Buckle up!

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!

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!

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!

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...

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?

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...

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:

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!

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?

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.