Monday Morning Musings

There was absolutely no open wheel racing to catch this weekend. However, NASCAR nation rolled into Richmond, VA for their annual Spring Saturday night shootout.

I had no interest in watching this, but ran across it as K and I were looking for something to watch late Saturday night. K made her disdain known as soon as we heard Darrell Waltrip's voice in the booth. I don't blame her; I don't watch NASCAR racing any more. Mainly because it's oval racing 98% of the time and I find the majority of those races as fun as going to the dentist.

But there were only about 10 laps left and Kyle Busch was inside Dayyyuhl Jr battling for first place. I said, "They are going to wreck" and sure enough Kyle gets a little loose being pinch down low in the turn and Dayyyuhl Jr looks to chop down a him slightly and a spinnin' they go. My next comment was "Sonofa.... now watch these fans go nuts". And like clockwork the Jr fans were on the catch fence five deep like flies on fly paper. You know, the gooey amber colored ribbons you pull out of the little canisters and hang up for all the summer bugs?

You see Jr hasn't won a race in 71 tries, I think. BUT he is THE most marketable driver in NASCAR since the death of his dad at Daytona. That along with his Budweiser sponsorship, up until this year, was a promoters' wet dream. And NASCAR, no dummies, to pimping out their drivers(not bad in my mind), capitalized on this to no end; sometimes with suspicious calls near the ends of races or a particular driver getting 'the call'. No proof of this just a hunch.

And you know what? Jr is a genuinely good guy. He's not a phony, he's not a whiner, but he's just not that great of a racer. I don't think he's got the talent that his dad had. That's not a bad thing but sometimes the yahoos in the booth act as if he's the second coming of Christ; and the borderline homo erotic fanaticism by the fans freaks me out to no end.

I'm sure Kyle Busch had to have a police escort to get out of Richmond in one piece after that accident. But that's all it was, a racing incident; no more no less. But it did provide a little bit of entertainment on a Saturday night.

Photo Friday

Remember the old Doublemint commercials? "It's two, two mints in one!"

Here's two for ya.

From the base at Crested Butte, CO. A great place to ski that is away from most of the crowds that hit the resorts on the outskirts of Denver.



Speaking of Denver; here's a shot from the Denver Grand Prix. Paul Tracy is getting a lift from, then teammate and now open wheel defector, AJ Allmendinger back to the pits.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Monday Morning Quarterback

We finally got to see what our Champcar guys, what is left of them, had for the IRL regulars on a more level playing field – a street course; the bread and butter track of the now defunct Champcar World Series. And let me tell you, things could not have gone better outside of sweeping the podium. Here’s how they fared:

1. Graham Rahal

4. Ernesto Viso

5. Enrique Bernoldi

7. Oriol Servia

8. Will Power

9. Justin Wilson

16. Mario Moraes

20. Franck Perera

24. Bruno Junqueira

This contest had changing conditions throughout; rain at the start, a very wet track, and the added variable of when to change to the faster racing slicks from treaded rain tires. It was evident with Justin Wilsons’ early domination and Graham Rahal’s eventual race win, that Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing work like mad men to gain as much knowledge as possible. KV Racing had a similar showing with Oriol Servia and Will Power consistently in the top 10 throughout the race.

But the biggest surprises of the afternoon had to be HVM’s Racing, Ernest Viso(Hard Charger Award Winner) and Conquest’s Enrique Bernoldi finishing fourth and fifth respectively. While not household names these guys are no strangers to racing. Viso has won two British F3 (B) championships, raced in GP2, and was involved in F1. Bernoldi raced in F3000 and also had a taste in F1 as a test driver. Neither driver looked out of place on the grid, never really putting a wheel wrong.

It’s obvious that Dale Coyne Racing has still got a lot of work to do, but if anyone can find a way to make lemons out of lemonade, it’s this guy.

Other notable takeaways from St. Petersburg:

1. As promising as the street course results were, don’t look for quite the same results in the next oval event. Those teams have not had the testing and telemetry hours necessary to be up to speed with the IRL requlars.
2. After getting a lot of their clocks cleaned by the newcomers, some IRL regulars don’t want it to be an ‘us against them’.
3. Danica is not that good (never was). It’s even more obvious with the influx of more talent.
4. Sponsorship is up and the IRL has a much better marketing group than Champcar ever had. Expect good things.
5. Graham Rahal is the real deal with an exceptional team. He will be in the hunt.

Open Wheel Wednesday

The IRL is to hold a press conference today that will be covered live on SPEEDTV. It’s to go over the recently announced unification of the rival open wheel series, the IRL & Champcar World Series.

This will be a tough year for the Champcar teams that will be incorporated into the IRL. They are basically starting from scratch with chassis that are foreign to them; unless they have raced the Indy 500 in the recent past. Testing is a HUGE part of racing and can gain you seconds on the race track. And seconds can be the difference between first place and fifth place; or even last place. What goes on behind the scenes in racing has a massive impact in track performance. Knowing the Champcar teams like Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, Forsythe Racing, PKV Racing, etc one can tell that they will do all they can to prepare themselves for this cluster that is 2008. They are proven winners and their professionalism is rivaled by no one. Whether or not they will be able to compete for podiums this year, remains to be seen; but don’t count them out too soon(especially someone with no fear like Paul Tracy who was airborne, hitting the rev limiter going into a downhill turn in Vegas).

More importantly we as fans, especially staunch Champcar fans, need to suck it up and embrace this unification. It may not be perfect and we may feel like Champcar conceded on everything to unify, but Champcar was bleeding money like a sieve and at times was terribly mis-managed.

For the first time in years we could see 24-26 cars on a race grid! Isn’t that amazing?! We have Newman/Haas competing against Penske and Ganassi. We’ve got the next generation of Rahal vs. Andretti vs. Foyt, names that ring of racing history.

So please, let go of the past, we cannot change it. We may not like it but let’s throw it in the closet and support a unified open wheel racing series.