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.

Conquest Confirms 3 More Races

With Alex Tagliani leaving Conquest, effective immediately according to his column for RDS in Canada, Conquest have landed a couple of other drivers to fill their driver line up for the rest of the year.

Nelson Philippe will compete for Conquest at the snoozer called Sonoma and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Sonoma will be the first race Nelson has competed since Indy where he finished 25th for HVM Racing alongside E.J. Viso, and it will be his first road course race in a Dallara. This will be Nelson's third stint with Conquest after about 1 1/2 seasons with the team in the Champ Car World Series. It's unknown at the moment if Nelson is bringing his "i drive green" sponsorship (if there was even any money involved in this sponsorship) with him to Conquest.

And 2004 ICS Rookie of the Year and Indianapolis 500 ROTY Kosuke Matsuura will run for Conquest in Japan at the Motegi track Jack Arute so elegently describes as an egg. Matsuura is a veteran of 64 ICS races. He is the second Japanese driver entered into the Motegi event alongside Roger Yasukawa with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

The car count for Motegi actually looks pretty good for an overseas race. Looks like we'll have atleast 21 for the race, and if you still believe Takuma Sato will run the race with someone, it would make three Japanese drivers in the race, which would tie the most ever Japanese drivers in a CART or IRL race at Motegi.

It's good to see Conquest getting a couple more races in, but it's too bad it can't be full time from here on out. They seemed to have something set up for 2010 though according to Tags, but it involved multiple drivers. We'll see what happens.

Tags is another question mark for 2010. He seemed pretty confident that he would have a full time ride in 2010, and he mentioned his strong runs at Indy and Toronto opened some doors for him. Maybe AGR wants him to help set cars up for their younger guys? He can be quick, but he really has a knack for setting cars up. It's what he was known for in CCWS and CART, and Conquest raved over how much they learned from Tags running their car.

By the way, Homestead should be a nice turn out for cars. I'm counting 25 or 26 right now if Vitor is able to get back in the car in time.

Editor's Note: Nelson Philippe will be carrying the "i drive green" colors for Conquest as per Racer.com.

Junkyard Dog

Well, we can add a 36th car to the field. 16th and Georgetown picked up that WishTV in Indianapolis is saying Bruno Junqueira will be running the #36 Conquest machine tomorrow and attempting to qualify the #36 car for the I500.

Good news indeed, and Bump Day seems to be getting a little bit more exciting. Any more driver announcements will be past last minute, but maybe we can get to 37 or 38 cars if Buddy Rice and/or Jacques Lazier or anyone for that matter come up with anything.

Also rumors Alex Barron will pilot the Team 3G machine if Stanton Barrett can't put it in the show are heating up. Barron was in the Team 3G garage yesterday. If Barron can run some laps in the car, maybe it will convince them to run Barron instead of Stuntcar Stanton, or atleast help SB find some speed. (Just realized I used Sebastien Bourdais' initials for Stanton Barrett, sorry for the confusion, but Stanton Barrett is still nowhere near as fast as Bourdais)

Right now, the qualifiers who are looking risky are Milka Duno, Stanton Barrett, Bruno Junqueira, Nelson Philippe, and Buddy Lazier. You would think 3 of these 5 will be 3 cars attempting to get into the field on bump day, unless there is some unforeseen accident later today.

Does anyone else find it ironic Milka Duno will never be drinking milk at Indy? I sure think it's relatively foooooonnnnny.

HVM Hurtin'

Now, at the beginning of the year, I figured HVM was pretty well off. Sure they were a one-car team, but they were a one car team with some dough behind them. PVDSA has been funding E.J Viso's Indycar career for '08 and '09, but this year, with the added engine bill ontop of everything they had last year, there seems to be a bit more of a budget crunch.

Before the first race of the year, there were whispers HVM was hurting for some coin. Mike King said they were going to have difficulty answering the bell and making it through the season. Well, so far, he has an average finish of just over 20th, and 2 of them have been mechanical failures, which can sometimes have connections to the lack of money (teams trying to make things last, not buying the best parts etc...).

How we are coming up on the month of May, and while HVM might be expanding it's team to two cars for the I500, it isn't expanding the amount of chassis' it has kickin' around. According to Is It May Yet (who seems absolutely giddy that it's that time of the year), the addition of Nelson Philippe to the HVM stable has come at the expense of Monsieur Viso's 13 T-car. HVM will instead run solely cars 13 and 31 with no T-cars entered for the race.

Well I'm sorry, but running through the month of May with two cars, hoping neither crashes, well... You'd better be liked by the big guy in the sky, especially if you consider who the driver of the #13 car is. You'd have to assume HVM is making some money off of this endeavor to help fund the rest of Viso's season, otherwise this risk would seem almost stupid. I mean it's nice to get two cars out of them for May, and it's nice to see Nelson Philippe out there, this time in an IRL sanctioned race, but come on, there must be another reason they are doing it, and I'm guessing it's money.

So I guess the rumors at the beginning of the season were true regarding HVM's money, or lack there of, and with a string of ovals coming up, this is where we'll see that lack of money hurt the most. Hopefully they can come out it relatively well at Indy and Mr. Excitement can provide some excitement for us all.