Carb Day...Lights

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!

Happy 2009! And Fantasy Racing...again

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...

Fantasy Racing Teaser

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!