Shake 'em up

Well, Milwaukee is done, and count that towards another race I missed due to my terrible lacrosse schedule that this past weekend, included a 5 hour bus ride to Ottawa to play a team we knew we'd beat, and we did. Unfortunately, game time was race time, which meant I had to go have rubber lacrosse balls hurled at me while Indycars flew around the Milwaukee Mile a couple hundred plus times.

Anyways, Dixon won, Briscoe continued his strong performances at Milwaukee, Danica finished top 5 again, and PT had a rough day. It's all over now, time to move to to Texas for this coming weekend and the Bombardier Learjet 550k/341.75m at the Cheesegrader Texas Motor Speedway. I like Texas, but something tells me the drivers fear that track. Hitting the wall there at 210ish can't be very much fun, and it has the reputation for tearing cars apart.

However, let's not forget the positives from Texas, the great side-by-side racing it provides us, the great crowd they pull in, the wide array of winners it produces, and drive through liquor stores.

As for the driver line up, there are a couple shakeups. First of all, PT is out, which seems mutual after AJ was embarrassed by the car he provided PT, and after PT realized he would be a lapped car in the Foyt equipment at Texas. Instead, AJ Foyt Numero 4 will pilot the ABC Supply Co. machine at Texas.

Stanton Barrett has finally stepped out of the car, for now anyways. Jacques Lazier will drive the car in Texas after Greg Beck said his Dallara needed an experienced driver right now. Atleast J-Laz will be up to speed and running with the back half of the field instead of being lapped every 10 laps. Beck did say Barrett will be back in the car at some point this season, just not sure when yet. I guess whenever the car doesn't need an experienced driver?

Conquest hasn't announced their driver yet. It will most likely be Alex Tagliani, Tomas Scheckter, or they won't show up. If you believe the rumor I threw up from the Bartender last week, they just won't show up.

As for the aforementioned Scheckter, he was on Twitter saying he is "looking forward to Texas" which led to rumors he would be driving in Texas obviously. Options are limited, either a second DCR car (please, please, please!), a third DRR car which has been rumored by Indyinformer as the number 43 car, or the open seat at Conquest. Hoping it isn't Conquest as this will raise the car count by one if both Conquest and Scheckter show up seperately.

Milka Duno is back in the number 23 car this weekend after stepping out for T. Scheckter last weekend. Milka will provide ample challenges for the leaders, she will most likely get about as much exposure as a top 5 car will, as she will be on camera about once every 10 laps as the leaders lap her.

By the way, all these shake ups are adding to the suspense of the "The Other Side - Weekly Poll". With Stanton Barrett and PT out, with Milka and Schecks in, the point standings will change a little bit. Make sure you vote, there are only 4 days left.

For now, this is how it has shaken out. I'm sure we'll hear more possibilities as we get closer to qualifying on Friday afternoon/night. Anything changes, I'll let you know about it.

Being Ed Carpenter's Teammate...

Is not a good idea, not the last couple of years anyways at Indy.

It's safe to say A.J. Foyt IV begged Facebook.com to let him start the fan page for Not Being On Fire after being set on fire twice during the Month of May, once during a crash, and once during a refuelling accident in pit lane. Then once he got to the race, he had a forgettable one, finishing 21st, 20 laps down, the last of any cars running at the finish. Safe to say he would had liked to had been elsewhere last year, probably somewhere he couldn't catch fire.

And now this year, Ed Carpenter's new teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay, who has started the season strong with a second place finish in the season opener and a decent result at LB, gets the distinction of being the first driver to hit the wall during the Month of May. Ryan lost the back end at speed coming out of turn 2. These things happen, but when interviewed afterwards, his body language spelt p-i-s-s-e-d o-f-f! He says something broke in the back right which caused him to go around. Not the best way to start the month.

Now there is plenty of time for Ryan Hunter-Reay to turn his luck around, but as of now, Ed Carpenter seems to be his teammates Kryptonite of late. Maybe Davey Hamilton knew something when he took his sponsorship to Dreyer & Reinbold this year.

Full Throttle

The Month of May has finally hit full throttle (don't worry, no Charlie's Angel's sponsorship, although that might not be a bad thing come to think of it) with the track open to all cars finally. All rookies have completed their ROP and with the green flag for practice, 28 car-driver combos have seen the track this morning.

At one point early in the session, Quattro and Meira held P1 and P2 for a few minutes which was nice to see. I'm sure Tex snapped a picture of the scoring tower for future reference.

Scott Sharp and Paul Tracy, my two one-off bets, are running respectively in the top ten early.

As for one-offs, it is safe they say they have the sexiest livery's on pit lane. I mean, it seems every one-off has a refreshing paint scheme to it, and is a nice change from the red and white we are used to seeing.

A bit concerned as to where Will Power and his number 12 car is. He is yet to take to the track this morning.

And as I type, HCN just broke 223.

I'll be back on later for more updates.

Happy Anniversary AOWR

Well, it's been about a year now since the shizz went down. About a year ago, it was announced the CCWS would more or less fold into the IRL and they would become one. Tony George and Kevin Kalkhoven sat down in front of 20 or 30 CCWS/IRL drivers and made the announcement live on SPEED TV (probably their last meaningful coverage of AOWR at its highest level). The mood was high that day, as enthusiasm for a new era began and things started happening very quickly. Decisions had to be made quickly in regards to the schedules, cars had to be delivered from IRL shops to CCWS shops, and personnel had to learn new cars as well as crack out some new sponsorship dollars.

Everyone seemed content to put in the extra hours between getting things organized and making things happen because it was a major step forward for the Indy Racing League and AOWR in general. Fans were getting more excited about the prospects of one series and the competition and talent in that series would be stronger then ever.

The season went off without too many issues (a couple occasions CCWS cars couldn't race due to practice/qualifying practice, or the lack of a race-worthy car). Hell, even a couple of wins by NHL showed that the CCWS teams could be competitive in this new environment, atleast on road and street circuits to begin with. Even by the end of the year, the competition had leveled out as many CCWS teams were competiting for top 10 positions at the finale.

Now with a full off-season to do some aero work and run some more oval tests, the former Champ Car teams are now in a position to compete full-time, and they will be expected to compete for the entire year. These teams have seen a lot of cars the last few years. Hell, the last three seasons have seen 3 different cars (2006 Lola, 2007 DP01, 2008 Dallara). If anything, the CC guys should be able to figure out new cars better then the IRL teams simply due to experience. This season will prove a better example of the depth of the field in the ICS with the so-called Big 3 maybe expanding to the Big 4 with NHLR looking strong in pre-season.

Even with the bad luck timing of the world-wide economic downturn, the ICS still looks like it will be in a good position this year. Indycars provide a better bang-for-your-buck then Nascrap and seem to have weathered the downturn better then the taxi's have. The IRL fields look to be a consistent 23 or 24 cars throughout the season, possibly (I doubt it, but I'm trying to be positive here) hitting 26 at certain times of the stars line up just right. We had 21 at the off-season test, and we can probably add a car for DCR. Add in what seems like a good bet of RHR at HVM and Tomas Scheckter landing somewhere since he has a bit of cash lying around and we are at 24. Now if the stars line up and Conquest manages to get 2 cars for the full season and KVRT or Vision find the money to run PT or Foyt IV then we are at 26 cars.

But what I'm really looking forward to is the second anniversary of the unifibilesbianficationmerger. Many economists are looking at the US economy rebounding in late 2009, so we will start to see more sponsorship money available for motorsports and hopefully the IRL can take advantage of that if things go well through this season and attendance numbers stay up and TV viewership grows a bit. We could use a good year out of the I500, TV-numbers wise so we could use that to sell 2010 sponsorship. Maybe get Michael Andretti back into a car again. Seeing Michael contend again might up the number of viewers up a bit. Anything to help the 2010 sponsorship season would be needed to keep the momentum going forwards.

If we can push forward, we can hopefully see some of these 1 car teams move back to 2 car teams in 2010 and make a push for more paid-drivers and hopefully see some of the old teams like Fernandez come back and RLR return. There are even some rumors of de Ferran Motorsports being interested in the IRL down the road.

Anyways, things are looking up for Open-Wheel in general and we should be happy because everyone of us are along for the ride. We all get to be a part of the growth of AOWR in North America. It will continue growing as it does, each of us will be as proud as the driver, team owners and management of the IRL.