Exciting is in the eye of the beholder

First of all, after my lack of posting for a while, I must apologize. I've been relatively busy and this blog was shoved to the back burner, and for that I'm sorry. I know there are a few people that regularily read this blog and hopefully it wasn't too much for you to have to do without for a while.

Next thing on my to do list is to congratulate Dario Franchitti on a strong run to the 2009 IRL Indycar Championship. Dario was consistently fast and made the fewest mistakes of all the championship contenders, and subsequently won the championship because of it. Of course, there was some luck sprinkled in there at times (ie: the finale at Homestead).

Many of the forums I've visited the last few days seem to have arguments regarding the excitement level of the finale. I've seen posters saying this race was on par with the '09 Richmond debacle while some posters talk about the race being one of the more exciting races of the year for various reasons.

First of all, I think that if you are one of the people upset that most of the field was one or two laps down by about midway through the race, maybe Nascab is better for you? I mean, Nascab is the series that throws debris cautions to keep a number of cars on the lead lap. They are the series that pushes pack racing down our throats (and I know, we had Chicagoland, but I don't think that pack racing was the planned).

At Homestead, we saw the three fastest cars on the track show in a class of their own. They were the best on saturday, and they deserved to be that far ahead of the rest of the field. Look at any of the Indianapolis 500's from 1980 to 1990. They had a large number of cars laps down at the finish, hell in 1984, Rick Mears put the rest of the field 2 laps down on his way to the victory.

Briscoe and Dixon battled for the lead most of the race, with the 2 points for the most laps led a very important factor in determining the championship winner. I'm not sure if you noticed how loose Briscoe was running, he was all over the track. Any lap he could had lost it, and thrown the championship away. But, I was on the edge of my bed (yea, I couldnt watch the race live, because I'm Canadian, and I lost the online feed with about 40 laps to go... But I did get to see the end of the race on tape delay) hoping Briscoe wouldn't lose the little bit of grip he had.

And watching the battle for the lead was fun to watch, any given lap for a while, Dixon or Briscoe would pull ahead. Drafting down both straights and pulling alongside in the corners side by side, with the cars dancing around underneath them. Then knowing Dario was there if anyone made a mistake.

Versus did an awesome job of showing the battle for the championship and playing it up very well. I know listening to the race later on that night I was still excited even though I knew who won the race already. They played up the fuel mileage on Dario's part vs. Briscoe and Dixon running full out very well. Seeing which strategy would end up on the top step of the podium and with the winner's trophy in hand was fun to see play out.

Dario was a deserving winner and definately deserved the championship, as did the other two candidates. But knowing Dario ended up with the title keeps a smile on my face and is a very good story heading into 2010.

Let Danica Go To Nascab

I know, I ripped into Danica earlier this summer on the blog, and I got a good amount of heat for doing it. People couldn't believe I was ripping a strip off of the IRL's princess, oh well, these things happen. And if I ever feel the need to do it again, I probably will.

However, I will admit one thing, she has done rather well since then, staying in 5th place, even after a bunch of road courses which are her weak point. Even I have to give her credit. Being the best of the rest, atleast in terms of points, is a great accomplishment. Who knows, if she was in a Ganassi or Penske car, she could be near the top of the points standings and battling for a championship with two races to go.

So yes, I just gave her some props for her good runs. Bookmark this posting because it won't happen all that often.

Being an IRL blogger, I'm well aware that she is our biggest ticket in 2009, and probably will be for about 2 or 3 years along as she sticks around for a while. She brings in big ratings, is our biggest known driver, and her car consistently has the highest ROI in the end of season ratings.

If she happened to dissapear from the IRL and Indycar Series, it would hurt. But the latest rumors going around, specificially, Danica sticking with the IRL while doing a few ARCA, Trucker Series, and Busch League races for Tony Stewart's team could turn into a positive overall for the IRL.

Obviously, if she does run a few races in tin tops (which in my opinion, is a terrible career move for her, because she will most likely fail miserably), it most likely points towards her departure for Nascab in 2011 or 2012.

However, any fans she gains over there could follow her over to the Indycar Series race on ABC and Versus. Hell, if she is able to battle for the points title in 2010 in the ICS, as well as run competitively in some tin tops, she might even get some rednecks to tune in for the points race simply to follow her, and to see how Nascab's princess is doing. If these people happen to tune into Chicagoland and see the fabulous 3 wide racing these heroes put on in a few weeks ago, then maybe these Nascrap fans stick around to watch a little more often.

These additional fans might help turn Graham Rahal, Alex Lloyd, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Tomas Scheckter and Ed Carpenter into more mainstream guys. Nascab fans know how to get behind a driver, and maybe they can do the same and teach some ICS fans to do the same.

Overall, Danica going to race in the various Nascrap series basically gives the IRL free advertising with potential for very high return on investment.

Thus, let her race tin tops. Whether she decides to leave full time for the taxi's or not, she will be doing the IRL a favor while trying them out.

Come Back Time

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.

Singular Effort

What do the three cars above all have in common?

Sure, they are all Dallara's, they all have Honda engine packages and run on Firestone tires. But there is something a little less obvious that is outside of the picture.

These three cars are all poised to be single-car teams this coming season. Hell, they aren't the only ones. If I wanted to include all of the one car teams for this season, I'd need a picture as long as Marty Roth's damage receipt.

• Panther - Wheldon
• A.J. Foyt Enterprises - Meira
• Vision - Carpenter
• Conquest - Camara/Tagliani
• Dreyer & Reinbold - Conway
• Luczo Dragon - Matos
• 3G/Beck - Barrett
• KVRT - Moraes

I didn't throw HVM in there as it is likely RHR will land a ride with them, after getting the testing gig at Barber at the next group test.

And now-a-days, the success of one car teams is minimal. A rare victory for Rahal Letterman at Watkins Glen in '08 was the first win for a one car team since the Delphi Indy 300 at Chicagoland in 2004 by Adrian Fernandez (By the way Mr. Fernandez, Indy is calling you, they would love to have you back in the series).

I'm sure many of the teams listed above would love to see that trend reverse itself for 2009, and who is to say it won't? But in all honesty, many of these teams will be happy with an occasional top-5 performance. It seems that now, to keep up, teams need that second car to 'use' in a way. Information sharing between cars is vital to nailing down the right setup. Team work and cooperation is critical to winning races. The old "2 heads is better then 1" routine comes to mind. Also, 2 cars simply have better odds to win a race for a team then 1 car does.

Then we look at the Big-3 (plus NHL Racing). They are all multi-car efforts, 2 each for Ganassi and Penske, then 3 and 4 for NHL and AGR respectively. Obviously, we all see how strong these teams are compared to the rest of the field, but how easy would it be for some of these one-car teams to make that step up to Big-3 plus 1 status? I mean, does a team like Panther, who competes constantly near the top of the best of the rest find sponsorship for a second car and jump into championship contender status? Possibly.

But here is a real measure of the strength of multi-car efforts. This year, if Dale Coyne is able to run 2 cars (I suspect he will), and he surpasses most of the 1-car efforts, it should prove how much stronger a mediocre 2-car team is compared to many 1-car teams.

I think the point I'm trying to get across to you is this. Maybe the IRL is not dominated by the Big-3 simply because they are stronger and better then everyone else. Maybe the Big-3 dominated because the lowly-7 aren't able to take that step towards the top to join them. If the Big-3 are maxed out, which in a spec chassis world with little development available, is quite possible, maybe the lower teams just need to get close to maxing out themselves, but without a second car, won't be able to do that.

Once this economic recession or depression or concussion dissapears I think you will start to see some of these 1-car teams find the 2-car and 3-car team budgets and join the top ranks to create some more competitiveness. Until that happens, I doubt we'll see a whole lot of teams aside from the Big-3 and NHLR winning races, especially in '09.

Ugh... How Much Longer?

Well, it has been a terribly long time since the season ended, and it feels like an eternity before the season starts up again at St. Pete in April. Over the offseason, we've gotten good news and bad news and no news. Unfortunately this is going to last for a few more weeks before we hit the streets again.

But as much as I want to get going again, I feel that it is imperative that fans don't get lured into wanting to run a schedule comparable to the N-word. On some of the forums I visit, specifically the Talkback forum at Indycar.com, it seems like some people want Indycar to run longer seasons and more races. And while that is good and all, and people are simply stating their opinions, I feel that I should throw my opinion into the mix.

I've felt for a long time that the Indycar season is a couple of races too short. think there are too many great tracks left off the schedule in the series. There are tracks like Cleveland, Road America, New Hampshire, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve (Montreal), and Portland on the sidelines.

But running a schedule that compares to Nazicars 92 races in 40 weekends is pure insanity. It would drive up operating costs for the teams, fans would lose interest over the course of the season (the same problem that is beginning to occur down south), and it would just be too damn long.

Fans also seem to think that we need our schedule to compete with theirs simply because they start earlier and end later thus they steal a bunch of our spotlight. Well, right now if we want to compete with them, we have some serious problems, and I doubt we would win this one. They are still much stronger then us unfortunately and would squash us if we went out of our way to compete head to head with them.

I believe in the long run, we should be running 22 races from the second week of March until the end of October. This gives us a slightly longer season but still gives us some breaks in between races, thus giving us that compact feel without tiring the teams and the fans out. It also keeps us from competing too long with the NFL.

Here is my ideal 22 track schedule including a couple of courses that just won't leave the schedule. No dates as I'm nowhere smart enough to piece this together, and obviously don't know the tendencies of each specific track.

Current Tracks
St. Pete - S
Long Beach - S
Milwaukee Mile - O
Texas Motor Speedway - O
Watkins Glen - R
Toronto - S
Inidianapolis - O
Edmonton - A
Kentucky - O
Mid-Ohio - R
Chicagoland - O
Motegi - O

Proposed Additions
New Hampshire - O
Cleveland - A
Michigan - O
Pheonix - O
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve - R
Portland - R
Laguna Seca - R
Road America - R
Las Vegas - O
Mexico City - R

Well there you have it, my 22 race schedule for the Indycar Series. However, I don't want this implemented asap. Let's give it four or five years until we get growing a bit and then we can piece this together.

Hell, without trying, I even pleased all you folks who think it should be 50/50 (Oval/Twisties), which I disagree with, but that is for another discussion.

If anyone has some issues with my proposed 22 tracks, let me know how you feel in the comments section.

The Old Switcheroo - UOWWB Weekly Question

This weeks weekly UOWWB question is in regards to the current F1 World Champion and current Indy 500 winner and ICS Champion.

If Lewis Hamilton and Scott Dixon switched places for the 2009 season, how would
each driver fare in the other's league? Who would be more successful in 2009?

I guess to answer this question, we'll go through a bunch of different circumstances to each ride.

Now, you have to take into consideration where you think Vodaphone McLaren Mercedes is aerodynamically this year compared to where they were in '08. With the new regulations, that could definately affect Scott Dixon's ability to win the 2009 F1 World Drivers Championship, while you have to assume that Ganassi would still have the top cars in 2009 with the lack of development available to teams.

Advantage Hamilton

The tracks that each driver would be driving on would be a huge change. Dixon would be going from the tight turns of street circuits and the long sweeping pedal-to-the-floor ovals to the winding historic tracks in Europe and the new Tilke tracks that have been designed to create good racing and challenge the drivers. Hamilton would be going from these long european tracks to the IRL tracks. I would think the transition from road courses and street courses in N.A. to road courses and street courses in the F1 world would be easier for Dixon since Hamilton would also have to learn how to run ovals flat out, and he would need some time to determine if he had the balls to do it.

Advantage Dixon

Again, I think the atmosphere would be difficult for Hamilton to overcome since he would be going from a place where he is barely seen on race weekends by fans to a place where he would be swarmed in the paddock area by media and fans alike. Also, the added pressure of being the first black driver to contend for the championship would attract even more media attention to Lewis. As much as I think Dixon likes the fans and enjoys the atmosphere of the IRL weekends, the switch to a nice relaxing weekend in the F1 paddock where you only need to be out in the public for practice, qualifying and racing would be easier to do then to move into America where the atmosphere is much more intense, media wise.

Advantage Dixon

Dixon has sat in an F1 car before, and tested for Williams-BMW in 2004 after his first ICS championship. Lewis Hamilton has not run a Dallara Indycar before, and I doubt he has run the amount of different cars Dixon has run over the years so I have to give the experience edge to Dixon in acclimating to new cars.

Advantage Dixon

Year after year, Ganassi and Penske and AGR are the top three teams in F1, and lately, AGR seems to have fallen off the pace leaving just 2 Ganassi drivers and 2 Penske drivers to compete for the crown. In 2008, F1 saw more winners then usual, and it seemed as though more teams were able to compete at the top echelon with Renault, Ferrari, BMW, McLaren and even the baby Red Bulls. I think Hamilton has less competition in the ICS then Dixon does in F1.

Advantage Hamilton

The hardest thing to judge is raw talent. Who is the better driver in the exact same equipment day after day? They have both proven to be at the top of the class in their respective divisions, but, will we ever know who is a better driver? I don't think we can answer that unless we see both in the same car on any given weekend.

Draw

I assume both Hamilton and Dixon would be extremely competitive in the opposite series. But I think Dixon would have the better season since he would not need time to adapt to a new form of track whereas Hamilton would have to learn the ovals in his first year which could cost him a few points in the first few oval races.

If this question asked who would have a better career in eachothers series, I would give the nod to Hamilton due to his age and his time to learn and improve in America. But I think I have to give this one to Dixon. I think he would definately have the better season in 2009 if he were in a Vodaphone McLaren Mercedes F1 car.

Winner, and still Indy 500 and ICS Champion, Scott Dixon