Homestead and Versus

Well, day one of the Homestead Open Test for the ICS teams is in the books. The usual contenders were up front, with a few surprises. The test was led by Scott Dixon, Ryan Briscoe, and Dario Franchitti. Now the surprises start. Mario Moraes pulled a rabbit out of his ass and grabbed 4th overall for the day, followed by Power in his new ride, Andretti, and a good day from Robert Doornbos in the "Bobby D" sponsored car. Briscoe (setting up Power's car), Kanaan and Rahal round out the top 10. Stanton Barrett brought up the back end.

Seemed like Goodyear tire test as more then a few tires went flat, but I don't believe any incidents occured. All the ICS cars remained intact (there was atleast one crash from the FIL guys) which is good news since some of the teams don't need the crash damage this early.

NHL Racing put alot of miles on their cars today between Rahal, Doornbos, and "test driver" Milka Duno. Each car had more then 130 laps. Not sure if you have heard yet, but Milka at NHL is now the worst kept secret in the IRL, actually all of motorsports. Milka told the media to expect something next week.

After the testing was completed, on the sole camera set up at the test, you could see a group of cars led by Ed Carpenter circling the track at half or 3/4 speed. Carpenter was followed by the Versus liveried car of AJ Foyt IV. Don't get your hopes up for a Versus sponsored car at Vision (I'll talk about that in a paragraph or so), as this group circling the track was for a Versus promotional shoot. A chase car could be seen following the cars filming.

It seemed like a pretty positive day for the ICS teams, and today will see atleast one new car on track as Dan Wheldon makes his first appearance at the test with Panther after a National Guard promotion (I wonder what the soldiers thought of Dan and his pretty shoes) on tuesday. I still can't see how they can carry a foreign driver in a US National Guard sponsored car.

Anyways, back to the Versus car. If they really wanted to try and gain some viewership, Versus should sponsor AJ Foyt IV for 5 races, specifially Indy, Milwaukee, Iowa, Watkins Glen and Toronto. Why these 5 races? These are the 5 ABC races that will most likely get a larger viewing audience then any Versus race. On top of that, they don't need to advertise to people who are already watching a race on their own channel. Sure, it would stir up a bit of controversy, but it would boost the car counts up a little bit and you know that Vision is going to run atleast 2 cars in the I500, so why not make one of them a Versus car?