The Izod Indycar Series has announced a press conference regarding manufacturer competition for 2012, at the IMS museum.
It is fair to say that this is the Chevy to Indy 2012 announcement, unless something new has come up, or Ford or FIAT has beaten Chevy to the punch and will announce something instead.
Keep your calendar's open on Friday, I'm not sure if it will be shown via the web, or if it is simply for local press.
Good news everyone, more then just Honda in 2012!!!
No, this isn't about the wonderful game BAT Racer which has recently been dumbed down to avoid copyright infringements.
This is about Bruce Ashmore, Alan Mertens and Tim Wardrop and their plans to submit their own chassis design to the Indy Racing League for inclusion in the 2012 plans.
According to the article, the BAT Project is emphasizing safety features of their new chassis, as they have already met with Indianapolis surgeon Dr Terry Trammell who is well known in the safety of the Indycar Series, and IndyCar's Safety and Technical Directors, Jeff Horton and Les Mactaggart.
They also include that they will build everything within 30 miles of IMS. Now, to me that seems optimistic. They are going to need a hell of a factory to build 30 or 40 chassis' and to expect all pieces of the puzzle to be built around Indy, specifically 30 miles around Indy seems pretty tough.
Of course, the same ideas when it comes to aero including helping overtaking by providing the trailing car with stable air to make passing easier.
This BAT Project is a bit of a surprise. I had thought that chassis ideas were all submitted and done with, waiting for the IRL to approve and accept 1 chassis. Now this proposal will probably aid in screwing with their heads even more as they now have a fifth proposal to decide on.
Randy Bernard is going to have a busy first month as CEO.
Well, I'm finally back on the scene. Took some time off from the blog simply because I didn't have the time for it unfortunately. I was in Edmonton for the Founders Cup (Jr. B National Championship), and prior to that, we were going 110% to get ready for the tournament. Hopefully you guys can forgive me and I can get whatever followers I had on the blog back for the last couple races and into the off-season. I'm planning on doing a silly season page for the site to keep everyone up to date on the multiple situations regarding empty race seats and new teams.
Anyways, I missed the Sonoma race as I was flying back from Edmonton, saw the intro show on the plane, and got home to see the winner interview. I had heard about the Will Power/Nelson Philippe crash and am very happy Nelson was not hurt further then he was. Happy both men will be alright. If Will is ready for 2010 hopefully we'll see him in a Penske Dallara. As for Nelson, if he is ready to go, expect him back at Conquest for a lot more races, if not the full season under the i drive green banner.
Luckily, I planned timed into schedule last saturday to watch the Chicago race, and got to watch another race from start to finish. And what a race I got to watch. Close action lap after lap, passing, side by side racing, and a top four that didnt involve Red-Red-Red-Red (or in Dario's case, the yellow Lifelock livery).
Mario Moraes managed his best finish in his still short ICS career in a race dedicated to his father. Graham Rahal also made a strong push for first with a couple of laps to go. I know I was on the edge of my seat to see if Graham could make it stick around the outside and take the lead, but he just didn't have the help he wanted.
As for those who are complaining about the Indycar Series at Chicagoland being dangerous and contrived, I say to you, Chicagoland has always been a very tight track competition wise. Look back at the 2008 race and you'll see that the cars were just as tight, yet there were simply less cars able to hang with the Penske/Ganassi bunch last year. And if I recall correctly, I didn't hear anyone complaining last year about the pack racing. As for the danger involved in the close, sidepod to sidepod action, perhaps the danger involved will help teach the drivers on track to respect eachother a bit more. It seemed like drivers had learned to be fearless with all the new safety innovations, and can be attributed to some stupid accidents where drivers didn't mind putting someone in the wall at 220 mph. Hey, by the way, unfortunately, danger gets the viewers attention.
Now we have this Versus/Comcast/DirecTV issue coming up. Obviously, people aren't happy about this, especially those subscribed to DirecTV. As far as I'm concerned, give it time. They've got about two more weeks before you really need to worry about not being able to see Motegi.
By the way, big thumbs up to Alex Tagliani who managed to put something together to run full time in 2010 (atleast that's the plan) with entrepreneur Andre Azzi. This current and future unofficial Team Canada seems to have the makings of something good right off the bat. They bought the remnants of Marty Roth's ICS team, which includes 4 top of the line (yet heavily crash damaged) Dallara's. Those cars, according to Robin Miller, are all top of the line Dallara's, and Roth spent top dollar to buy all the little extra's for his cars. If Tag's can bring up James Hinchcliffe and Andrew Ranger once he retires, then his team will be a success.
Grand-Am Rolex Series at IMS? Screw that. If you want a sports car race there, run a 12 Hour ALMS race there. An Indy ALMS 12 or 24 hour race would bring in the same major entrants from across the pond as Petit Le Mans brings across for Road Atlanta. Grand-Am is slow, boring, and very low car counts, and it's Nascabish.
Alright, well, I will drop by the Gryphon and see if our favorite bartender still has his job, hopefully he will be working and can give the dish on some silly season stuff. Stay tuned folks.
Robin Miller, I am thinking you're going to be in a bit of trouble for this one. Same with Bruce Martin. I think you two both might had done something not good today. Either someone fucked with you, or you fucked with someone else pretty poorly. Either way, you guys are going to take the fall for all of this I would believe.
Unfortunately, many people will no longer believe what either of you post. This isn't your run of the mill, "Conquest to run 2 cars in China" rumor, this is much bigger then that. You put out a story about someone losing their jobs, that someone is probably the most powerful man in American Open Wheel Racing. Something tells me that might have a little bit of backlash to it.
Either way, if you can't tell by now already, Tony George is still the CEO of IMSC. Now he is trying his best to subdue rumors he has either been removed from power or will be removed from power in the next couple of days or weeks.
Is TG still the big boss at IMS? Yes Will TG still be the big boss in the near future at IMS? We aren't as sure as we were before.
If your a fan of what TG has done and were upset he was ousted from IMS, then be happy because he is still around. If you hate TG for what he has done in the past with AOWR, and were happy he was no longer in power at IMS, then be sad, you still have to put up with the man.
Well, Robin Miller is at it again. He is reporting that Tony George has been ousted from the CEO position of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a board meeting late last night.
Apparently, Tony's siblings were upset with how much money he has spent the last few years in purses, cars, fees etc... is running the bank dry and they didn't want to be left with nothing. Understandable. However, personally, I could care less about the money at the moment. What I care about is what happens to the IRL?
Now that Tony George has lost control of IMS, this in no way can be a positive situation. IMS was a source of cash, a source of stability, and a source of tradition for the IRL over the last 12 and a bit years. When you think of the IRL, the first thing that comes to mind is Indy.
Now, I'm not saying that with Tony George out of power at IMS, the IRL will disapear from the Indianapolis, however, it doesn't make me comfortable that we don't have Tony George in power there anymore. If his siblings are upset with him spending so much money, could they in turn be upset with the IRL? I mean, if they really wanted to now, the Hulman-George family sans TG could really make things hard for the IRL.
And now that Tony doesn't have IMS to run anymore, he will probably take a more active role in the IRL's day-to-day business, and I'm not so sure I like that. I haven't been a fan of a lot of Tony George decisions. Now I'm not a TG hater like some people, I just don't nessicarily like his decisions all the time, but, I still don't think he is the right man for the job in the IRL.
I guess we are sort of stuck in limbo until all of this gets figured out in the near future hopefully. Most likely a press release will be put out to make it official amongst the media, and the IRL will have to put something out to explain what is happening and how this affects the ICS and FIL. Once that happens, I'll make sure to post it asap.
Edit: The story is now being reported as false by Tony George and Mari Hulman-George. They say there was a board meeting, but that the meeting was typical and TG's leadership was not discussed at all in the meeting. This is a very odd situation. We've had both Robin Miller from Speed and Bruce Martin from SI.com reporting Tony George's firing as truth. Either both RM and BM were mis-informed or flat out lied (I'd pick the first one), or Tony George is not aware of either his lack of a job at IMS or his impending firing.
Pressdog made a good point on twitter though, people both reported unification prior to it happening, and denied it after it had happened.
And from 16thandGeorgetown, we have video of TG dismissing the claims.
Stay tooned, I'll update this as more becomes available.
