game, where drivers are basically waiting for other drivers to make a mistake in order to make a pass? That's OK by me. Again, let me reiterate, I'm cool with 3-4 of these races a year (especially if the surrounding scenery is interesting to look at as well), but not much more than that. I'd say that IndyCar has struck about the right balance in the schedule right now.

Now, looking ahead to this weekend, we've got our first oval race of the year, and the only one that comes before the Indy 500. If last year is much of anything to go off of, we're looking at a Ganassi/Penske one through four formation, followed by a mixture of AGR cars, the Panther car, and a couple of other isolated guys in the top-12 or so. I think that this year will be around about the same, but now that the ex-ChampCar teams have had a full year to work on their setups, I think they'll be closer, and probably fully competetive for spots in the 7-10 range. Newman-Haas-Lanigan, with a rapidly maturing Graham Rahal and a lightning-quick-when-he-keeps-it-off-the-wall Robert Doornbos should be close-ish to the leading pace. Dan Wheldon, the best driver that Panther has employed since the days of that...Sam guy, should be right up there in the top-5 all weekend. Rafa Matos has been quick so far (when he hasn't been wrecking Danica), and I might be one of the few who thinks he can do the same on the ovals as well.

There are so many more questions. Will there be any repercussions from Dario for Justin Wilson implying that the Franchitti brothers are Britney Spears fans? How huge will Tony Kanaan's hair be, since it's grown out for a whole week? Will Will Power frame Helio Castroneves for some sort of crime, so that he can get his ride back? How will Our Girl Sarah fare this week, in her first outing of the year? How well will Nobody's Girl Milka stay out of the way, given that she's done basically no testing since last year, and hasn't sat in a Dreyer & Reinbold car since Chicagoland last year? We shall see.

And on that note, one other question: to anybody who's been to Kansas Speedway before, what should I be checking out there? We'll just be there on Sunday, in a nod to keeping Mrs. Speedgeek sane and racing-tolerant, but is there any must-see stuff that we ought to be fitting in between the Indy Lights race and the Big Car race? Drop me a comment if there is, or if you might be in the Big KS yourself this weekend.

Take it easy, everybody, and see you at the races!

Post-Tax Day Thoughts

2009-04-16T20:25:00.002-04:00

For anybody who's read the headline and is looking for some solid, in-depth analysis of the Helio Castroneves tax evasion trial...sorry. I'm no lawyer, and I'm not even going to pretend to play one on the internets. For that stuff, go read Chris Estrada, James at 16th and Georgetown, or even Robin Miller.

Nope, tax stuff bores me to tears, even if it involves multiple time Indy 500 winners. All I mean is that it's been something like 15 months since I've posted, so it's time for another one of my patented mish-mash "six racing series in one post" posts.

Formula 1!

It's been a nutty, nutty season so far. I'm not going to be one of those folks who say "a team that didn't even exist two months ago won both of the opening races", because the Brawn team did, in fact, exist two months ago. They just weren't called Brawn until then, that's all. Not to belittle what they've done, though. That team was cover-your-eyes awful last year, and the turn around to two poles and two wins in two races is like nothing we've never seen before. I'm not sold on their ability to hold their advantage until the end of the season, but they could have a big enough lead by mid-season to remain in championship contention until the end of the season.

There are lots of other things to answer this season, though. Can Lewis Hamilton continue to haul the piece of junk McLaren into the top-5? When will Ferrari quit shooting themselves in the foot long enough to score a point? Can any of the other "diffuser" teams (or maybe Red Bull) make up the remaining difference to the Brawns? Will I be kicking myself at the end of the season for not trying hard enough last weekend to find a sports book in Vegas that has F1 on the board, so that I could plunk down $20 on Timo Glock for the title at probably 15-1 odds?

I will say one more thing about F1: the FIA has done the right thing by upholding the scrutineers' judgement that the three "diffuser" teams' cars are legal. That's good. Now, if only Max Mosley would come to his senses and let McLaren out of the April 29th FIA hearing on "Lie-gate". That is heinous. McLaren's already lost six points. That's plenty. Let's get on with the racing.

IndyCar!

I think that St. Pete answered most peoples' wishes for a season opener. Some good storylines (Justin Wilson almost winning Dale Coyne's first race, Ryan Hunter-Reay almost winning less than two weeks after signing with Vision, a clearly medicated Danica Patrick taking a philosophical approach to getting crashed out of a race), some good on-track racing (including an actual pass for the lead with less than 20 laps to go), and some good...no, great coverage from The League's new broadcast partner.

Let me expand on that last point. I'm going to throw in right here at the top that I was one of those crackpots who was in favor of going with Versus. More coverage is good for the sport, and if it happens to be competent-to-good coverage, all the better (I'm looking at you, Spike TV). Versus has basically nailed the first ingredient of any great racing coverage: the booth team. In Bob Jenkins, Robbie Buhl and Jon Beekhuis, we've got an old-pro who is one of the best traffic cops in the business (Jenkins, dating back to his days doing the same for "Buffet" Benny Parsons and Ned Jarret on ESPN), a current team owner who has a great grasp on how the sport works on a day-to-day basis (Buhl) and the previously best technical- and strategic-minded pit reporter in the business (Beekhuis). The fact that they spent the two hours of qualifying coverage and three hours of the race talking like old friends, busting on each other, catching 95% of what was going on on the track and in the pit boxes (and that'll get even better as the season goes on), that is exactly what I'm looking for. The pit reporters were solid, if not perfect, but they'll get better, too.

This is going to be a good season. There are lots of potential winners, even more drivers coming on board in the coming weeks before the 500, and the new broadcaster is off to a solid start. The ratings numbers were not good for the first race, but I'm not going to get excited about that for quite a bit longer. If we're still getting 0.3s come Watkins Glen or Motegi...well, then we'll talk.

ALMS!?!

There were only 17 cars on the grid in St. Pete. There are going to be 21 on the grid this weekend at Long Beach. GT1 is basically extinct in four days. There are only probably three cars on the grid that are quick enough to win overall on any given weekend, and all of them are made by the same manufacturer. Yuck. Let's move on.

GrandAm?

When did they race last? August 2006? Wake me when the season gets going again.

NASCAR!!!!!!!

I'll be honest. I haven't been watching much since the other series got going. On the other hand, I have been watching enough to know that Jeff Gordon is laying a Grade A beatdown on the field this season. No finishes outside of the top-6 since Daytona (where he finished 13th)? Yeah, that's a beatdown. Good work, Jeff.

World Rally Championship!

Sebastien Loeb still drives here. Championship's over, folks.

Bullrun on Speed!!!!!!!!

The season's about to wrap up! Who's going to take home the big prize? The dishy brunettes in the Lexus? The 'Bama Boys in the Avalanche? The weird-haired guys in the Corvette? We all want to know!

Just kidding on that last one. Sort of. Whatever it is you're watching and following nowadays, enjoy it. Racing season's in full swing. Life is good.

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

2009-02-22T20:47:00.015-05:00

One of the original ideas behind this website when I started it back in 2006 was to yammer about more than just F1, IndyCar, NASCAR and whatever other major league motorsports that I might be thinking about. I actually sort of envisioned this as being a homeless man's Jalopnik, covering all sorts of minor-league motorsports (which guys like Junior Open Wheel Talent do better than I ever could, anyway) one day and high performance road car stuff another day and mundane-y thoughts on boring-ish road car stuff (like thoughts on the upcoming Ford Fiesta-in-America launch) another day. Well, my basic inability to post more than once every couple of weeks (at best) sort of submarined all of that, but...every day's a new day, right?

Motorsports and general fast car experiences are not exactly an every day occurrence in Eastern Nebraska. Sometimes, though, stuff comes up, and you've got to go ahead and do it, 'cause sometimes there's aren't second chances. Not to make what happened this weekend some sort of life-changing experience or epiphany or anything, but it did make for a far more interesting than normal Saturday afternoon.

A co-worker friend of mine approached me a few weeks ago, knowing that I'm a gearhead of sorts, and invited me along on an outing that his car club was doing. I'm not a big car club guy, I suppose because the cars I've owned ('88 Honda Accord, '99 Ford Contour, '05 Mazda6) are not really car club-worthy, but I thought this would be a good time to bend that general rule. These guys, being the area's preeminent Mopar club, were going to go check out the Woodhouse Viper Pit.

Some background: Bob Woodhouse has been a big-roller in Nebraska and national motorsports for the better part of the last 20 years. He's kind of a hitter in the car biz, as well, selling a few cars here and there. Anyway, he's possibly best known in motorsports circles as team owner of the Woodhouse SCCA World Challenge team, fielding Vipers in the GT class last year for the likes of Tommy Archer, Brian Simo, and Jeff Courtney.

Woodhouse Chrysler in Blair, Nebraska is the #1 Viper-selling Dodge dealer in the U.S. That sounds sort of crazy, but it's sort of obvious to see why...

Yeah, that's 25 Vipers under one roof, plus a few Shelby Cobras and some different stuff that people have recently traded in for Vipers. That, by my quick and rough math, is something on the order of 18,000 horsepower, all under one rather non-descript roof. They even had some full-blown Viper ACRs, which are possibly best known for making the all-time fastest lap by a street legal car at the Nurburgring.

Very, very cool. Alas, they wouldn't let me do any hot laps in the parking lot, but it was well worth the trip for the simple gawkability of the whole thing.

Huge, huge ups to Bill Pemberton and Mark Jorgensen at Woodhouse Chrysler, and thanks to my buddy Wade and the guys at High Impact Performance Mopar Auto Club for having me along. I survived my trip to the Viper Pit, but I've definitely been badly smitten/bitten.

Danica to F1! Yeah!.....or not

2009-02-16T17:12:00.006-05:00

New rumor concerning the USF1 team that I wrote about last week: Danica Patrick is going to drive! Holy crap! She’ll be the first female F1 driver since the esteemed Giovanna Amati!

Let’s slow down for a minute, shall we?

While this breathless conjecture is sort of fun to think about, I can’t imagine that it’s anywhere near reality. First off, Danica has not won a road course race since…well…uh, the Toyota Pro-Am race at Long Beach in 2002. She’s not exactly the #1 American road racer these days. In fact, I don’t even think that her results in an IndyCar on road courses would place her in the top-10 on such a list. Second, I’m sure that she’s looking to get paid, and would not be willing to drive for such an effort for a reduced price. As other folks have pointed out, any retainer that you’d have to pay her to drive for you would be that much less money that you could spend on your new-from-scratch F1 car. Not a good idea right now.

I can’t believe that hardly anybody has floated my favorite “obvious” pick for an American driver for the USF1 team: Graham Rahal. I don’t know what the terms of his contract with N/H/L look like, but if he’s on a 3-year deal, then that’s done at the end of this year. Even if it’s not, I can’t imagine that his retainer is anywhere close to Danica’s, so he’d be far easier to buy out. He’s only a couple of years older than Connor Daly or Josef Newgarden (two other rumored USF1 drivers), has some pretty extensive experience in high HP/downforce cars (those other guys have none), and he has actually shown some interest in going to F1, which Danica has not and Scott Speed has said is long gone for him.

Other drivers don’t quite make sense for me, either. Bryan Herta, I think, is a tad too old to take on a completely different style of car and driving. Ryan Hunter-Reay, while quite competent on road courses, has not shown the sort of dominant form that one would expect of a serious F1 candidate, even back in his Atlantic days. He’s just fine in an IndyCar, but going up against Kimi and Lewis and Felipe and Fernando? I’m not seeing it.

As I mentioned in my last post, the other guy I’d go with would be Jonathon Summerton. Of all the people who have driven for the US in A1GP (Marco included), he’s had by far the best results, including a win in a feature race last year. Literally no other American has had any sort of international single-seater success in the last 10 years, except for maybe Patrick Long. However, Pat has probably been out of a single seater for too long now and picked up too many tin-top habits to truly be an F1 aspirant any more. Anyway, why roll the dice with any of these other folks, when Graham and Jonathon are basically ready to go right now?

This Danica thing absolutely has to be a publicity stunt to get people interested in the concept of an American F1 team. Either that, or they are hoping that some sponsor (or sponsors) will cough up $50 million on the condition that Danica is one of the drivers. In that case, an USF1 team with a sub-world class driver would be better than no USF1 team, but maybe not by much. Nice try, Ken Anderson, but I don’t think anybody’s buying it.

USFWhat?

2009-02-09T21:16:00.005-05:00

While enjoying the fantastic entertainment (read that: dozens of minutes of caution flag laps, and a "halftime" break that felt like it was 40 minutes long) during Saturday's NASCAR Sponsor Splatter (or, as my friend Rick calls it, the Tequiza Tangle), I had plenty of time to let my mind wander over the racing world's current events. I really managed to cover a lot of territory up there in the ol' brain bin. What's the car count going to look like in IndyCar this year? (20+, and that's fine, methinks.) Why does having the same size front tires as the rears make the new Acura LMP1 car look so weird and lumpy? (Dunno, they just do.) How could the FIA have screwed up the World Rally Championship so badly, when just a couple of years ago they had four or five manufacturers signed up long-term and a crop of drivers that includes possibly the greatest driver of all time? (Because screwing things up is what the FIA does best.) If a Porsche-engined car wins the next GrandAm race at VIR in April (three months off?!?), are we going to get to see a full-on kicking and screaming podium tantrum by Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett? (Yes.) Am I going to spend 2009 like I have the last three years and mainly write my blog posts in parentheticals? (...) (I hate me sometimes.)

But, the tastiest bit of racing-ish "news" that I kept coming back to during my NASCAR (and malted hops) induced slumber was the recent breathless conjecture over the supposedly forthcoming announcement of the new USF1-All-US-All-The-Time Formula 1 Team. Let me preface all of the following by saying that I'll be the first guy to hop aboard an All-American F1 effort. Believe me, I was one of those dudes going around racing message boards back around 1998 when BAR was just coming into the public consciousness (as a theoretical British-American concern), and debating who should be Jacques Villeneuve's teammate in '99. My pick was Jimmy Vasser, but if you've read me at all in the past, you get zero points for having guessed that. So, I'll be all about an American Formula 1 team, if it ever comes into being...

However. Wow. Where to start? The team's supposed principals are Peter Windsor (will he take along the unseen Jean-Michel, Pressdog?) and Ken Anderson. While I do not question either of those guys' credentials, are either of them really well versed enough in F1 circa-2009 to have a team up and running for 2010? Peter's been around F1 for, roughly, as long as Bernie Ecclestone's been interested in money, and Anderson's been around racing since before Rick Mears developed a limp, but recent F1 experience? Not so much. Windsor's been out of team management for the better part of the last decade, and while Anderson runs the Windshear wind tunnel, a fancy-shmancy wind tunnel does not an F1 team make (ask BAR/Honda; and besides, aren't wind tunnel hours being drastically cut by the FIA this year?). Also, has Anderson's recent history of projects been quite at a 100% hit rate of happening?

Sure, the arguments laid out by the always reliable Adam Cooper in that SpeedTV column I linked to above sound pretty decent. The FIA has slashed costs in F1 going forward. However, it's still going to take upwards of $50 million to start up and run a back marker F1 team. How many sponsors are floating around with that kind of cash right now? There are hundreds of recently laid-off NASCAR folks down in the Carolinas right now. Uh, those guys don't even use data acquisition during race weekends. Or fuel injection, ever, for that matter, let alone carbon fiber and titanium. All of the tube benders and sheet metal hangers in the world can't manifest an F1 car onto the grid in Melbourne in 14 months. A satellite base of operations can be had in Spain, with the Epsilon organization. OK, well, running a Renault World Series team and building a shoestring-ish LeMans prototype is still a world away from F1 (ask Prodrive or Dome about that). An off-the-shelf engine and transmission combo is supposed to be available for next year from Cosworth and Ricardo (big blue "R" represent!). OK, well, I'd feel a lot better about that being an option for 2010 if those pieces were running on dynos right now. Could 2012 or 2013 be a possibility for an all-new team? Sure. But 14 months from now? Hmmm. Maybe we all ought to take a deep breath and sit down before we all get too light headed about the whole thing.

Again, I really don't want to sound like the wet blanket here. I'm not one of those guys who think that the euros know better than we do, always, and that we could never catch up to them in an arena that they call their own personal playground. There are plenty of good people in the States who can wield a CAD digitizer or lay up carbon fiber with anybody in the world. I've worked with some of them. Unlike some of the greatly nuanced commenters on the SpeedTV article pages (have you read those guys? Yikes.), I also think that within a couple of years, the US could also have some top-line road racers who could be just about ready for F1. A kid named Rahal comes to mind. Another kid named Summerton has had some great results for a usually sub-par US A1GP team. If somebody were to come up with the $50 million to get a team off the ground in 3-4 years, I'm sure that that same somebody could probably front the necessary $3-4 million to get those two guys a season in GP2 or F2 to get them some European training.

I sort of hope I'm wrong on this. More details are supposedly due later in the week, or maybe they're even coming out right now, which would make this bit of word-hackery obsolete the moment I hit the "publish" button. Having a team on the grid in 2010 would be OK with me. On the other hand, I also think that US Formula 1 fans and fans of new F1 efforts the world over would be better served if the USF1 cake got a little more time to bake. That said, maybe an undercooked effort would turn out OK. After all, who knew that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream would be so tasty?

Temporary Relocation

2009-01-24T15:59:00.003-05:00

In order to make myself look like I have some sort of actual following or reason for subjecting folks to my bleatings, I'm going to be relocating for the weekend over to The Furious Wedge, whose proprietors have been very kind to invite me to open my virtual mouth and air my virtual grievances in their general vicinity. Over there, we'll be talking all things Daytona 24-related which is a major component to those guys' "24 Hour Blogathon". They'll also be touching on stuff like NHL All-Star weekend, the Aussie Open, the X-Games, maybe some basketball, and definitely some figure skating. So, ture believers, skate on over there and enjoy all that's going on. Should be fun.

Also, The 'Geek has learned what the kids are talking about when they mention The Twitter. I'll be up in the business there, too.

Thanks to all, and enjoy the race!

Happy 2009! And Fantasy Racing...again

2009-01-05T21:55:00.006-05:00

Good day, everybody. It's been a while since I've been on here, that much is definitely true. The simple fact of the matter is that while there have been quite a few things going on in the racing world of late (team pull-outs, some movement on the NASCAR driver market, Bernie Ecclestone making stupid statements about the global economic downturn not affecting F1, etc.), I've been extremely, EXTREMELY lazy. I've also been busy with traveling to the in-laws for Christmas and general holiday on-the-go-ness, but mostly it's been the lazy thing. I suppose that's my calling card, though. Do what you do best, even if it's nothing, right?

On the other hand, the 2009 racing season draws close. This is very good news, even if things remain in a constant state of flux in most of the major worldwide racing series. The approaching racing season also means that it's almost time to kick off another season of fantasy racing, in my All-Racing Fantasy League.

There has been a great response so far, with a few new team owners coming on board, but I still have a couple of spots open for new team owners for this year. The main change since my last post is that due to the loss of several road races in F1, IndyCar, ALMS and GrandAm (five total since last season), I've decided to re-balance the number of road and oval races by dropping the NASCAR Truck series from the ARFL sanction. So, for any of you you might have been scared off by having to know stuff about a third-rate stock "car" series, worry no more. The series that we'll be using for our scoring are the aforementioned F1, IndyCar, ALMS, GrandAm and also the NASCAR Cup series (they don't pay me anything, so no series sponsor mention from me). As Johnny and The Duke proclaimed on the latest (and fantastically excellent) Live Fast Racing Podcast, the Truck series may not live to see 2010, so it's probably not a bad thing to cut it loose from my attention right now.

If you are at all interested in playing this year, please drop me a line, either in my comments or to my e-mail, which is andymiller23 at gmail dot com. I'll be happy to send you all of the necessary material to get you up to speed (basically, a two page set of rules and an Excel spreadsheet of last year's statistics). The pre-season team draft is coming up in less than two weeks, so time is running out for you to get in on the ground floor of what should be a fun (and hopefully recurring) supplement to your race watching.

A Happy New Year to all from The 'Geek! More soon...

Thank you, Trackside!

2008-11-06T21:48:00.008-05:00

I've gotta get in a huge, huge "Thank You" today to Kevin Lee and Curt Cavin and the Trackside crew on Indy's 1070 AM "The Fan". They very graciously hosted a group of racing's best bloggers (and allowed me in there as well) on last night's radio show, which is also available via podcast. You can either get the show through iTunes (as I do; please subscribe, as it helps their case as a viable ongoing concern and will help ensure that we get more Curt and Kevin in 2009), or you can download it in MP3 format, right through their website.

Big, big ups as well to the fellas who made the show: Pressdog (or Bill, as his friends know him; I wouldn't know, though), Jeff from My Name is IRL, Steve from Motor Racing Online, and James from 16th and Georgetown. I'm just thrilled to share a venue with all of you, even though my word butchery now extends into the multi-media arena.

Minus side: I missed a couple of words of one question that Kevin Lee asked me, and I made it sound like there is a large, impending backlash against those bloggers out there that remember to post more than once a week (namely, 'Dog and Jeff). That backlash might or might not be coming, but I can assure you that I'm not leading the charge. Too lazy.

Plus side: I then proceeded to undermine any points that I might have made or any possible threats against the above mentioned bloggers by wresting the title away from Kimi Raikkonen for "Most Uses of the Word 'Uh' by Someone Using a Monotone Voice in One Conversation". Great work by me.

Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

2008-11-03T20:41:00.006-05:00

I'd like to pretend that that's what I had to say at the end of yesterday's Formula 1 finale, but I'm afraid that it was probably closer to the noise that a 12 year old girl would make throughout the first 45 minutes of a Jonas Brothers concert (until they pass out of dehydration).

Through 18 years of watching nearly every major open wheel race (F1, CART/ChampCar, IRL - I've probably seen 90% or more of all of those since 1991), I have never seen anything quite like what went down at Interlagos. Yes, the IRL closer at Chicagoland last year was similar, but maybe years of 0.003 second margins of victory at the mile and a half ovals have somewhat numbed me to close IndyCar races (Scott Dixon would have had to have clinched the '08 title while sliding on his roll hoop to completely impress me). The kind of drama that we had in Brazil...it was written in the race review on Grandprix.com that this would have been laughed out of Hollywood if it'd been written in a movie script, but that really is true. That sort of thing just does not happen in F1.

Over the course of the last 20 laps of the race, the identity of the champion-to-be changed hands four or five times. From Lewis cruising in 4th or 5th for most of the middle portion of the race, to falling back to 6th during the next to last round of pitstops, to being threatened by Sebastian Vettel for 5th for 10+ laps (and the lack of a margin of error that that would have meant), to the Toyotas gambling on skipping wet weather tires and Glock leapfrogging Vettel and Hamilton, to Vettel passing Lewis for 5th (due to a bizarre pass by Kubica, who was a lap down; how was he so fast all of a sudden? Was the BMW set up for the wet and that's why he was so slow in qualifying?), to...finally...the pass by Vettel and Lewis on Glock on the last lap, after Glock had started the lap 16 seconds in front... I can still barely get my head around the whole set of circumstances.

I believe that justice was served in the end. If not for the FIA's penalty on Sebastien Bourdais at Fuji, Lewis would have gone to Brazil with an eight point gap, which would have meant that 6th would have clinched just as well as Lewis's eventual 5th place did. In my opinion, two other penalties had a negative effect on the championship as well: Lewis's penalty at Spa (which I think should have been more like 20 seconds, which would have only dropped him to 2nd; that just seemed more fitting, as a real drive through penalty at Spa wouldn't have taken a full 25 seconds), and Massa's effective non-penalty for trying to take Lewis out at Fuji (it'd take me taking a long, hard look at Ferrari's data traces to convince me that that wasn't deliberate; Felipe shouldn't have been allowed to score in Japan at all after that, in my opinion). Both of those penalties, to my mind, cost Lewis two extra points worth of a lead, and so without either one (and without the Bourdais penalty), he'd have been up by ten points going to Brazil. That would have been an absolute lay-up for Lewis to win the championship, which is precisely why the FIA didn't let things play out that way.

Meanwhile, I am glad that Felipe did manage to win the race, even if it meant some very bittersweet emotions for him on the rostrum and in the interview room (and he did a great job to not completely break down in tears). He deserved the race win, and if he'd been a legitimate seven points behind Lewis going into the race, I'd even have been OK with him winning the championship, too. Ferrari also did deserve to win the Constructor's title, as McLaren only managed to get both of their cars through to the end of a race without a major drama for one or the other a handful of times all season.

One thing that seemed to be missed on Sunday: Heikki Kovaleinen did the right thing in trying to tuck in behind Lewis on the start, even though he'd gotten a better start. That move meant that Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel were able to attack and pass him through the Senna Esses, but Heikki made a great exit from the Esses and was well positioned to pass both guys back on the run down the backstraight. However, after clearing Alonso, Vettel threw a gigantic block on Heikki in the middle of the straight, forcing Heikki to put two wheels on the grass (which was still soaked from the rain from 15 minutes before), which subsequently caused Heikki to be re-passed by Alonso. If the FIA actually penalized for driving tactics that were truly unsafe (as opposed to driving tactics that simply put you in the general vicinity of a Ferrari), this would never have happened, Heikki probably would have passed Alonso, Vettel or both, and he'd actually have been able to help Lewis by holding back the rest of the field. A moot point now, sure, but in view of the FIA also failing to penalize Jarno Trulli for a wildly kamikaze move (can I say that, if Jarno is driving a Toyota?) on Sebastien Bourdais, you've got to wonder what sort of tactics do and don't merit a penalty.

2008 is going to be a very, very tough act to follow. I have high hopes for next year, though. The introduction of KERS will be an interesting development, but for my money, the most important things will be which team is able to best optimize their car for the new aerodynamic restrictions which are supposed to eliminate 50% of the cars' downforce and reduce their wake-turbulence, and who can adapt to the re-introduction of slick tires. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing F1 cars on proper tires, and not the goofy grooved ones of the current era, which I never thought seemed to be compatible with a world class racing series.

Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton! He's won one of the best Formula 1 championships the sport has ever seen, and may he win many more.

Let's go!

2008-11-02T10:43:00.004-05:00

We're almost to race time for the Formula 1 season finale at Interlagos today. So far, the weekend has played out pretty closely to how I figured it would. Felip Massa put his Ferrari on pole by roughly 15 seconds, and Lewis Hamilton is qualified in a relatively safe 4th, with what appears to be a relatively heavy fuel load. Going off of sector times in qualifying, McLaren has apparently also trimmed a lot of wing off of Lewis's car, and I imagine that the reason for that is that if he has a sub-standard start, then he'll be able to use his superior straightaway speed to pass enough cars to get back up to the championship-clinching 5th place. The real wild cards in the equation are Jarno Trulli (qualified 2nd, though I think he's running light fuel and won't be a true factor in the race), Fernando Alonso (qualified 6th, directly behind Lewis on the grid, and who has said that he's willing to help Felipe to the crown), and the dirty side of the grid, where Lewis will be starting. I think that we'll see Felipe take off at the start like he's got a Titan rocket booster strapped to the rear diffuser and take an easy victory, meanwhile Lewis will make a slow start, fall to maybe 6th or so, then leapfrog 2-3 cars at the first round of stops. This will be followed by Lewis cruising home and take home the title. What I don't think will happen (or at least, what I hope doesn't happen) is an unforced error from Lewis like we saw here or in China last year. I think (hope) Lewis has learned that it's not necessary to get all the way to the front, and that he can wrap up the title while avoiding much in the way of close calls with other drivers. I'm not going to pretend here, I'm rooting for Lewis, since I've been following him since his F3 days, and I've been a raving psychophant of his since halfway through his year in GP2.

Anyway, I'm OK with Felipe winning the race, though I wish that he'll at least have a little competition. And I'm definitely fine with Lewis being in "cruise and collect" mode today. After all, I haven't had a favorite driver of mine win a major open wheel championship since Jimmy Vasser won the CART title at Laguna Seca in 1996. That was a long time ago. Did I mention that I've been a Cubs fan since 1984, too? What I'm trying to say is that Lewis needs to win this one for me. It is all about me, and only me.

Better wrap this up before the pre-race gets going (and I get my last dose of the incomparable Varsha/Hobbs/Matchett comentating team for five months...it's a long off-season). Enjoy the race, everybody!

Fantasy Racing Teaser

2008-10-24T12:59:00.006-04:00

For all of you who might have come over here after hearing a fantastic plug for my fantasy racing series on the Live Fast Racing Podcast, welcome! And for those of you who may have stopped by on your read-through of what's current in the racing blogosphere, maybe coming over from My Name Is IRL or Starting Grid News or anybody else who might be linking to me nowadays, then welcome to you as well.

As Johnny and The Duke so generously mentioned, I'm currently running a multi-series fantasy racing league, and with 2008 drawing near a close, I'm looking for potential team owners for 2009. I have a full set of rules that I can send to anybody who is interested (don't worry, it's only about two pages with generous spacing), but here are the basics for the All-Racing Fantasy League (or ARFL, as it's currently called):

- The series that are incorporated into the ARFL sanction are as follows: Formula 1, IndyCar, ALMS, GrandAm (Daytona Prototype class only), NASCAR Cup and NASCAR Truck. The series that will be covered in 2009 will probably be similar to this list, though I'm considering other road racing series to add in to better balance the number of oval and road races. ChampCar's demise sort of messed that up for this year.

- There will be either 10 or 12 teams for 2009, depending on interest level. Each individual team consists of 14 drivers, derived via a pre-season draft. The draft will take place sometime in January in the weeks leading up to the Daytona 24 Hours, which is the first race on the ARFL schedule.

- Each week, every team owner will submit a "starting lineup" of 5 oval drivers and 5 road racers who are eligible to score points that week, and then their 4 "bench drivers" for the week. If you forget to send in your lineup some week, your previous week's lineup is carried over. This avoids any unnecessary "zeroes" which would most likely paralyze you in any one of the dozens of "pick-'em" leagues out there. Been there, hated that. Missing week 30 in a NASCAR league means that you're wasted your time for the previous 29 weeks.

- Every race is scored via a system that I've derived using the current IndyCar scoring system as a starting point. A win scores 50 points, a 2nd is worth 40 points, a 3rd is worth 35 points, and so on, plus pole position is worth 3 points, leading the most laps is worth 2 points and the fastest race lap is worth 2 points.

- Drivers can only be owned by one team at a time (i.e. 4 teams can't all have Jimmie Johnson on their team), but teams can change up their rosters on a weekly basis via trades with other team owners or through the free agency process (which sounds complicated, but I assure you is not).

- The winner is the team owner who can pile up the most points at the end of the year, plain and simple. No points re-setting or playoff system here, buster.

- This is not a profit source for me. I'm simply looking for similar-minded racing fans who imagine themselves a Roger Penske or Chip Ganassi-type who simply lack...well, a gigantic Garage Mahal, a professional racing team and several million dollars with which to run it.

That's about it, in a nutshell. Please feel free to drop me a comment using the comment form or an e-mail (the address would be andymiller23 at gmail dot com), if you're interested in playing. If you'd like to see if you'd be interested in playing a full season in 2009, there are currently three teams that I'm running to fill out the ranks this year that I'd be happy to sign over to you for the remaining 2-3 weeks of 2008.

Thanks for reading, everybody, and enjoy the races this weekend!

Don't know what to say anymore...

2008-10-12T11:14:00.005-04:00

I'm not about to start making threats about no longer watching F1 (I don't think I could quit if I tried at this point), but it's really not very easy to be an F1 fan at this point. I'll start with this: if you recorded the Japanese GP and have not heard the results but are planning on watching the race, uh, there are going to be spoilers below.

Spoilers below!

I'm beyond frustrated with the FIA, and now I'm bordering on angry. I was vehemently opposed to last year's $100 million fine on McLaren for receiving data from another team, when there has been plenty of evidence that that was far from the first time that sort of thing had taken place (or that it would be the last, since the FIA basically let Renault off the hook for a similar transgression of stealing data from McLaren later in the season). Even in the days when I was more of a Ferrari fan than a McLaren fan (this would be in the early-Schumacher days, before they were an unbeatable team-order-giving juggernaut), I thought it odd that Ferrari was let off for certain things, like the barge boards that were out of spec at Maylasia in 1999. At the time, I was happy to look the other way, since it made for a good story with the championship coming down to the last race, and Ferrari was still something of an underdog.

However, this year's events at Spa and now Fuji make it completely obvious that the FIA is biased toward Ferrari. I can even sort of understand the penalty on Lewis Hamilton at Spa. He did, no doubt, derive an advantage by shortcutting the chicane, and only by doing that was he able to be close enough to Kimi Raikkonen to attempt a pass at La Source hairpin. However, a 25 second penalty, after McLaren had been told twice by race director Charlie Whiting that he'd done enough to make up for the shortcut, is just out of bounds. An actual drive through penalty at Spa would cost a driver roughly 20 seconds, so why should the penalty be 25? My money is on "because that would drop Lewis behind Nick Heidfeld and therefore cost him two extra points." On the other hand, I'd basically been able to move on since then, since Ferrari seemed intent on making things right again with Felipe's engine blowing up at Valencia, and then the pitlane miscue at Singapore which cost him any chance of scoring points.

This weekend's Japanese GP at Fuji may have contained several of the most puzzling penalties I've seen levied on racing drivers in my 18 years of watching racing. In that amount of time, I've probably watched several hundred races; you may draw your own conclusion on how much of a life I might or might not have.

For starters, Lewis Hamilton's drive through penalty for "forcing Kimi Raikkonen wide" at the first corner...how often has that sort of incident happened in the history of F1? 200? 500? How many penalties have previously been handed out for that before, in cases when no contact was made between cars? I'm going with...none. Until now. That is a brilliant precedent to set. It's basically saying, "You may not intimidate another car or take a position on the track such that it inconveniences another driver."

Later in the first lap, there was a completely toothless penalty given to Felipe Massa after he blatantly attempted to take Lewis Hamilton out of the race. Lewis made a great move inside of Felipe, causing Felipe to carry too much speed into the corner and then slide wide. Lewis completed the pass, only for Felipe to make a stab back at Lewis. Not only did Felipe go over the curbing on the inside of the chicane, he put two wheels over the grass inside of the curbing and drove directly into the side of Lewis's car. Patrick's excellent race notes at Too Much Racing indicate that Martin Brundle on the ITV coverage claimed that Lewis had not given Felipe enough room, but...you don't have to give any room at all when you're fully ahead of somebody and there's no realistic chance of an overtaking maneuver! Felipe was given a drive through penalty for this, but the damage was done: Lewis spun and had to wait for the entire field to pass by before resuming. Mission accomplished for Felipe. The fact that Lewis was handed his drive through penalty at exactly the same time as Felipe only served to reinforce that Felipe had gotten the better of the whole exchange, as the two drive throughs would cancel each other out, but leave Felipe further up the road from Lewis. During the Saturday qualifying show, Bob Varsha spent some time talking about how much Felipe Massa has been able to learn from Michael Schumacher over the years. I couldn't agree more.

The final "coup de gras" came late in the race, as Sebastien Bourdais was coming out of the pits after his last pit stop, directly in front of Massa. Felipe did manage to get fully alongside (though on the outside of ) Sebastien going into the first corner, but then Felipe obliviously turned into the apex, even though there was another car there. It appeared to me on the replays that Sebastien went over the inside curbing and even slowed down a little extra in order to give Felipe some more room, but in that instant, there's only so much you can do (I think F1 cars don't get a "beam up" feature until the 2025 regulations come into effect). At the time, there was no question to me that Felipe was in the wrong in this altercation, but I see that after the fact, the FIA gave Sebastien a 25 second penalty for "avoidable contact". I don't think that any even semi-impartial observer could make a claim that this was more than 50% Sebastien's fault, so where's the matching penalty for Felipe? I guess that the moral to this part of the story is "if you can even see a Ferrari anywhere near you, you probably ought to pull over and let him by before the FIA gives you a penalty for failing to do so".

This championship has been tampered with by the FIA. There is no doubt about that anymore. If there is any justice in F1 at all, Lewis will still pull it out in the end, and Ron Dennis will be accepting the Constructor's Championship trophy from Max Mosley at the FIA awards banquet. Lewis and McLaren have had far from a perfect season, and Lewis has been responsible for a lot of his own problems (ahem, Canada), but right now he's not just trying to beat the Ferrari team. He's also trying to beat the FIA Stewards and rulemakers, who've done a masterful job this year of making up new pro-Ferrari rules as they go. It's going to be an interesting last month of the season, but let's just hope that it comes down to what happens on the track, and not in the race control booth.

Some weekend, huh?

2008-10-06T20:08:00.007-04:00

Well, how's about that for a weekend of racing? Petit Le Mans was as good as billed, though I think I managed to singlehandedly curse a couple of cars myself. Seems that two of the only four teams to get a mention in my last post met untimely ends, with one (the B-K Lola-Mazda coupe) crashing in the morning warmup and not even making the start and the other (the Zytek hybrid) having an early contretemps with a Turn 12 tire barrier (hint: the mostly immovable object won). Oops. My bad. Just don't send me the bill.

Anyway, Petit came right down to the last dozen or so laps with the outcome yet to be decided between the two Audis and the Peugeot. The Peugeot obviously had the superior speed, though for whatever reason, they decided to have Christian Klien in the car for the last couple of stints of the race. This decision came in the face of his having had no previous experience with the Road Atlanta track, and his only previous night driving experience coming at Le Mans this year. Meanwhile, Nicolas Minassian and Stephane Sarrazin (two of Peugeot's regular drivers in the Le Mans European Series, and both blindingly quick) just had to sit and cool their jets and think about what the new Peugeot hybrid will be like to drive at Sebring next year while their team choked away yet another major race. At the same time, Audi smartly went with Allan McNish in the #1 car, who promptly diced Klien up on a late race restart and drove off into the distance (I'd say sunset, but the actual sun had long since set by then). Great racing, though. Also, big ups to Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves on their P2 class win, coming just one day after Helio...uh, appeared in court in chains.

On the down side: GT1 was only attended by the two Corvettes, as the Bell Motorsport Aston Martin decided to sit this one out. I never heard quite why that happened, as the Aston has made it to the last few races and did not sustain any visible damage at the last round at Detroit. Very much on the downside: the P2 class championship is over, with Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas clinching after Scott Sharp crashed the Highcroft Acura and then walked away from the car...which is against ALMS rules. Instant retirementfor you. Oops.

I've been told that NASCAR was also in action this weekend. OK, that's a lie. I actually managed to catch about 30 laps worth of the fall Russian Roulette 500 from Talladega. As always, the action did not disappoint. Or, I should say, it did not disappoint anybody who likes lots of wreckin' and some shoddy rule enforcement by the sanctioning body. There were several big pileups this time around, but none bigger than the one caused by Carl Edwards stupidly attempting to bump draft his teammate Greg Biffle in Turn 3. Refresh me here, but I thought that NASCAR very publicly came out a couple of years ago and threatened draconian penalties against anybody who bump drafted outside of marked zones on the backstraight at both Daytona and Talladega. What happened to that? It appears to have been no more than big talk from Mr. Helton and the NASCAR Hauler Boys. Good work there. Also, when this happens again in the future, I want the accident to not be called "The Big One", but instead dubbed "The Dumb One".

Last NASCAR thing for now, promise: how about that last lap selective rules enforcement? Tony Stewart throws the mother of all block parties (thanks, Pressdog!) for Regan Smith and gets no penalty, while Regan gets called for improving his position and is docked back to the last car on the lead lap? Believe me, I'm a Tony Stewart fan from back in his pre-IRL days, but that was nonsense. To Stew's credit, he probably had a hunch that a driver who's in the middle of NASCAR's contrived "Chase" wouldn't get called for anything short of stabbing a guy during a round of yellow flag pitstops, so good on him for playing the system and scoring his first win of the year. Sorry for you, Regan Smith. Better luck next year. Oh, unless your team can't come up with a sponsor and goes out of business.

Hey, hey, F1's back in action at Fuji again this week! I absolutely love the Japan races. There's something about being able to actually stay up and catch a race live instead of having to get up early and watch at 6:00 AM. Of course, I don't really do either of those anymore, since the advent of TiVo and DVRs, but still. Also, it's rainy season on the Pacific Rim, which means a high probability of another fantastically entertaining wet race. Watch it. You won't be sorry.

Petit Preview

2008-10-04T10:06:00.003-04:00

Hey, all! Time for a quick update this morning, in the hour before the Petit Le Mans starts up. It's going to be a great one this year, with three (ridiculously fast) cars from two teams going for the P1 and overall win, a few other P1 cars vying for top-5 and top-10 spots (including one with a hybrid Kinetic Energy Recovery System), nine top level P2 cars fighting for the class win and even top-5 overall positions (though I sort of doubt that any of the P2 cars will be able to touch the Audis and Peugeot for the overall win today), and 16 GT2 cars from seven different manufacturers. Qualifying results this morning indicate that the pole speed by Stephane Sarrazin in the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP is actually the fastest lap of Road Atlanta ever, faster than the 1992 pole speed by Davy Jones in the Jaguar XJR-9. That was in the days before there was a chicane at the bottom of the hill at the end of the backstraight...to paraphrase our good friend Rusty Wallace, "These cats are flyin' around here in these hotrods!" Ugh. I've got to go take a shower now.

The first couple of hours kick off here on SpeedTV shortly, and then there's a few hour break before the last 4 1/2 hours of the race is shown in its entirety. Whoever you're rooting for, Audi, Peugeot, Porsche, Acura, or even Mazda (as I am; love the new coupe, guys!), it's going to be an all-time classic. Enjoy!

Buckle up!

2008-08-17T18:04:00.007-04:00

OK, get ready 'Geek fans, it's time for my second post in one month for the first time in 2008! Yes, it's a big day at Speedgeek HQ.

Anyway, as I mentioned last week, I did go to the ALMS race at Road America last weekend, and I feel like I need to extol the virtues of sports car racing, as the crowd was definitely less than what it was for the ALMS/ChampCar weekend at Road America last year. I would have to argue that the ALMS guys put on a better (read that: more spectator friendly) show than the ChampCars do at RA, or even what most series put on at most tracks in North America. There are several reasons for this:

1) The ChampCar races (and now, the combined IndyCar races) are guaranteed to be over in right around two hours, whereas the ALMS main event race is a four hour timed race. The extra two hours are exactly what the doctor ordered for being able to walk around the track, hit five or six different vantage points, and be able to have enough time to settle in and see how all of the different cars behave. I suppose that places like St. Pete or Mid-Ohio can get away with 2 1/2 hour races, being more compact venues, but the four hour event is absolutely necessary at Road America. My group was able to spend the first three laps at turn 1, then head back to the Hurry Downs for about 45 minutes, then spend a half an hour inside turn 6, then a half an hour on the hillside between turn 6 and turn 13, then a half an hour walking through the paddock looking at the merch trailers, then the last 45 minutes of the race in the woods just before turn 5. Perfect.

2) As I mentioned before, it's mandated by the series to have all of the drivers available for autographs for at least an hour per weekend. Kids love that stuff. OK, who am I kidding? I love that stuff. I decided to limit the amount of potential for "fawning fan-boy" talk (I get like Chris Farley on the Chris Farley show: "Hey, Randy Pobst, remember when you passed four guys on the start at Sebring this year? That was awesome."), and only hit a couple of the autograph tables, but I did get signatures of this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans GT2 winners, Jamie Melo and Mika Salo, and autographs of almost 50% of this year's Speed World Challenge drivers. I don't know if the all of the drivers' smiles and general friendly demeanor is also a series-mandated thing, but they all seem pretty psyched to be spending time with people who know who they are, and can appreciate that they drive in a series where you don't have to throw your HANS device at other drivers to get a round of applause from the crowd.

3) I don't care what people say. Multiple classes in one race is a good thing. When the Audis, or Acuras, or Penske Porsches or whoever check out at the front of the overall field, it's a nice thing to be able to watch the Corvettes trading the lead in GT1, or see who is is at the front of the very tight pack of GT2 cars. Yes, watching sports car racing requires the fans to use their brains to think about what's going on on the track. Heaven forbid. That would be awful. Of course, that does not stop a certain number of the fans from getting completely hammered and obnoxious, as I found out in turn 1, where a drunk guy was complaining loudly about two people who'd leaned their bikes against the first row of the grandstands. Where nobody was sitting anyway, because you couldn't see anything from there. I guess there's one dumb drunk guy in every crowd. Anyway, I digress.

4) Multiple fundamentally different cars on the track at once is a very good thing. Think about it. Just about every other type of racing showcases cars that are not terribly different from one another. NASCAR? Glorified spec series (where people complain about Toyota having a 14 horsepower advantage). IndyCar? Actual spec series, though if you have a bottomless pocketbook, you can find advantages in fan-intriguing areas like rear-view mirrors. Ooooh. F1? For now, until next year's introduction of KERS, more or less a spec series, with everybody's engines putting out within 20-30 horsepower of each other and copycat aerodynamic developmets. ALMS, on the other hand, have cars from nearly a dozen different manufacturers, and each of them are distinctly different from what each of the other manufacturers have. So the Acuras and Porsches are way better than the Audis through the twisties? Watch the Audis claw back the deficit down the straights.

5) This seems kind of dopey, but it's another reason: ticket prices. How much is it to get a grandstand seat at the average NASCAR race? $80? $90? How about IndyCar races? Just less than that? For the Saturday at Road America, tickets were $55, and that got you access to just about everything but the hot pits and the team transporters. Oh, and you also get to come down on to the grid before the race and mingle with the crews, and if you're so inclined, you can get onto the main straight after the race and take your picture next to any of the winning cars. Try that at Bristol or Darlington.

6) With races being 2 1/2+ hours, if your significant other, or the rest of the family isn't as much of a super fan as you are (hard to imagine, I know), they can go take a nap in the car or prop themselves up under a tree with a book for an hour or more. I don't get it either, but I'm just throwing that out there.

7) OK, maybe this is more of an endorsement for Road America itself, but can you beat this? You can fill out the illusion by putting a bratwurst in one hand and a New Glarus Spotted Cow Ale in the other as you look at it.

Now, doesn't that beat sitting shoulder to shoulder with sweaty race fans in some aluminum grandstand that could be at just about any track anywhere? Yeah, I thought so.

Hello and Good Day!

2008-08-11T21:15:00.004-04:00

The 'geek has returned. That was a fantastic 24 Hours of Daytona, huh? Next week's Daytona 500 ought to be a pretty good one as well, don't you think? What's that? You say that it's not early February anymore? Oops.

Several things have happened recently which have inspired me to dust off the ol' internet soapbox, and write a bit more. One: I've come across some quite talented bloggers who I read regularly, and I'd feel remiss if I didn't chip in my $0.02 as well. Namely, the fellows at http://www.mynameisirl.com/ and at Pressdog are quite good, and very well informed. In fact, I met Jeff from MyNameIsIRL at Indy this year, and I told him that reading his stuff had inspired me to get behind the keyboard again. Of course, now that it's been two and a half months since the 500, it's high time. Second: a fantastic trip to Road America this last weekend for the ALMS race got my fan-juices flowing anew and I once again think that racing is awesome. I guess I hadn't really forgotten that or anything, but there's nothing like standing in the woods and watching sports cars rip by at 150+ mph, and only 50 feet away, to bring things into pretty sharp focus. Racing rules, just about all of it. Though I do still believe that some forms rule more than others...

Which brings us to today's quick-hits! You can read that as "the 'geek hasn't written in 6+ months, so here are several underdeveloped thoughts to get back up to current events."

- Reunification has gone pretty well

I'm obviously thrilled that IndyCar has one and only one series again. Not everything has gone perfectly, but it's actually gone better than I thought it might. A couple of ex-ChampCar teams are in the top-15 in points, and haven't been completely at sea all season, and the racing on track has usually been pretty good. Every statement has its exceptions (ahem, Nashville) but overall, it's been a good season and bodes well for a great 2009.

- The 2009 IndyCar TV package is good

I'm not scared of Versus. People who are already fans of IndyCar will find it (believe me, I'm one of those people who tried to swear off back in the Fox Sports Net/Eliseo Salazar/Buzz Calkins days; it didn't take), and I actually think that a growing network that is willing to spend a bunch of programming time on developing the league's personalities might be just the thing that could foster new fans. Casual fans can see some of the races on ABC, and those who are open minded toward non-NASCAR racing will tune in to Versus, same as they could now for the races that are on ESPN/ESPN2.

- I'm thoroughly enjoying the Kyle Busch Era

Anybody who is willing to stand up in front of 80,000 boo-ing Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans and take a bow after he's won a race is OK in my book. Yes, he's a spoiled Busch kid, who may be prone to throwing tantrums when things don't go his way, but he's an entertaining spoiled Busch kid. And that counts for something.

- Big league sports car racing is the best thing going

I was able to stand in line for 5 minutes or less to get the autograph of just about anybody in the Road America paddock last weekend. Try that at any NASCAR race, or even an IndyCar race (unless you pony up an extra $25 for an IndyCar pit pass, which is more than you can say for NASCAR, where pit passes are as rare as dodos). You'll be stuck behind a chain link fence for hours and probably come away empty handed. I got to see several ex-F1 and IndyCar drivers (Salo, de Ferran, Pagenaud, Brabham, Sharp, Magnussen, Fernandez, Montagny) up close and tons of guys who've won races all over the globe (Luhr, Werner, Leitzinger, Smith, O'Connell, Beretta, Gavin, the Franchitti brother who isn't married to Ashley Judd), and you really get the impression that if you stopped any of them in the paddock to chat for a minute, they'd be happy to shoot the breeze for a second and take a picture with you. I couldn't recommend catching one of these races highly enough.

That's about it for the moment. Yes, I've said this about a dozen times before, but like Mr. Burns and his beloved teddy bear Bobo, "I'll never leave you behind again." Of course, I'm referring to you, my three faithful readers, and not a stuffed animal. Oh, and sorry about the silence again. That darn coma...

Woo-Hoo!

2008-01-26T13:42:00.002-05:00

The 24 Hours looks awesome in HD! Too bad it'll just be the first hour and a half that gets the hi-def treatment, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Enjoy the race, folks! The season has started!

'08 is Live!

2008-01-02T20:16:00.001-05:00

Good day, race fans. Or, good evening, I guess, as I write this. Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all. Here's hoping that the new year will be as entertaining as last year was, racingwise, though I couldn't in my wildest dreams hope that anything as delightful as The War at Watkins (i.e. Kanaan vs. The Hornish Family) will happen this year.

I just wanted to weigh in and say that I actually just experienced one of my favorite racing moments of all of 2007 last week: the black flag period during the Formula Continental race at the SCCA Runoffs. Usually black flag periods (when all cars have to come into the pits for track cleanup, in SCCA parlance, not what Milka Duno gets around lap 40 of every IRL race she enters) are deathly boring, but not so much this time around. In the able hands of Mike Johnson and Chris Neville, Speed's pit reporters for half of the Runoffs races, we got a clinic of what on-the-scene race reporting can be. Working with each other, and with one fleet footed camera man, we got to see Johnson and Neville have a quick word with each of the drivers in the top-10 in the space of about two or three minutes. It was awesome watching the two of them leap frog each other, one guy running behind the camera man while the other talked with a driver on camera, then the camera man running down to the next car. Making the whole thing even better was the fact that Johnson and Neville knew exactly what was going on with each driver in the race (or, at least the guys feeding them info through their headsets did), and all of them were asked interesting and pertinent questions regarding tactics to that point or what we could expect after the restart. It was fascinating to watch the whole thing, leaving me wondering how this has only shown up at an "amateur" event, and why we haven't seen anything similar on a starting grid in any other form of motorsport. The tape of the FC race should be required watching for anybody involved with TV production for any series in North America.

That's all for now. The Daytona 24 is in 24 days!

Oh, for crying out loud...

2007-11-23T22:11:00.001-05:00

Well, for the record, I was rooting for Jeff Gordon for the Cup championship this year, due to the fact that it is ridiculously boring to root for Jimmy Johnson. Yes, he's never finished out of the top-5 in points. Yes, he's won more races than anybody else over the last six years. Yes, he won roughly 82 races during the Chase over the last three years. But, he's as boring in interviews as watching grass grow. And, he's always had (to me) a vague air of entitlement (including on Wind Tunnel a couple of weeks ago, when he basically turned down the opportunity to say, "You know what? Let's not compare me to Jeff until after I've won a couple more championships. He's won a lot more races and Cups than me."). Well, you can now take the word "vague" out of the preceeding sentence. Hello, Mr. A-Rod of NASCAR. Yeah, he might wind up on my fantasy racing team next year (it'd be dumb to bet against him under any circumstances right now), but I won't enjoy it...

Huh?

2007-11-04T19:35:00.001-05:00

Did I hallucinate this, or did I really tune over to the NASCAR race today with about 20 laps to go, only for Brent Mussberger to proclaim that Jimmy Johnson was in the process of building an "insurmountable lead in the NASCAR Nextel Cup points standings"? Has NASCAR changed the points system for the last two races so that it's impossible to make up 30 points? Or is everybody just looking to give JJ the championship now, lest that nasty whiner Jeff Gordon actually finish 4 places in front of Jimmy in both of the last two races and "steal" the Cup away from Darling Jimmy? Boy, why is it again that I can only stomach about 15 minutes of NASCAR coverage per week?

The Aftermath...it's The Aftermath...

2007-10-22T19:39:00.001-04:00

A quick shout-out there to my buddy (and one of my three regular readers) Pablo. Thanks for the comments, dude. As the resident Spaniard reader, I was very interested to hear that he was actually rooting for Lewis Hamilton, and not Freddy Alonso, as I'd have thought would have been required by Spanish law. It's been no secret around the Speedhouse that I'm a borderline Hamilton stalker, and have been since about a third of the way through his year in GP2, so I'm pleased that Big Lew is actually reaching across national lines to grab some folks who I know used to be Alonso fans. Lew did press too hard early in the race, and it cost him, so perhaps I should not have said what I did about learning from the mistakes made in Shanghai. Oops. As for Alosno, I've been a bit perplexed by the reaction of the Latin press, and their insistence that Fernando is not to blame for his troubles at McLaren. Frankly, I've thought he's handled the whole thing like (to quote the brilliant lads at sniffpetrol.com) "a massive baby." And today's post-race reaction by Alonso to McLaren's protest of Williams' and BMW's non-penalty is some extra fuel to that fire (no pun intended). I used to be an Alonso pseudo-fan (i.e. I was tired of Schumacher winning every year), but those days are long gone. Once you've crossed the line of racing jackassery (see also: Tracy, Paul; Harvick, Kevin), you're dead to me. I shan't be drafting you for my All-Racing Fantasy League team next year, Fred, and I hope you're stuck on two championships as long as you continue in F1.

With that said, I'm happy to see Kimi actually win a championship. He deserves it, after years of rotten luck in F1, and I'm only bummed out by the fact that I won't be anywhere near Finland for the next four months, or about as long as the party is likely to last.

One last post before race time:

2007-10-21T11:40:00.001-04:00

1) Big ups to my boy Eric Langbein, and his 7th place finish in Formula Ford at the SCCA Runoffs this year.

2) Yeah, at the heart of it all, I'm still a racing fanboy. Go Big Lew!

Happy Big Race Weekend!

2007-10-21T09:27:00.001-04:00

Good weekend on tap, everybody. ALMS finale from Laguna, Champ Car from Surfer's, and of course, the F1 Finale (capital F there) from Brazil. Of course, two of those races have already happened before I got the chance to write this, but they're still on the DVR and unwatched at this point, so I'm pretending I'm just watching 9 straight hours of live racing today. The SpeedGal has theoretically agreed to let me have the TV for the day, since I've been preparing her for this for over a month, but we'll see if our marriage survives the day.

Anyway, there's basically no championship drama for the ALMS and ChampCar races, which makes up a bit for the fact that there's a dizzying amount for the F1 race. Oh, I've just been told that Justin Wilson can still be eligible for the championship at Mexico City, though he has to win and Bourdais has to finish outside of the top-12, and theoretically, the GT2 championship is still up for grabs, though the Flying Lizard Porsche has to win the race, with the Risi Ferrari not completing 70% of the laps for anybody but the Risi guys to win that. It's almost too bad you can't run a teaser at one of the Council Bluffs casinos on a Seabass clinch parlayed with a boring Laguna race/Risi clinch.

On the other hand, there's that F1 race today, too. You can call me nuts, but I think that with the lessons learned at the Chinese GP, there's no way that Big Lew doesn't win the championship today. Freddy Alonso needs to win (unlikely, given that he's starting 4th, and on the dirty side of the grid), with Lew in 4th or worse (could happen, but not at the same time as an Alonso win) for Fred to get the title. And I'm not too worried about Kimi figuring in much, unless the McLaren guys absolutely lose their heads and crash each other out (most likely to happen with Alonso taking out Lew). Any way you slice it, though, it's going to be an extremely interesting race, and since it's the last time to see these guys in action until March (plus it'll be the last chance to see Alonso in a McLaren and the last chance to see Ralf Schumacher in anything but a touring car), enjoy it while you can.

Oh, also NASCAR is at Martinsville. I'm already getting drowsy. By the way, to clarify some remarks I made in my last post, the CoTs are extremely racy on the big tracks, as we saw in the last few laps at Talladega. Unfortunately, they did an excellent job of putting everybody to sleep for the first 450 miles. That was absolutely a horrendous race too watch for the first 2 1/2 hours. I'd almost feel bad for the fans who paid to see it in person, but they were likely mostly hammered by green flag time. Good for them. I, on the other hand, was sober and dozing off by lap 20. Luckily, I'd woken up by the end, which was excellent, though scary. I still think there will be a gigantic pileup at Daytona, with NASCAR needing to take measures to string the cars out (yeah, I know, I mean even more precautions than they've taken over the last 5 years) before the spring Talladega race. Handford device, maybe? Have everybody race their rental cars?

2007-10-09T21:17:00.000-04:00

Boy, has it been a couple of weeks since I've posted? Didn't think so.

Many things to talk about, but I just finished watching the Talladega Cup race on the TiVo, and couldn't wait to write a giant catch-all post.

1) Apparently, there is now something in stock car racing known as "draft lock." I know this because Rusty Wallace used the phrase roughly 854 times during the telecast. Has this always existed, and have drivers actually used this term before, or is it something entirely made up by ESPN for the broadcast? Yeah, I thought so.

2) Listening to Rusty freak out with 15 laps to go because "guys need to start making moves, or they're going to run out of time to get to the front!" is the highest of comedy. Sure, Rusty. Pulling out of the draft with more than a dozen laps to go is how you won all of those restrictor plate races, huh? How many did you win by the end of your career? 15? 20? Oh, right...

3) The CoTs are actually TOO racy on the plate tracks, or maybe it's that guys have gotten cocky since they've gotten spotters. Drivers were all over the place those last 8 laps, changing lanes three or four times per straightaway, sliding into holes that were one car length plus two inches long, jostling, etc. Good thing those cars are so much safer than the previous cars, since with driving like that, there's sure to be a 92 car pileup at Daytona next year.

Delish...

2007-07-03T14:35:00.001-04:00

Just had a delightful experience that I thought I'd share with everybody. As some might know, I'm currently unemployed (well, except for my ridiculously lucrative side business of race-blogging), and so I have a bit of latitude as to how I spend my mid-days. Today, I decided to run out and grab some lunch at Jimmy John's (mmm...love me some Beach Club), and I returned home to our hotel room to watch the ChampCar race from Mont Tremblant that I taped on Sunday, so that I could watch the French Grand Prix tape-delayed on Fox (can't wait to get DVR capability back). Only, when I switched on the TV, what was already on ESPN was far too compelling to turn off. I just happened, by dumb luck, to tune in for a re-run of the 2006 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Mmmm...that's some good lunchtime watching. Especially when, much to my delight, the main play-by-play commentator is one of my all-time personal favorite racing commentators...Paul Page. Oh, wow. The only thing that the contest lacked was Jack Arute attempting to interview the contestants during the competetion, only succeeding in annoying everybody in sight, and doing his annual expose on the wooden dowel rod that race teams use to smack the fueller in the back to do late race timed pitstops, only it's for...maybe cramming hot dogs down your gullet.

Anyway, it was a life changing event to watch Page announce

***SPOLER ALERT***

Takeru Kobayashi reset his world record with a winning count of 53 3/4 hot dogs, and nearly chucking up about a dozen of them with 30 seconds to go.

END SPOILER

Maybe it's just the Page-related schadenfreude talking, but suddenly, my turkey, sprouts and guac ain't sittin' too well.

Many Apologies

2007-06-05T10:16:00.001-04:00

It has come to my attention that I have a racing-themed blog that I write from time to time. It seems that I had forgotten about it for, oh, about three months now, and now that I do not have an actual steady-paying job, I have no excuse for not writing. So, thoughts from the last three months:

- ChampCar blows. Maybe I'm not one of those hardcore ChampCar fans, the type that you see on the telecasts who incorporate Bruno Junquiera into their marriage proposals and what not, but I feel like I've been a pretty faithful fan for the last 16 years. Granted, during that time, I probably haven't been to more than 8-9 ChampCar races, but I've been an unfailing television race watcher. Allow me two more notes of preface before I get into the main gist of what I'm going for:

1) The new Panoz is a major improvement over the old Lola, in terms of appearance and performance, if not safety (sorry, Paulie "Walnuts" Tracy) or reliability (sorry, most of the field at Vegas and Houston who had problems with the refuelling rigs).
2) The TV coverage is 20 times better than it's been for the last five years. Even if 2/3rds of the crew is normally a NASCAR crew, at least they seem to care enough to do a bit of research (like, say, learning the drivers' names) before showing up at the track. More than you could say about Derek Daly and Rick Benjamin.

With that out of the way, here goes... The level of competetion seems to be even more lopsided than in years past, due to the fact that the big teams (OK, Newman-Haas-Lanigan, and nobody else) have learned the new car quicker than the smaller teams. Plus, the other big teams (Forsythe, um...PKV? Ru-ocketSport[s]?) don't seem to understand that driver and crew stability is the only thing that will close the gap to Seabass and company. Call me cynical, but I don't see Paul Tracy, a substituting (though deservingly taking over a full time seat from Mario Dominguez, now that Tracy's back) Oriol Servia, Will Power (I'm not sold on the Aussie team joining the big boys yet), Justin Wilson (the whole RuSport mess was an absolute catastrophe, as far as trying to win the championship goes), or anybody else seriously challenging for the championship. I think we might see quite a few guys winning races this year (namely, the guys I just listed, plus maybe Graham Rahal and Neel Jani), but nobody is going to touch Bourdais for the title.

Other Champcar thoughts: other than Rahal, Jani and Doornbos, I'm not really feeling this year's rookie crop. Simon Pagenaud? OK, you won last year's Atlantic championship, so you can stay. Dalziel, Figge and Halladay are hopelessly overmatched, due to their teams. Tristan Gommendy? Please. I know that a lot of people complained when Juan Pablo Montoya was given a ride in ChampCar, but by the time he came to the states, I'd been watching him closely for five years. Gommendy? Not so much. Let's just say that when my buddies and I go to Road America this year, we might be bugging out after the ALMS race, and skipping ChampCar on Sunday. Even five years ago, that would have been unthinkable.

Also, the schedule is a mess. It's been so long since there was a race, I had to look up the driver lineups in order to complain about them. OK, enough said on that topic.

- The IRL is better than it's been for a while, but it's not good enough. Storylines abound in the IRL, with Mr. Judd winning the 500, Danica and Wheldon throwing down in pitlane, Penske cars inexplicably breaking rear wings while in the lead, Marco Andretti's inevitable nasty contract dispute at the end of the year when he tries to leave AGR to drive for Honda in F1, Rusty Wallace thankfully being banished from all non-Indy broadcasts, and much more. Unfortunately, as some of my favorite writers continue to point out, Nielsen ratings still hover in the sub-1.0 region. That's a shame. There's way more going on here than any fabricated nonsense that's happening in NASCAR right now. Speaking of which...

- Dale Who? I think I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't really care where Dale Jr. winds up next year. Frankly, I think that Rick Hendrick is lying (shock horror!) when he says that all four of his drivers will be returning next year. Let's be serious. Casey Mears is going to drive for Ginn and Dale winds up in the 8/25 car (depending on if DEI holds the rights to the #8) with Bud sponsorship. The nice thing for them there is that if Dale drives the #25, Hendrick probably has two warehouses of leftover #25 Budweiser merchandise from the Ken Schrader/Ricky Craven Era. Airbrush Dale's face in, and you're sitting on a gold mine. Also, it'll be fun to watch all of the Jeff Gordon haters'/Dale Jr. fans' heads explode when Dale is protecting Jeff's bumper as Jeff makes a championship run next year (I still don't believe that Dale is consistent enough at all types of tracks to win the Cup).

What else? Hmmm...well, I oughta go comb the job boards again. Gotta do something to pay for race tickets, after all...

More soon, I promise.

For real this time.

Crazy Day

2007-03-02T15:42:00.001-05:00

Hey, all. Quickie post here before the weekend with a couple of links to check out. It's well documented, and any regular reader of mine (all three of you) will know, that my two favorite writers on the 'net are Robin Miller and Bill Simmons (Chuck Klosterman is more of a print guy that happens to appear online from time to time). Well, it appears that they both chose today to call out people in their regular columns: Miller viciously takes every previous employer not named Speed Channel to task for firing him and Simmons positively lambastes Scoop Jackson for claiming that NBA All-Star Weekend in Vegas was less violent and out-of-control than some media folks made it out to be. I don't have a whole lot more to say about it, other than both these columns make pretty interesting reading (especially Miller's, who basically confirms just about every notion I've had about the open-wheel racing media since the late-'90s).

Enjoy your weekend, everybody, and wish me luck.

2007-02-18T19:12:00.000-05:00

As I've been saying would happen for two years now, a Green-White-Checker finish managed to tear up a couple million dollars worth of equipment. It's a friggin' miracle that nobody got killed today, and NASCAR needs to change the end-race policy before someone winds up in court or dead. The most shocking thing I saw from the whole situation was from Clint Bowyer's in-car camera: he never lifted off the throttle, even as Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth were wrecking directly in front of him (and even as he pushed David Ragan into the middle of the wreck). Hey, nothing's out of bounds at the end of the Daytona 500, even if you're doing extremely dumb things to try to finish third.

Oh, and a full season of "Kevin Harvick, Daytona 500 winner" is going to be just delightful. One of the biggest egos in NASCAR, and now he's leading the points and winner of the season's biggest race. Great.

One last thing before I sign off for the day: is it just me, or are the new Chevy commercials for the Impala Car of Tomorrow incredibly racist? Hey, check it out, we're racing the Impala! Attention, Black Folks! See? We're cool!

2007-02-18T16:48:00.000-05:00

New complaint, and it involves the aforementioned Mr. Boogity Waltrip. Someone has to make him stop yakking about how awesome Toyota is during the Fox telecasts. He opened up the Bud Shootout (nee Busch Clash, possibly someday to be the Tequiza Tangle or Michelob Melee, according to my friend Rick) by saying that the story of the year is how hard the Toyota teams have worked, and that it's huge, great news to have such an awesome manufacturer coming into the sport. Today, while the booth guys were talking about Toyota making their first Cup start, he makes the non-sequiter of "Yeah, and the Camrys are all made right here in the USA!" Really? Thanks! I'm a little hazy, but I think I remember Darrell doing commercials the last two years for somebody...a car and truck manufacturer, maybe. They might have been Japanese? Can anyone help me remember, maybe?

I dunno, call me sensitive, but it really, really bothers me to have a supposedly impartial color commentary guy openly shilling for a company that he's a very public spokesman for during telecasts. Somehow, it just seems more subversive than the race breaks so that we can "see how the entire Coca Cola racing family is faring today!"

A quick pre-Daytona 500 note

2007-02-18T15:03:00.001-05:00

...with more probably to come as I intermittantly become inflamed and/or outraged during the day.
Darrell Waltrip just said that there is "a stigmatism attached to Toyota being in NASCAR." Couldn't have put it better myself. Thank you, Mr. "Boogity Times Four Minus One."

Oh, also: go Juan. I want to see him win today and then rip off Cris da Matta's old catchphrase of "I keek ass!"

A few quick notes, all of which are well overdue:

2006-11-11T12:19:00.001-05:00

ChampCar has their own Earl Hickey. It is my firm belief that the racing gods decided that if the series officials didn't have the guts to park Paul Tracy for the final race of the year after his idiotic shenanigans in pitlane at Surfer's, they would do it themselves. Or maybe he's just a moron. It could go either way. I'd also like to take this opportunity to throw out there that Paulie Walnuts's only championship was won against the perpetually snakebitten Bruno Junquiera, Michel freaking Jourdain (underrated, but not really a top-five guy), then-rookie Sebastien Bourdais, then-teammate Patrick Carpentier (always wildly inconsistent), Jimmy Vasser in vastly inferior equipment and on a brand-new team, and an absolute pu-pu platter of guys who have never run up front on a week-to-week basis. And since then, Bourdais has won the last three championships and roughly 437 races. Can we put an asterisk next to 2003 now?

I am not shocked that Allmendinger has made the jump to NASCAR. How do you turn down $3 million a year to race, when your best option in ChampCar is only offering you $1 million? Poster-boy or not, I can't blame him for taking the cash. Now, I'd just say that it would be nice if Jerry Forsythe signs Buddy Rice for next year, so that we can actually have a few Americans in the series with Graham Rahal making the jump to the big cars and Alex Figge driving for the new PCM effort. Not that I think that either one can beat Bourdais next year, but it's nice to have 15% American drivers in a series where 60% of the races take place in the U.S.

That's all for now. Everybody enjoy the last non-NASCAR race of the year. Looks like Bourdais vs. a one-handed Justin Wilson, by the looks of qualifying, but it should be fun anyway.

Post #2 of the day, this time for the ChampCar race:

2006-10-23T13:23:00.001-04:00

3:07 – Back from the basement. Upside: there was still one Sam Adams Octoberfest in the beer fridge. Downside: the F1 season review is still going. With how often all of these clips are trotted out during the actual season, it seems like a bit of overkill to show them now. Shouldn’t we wait a month or two for this, when we’ve actually forgotten some of it?

3:09 – A look at the Speed boys in Charlotte! Everybody’s dressed up for the occasion today. Frankly, I usually imagine these guys sitting around in the studio watching the race in PJ’s and slippers. Maybe that’s just me.

3:13 – Now is the time for the Speedy Awards? 10 minutes after the season is over? Nothing like a little instant history.

3:14 – Can’t take much issue with any of these, except that Matchett has given the “Technical Achievement Award” to the Ferrari gearbox. Too bad this had to be taped before hand, since I’m still convinced it was acting up today, and cost Michael about three positions.

3:16 – Also, “Best On-Track Pass” could have had another contender today with Schumacher going inside Fisi into the Senna Esses. That said, Alonso’s pass of Schumacher at Hungary was pretty awesome.

3:17 – Driver of the Year to Schumacher? After purposefully blocking the track in Qualy in Monaco and losing points from wrecking at Hungary while trying to hold off two clearly faster guys? I don’t know about that. I’ve gotta go with Freddy here.

3:22 – Wow, a pretty even-handed retrospective of Michael’s career. Nice job by the Speed crew. Plus, we get some great footage of Mike in the Sauber Mercedes sports car and the Jordan F1 car in 1991. Oh, plus the Foo Fighters. Kickin’.

3:25 – And just as I think we’re about to head to Surfer’s…it’s a visit from our friend Sam Posey! Ugh. Shoot me now.

3:27 – At least we get some more Foos…

3:29 – Off to Surfer’s! And it’s time for the most jarring contrast of the year: not the performance of F1 vs. ChampCars, but the quality of the F1 booth crew vs. Derek Daly and Rick Benjamin. The over/under for mispronunciations plus mis-identified drivers plus inane comments? Vegas has the line at 124 ½. I’ll take the “over.”

3:32 – Aaaaaah. The grainy footage we always get from Down Under always makes me feel good. Makes me think of John Andretti, and of Senna winning at Suzuka and Adelaide.

3:33 – Yikes. A couple big practice crashes for A.J. and Bourdais. Were the tire barriers placed for maximum carnage potential?

3:34 – And now, we get a graphic for “Final Race Title Surprises.” Uh, guys? This isn’t the final race. I think if Bourdais starts the last two races, he wins the championship. Even if he’s last today, he’ll only need like a 14th or so in Mexico to clinch. I wouldn’t exactly start talking about championship drama right now.

3:35 – Does it make me a bad person that I chuckle whenever I see Erin Crocker in commercials for the Truck Series? I don’t care. Anytime you can make a joke about somebody sleeping their way into a NASCAR ride, I’m laughing. It’s something I’m not sure you could accuse Jimmy Spencer of doing…at least I hope not.

3:38 – Time to get some more mileage out of Katherine Legge’s massive crash at Road America! Apparently, she made appearances on 10 talk shows. OK, we’ve got that out of the way for today, now let’s let that go.

3:44 – Hey! Mario Dominguez! On your third team this year! Having a great season, though.

3:46 – NASCAR results on my phone! Great. Delete. Note to self: disable NASCAR results text messages before next season. I probably waste 3 whole minutes a year looking at those.

3:47 – What is this paddock profile with the Rocketsports guys? It started as an interview of Wario and his race engineer, and now it’s devolved into an explanation of what the buttons on the steering wheel do. Anyway, that was meandering and far-too-long bit. Less pointless stuff, more Bronte Tagliani, please.

3:51 – Now we’ve got Jon Beekhuis doing his poor man’s version of Peter Windsor. It’s kind of hard to take him serious, when instead of Flavio Briatore and Rubens Barrichello, we get interviews with Jan Heylen and a very-bummed-out Justin Wilson, missing the start today with a broken wrist. Whoever designed the tire barriers that he crashed into should be fired. Now.

3:56 – Bourdais is the only repeat pole winner this year? These are the things I forget when we go 3+ weeks between races. Let’s just say this hasn’t been a banner year for the ChampCar series.

4:00 – Good aerial view of Surfer’s. Too bad ChampCar will NEVER appear in high def. This would look 80 times better than Martinsville would.

4:01 – Will Power is on the pole today with an on-board camera that looks like it’s hanging from a crane that’s mounted on his roll hoop. Weird.

4:03 – No start? The first 5 rows looked perfect. When positions 11-17 are inhabited by Heylen, Pizzonia, Zwolsman, Wirth, Legge and the like, I’m afraid that’s as good as it’s going to get.

4:06 –And now we get a single-file start. The fix is in! There’s no other way Power leads through the first chicane over Bourdais if there’s a two-by-two start. Can somebody check Tony Cottman’s passport to see if he’s actually Australian?

4:13 – We learn from Daly that Will Power won “some very big races in Europe” before coming to ChampCar. Of course, it would be too much to ask for the commentators to do any research and find out what those races might have been. This is only their job, after all.

4:18 – A.J.’s on the juice and gets by Servia, but only after doing a little wheel banging at the first chicane. That was less than elegant.

4:19 – Katie is out. Well, I guess that the plus side of her retirements is that it ensures that she’ll get some camera time. To say that she’s been a little disappointing this year would be a slight understatement.

4:20 – OK, Will Power came from the Renault World Series. Thanks, Derek. I think it’s a fair thing to say that no NASCAR commentator would come into a broadcast and not be able to recite the past career stats of that day’s polesitter. This is why I should be calling these races remotely from my living room instead of Daly. Not because I’d be a whole lot better, but I’d definitely be cheaper. OK, plus I’d be better.

4:26 – PT past Bourdais, like Sea Bass was tied to something. Uh, oh.

4:26 – Shock of the day: “Sh***y” Dan Clarke is in the tires. Betting on that in Vegas would have won you, um, probably a hand shake.

4:30 – Good lord, melee on pit road. Fire in the Forsythe pits after A.J. takes off with the fuel hose still connected, Briscoe hits somebody coming out of his box, and Paul Tracy spears into Will Power trying to take the lead on pit lane. Moron. Shades of Cleveland in ’93 or ’94 (I forget) when he did the same thing to teammate Al Unser Jr. (taking both out), or when he did the same to Castroneves at Laguna in about 2000 or 2001. We’ll see if Paulie does the same this time around and blames the other guy.

4:33 – Let me get this straight: Tracy is allowed to come in and take tires and fuel under caution and avoid a penalty? No penalty for a malicious attempt to chop the leader in pit lane, and causing damage to another car? Sure, that makes complete sense. I thought Paul was under probation through this race. Apparently, in ChampCar, that means “do whatever you feel like, and we’ll just reprimand you again”. I think PT would have to stab somebody on the podium to get suspended for a race. At least Daly just called him “an idiot.” That cheers me up a little.

4:39 – Apparently, according to Benjamin, “Speedy” Dan Clarke has been “a thrill a minute all year.” That’s like saying Terrell Owens has “had a few personality differences with some teammates.”

4:42 – Points as they run now: Bourdais wins the championship, and Nelson Philippe and Will Power are 4th and 5th. Did my head just spin completely around? What year is this? Where am I? I think I might have just blacked out for about 4 months.

4:48 – What the hell is Katherine Legge doing? Isn’t she about 3 laps down after stalling? What business does she have muscling her way past people who are on the lead lap? I’ve got to say that this is the most disturbing trend with the latest crop of rookies in ChampCar: they have no qualms with racing with people when they are laps down. This is just unacceptable. It’s going to take somebody taking out a race leader before anything happens in the way of disciplinary action. Oh, except that Marcus Marshall took out da Matta at Cleveland last year (right in front of where I was sitting) and nothing happened. Good precedent.

4:53 – Daly calls Bourdais “un-champion-like” for his move on Will Power for the lead, damaging Power’s car. If Tracy had made that move, Daly and Benjamin would be chuckling and making jokes right now. Sure, it was dumb, but uh, guys? It’s racing. That happens. And the championship is clinched, so what did you expect from The Bass?

4:56 – Power is out. Too bad. Good drive by him.

4:56 – Footage from the Atlantic banquet. Thankfully, it’s only about 30 seconds worth, as opposed to the seven hour marathon that the NASCAR banquet has become. Who the hell watches the whole thing? I use it as a sleeping aid.

5:00 – We are told by Daly that he expects “Nelson Philippe to hit the front here.” He means “take the lead,” but I think “hit the leader” might be a little more likely.

5:02 – OK, we’ve seen Bourdais hit Power about six times now, but could somebody talk a bit more about Tracy and his non-penalty? If he doesn’t hit Power and knock off some of Power’s aero pieces, maybe Bourdais doesn’t have enough speed to get close enough to make a move. Also, Tracy is running 4th and might have a chance at the win on an alternate fuel strategy. I’m going to go throw up now.

5:04 – Philippe proves me an idiot by taking the lead and we get another helping of “what was he thinking of?” from Daly when Servia loses downforce, locks up, and nudges Philippe under braking. Derek, calm down. That was clearly not on purpose from Oriol.

5:07 – We go to commercial and find out that Andreas Wirth is in 7th. Wha? He had a decent year in Atlantics, but I don’t think anybody thought that this was going to happen. You might want to pick up some Powerball tickets when you get back to the states, Dre.

5:13 – A.J. accepts at least half of the blame for his accident that was assisted by the gearbox acting up. I’m not sure that that interview would have gone quite the same with someone like Tracy.

5:17 – Tracy appears to have pitted and rejoined in front of Philippe. Now he’s in the catbird seat for the win. I may protest and not watch Mexico City if Tracy is allowed to win this race.

5:21 – I’d like to point out that we’re almost 90% of the way through the Surfer’s Paradise ChampCar race and we haven’t seen a single shot of a bikini clad girl on the beach. Have the political correctness police gotten to the SpeedTV guys, or have they just forgotten who their target audience is?

5:22 – A flurry of activity during the commercial: Servia has retired with a gearbox problem and Heylen and Katherine have hit various things. Daly: “I think Katherine’s had about six incidents today.” Ladies and gentlemen, ChampCar’s answer to Danica Patrick!

5:23 – Look, don’t get me wrong, I like Katherine Legge, and I think she’s a decent driver, but she clearly came up to ChampCar at least a year too soon. She’s been in way over her head all year, and the improvement I’ve been hoping would be gradual over the course of the season has been non-existent. She’s just as capable of rearranging tire barriers at any given moment now as she was at Long Beach. I can only hope that they can give her about 10,000 more testing miles over the winter, and maybe some time doing wheel-to-wheel stuff in a shifter kart or something.

5:26 – We learn that Derek Daly gets all of his “insider information” from autoracing1.com. You’ve got to be kidding. Why bother earning your salary as a TV personality by talking to actual people in the paddock, when you can sit in your hotel room and surf the ‘net?

5:28 – For the record, I’m very excited about the new Panoz ChampCar. It looks great, and should put on some fantastic racing next year. It’s just too bad that there might only be a few legit championship contenders left (Tracy, Bourdais, Wilson) after Allmendinger goes to NASCAR and Bruno gets fired in favor of Graham Rahal.

5:33 – Huh? Tracy and Wario have to trade places? Too bad we don’t have any footage of the pass under yellow. And why isn’t Pizzonia getting out of the way of the leaders here?

5:35 – Daly claims that Wario is one of the “great late brakers.” Ha! Can we just simply call him a “late braker,” please?

5:37 – Philippe, Dominguez and Tracy do their best to make a three car pile-up and give the win to Tags, but fail and continue driving. Too bad.

5:38 – Tracy has to get behind Tags to “give back the time”? What? Since when is this a rule? Tracy short-cutted the chicane, and fell back in behind Dominguez, exactly where he was before. Believe me, I’m not bashful about asking for Paul Tracy to be penalized for things, but this is bullshit.

5:41 – This race has officially attained “train wreck” status. Inexplicable penalties and non-penalties, lots of incidents, most of which took place off camera, and a weird leaderboard. I know that this tends to happen in Australia, but this seems worse than usual.

5:44 – We learn that Dominguez needs “an extra brake pad,” because he’s such a late braker. Um, that’s not a good thing. That means he overdrives his equipment.

5:51 – One lap to go and Wario is close. Plus, he’s got some juice left. But, he just spun the wheels coming on to the backstretch when as Daly says, “the traction control didn’t take off there.” Of course, these cars haven’t had traction control in three years, but who’s paying attention?

5:52 – The win goes to Nelson Philippe! He’s far from my favorite driver, but I guess he deserved this one. When you can stay out of trouble on a day like this, you deserve to wind up in the top five.

5:53 – And a quick championship montage for Bourdais, set to some 1988 vintage Van Halen. Good times. It bothers me, though, that they keep comparing his run of three straight championships to Ted Horn’s. I can’t imagine that this crop of drivers is quite as deep as what Horn had to beat. Nowadays, apparently any dork with a million dollars can be a ChampCar driver.

5:58 –Jon Beekhius: “Nelson Philippe, you’ve joined the ranks of such illustrious company of John Andretti and Mario Dominguez as a driver who has won his first career race at Surfer’s Paradise. How does that make you feel, to follow in those guys’ footsteps, knowing there’s a better-than-good chance that your career will follow the same arc?” OK, maybe that’s just what I’d have asked.

6:00 – Well, it’s been an up and down day. Alonso and Bourdais did manage to sew up their respective championships, and we’ve had a couple of novel winners in Massa and Philippe. Oh, and the most prolific winner (note how I did not say “greatest driver”) in Formula 1 history retired. I’m feeling a little unfulfilled after all of that. Good thing there’s more Labatt’s in the fridge. Enjoy the three week break until Mexico City. And don’t forget to keep ignoring NASCAR. Just remember that it’s for the good of racing.

2006-10-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Speed Geek HQ! I figured today, being the last big racing day of the year with ChampCar from Australia and the finale of Michael Schumacher’s career, plus rainy and cold outside to boot, would be a great time to co-opt Bill Simmons’ running diary idea. So, here goes, with 5 hours of racing action coming at ya!

First, I’ll be making no apologies to the length or coherence of this post. This blog is meant for my amusement only, so whatever I produce comes with no money-back guarantee for reader satisfaction. I will say, though, that I’m cheating a bit with the “live diary,” since it turns out that Sam’s Club is a terrible idea at 12:00 on a Sunday. I’m starting 80 minutes behind, but thanks to our new Comcast DVR, I’m going to pretend we’re live:

12:30 – Not sure how I feel about Schumacher’s last race. I was a big fan for the first 8 or 9 years of his career, but over the last few years, it has become apparent that he’s actually not all that admirable (Monaco this year was the last straw for me). And, it’ll be better to have four or five top drivers vying for race wins, instead of wondering whether or not anybody can beat Michael every week. But, that said, it won’t be the same without him around.

12:32 – First throw-down to Peter Windsor. A great idea for this year. Dough well-spent to get someone on the ground at the race. Varsha, Hobbs, and Matchett do a great job, given that they’re sitting in a booth in Charlotte with the same TV feed we’re seeing, but it’s nice to have somebody at the race to conduct actual interviews and tell us some of the behind-the-scenes stuff.

12:36 – Apparently there is a “Speedy Award” for “Best Race.” Who gets to put that award on their mantle? Bernie? Max Mosely, for effective rules manipulation? I think the ESPY thing has gone a little too far.

12:37 – Windsor: “Jarno, prospects for the race?”
Trulli: “We’re going straight to the back.” (Maybe that wasn’t the actual answer, but it should have been.)

12:42 – Scott Speed’s best memory of the year is of getting a point in Australia? Something that didn’t actually happen? Yikes. Let’s try to get an actual point today, shall we, Scooter?

12:43 – Windsor: “We look forward to seeing you (Giancarlo Fisichella) as Renault’s team leader net year.” Or at least until you’re fired at mid-season for being the most disappointing #1 driver in F1 history.

12:44 – Windsor: “Misour Todt, can I ask you a quick question.”
Todt shakes head and turns away. Ha! That’s a new one. High comedy.

12:48 – It’s truly too bad that Mikey’s starting in the mid-pack today, but it’ll be fun to watch him march to the front. The only guy who can match his pace is Felipe, but I just can’t see him keeping it together all day to score the home-town victory. How long before Michael’s in second? I say 12 laps.

12:50: Kimi’s best memory of the year? “Ghsouhkduykjhgjh.” Or at least, I think that’s what he said. He kills me. Today’s SAT question: Dikembe Mutubo is to Simmons as __________ is to The Speedgeek. Answer: Kimi Raikkonen. Every interview is a virtual treasure trove of monotone, barely intelligible answers.

12:54 – The official time of the first overly dramatic, but somewhat hilarious Schumacher tribute. Can’t imagine that it’ll be the same in 10 years when Alonso quits with 4 titles and 35-45 race wins (depending on McLaren’s ability to get it together in the next few years).

12:56 – Track analysis by the still-sober Hobbs. I’m just waiting for his first Flavio Briatore impression after about his third gin and tonic in about an hour and 20 minutes. My favorite part of every F1 weekend.

12:58 – There’s no doubt that Alonso brings home the Drivers title today, but I think it’s a mortal lock that Fisi poops the bed and finishes 10th or so to cost Renault the Manufacturer’s title. Lipe might have a botched pitstop or a lurid spin that may cost him the race, but he’s still going to beat Fisi and bring home the necessary points for Ferrari.

1:00 – Hobbs: “Could be Yamamoto’s last race for Aguri today.” You think?

1:02 – Boogity, boogity, boogity, boys! Michael gets both BMWs at the end of the backstraight, and Webber loses his rear wing. Better luck at Red Bull next year, Marky Mark. He deserves better.

1:04 – Ooh, a reference to a good Surfer’s race by Varsha! Yeehaaa!

1:04 – Yikes, a gigantic write-off for Nico. And Mark’s parked. Too bad for Williams. This season was worse than the Supertec days back in 1999 and 2000. Hope the Toyota marriage next year is good for them.

1:07 – Nico took Mark’s wing (and his own front wing) off? Just start walking to the airport now, buddy. You’re better off in hand-to-hand combat with Sao Paulo’s street gangs than facing Patrick Head right now.

1:11 – Heidfeld took the door off the safety car here in 2002? How have I never seen footage of that? I’ll be off to Youtube directly after the race.

1:12 – No way Schu doesn’t slice up Fisi on this restart. I wish I could bet on this stuff. It’s money in the bank.

1:14 – Did Rubens fall asleep during the Safety Car? He was 2+ seconds down to Mikey by the line? I’d think the teams should practice these things during testing. Aren’t restarts more valuable than doing about 200 laps trying to find another 0.05 seconds per lap?

1:17 – Crud. Flat for Michael. That’s a little anticlimactic. A shame, really. Well, a point by Renault will clinch the Constructor’s now. Jean and Ross can have the red guys start packing stuff up now, except that Michael will undoubtedly lower the fastest lap about 25 times before the end of the day.

1:20 – Both Toyotas out at the same time? Unreal. What a hideous season for them. And I can’t see next year being any different with those two drivers. Ralf sucks and Jarno is snakebitten. Bad, bad re-signings there. You’d be better off putting Ryan Briscoe and Franck Montagny in those cars and saving yourself $25 million a year.

1:22 – Scooter in 10th! Nice. This live diary thing is making me miss stuff, though. No way Varsha points that out before I notice it, on any other day.

1:25 – Crazy Dave Coulthard out. Too bad. Disappointing season there. It’ll be fun watching him try to keep up with Marky Mark next year. Oh, and his interview in qualifying was his highlight of the year. “What happened? Don’t know. Car’s slow.”

1:27 – 11 retirements for Webber this year? Yikes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him with a sniper rifle on top of the press box by the end of the day.

1:29 – I know that it’s an open question as to whether or not Lewis Hamilton is going to race for McLaren next year, but I think it’s a done deal. He kicked ass in GP2 like no body else has for a few years in F3000 (Montoya was probably the last guy who impressed me as much at that level). Sign him, and start testing him tomorrow.

1: 33 – How are Rubens and Fisi drag racing in pit lane for position? Honda shouldn’t be even close to Renault’s pace here. Fisi will be fired before France next year.

1:35 – You’ve got to figure that Lipe is not going to lap Michael here. I don’t care that he’s running quicker, Mike just can’t go down a lap.

1:35 – Lipe is in. Nevermind. Although, if he can keep his head, and nothing befalls him at the next stop, this race is over. Ooh, or might Freddy be on a 1-stopper?

1:39 – Fred’s in. Race’s over, if Lipe can keep the dirty side down.

1:43 – Button goes by Kimi with barely any protest? No way. Kimi must already be trying to decide what topless beach he’s heading to after the race.

1:44 – A vicious chop by Vito Liuzzi on Heidfeld. Rookie mistake by Vito. How ‘bout Bobby Kubica, though? I didn’t see him doing a fraction of what he’s been able to do this year. Maybe there is something to the whole idea of plucking somebody out of Formula Fords, giving him about 40,000 miles of testing laps, then giving him a race drive.

1:47 – Petey DLR up to 2nd driving a silver tanker-trailer on a 1-stop strategy. Not sure how I feel about guys using that strategy. Seems kind of like Max Papis’s wins in ChampCar: sneaking in through the back door. But, I guess it works, and it is a legit strategy, no pay no attention to me.

1:53 – Next year, I’m totally starting the Berkley F1 Crew, so I can get a Varsha shout-out. That’d make my week.

1:54 – Fast lap by Schuey. No surprise there.

1:55 – So, Michael gets to take this car home with him? Do you suppose that he’s going to sit in it on Sunday afternoons with the F1 races on TV and the sound turned all the way up? I would.

1:57 – Disappointing sequence by the Speed guys when they miss Schumacher going slowly for about three corners and letting Kubica back by. He obviously went off, or at least got in the marbles and took a second cleaning the tires off. OK, Matchett has just had that idea. Nevermind, but that was the first misstep by the Speed guys. I wonder if Derek Daly will be able to go almost an hour and a half without making a mistake today? I’ll be happy with a minute and a half.

2:00 – Scooter is behind Taku with the same number of stops? Anyone care to explain how that happened?

2:03: - The 2006 highlight clip for this week includes Takuma Sato hitting Schumacher with his BAR. Uh, I don’t think that happened this year…

2:06 – Michael makes his last stop and comes back out in 8th. This could be interesting to see if he can get up into the podium positions…

2:08 – Heikki Kovaleinen has got to be stoked for next year. You just know he’s going to embarrass Fisichella before the season gets back to Europe next year. Best case scenario for the new guy: great car, subpar team leader. That’s a recipe for unquestioned #1 status for 2008.

2:11 – Lipe’s in! And the upset of the day: no problems in pitlane. Improbable. Look out for Vito Liuzzi, though…

2:14 – Even if Freddy comes out behind Button, there’s no way Jenson keeps him behind for the rest of the race. Fred’s back out of the pits in 2nd.

2:15 – Michael with a rare fist wave at Yamamoto. Fully merited, though. Can we put Anthony Davidson in that car for the rest of the race?

2:18 – Schu vs. Fisi Part 2. Will it be the same as 40 laps ago? Nope, Michael inexplicably slows for two corners and lets Fisi get away. Must have a transmission problem. I don’t buy the explanation that it was bad understeer for one corner. You don’t lose 2 seconds in one corner from understeer.

2:21 – Our first look at Cris Albers…and he’s thrown it off the road. Big surprise.

2:22 – Surprise: Hobbs still sounds sober. Not a surprise: Varsha is busting on Hobbs for being old.

2:24 – Also not a surprise: Fisi folds under the pressure and chucks the car off the road under pressure from Michael. Feeling good about that lineup for next year, Flavio?

2:26 – Someone has obviously gone off…and it’s Quick Nick Heidfeld, with a massive suspension failure at the end of the front straight. Promoting Scooter to 11th. Now, we just need Jenson, Kimi, Freddy and Michael to have a pile up and we’ll have the first point for an American since Monza 1993. It hasn’t been a great time to be an American F1 fan for the last decade and a half.

2:30 – The race director keeps switching from Kimi and Michael to Massa. Which makes sense, since Lipe’s got a 24 second lead and these are the last 5 laps of Michael’s career.

2:31 – Wow. Michael with an absolutely breathtaking pass on Kimi for 4th. And the Ferrari guys are going nuts. As well they should. I’ll miss that kind of stuff next year.

2:34 – Unreal. Michael cuts fastest lap on the next to last lap of his career.

2:35 – Lipe brings home a fantastic flag-to-flag win, Freddy brings home the title, Michael finishes on Jenson’s gearbox, and Fisi is driving straight off the track to the airport, before Flavio can take a swing at him for conning Flav into re-signing his contract for next year.

2: 39 – Gonna be a fun podium, with Lipe and Freddy crying and Jenson Button attempting to chug an entire bottle of champagne.

2:44 – I’ve got my fingers crossed that we can at least get Michael on to the podium for one last leap. It’s become tiresome over the years, the “I just crushed these guys, and I could still run a marathon” leap, but it’s our last chance to see it. That is, until Dale Coyne signs him to drive in ChampCar next year. Or not.

2:49 – A big swig of champagne for Ross Brawn. Gonna miss him next year. There’s no way Ferrari can maintain their level of competitiveness without him.

2:53 – Felipe: “The easiest race of my life.” You can say that again. And Windsor is officially trying as hard as he knows how to make Felipe cry again. No dice, though.

2:55 – Windsor: “Fernando, can you say a few words about Michael today.”
Freddy: “He’s a punk-ass. Smell ya later.” That might have only happened in my head.

2:57 – Gah! Jenson Button is growing a horrible “playoffs beard.” Thank God the season is over, because he looks like a freshman at college who’s come home for Thanksgiving. Shave that thing and get back to dating supermodels already.

3:00 – I’ve gotta say, the championships came out exactly as they should have. Nobody wound up with an inflated points total due to, say, 7 teams sitting out a race or something.

3:03 – Is this the best time for a post-season rundown? Isn’t there a ChampCar race to throw it to? I know it’s tape delay and all, but there’s a 5 month off-season that’s made for stuff like this.
3:04 – Time for a quick bathroom break and a run to the beer fridge to grab a couple of Labatt’s before our descent into Dalydom for two and a half hours. Back in a minute.

Back...for the 8th time!

2006-10-20T12:49:00.001-04:00

Sorry 'bout the last three months. Been in a coma. Let me guess, Alonso and Bourdais wrapped up their respective championships months ago, Jaques Villeneuve has been reconfirmed at BMW with a 6-year contract after five straight podium finishes, Michael Schumacher has bought MF1 and will drive for them for an Emmerson Fittipadi-esque ending to his career (teaming with Ralf as his Wilson Fittipaldi, no less), and Grand-Am realized that their racing was solid, but that attracting crowds in the double digits wouldn't sustain a series, so they folded up? Oh, none of the above?

Well, Bourdais and Alonso will clinch this weekend anyway, and ALMS at Laguna into the late-evening should be good watching, especially if Dyson can find a bit of extra speed on a track that should suit them. The season is almost over (4 total races left in the series that don't suck, ALMS, ChampCar and F1...OK, ChampCar kind of sucks, but not as much as the Junior-Gordon-Stew-This Week's Villian Show), so sit on down and enjoy some racing this weekend while you can.

Hopefully, there will be some extra posts coming soon about crap that's happened in the last few months that I didn't have a chance (read: was far, far too lazy) to write about. Namely, a somewhat entertaining trip to the Michigan IRL race, a rockin' karting excursion to Western Pennsylvania by Yours Geeky, and all of the other racing-related nonsense of the past half-season. Thanks for tuning back in. Uh, all three of you.

There's a Joke In Here Somewhere...

2006-07-13T12:20:00.001-04:00

Ed Carpenter apparently made a "joke" about Danica. Offensive? Not to me. Unfunny and predictable? Definitely. On the other hand, apparently Dani doesn't think that Eddie's much of a character. Says she: "No big deal. Ed is a really nice guy. There's no drama there. I think it's funny. I'm glad he's showing some personality." In other words, "Who are you again? IRL driver? I don't see you much out there, and you don't get many interviews..."

Back By Unpopular Demand

2006-07-11T22:26:00.001-04:00

My faithful readership (OK, Pablo) has pointed out that I haven't posted in quite some time. It has also been pointed out that one or two things have happened in the racing world since mid-June. I suppose that's true. So, here's what all three of you have been waiting for: The 'Geek's Take On a Wacky Month!

Firstly, yes, I knew that A.J. Allmendinger would go on a three-race win binge after getting picked up by Forsythe. That is why I arranged with Jerry himself to send me 20% of all of "Ding-Ding's" winnings for the duration of his contract in return for my insistence that A.J. get put in Dominguez's car. The only problem is that they still don't have a contract together. Oops. An oversight on my part. Possibly my deal with Dale Coyne for 7 cases of Sonny's Barbecue Sauce when Jan "Van" Heylen wins the championship in 2007 will work out better.

Secondly, I've got to backtrack to the USGP for a moment. I did not go this year, and that wasn't any sort of a protest or boycott so much as a lack of desire to spend a few hundred dollars on the weekend to watch a Renault whitewash. See, I really am a prophet! On the other hand, I was able to enjoy from home the unquestionable highlight of the weekend: Derek Daly's pre-race gridwalk. "I'm looking for Scott Speed right now. He's...not here. Might be in the bathroom. Moving up the grid, maybe Jenson Button is around... Hmmm. Nope. OK, Flavio Briatore...is surrounded by Italian TV. OK, Felipe Massa...looking for Massa...probably in the bathroom. These drivers pee quite a bit before the races..." F1 grid:1; Daly:0, in a perfect game shutout. High comedy. And for the icing on the cake, a near fisticuffs with Martin Brundle when they almost headbutted when going for a word with Bernie Ecclestone. Daly's best moment of the decade. As for the race itself, I doubt that Ferrari will maintain that pace for the rest of the season, but I'm pulling for them to show up at Magny Cours this weekend with a one-off gold paint scheme to mess with the French after the World Cup finale last weekend. Maybe invite Zizou into the garage for qualifying or something. Just something to keep things interesting before Alonso remembers how to win and rips off 6 straight to close out the season.

Thirdly, Montoya to NASCAR. Just a hideous decision. I know that there are all sorts of things that make this look like a great decision on paper: NASCAR has been looking for a marketable Latino driver, Juan is looking to get paid (which he couldn't manage in any other series in the world, short of Euro or German touring cars; all the ChampCar and IRL teams are either broke or full, F1 would have been a drive-for-nothing deal for next year with Toro Rosso), he's a fantastic natural talent who has shown considerable range in learning new cars and tracks, he's great on cold tires which will come in handy in stock cars, and he's even got a wife and kids who'll probably be happy going to the races in the NASCAR-standard 200-foot RV. He'll make a boatload of cash, regardless of results, but I just can't see this working out to more than a few Robby Gordon-style road course wins and oval top-5s. I'll just say that Juan is probably my favorite active driver (with Jimmy Vasser ostensibly retired), but I don't think that this will work when all of the Cup (and Busch and Truck) guys have been in that game since they could walk and Juan's never driven anything with fenders (except for the much-ballyhooed Tradin' Paint episode, during which Juan looked on the verge of dozing off due to boredom). He won't be a Christian Fittipaldi, Michel Jourdain or Anthony Lazzaro-level disaster, but I think that come April 2008, Juan is going to wish that he had just lobbied Chipper to run a third car in the IRL for him. Unless there's an out in his contract that allows for that when open wheel reunites...

Fourthly, Danica to NASCAR. Please. I like Dani, but she has not won a race since the Toyota Pro/Am race at Long Beach about 5 or 6 years ago. She hasn't quite come to terms with an IRL car yet to the point where she can run up front (she's helpless in the lead, and legitimately sucks at restarts), and those are flat-out all the time on most tracks. She could probably drive a Cup car, given a year or three in Busch, but I could not see her winning a championship there. Re-read my comments for Juan, and substitute in Dani, if you need to. This is not meant to be a ringing endorsement of NASCAR's claim that they've got the best drivers in the world, just the fact that those guys are bred from birth to drive stock cars. Same as Brazilians are bred to drive open wheel cars. Frankly, I just see this as an attempt to drive up Bobby Rahal's price on her next contract (no other IRL team is a realistic option for that bluff; Penske and Ganassi are full, Andretti will probably be a 3-car team for Marco, Dario and TK next year, everybody else is nowhere). She'll be back with Rahal, mark my words, unless Tony George hires her for Vision's 6 car team next year to keep car counts at 18.

Fifthly, Jimmy Spencer is a dumbass. "[NASCAR] definitely [has] the biggest fan base in the world as far as the driver's are concerned." Funny. Possibly he hasn't heard that there are 17 F1 races that run outside of the US, and that the folks in Europe (and Asia, Australia, Africa and all of the other countries in the Americas) have something of a passing interest in the sport. I think I also remember hearing him say a few years ago that Toyota would never be competetive in stock cars. Well, he got that right. Oh, wait, they've won 6 of 13 races in Trucks this year and their drivers are 1-2-3 in the points. Almost got that one, Jimmy.

Happy Le Mans Weekend to you all!

2006-06-17T10:08:00.001-04:00

I know, in the U.S., nobody cares about Le Mans. Well, I do, so I'm writing about it. I've never been to the race myself, though my British friends tell me that actually being there is all that plus the proverbial bag of chips. Or crisps, as they'd say, if they used that phrase. I can only imagine that falling asleep (or passing out, if you're doing the full Le Mans experience) to the sound of distant (or not-very-distant) racecars, and waking up to same is pretty cool, and having a radio network completely dedicated 24/7 (or, 24/2, actually) to the race you're watching would be fairly intense, too. Or, maybe I'm just a huge geek. Hey, that's the name of this site!

Anyway, it should be fascinating to see if the Pescarolos or Courages or whatever other French prototypes that have showed up this year can run long enough to keep the Audis honest. My dough is on "no", but hopefully I'm wrong, and I'll have something to watch when I wake up tomorrow morning. And hopefully the Audis aren't 16 laps ahead by then due to only stopping once every 6 hours or whatever their increased fuel mileage will allow. GT1 ought to be pretty good, even if it's basically 'Vette vs. Aston, with a Saleen or a Ferrari as a prohibitive longshot. At least two of those four frontrunning cars ought to go the distance, so hopefully they're still duking it out into Sunday afternoon.

The obligatory Champ Car note for the weekend: Ha, ha, Carl Russo! A.J.'s on provisional pole and Cris is sucking in 10th. Guess that might have backfired a bit, huh? And yes, I'll be watching Portland after all. I know you all were on pins and needles about that one. Enjoy your weekend, ya'll.

Three notes today:

2006-06-12T12:46:00.001-04:00

1) Hemelgarn folded and P.J. Chesson is looking for a new ride? Wha? I can imagine that losing both of your cars on lap 3 of the Indy 500 is fairly catastropic for a team that small, but when did this happen? I read nothing about it all last week, nor did I hear anything about it during the Texas IRL race this weekend.

2) Forsythe can kill two birds with one stone. Please sign A.J. Now. And thanks for getting rid of Wario while you were at it.

3) The IRL has managed to do away with thier best product that isn't named Danica or Marco: their 1.5 mile oval racing. I almost laughed during the telecast when ABC showed Scott Sharp blabbing about Texas' side-by-side, big pack racing in an inset screen while the main screen showed the Penske/Ganassi procession out in front. How many on-track passes for the lead did we have on Saturday night? To my count: zero, or roughly the same as most F1 races. I know that the one-engine program was bound to do this to some extent (not what Rusty Wallace was saying during the 500 telecast, which was that the one-engine program was "brought in to make the racing closer"; where do I start with that?), but this week was ridiculous. I fell asleep for about 20 laps at one point and didn't feel the need to rewind. That was unthinkable no more than two years ago.

OK, a bonus note: 4) Rusty, Scott and Marty are awful in the IRL booth. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, why should it take PROFESSIONAL racing commentators 12 minutes to figure out how a wave-around works? Especially when they could actually see it taking place in front of them on the track AND when they have the benefit of in-booth timing and scoring? And someone make Rusty stop spending 20 minutes of every race praising Roger Penske. We know he's a close friend of yours, and I'll give you that he's probably one of the smartest people in racing, but it does not need to be repeated at length every week. We got it. On to your next point: these hot rods are haulin'!

Are you joking?

2006-06-09T12:50:00.001-04:00

da Matta for Allmendinger?!? To paraphrase John McEnroe, you cannot be serious. "We're going to fire the one and only American in the series and ChampCar's star young attraction in favor of a guy who might still be quick, but it's hard to tell, since he's spent the last four years 1) slumming at Toyota in F1, 2) throwing the car off the road last year at PKV, and 3) begging for money at Coyne." Well done, Carl Russo. I may own a hat that has Cris's name on it (from last year's PKV team), but you've now landed as my least favorite car owner. You shall see none of my potential merchandise-purchasing money, ever.

Disgusting. I was already considering not watching ChampCar for a while (see my last post), but now it has been wrapped up. Until A.J. lands somewhere else, or we get some other American in a seat, I'm checked out (not that I'm xenophobic; I think that a diverse background of drivers is great for the sport; it'd just be nice to have a couple home-country boys in the nation's supposed "Number 1 Open-Wheel Series") . Consider my season pass deleted from my TiVo.

A Day Late

2006-06-06T12:16:00.001-04:00

Damn, damn, damn. I just had to go check speedtv.com before coming here to post today. Seems Robin Miller already wrote a post-Milwaukee column, so I'm gonna look a little dumb and amateurish here. I mean, even more than normal.

Anyway, I did get around to watching ChampCar at Milwaukee on the TiVo last night. I fell asleep for a good bit of it, and did not bother to rewind. The Lap 2 dust-up between Bruno (poor guy), Mario (idiot), and Tracy (innocent bystander, for a change) was as good as billed, down to PT making thinly veiled derogatory comments about Mario on the air. Good times. All we missed was a live radio feed of Paulie Walnuts calling Mario a bleeping bleep-head without the bleeps. There will be a pit lane fight between the two of them before this season is over, and Bruno will probably drop by to hit Mario with his back brace, just for kicks.

Seeing Katherine lead somewhat comfortably for a time was fun, even if it was ruined somewhat by Derek Daly wishing that Bourdais would "just let her lead for a while." OK, #1) that's a dumb thing to say, #2) he was just unlapping himself, and #3) there's no way she keeps Seabass behind her under any circumstances at this point in their careers. It was another tour-de-force by DD and Benjamin, with mis-identified drivers, self-interrupted thoughts and stories and non-sequiters galore. How do these guys keep getting work? And why did we have to wait until 18 minutes into the broadcast to find out why Tags was a non-start? How is that acceptable?

Anyhow, as bad as the telecast was, the worst part of the whole thing was that I finally focused on how desperate things have gotten for ChampCar this year. When a crash happens that takes out two of the top guys, or Dominguez forbid, three or four, the rest of the field is horrendously depleted. Having six (or nine, if you count the PKV guys, er, uh, birds, plus Tagliani) frontrunning seats with only five qualified drivers (Seabass, Bruno, Wilson, A.J., Tracy) is bad, bad, bad for this series. The only way we get interlopers in the top five is when one team nails a setup (like HVM did with Ryan Hunter-Reay's setup from two years ago for Philippe, who I still don't believe in) or there's carnage at the front. Fully eight of the drivers in the series are no-hopers right now, though Andrew Ranger, Will Power or maybe Charles Zwolsman could win races someday in the right equipment. (And don't bring up da Matta at Coyne; that's not working, especially when you get interviewed for 8th place and have to beg for sponsorship on the air as Cris did in Monterrey.) Everyone else should stay home. Including the fans. A merger is never going to happen unless it really comes into focus for Kevin Kalkhoven what is going on. Let's just say that I'm not going back to Cleveland this year to bake in the sun and watch Nicky Pastorelli and "Sh***y" Dan Clarke crash into each other.

Wow, didn't mean to get quite so negative today, but apparently this has been building for a while. But, who knows? Maybe Memo Gidley, Alex Barron, Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty will all get offered rides from Portland onward to take the place of all of these current guys who I've never heard of before this season (and I still don't know where you came from, Jan Heylen), and we'll get Patty Carpentier back from Montreal onward. Also, I might be fielding a Formula 1 team next year out of my garage. It's about as likely to happen.

Speedgeek Fallenback

2006-06-05T12:54:00.002-04:00

I invoke the name of my favorite ex-NASCAR driver-turned-TV commentator (since Kenny Wallace actually counts as a still-active driver), since I just got around to watching Monaco and Indy on the TiVo this weekend. IRL at the Glen and ChampCar at Milwaukee await for tonight.

Anyway, for starts, Indy was awesome. The world's most improtant race (I still do believe that, even though Rusty Wallace actually referred to it as Daytona at the end of the race before correcting himself) under the most difficult of conditions (everybody was sliding around to some extent on a hot, slick track) made for a great race. Everything was in place: defending race champ and his ex-series champ teammate vs. dominant polesitter vs. girl wonder vs. comeback legend, legend's kid, another ex-series champ, and Mr. Ashley Judd, and all on a variety of strategies. Riveting stuff. And it actually came through on the telecast, despite the best attempts of the guys in the booth to screw it all up.

I've read a couple of people who have said that the worst outcome of all those potential 8 winners was Sam Hornish Jr. winning the race. I completely disagree. People who tuned in casually and saw Marco and Michael Andretti battling for the win will also remember that guy from Ohio who actually won, I think. How can you not, when Sam made such a decisive, lightning fast and smooth move to win (though Marco cost himself the win by butchering turns 3 and 4 on the last lap; his entry to 3 was from the middle of the track, so it's no wonder that his lap 200 speed was 7 MPH slower than Hornish's)? I don't buy that the IRL absolutely had to have either Marco or Danica win. Uh, people will eventually have to find out that there are other drivers in the series, and why not learn who Sam is, since he's a 2-time series champ who drives for the IRL's New York Yankees? I think that most people know who Roger Penske is, so it might not kill the League for people to know who his drivers are and follow them to get into the sport. My $0.02.

Also from last weekend: Michael Schumacher is a dumbass. Competetive and masterful, yes, but also a dumbass. You've gotta know that you're under the microscope for anything sketchy that happens after Adelaide '94 and Jerez '97, so why push the issue and park in the middle of the track? Yes, it was a split-second decision to park, but it's not one that should ever come into your head at all, if you're worth half a crap as a driver. Too bad that that probably cost us any chance of a decent fight for the World Championship, since Alonso will never lose a 21 point lead this far into a season.

As for this last weekend, I'm stoked to watch the ChampCar race, since I understand that Tracy gets into it with Dominguez. Delightful. I'll go on record as saying that there'll be a pit lane fist fight between the two of them before Edmonton. Can't wait.

500 Weekend

2006-05-26T12:08:00.001-04:00

Yes, it's the most wonderful time of the year again. I know, it's supposedly less wonderful since 1995, but I only know of the 500 firsthand since '96, the first year I had a chance to go. Judging from what all the "old timers" say it must have been unbelievable back in the day, 'cause it's pretty damn cool now. Reducing attendance and car counts (which could/should both be helped by reunification) or not, Speedway, Indiana is the place to be on Memorial Day weekend. I'm not listening, NASCAR fans.

The short of it is that a red and white car will win this year. Nobody else is within 2 miles an hour of pole speed. Kanaan and Meira (and maybe Rice, Franchitti, Herta, or an Andretti) may be near race pace, but short of a four-car pileup in turn 1, either Ganassi or Penske get their win. I just hope that Heeeeelio, Sam, Dan (not Danica) and Scooter can battle amongst each other to make it a good race. My money is on Helio. Or it would be if I knew of a good sports book in Detroit. Note to self: check out sportsbook.com tonight.

Other racing thoughts: Monaco should be fun, if processional during the race. Qualifying should be a classic. Too many cars going for a time in too short of a session on a track with no runoff at all equals fun for the whole family.
Coke 600? Who cares. Not me, anyway. Since Daytona, I've watched a sum total of about 20 minutes of NASCAR coverage, and that was just to see what it looked like in high def. For the record, it looks great. Except that it's still NASCAR, so I couldn't be paid to care. Who's feuding this week? Boring.

Enjoy your weekend, y'all. And look for me and Ms. Speedgeek in Turn 1. I'll be the one holding the "Robin Miller for IRL Comissioner" sign.

One quick note before the weekend:

2006-05-12T08:40:00.001-04:00

No way Paul Tracy signs a 5 year deal for Forsythe and isn't in on some info about reunification. Would he really be happy running for 5 more years against Newman-Haas, Rusport and the ChampCar pu-pu platter? Please.

2006-04-24T12:58:00.001-04:00

Derek Daly is as awful as I remembered him from last year's attempts at doing F1 commentary for CBS. Uninsightful, unfocused and unimaginative, and that's about all I can say for now. CBS's four race F1 run can't come to an end quick enough. And "Hold on to your hollyhocks" is about the worst catch phrase this side of Budweiser/Joe Buck's "Slamma lamma...ding dong," except that that was actually a spoof on sports catch phrases. Though Derek did not disappoint, and did explain what "understeer" was about halfway through the race. Next up at Spain: why F1 teams use all of those guys for pitstops! What's up with that?!?

A Pet Peeve

2006-04-23T00:39:00.001-04:00

OK, a word of warning: this basic post will seem to keep reappearing about once a month, maybe more, with a few words changed, but I assure you that I'll actually type it fresh every time.

TV race coverage sucks. This is just an overall impression, not a hard and fast rule. There are a few commentary teams that are actually pretty good (NBC's fall NASCAR team of Bestwick, Parsons, Fallenback, Webber, etc.) and one or two that are excellent (Speed's F1 guys; Varsha, Hobbs, Matchett and Windsor all know their place and all bring things to the table; more on that at a later time). Any team with Tommy Kendall is guaranteed to fall in one of those two categories. On the other hand, the rest of the open wheel guys categorically suck. This weekend's IRL race at Motegi was bad in the booth and in the production truck.

First, the opening 10 minute intro is replayed in leiu of actually watching the first 16 laps. Wha? This from a race that is under 10 hour tape delay? Next, 5 laps of racing (including the day's one and only on-track pass for the lead that nobody in the booth noticed for a solid 10-15 seconds, even though all the cameras were looking right at it) followed by a yellow and a subsequent round of pitstops. Apparently. Never saw them. That's OK. Stops aren't all that exciting, especially in a race where one guy leads 183 out of 200 laps. I'll leave out the rest of my complaints, but it seemed like there were roughly 1428 laps of caution, mainly because the ones that actually did happen were filled with Rusty Wallace's insistence on referring to "racecars" as "hot rods." Enough, already. Just horrendous.

Racing, specifically open wheel racing, will never be a major sport in the US until someone figures out how to handle it with proper production and insightful commentary. NASCAR is showing how that works (even though I despise the FOX booth crew; Boogity this, DW), as is Speed with their F1 coverage, so why should it be so difficult to follow the example? Maybe we should kick all racing off the networks, give it all to Speed, and lock Varsha (whom I couldn't stand from '92 to about '98, now he's one of the best in the business), Hobbs and Matchett in a room every weekend and make them do color for everything.

Unfortunately, tomorrow's F1 race is on CBS (Top of the mornin', Derek! Tell us what understeer is again!), so I'll probably be writing this all over again in about 16 hours. See you then.

F1 Qualy Thoughts

2006-04-22T13:05:00.001-04:00

For the record, I'd like to say that the changes made to this season's F1 qualifying are my favorite development in all of racing since the advent of Champ Car's guaranteed front row spot for each qualifying session's fastest driver (not counting the latest development of Grand Am drivers going Allison/Allison vs. Yarborough on the track). The single car format previously seen in F1 was interesting, in that we actually got to see the Minardis and Jordans of the world, but in the case that it rained in the middle of the session or, God forbid, somebody spun into the gravel during their one lap, we still wound up with boring periods, which single-car was supposed to fix. Now, the Q1 and Q2 sessions are action-packed from start to finish, always with the intrigue of who is out of the top-10 or -16, who hasn't made laps yet, who might get balked on a late flier to cost them the session (see Barrichello in Melbourne), and who might get screwed by a yellow or red flag. The only goofy part of the whole system is the fuel credit in Q3, which results in guys driving around at 9/10ths for 15 minutes, which is nearly as boring as nothing going on at all for those of us at home (though about 1000 times better for those who ponied up big cash to go to the race, I can tell you from experience). That said, the final 5 minutes are as riveting as anything F1 qualifying has ever seen, and usually delivers better action than the actual race. Good stuff.

2006-04-20T12:38:00.000-04:00

A quick note about some new news (as of a few minutes ago). Paul Tracy is looking to extend his contract with Forsythe. This is great news. As anyone will know who has 1) been within 10 yards of me at a Champ Car race, 2) watched a race of any kind on TV with me, or 3) was in my section of the Northeast Vista at the 2002 Indy 500 and heard me shriek like a small girl when he made the non-pass on Helio Castroneves (material for a future post), I am no Paul Tracy fan. But, it's nice to have him around in Champ Car, and it'll be great to still have him on board after the open wheel series reunite (another future post). He's a great driver, even though he's caused me to hurl thousands of obsceneties at TV screens over the years, and any series that has him around is richer for it. Even if it's in the same way the WWF was richer back when Roddy Roddy Piper was picking fights with Hulk Hogan. Does that mean that Sebastian Bourdais is a French Hulk Hogan? I suppose it does. Now he just needs the Hogan 'stache to go with his goofy "nerd glasses" (my sister-in-law's words, not mine), and we'll be ready to go.

2006-04-18T11:18:00.000-04:00

Good day. It is April 2006, so naturally, I've decided to start a blog. Which is very 2004 of me, I know. This is roughly how current I am with every trend. Anyway, right up front I'd like to say that the purpose of this blog is:

1) for my own amusement and
2) to write my own (usually far offbase) opinions about anything and everything, but mainly racing.

The extension of purpose #2 is that on the rare occasion that I actually predict something right, or something which I have decreed should happen actually comes true, I can post a link to my original post, and thereby hold my rightness over my friends' heads. So, in essence, purpose #2 is for the general annoyance of everyone I know (or anyone who might stumble across this).

Anyway, after doing a quick Googling, it seems that there are very few motorsports blogs anywhere. I managed to find a few NASCAR blogs (which this will not be, though I'll be unable to resist weighing in occasionally), some Formula 1 blogs (mostly European, so I'll likely post my "ignorant American" views when I can), some ChampCar and IRL blogs (of course, I'll touch on both of those), and not much in the way of sports car or rally blogs. I am not an expert on any of the above, but due to my addiction to all of those (less so NASCAR), I'm going to pretend to be an expert because, well, this is my space. Don't like it? Start your own blog. Or post comments. Which I'll probably read and delete if you call me names.

Nothing that appears here is intended to be particurlarly deep or insightful, and if something I post happens to be either of those, I assure you that is entirely unintentional. Enjoy. Or don't, your choice.