Midway Mutterings

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

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

Stepping Out for a Bit

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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

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.