All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Andy Hall is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, and to have to read his apology on behalf of ESPN yesterday via Twitter was difficult, knowing how much he loves his job as a PR guy for the network.

The overall awfulness of the viewing experience from Australia could have been just some unfortunate series of circumstances, as hinted by "technical difficulties." But you'd be amazed and appalled by who's "minding the store" at even a major network or website on a weekend morning. Speaking from first-hand experience, unless there's a major event or a live show, the people babysitting the feed or site are rarely full-timers or overly experienced. And in many cases, there's not even a human in the building.

I can't tell how many times I frantically called Turner tech support early on a Sunday morning when the NASCAR.com content management tools would suddenly lock up in the middle of a race, or worse, something stupid like a cacheing error would take the site down. When you've got more than 1 million unique users on a race weekend, you'd think you'd have a manager on-call, or at least a webmaster. Nope. It wasn't deemed "cost effective."

So it's quite possible -- based on the ESPN cutbacks -- there was a shortage of qualified people struggling to input the correct satellite coordinates from Australia into the equipment in Bristol, since it sounds like the same things occurred on Saturday as well. That, or whomever programmed the commercial breaks knew next to nothing about how racing works. In any case, it was as unwatchable a professional broadcast as I've seen in quite some time. And while I feel badly for the Disney folks who may lose their jobs when IndyCar moves to NBC full-time next year, I won't miss ESPN executive management's apparent distain for competent coverage.

You get what you pay for.

 

Speaking of Greg Ray, here's your No. 13 car for this year's Indy 500:

 

ESPN is vowing to fix the problems, but really, there's only one serious core problem that truly screws up the viewing experience... and there's no way to fix it without fundamentally changing the way they broadcast these races.

You can't take a commercial-free feed and drop in commercials without ruining the viewing experience.

There is no way to know when it's a good or bad time for the breaks. The announcers are doing a commercial-free show, so there is no toss to a break and no recap after the break.

ESPN has three choices here, as I see it: They can (a) find a creative way to showcase sponsors without an actual, like planting the sponsor's logo in the corner of the screen, or (b) throw the commercials before and after the race but show the actual race uninterrupted (which is probably a non-starter), or (c) stick to what they're doing and watch the audience evaporate as soon as F1 has its streaming service up and running, which should be weeks or months.

I liked the commentary team. It was good to hear different voices -- I liked the NBCSN crew, but they tended to harp on the same stuff all the time and it's nice to get a different perspective. I didn't hate the broadcast as much as most others did, but I was anticipating the commercial issue so my expectations were extremely low. Still, the second the streaming service is available I'm jumping on that.

(It's funny for me to go on message boards and see people declaring this the "worst broadcast deal F1 has ever had!!" Yeah, I remember when F1's broadcast deal was 10 minutes of highlights of Monaco on "Wide World of Sports." I can watch every moment of every practice, qualifying and race session live now? I'll take it.)

 

I realize it wasn't for the win, and he ultimately got penalized for it, but Bourdais' three-wide pass on Dixon for second, plus passing another lapped car for good measure going into turn 1 at Long Beach, was incredible.

 

One year ago, my wife was on life support and "mostly dead," as she put it. But she battled pneumonia with sepsis and survived, getting discharged from the hospital two days before her 59th birthday. For her 60th this week, she asked me to surprise her.

Backstory: I've always been a huge open-wheel fan, so when we got married, she couldn't really understand the fascination. "All they do is go round and round in circles." However, when I went to a buddy's house to watch the 1989 Indy 500, she stayed in the apartment and started flipping channels, eventually getting caught up in the excitement of the closing laps. When I got home, all she could talk about was "Little Al" and how he should have won.

I took her to her first 500 in 1991, and she braved the bitter cold to see Al win in 1992, then she drove solo from Raleigh to Indy in 1994 (I got stuck at the Division III College World Series) for his second victory. Our hotel was in Florence, so she got up the next morning and drove three hours BACK to Indy to get a copy of the Star and take a picture of the motel marquee.

So yesterday, I didn't tell her we were going to Barber Motorsports Park (what a great facility and great crowd, by the way) -- and I had e-mailed Harding Racing's PR rep to see if Unser might have a few minutes to surprise her.

It worked out perfectly. She was absolutely blown away, and Al couldn't have been nicer. They chatted for a few minutes (amid roaring engine noises) and she had a smile on her face that hasn't gone away yet.

 

Thanks, very thankful for all the doctors and nurses and therapists, because chances of surviving that drop dramatically with every hour left untreated. Our primary doctor told me it was basically a coin flip between living and not. The emergency room staff worked quickly to stabilize her, because her body was shutting down in an effort to fight the infection.

So to have a chance to celebrate her birthday with a huge surprise like that was fun. Helps to know how to sweet-talk PR folks sometimes, and glad Liz Von Oosterburg was willing to help.

Yeah, we went Saturday because I'd rather see practice and qualifications and miss the big crowds. Plus, Sunday's forecast was brutal. Great race today, with Newgarden outclassing everyone. Started pouring again with about 15 minutes to go, forcing everyone back on rain tires. But Bourdais and Dixon drove amazingly well on slicks in an attempt to hang on.

I "almost" drove back this morning since it was free. But Atlanta rush hour traffic in the rain is crazy stupid and wasn't worth driving 200 miles each way to get soaked again.

 

Well, that's a new one. Final IndyCar warmup at Indianapolis was red-flagged because of four Canada geese that settled on the grassy aprons on the road course and couldn't be scared off the grounds by the safety vehicles. Reminds me of the hundreds of seagulls that would sit in the Daytona infield before the race on Sunday morning. They'd have to shoot multiple blanks from a rifle to chase them away.

 

Canada geese aren't quite as stupid as turkeys, but it's close. They're a whole lot meaner, though.

 

Thoughts from the first two days of Indianapolis 500 practice: Love the new aero package but not sure we'll see the drafting and passing of the past two races. Having identical cars makes for equal downforce, and even though drivers were getting runs at the end of the straights, I'm not sure that wasn't more the result of the lead car lifting.

All 35 cars are over 221 in the draft. So far, Kanaan is about the only one who's at least shaken down his car in clean air and has a 223 mph on the board. I expect Friday will be the true test of what pole speeds we might expect, as everyone trims out and takes mock runs.

Right now, there isn't an odds-on favorite for getting bumped from the field. Pippa Mann hasn't shown much, but again we don't know what that car might do alone on the track. Conor Daly's another who is struggling.

 

Anything to Marco’s big number yesterday? Every time I’ve given up on him, he pulls me back in.