WideOpenWheel

Hello there again race friends,
With the conclusion of the recent weekend’s racing activity, Oh, wait! The Izod IndyCar Series had a rare off weekend. No news there, now is there? Yeah, move along, nothing to see here folks. Even F-1 is off……for a freakin MONTH! I imagine they don’t have to stress about falling off the race fan’s radar, especially after taking a mid season break. How do you keep in front of the face of the average race fan unless you are KrapKar, or F-1 on a month long break? You fashion news, of course!

I was very impressed with her Highness smoking off the boyz in the Busch series. Isn’t that the series owned by the Bush Brothers PR Machine? I mean, one could honestly look all the drivers in that field in the eye last Saturday and say to each one; You………..Got……Passed……By……A……Girl.

One can only vision the frothing Mr. PDog throwing all kinds of objects at his television when the other Go Daddy driver passed all the boyz and legitimately kept them at bay. Lap after Lap. I have to take note and give credit where it is due; the lady drove her a$$ off like she does every race day. Robin Miller was captured on live radio in Indianapolis Monday afternoon talking about Princess Sparkle Pony in a flattering (for him at least) way. When asked if he thought she would win a race eventually or not, he responded with a well thought out “Shit yeah”. Run this audio link from the show down to the 5:30 mark. Too funny! The show is podcast posted 8/20/2012 5:19pm. Give it a listen for some local talk about a TV sportscaster and then the gems begin to unfold from Robin and JMV.
http://www.1070thefan.com/podcast/Episodes.aspx?PID=2161
There is some very fine wordsmithy taking place based upon a rumor or comment or inside scoop or UNABRIGDED TRUTH depending on how one looks at Robin Miller’s remarks Sunday night on Wind Tunnel. Hence the lead in to this article and fine segue to News; Reported or CREATED? I can distill the argrument down to one common denominator and that is control. I have seen this movie before several times now and it usually has the same ending. Big league owners want race series. Big league owners buy said race series. Big league owners disband in financial ruin.

One of the writers I mentioned last week scooped some of his peers and posted on the topic of the selling of the open wheel series in North America. I could sit here and write words to the effect of nodding my head in agreement or perhaps just send you the link (Mark Wilkinson hit this one out of the park). On that note, this needs to be a short post anyway due to the tempo of things developing for the open wheel series we all love and admire. And no, I don’t mean Bernie the Troll’s series over “there”…… You know what I mean. So, without further ado I present the link to “The IMS Garage Sale”:

http://newtrackrecord.com/

Ponder this a while and reflect. I love the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is so unusual to see fighting and pandering and postulating going on once again. Like I have said, I have seen this movie before.

Thanks for reading and we will talk to you next time!

GForcePaul

Where will they be in 2013

Just had a long overdue visit with the bench racing posse yesterday and covered a lot of ground in a few hours. With the wrap up statements about Mid Ohio, in depth analysis of the improved turn radius at Sonoma out of the way we began the difficult task of handicapping the silly season. Let’s see, Foyt signs a second driver for next year’s Indianapolis 500 and he has a ton, a boat load, well, SOME open wheel experience. Smooth one, Larry Foyt. Maybe he can share some oval experience with ConWheezy…..Nah, perhaps not.

I see that Zach Veach got his lights car fitting. Great story by Zach in, of all things, The Huffington Post:  Zach The Scribe  (Please see previous paragraph for a theme here). I mean, yeah Zach the man/kid is good, but certainly more than a few rookies, looking for their next step, have to ask themselves this: is little Seabass Savadra ready for prime time, take duex? I mean, he walked from his first experience with the ladder system while just a little minnow, or at least his father yanked him to a different team. While he has made progress this year in lights, has he been there too long? I was hastily reminded that Hinch did 2 years in Atlantics and three in Lights! Woa, I had forgotten all of that and thought that James just arrived at the Go Daddy Offices one day saying “I got next”.

Speaking of the ladder system; if you have followed Clint Briney’s charge Shannon Macintosh, you will know these stats; finished 8th in the 2011 season. She enjoyed her two best finishes of eighth plaace during the USF2000 championship run that year. In 2012 Shannon has cracked the top 10 only once season to date. Granted she did change teams, but as Adele sings, ‘RUMOR HAS IT’ that Clint is shopping some tin top type of work in the future. What True Car and their dollars do next year is going to be very interesting based on the different levels of motorsport that they are involved in.
Shall we move onto the big league players and the revolving seats?

I always love this part. Now, if the Izod IndyCar series can just get to 19 races in 2013 we will not have to write such silly season nonsense so early in the late summer. I am still working on my base tan for God’s sake! I just want to know how Gil De Ferran snags Rubino and TK and where in Brazil does the money come from? Gil’s finest moment can be found here: Fast Gil, VERY fast
My questions have more to do with some of the obvious changes that will take place and some subtle changes that may fly under the radar. Current wisdom (or lack of it) indicates that one Penske car may not have a certain television pre-race hostess’ hubby behind the wheel. The Vega$ money is leaning towards Son of Stache getting the Penske nod, since Graham, ahem, er, Chippy did not exercise an option year…… To this I say blah blah blah. You think only Graham performed the option year exercise? Really? Well then, like smoke another one, dewd. No, there is no need to share……enjoy!
Of course, wild speculation centers around Michael Shank, Dinger (a non entity unless it is his partially owned sports car team) and engine type. Obviously, Lotus is out, Ford is still not talking too loudly about the near future and now the question becomes, can Honda and Chev-ro Lay absorb the increased team count? If there are obnly two engine suppliers and a lowly one car team wants a second engine, well then buddy, see the last 2 sentences of the previous paragraph.

The only thing that is more exciting today as I write these silly season comments is the breathless Twitter Feed reporting being done by Her Majesty, Jenna Fryer. AP assigned her to Olympic coverage and this morning she fills us in on the lengthy lines attending Madame Tussauds latest wax figure offerings. Yeah, Indy Car really needs to get to 19 races next season. We need to keep Jenna relevant………I mean engaged.

I would like to thank the bench racing posse for their inspiration over coffee. You need to get off the couch, turn off the remote control that is locked on broadcasts of CrapKar and begin following these guys because they are:
1. Wired In
2. Well written, qualified wordsmiths
3. Funny
4. GREAT ambassadors of the sport we all love.
Hit their blogs and Twitter feeds for a treat!
Mark Wilkinson writes “New Track Record”
http://newtrackrecord.com/
Zacahry Houghton writes “IndyCar Advocate”
http://www.indycaradvocate.com/
Eric Hall writes “AnotherIndyCarBlog”
http://anotherindycarblog.wordpress.com/
Last but not least, you had BEST follow @Stevewittich on twitter. Don’t be a twit, just do it! If you need the inside scoop on feeder series, Steve is your man. Besides, we all could not thank Jay Penske enough for giving us something else to laugh at!

Thanks for reading! Talk to you next time,
GForcePaul