Why GrandAm Shouldn’t Race at IMS

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

...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

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?

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.