This weeks question is a bit of a doozie. You're going to have to use your thinkers for this one as some math and guestimations will have to go into it.
Who will finish the 2009 point standings higher? Milka Duno, Paul Tracy, Stanton
Barrett, Vitor Meira, or Tomas Scheckter?
This one should be fun to see whose logic places who where.
Graham Rahal seems like he is ready to break out this year I think. Last years rain soaked St. Petes GP was more luck then anything. But now it seems like, on the road and street courses, Graham Rahal has shown he is ready to roll this season and I like it. I'm impressed with his ability to put the NHL car on pole ahead of IRL Vets like Franchitti and Kanaan and Briscoe. This is a shot across the bow of the Big-3 and I hope NHL and Graham sink them this weekend.
As for Dixon, I expected him in the top 6 for sure. I know most of his wins came on the ovals but I still expected Dixon to compete for the pole here based on the team he is with and how his teammate did. But maybe it was just a rough session for them, but I think the competition will be gunning for him and will make it tough for him to do well as often as last season.
Anyone else notice that Justin Wilson picked up second place? Is it a typo or did DCR really step it up over the off-season? I know Robin Miller made it seem like Dale Coyne was ready to spend some of his coin to step up the ladder a bit, but this seems a bit far fetched to be competing with the Big 3 at St. Pete's. I doubt they will find this success on the ovals, but it is nice to see them start up front. Hopefully this means Paul Tracy will change his mind on turning down the offer for the second car at DCR.
The 2 last minute replacements did very well considering they finished ahead of most of AGR while Manning also finished in front of his teammate in the qualifying session. Tags best time was actually faster then Will Power's time in the Fast 6. Hopefully this will encourage some sponsors considering taking the plunge to hop on board the Conquest train.
Is it personnel or is it drivers? We all know AGR has all the parts and pieces for their Dallara's available so you have to wonder why they are so far back in the field for qualifying. I don't actually remember the last time an AGR driver aside from TK qualified for the Fast 6 session. Personally, I actually enjoy seeing Danica and Marco in the bottom half of the field because I don't like either of them while I'm null on Mutoh. Atleast Kanaan is near the top as I do enjoy him even though he is driving for AGR. The problem with Danica and Marco in the bottom of the qualifying order is that they are the drivers that the IRL needs to have near the top of the time charts to get the Americans who cheer for Americans back watching the series. It's a good thing one famous racers son has the ability to do that.
Anyways, with the field so spread out talent-wise (the top 19 are less then a second apart), it should make for an interested race. There will be some good battles for position and I'm hoping Versus covers it well. This is their first big test so we'll get to see how it goes.
March 21st until March 23rd, the IRL will be holding testing for both the ICS and FIL series at Barber Motorsports Park. The FIL cars will be on track on the 21st for 7 hours while the ICS cars will take to the track for 14 hours on the course over the last two days.
The Homestead test in February brought 21 ICS entries to the track for testing. That number seems to be the low end opinion for the car count in 2009. However, I think we'll get a better feeling regarding the car count and the location of each of the free agent drivers once we see who shows up with who at Barber.
Expected cars are all those that tested at the Homestead test plus a second HVM car for Ryan Hunter-Reay. Things look like they are falling into place for RHR to land with his former team back in the CART days.
So, unofficially we are looking at a minimum of 22 entries for the test most likely.
2 Penske
2 TCGR
4 AGR
3 NHLR
2 HVM
1 KVRT
1 Panther
1 D&R
1 Foyt
1 Vision
1 Luczo Dragon
1 Dale Coyne
1 Conquest
1 3G/Beck
Now, this Conquest entry is not a guarentee due to their struggles finding money, but I would put my money on them making the trip with atleast one car. Eric Bachelart has found ways to run cars on shoe string budgets, and usually once all hope dies, he finds a way to make something work.
Now, the fun part about this test is trying to figure out who will show up for the test that wasn't previously around. Rumours are swirling around about 2 cars at various outfits. Let's do a run down of the 1-car teams and who might move to 2 cars for the test and/or the season.
KVRT - Jimmy Vasser has been quoted as saying they hope to have 2 cars from Indy on. So, it seems like they will be at one car to start the season.
Panther - No news regarding a second car to supplement Wheldon. Rumours of a second car over the off-season never came to be, atleast it seems that way.
D&R - Dreyer & Reinbold is much like Conquest where they seem to be able to put deals together to get cars on the track. Nothing has come out in rumors asides from the Wilson to D&R whispers earlier this off-season, but they seem to be quelled now that he is at DCR. They could surprise us with a second car at the test.
Foyt - Don't expect anything more then Meira out of Foyt until the 500, unless they have found some money to run IV but that is unlikely.
Vision - Tony George seems adament he isn't spending the money for a second car. Unfortunately it looks like he isn't going to give in, and will only run one car. IV will not be in the car at Barber.
Luczo Dragon - They are set as a one car team for 2009.
Dale Coyne - Dale Coyne has run 2 cars as far back as I can remember, mind you that isn't all that far back for some reason. But with rumours that he offered a second seat to Paul Tracy in front of Bruno Junqueira, you would think he is planning to run a second car. They could show up at Barber with two cars, without having to worry about heavy crash damage to a car like they did at Homestead.
Conquest - Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like they have found any money between the Homestead test and now. Hopefully they have and kept it on the downlow, but hope for 1 car from them. Eric Bachelart will probably find a way to get there.
3G/Beck - Unless something dramatic happened for the team, they will be a one car team for 2009, and expect Stanton Barrett to continue his ICS training at Barber.
Now, the other possibility we are looking at is Rubicon Racing. They are rumoured to have $6.5 million in sponsorship, and are looking at running Buddy Rice for '09. But the longer they wait to announce something, the longer I doubt they are actually going to make the grid this year. And you'd think they'd want to make it to a test if they are going to run a full season. We also have to look for Tomas Scheckter to land somewhere with his $2-3 million, Vision maybe?
Whatever way you look at it, the field looks deep with atleast 22 cars ready to hit the test at Barber and ready to hit the grid at St. Pete in about 3 weeks. Out of all the cars headed to the test, I expect atleast 21 of them to make the grid, plus atleast one more car to enter the competition. 22 cars in this economy seems like a pretty good number. Especially since the number of cars seems poised to grow after the I500, we seem to be in a good situation for the full season despite what some others are saying.
As a side note, the Sebring 12 hours (ALMS) is running this weekend, and in particular, Franchitti and Dixon are running for Acura with Patron and de Ferran respectively in their LMP1 cars. This leaves me wondering if Ganassi will run 2 cars at the Barber test on the first day, or if they will run 1 car with Alex Lloyd or no cars since the 12 hours ends at 10:30 on Sunday, the first day of the Barber test. Maybe they will use this chance to run Lloyd and another Lights driver to gain the bonus testing miles.
BTW, The Other Side Blog is closing in the next 19 hours, so make sure you drop off your vote for this years biggest storyline.
Anyways, as a CCWS crossover fan, I'm quite happy to get another one of our drivers into the series even though it could mean losing Justin Wilson. But I'd rather see NHL run 2 cars. Either way it seemed like J-Dub was on the outside looking in, atleast for the NHL seat.
But, listen to this, I was in class today, and some joker in the crowd looked over and saw me surfing on the IRL site and said to me...
"Did you hear Milka Duno was going to be running with NHL in 2009? They are
going to run three cars, Boobies kid, Robert Doorknobs, and Ms. Grand-Am
winner."
I just laughed at him and told him to smoke the hippy hay after class and I continued on with my studies...............
what?
really?
your not serious are you? are you shitting me?
Duno really is running with NHL? She has another sponsor willing to pay out big bucks?
Wow... well, I feel stupid...
Well, I guess we can take it as a positive that NHL will be running 3 cars this year. I wonder if she will be running 08 (02 + 06)? But I mean, it's Newman-Haas-Lanigan, that team is quite possibly one of the more storied teams in AOWR. Driving a NH(L) car is an honour and the list of drivers who drove their cars is splendid.
Well, I guess she can be the first women to lay claim to driving for NHL. And hell, she led more laps last year then Quattro, Power, Carpenter, Bernoldi, Moraes, and Ms. GoDaddy.com. And any feuds between Danica and Milka will have a little more emphasis if Milka is in a competitive ride I guess. Uhm, and maybe D&R can fill her seat with someone more talented? I heard Marty Roth is available.
But in all seriousness, I guess there must be some positives. Maybe Milka was in the same situation Katherine Legge was in with Dale Coyne in CCWS. Legge was always plagued with the sub-par equipment while Bruno would get the top car leaving Legge to run laps down and encounter many mechanical failures. Maybe getting out of a sub-par team like D&R and into a top tier team like NHL will get force her to put up results, as she doesn't have that crutch to lean on when she does poorly.
And you can only assume that if she is still a backmarker with NHL that she will atleast be a little bit more competitive on ovals atleast. Instead of being 7 laps down in a D&R car, she might simply be on the tail end of the lead lap or simply one lap down in an NHL car.
We are also guarenteed 2 more cars with Duno and Doornbos all but confirmed at NHL. And depending on how much moolah Duno is bringing, it might had made the Doornbos deal possible using some carry over cash from Duno to fund part of RD's ride. Let's face it, it seems that either with this new sponsor she is supposed to have lined up to pump money into her system, or with CITGO, Milka Duno was going to be on the 2009 IRL grid whether you like it or not. If Duno at NHL means adding 2 cars instead of Duno at D&R adding 1 car, I'm all for it.
Now, Robert Doornbos and Graham Rahal will still both be very competitive with NHL, but with Milka Duno as the team leader (due to age of course, and perhaps IRL experience), will they be able to hold everything together. There will be towels flying all over the shop in Lincolnshire, and the engineers will know the wrath of a womens scorn. Perhaps it will be a benefit as GR and RD are probably too easy on those engineers anyways.
Now the question shifts to D&R, and whether they manage to wrangle together another car as it seems they were counting on Duno for one of their cars.
"I don't know what we'll end up as, one or two cars, and we're also working on
some single-race deals like Indy and a couple other tracks." Dennis
Reinbold.
Hopefully they can pull together something for Townsend Bell, as I'd love to see him as a full time guy, and it would bump the car count up. Atleast this ride buyer has talent.
