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

We could have had Mussburger saying "This is for all the Izods."

 

Classic - a rundown of Kimi's radio transmissions during this weekend's Nationwide race.

http://tinyurl.com/4xprl6r

My personal favorite: "We're so fucking shit, it's unbelievable."

Welcome to NASCAR, Kimi!

 

That's pretty much what Brian Barnhart said after the race. If a car is disabled and cannot keep speed, it can be passed under yellow.

And NASCAR has the same positioning rules -- freeze the field at the time of a yellow, one they put in AFTER the Tracy-Castroneves incident in '02 that had everyone clamoring for "racing to the line" in IndyCar. It's a safety thing.

 

It was Rusty Wallace in '06. He also said "you couldn't get me out of an electric chair to drive one of these things" after the first race he did for ABC (and I'm trying to remember, but I think that was the day Paul Dana was killed in the morning warmup). Rusty was enthusiastic, but Eddie Cheever is quite an upgrade there.

 

I heard the radio call of the final seconds, and it did sound like it took forever. King didn't know -- Page jumped in to help him out (helped that Page's son works on Wheldon's crew). I can understand why there was some confusion. All eyes were on Hildebrand. When I saw him hit the wall, I immediately started looking for the next lead-lap car to come around the turn and saw the 98. That's where one of the turn reporters has to be in somebody's ear and say "Wheldon's coming."

Of course, the play-by-play guy in me always thinks he would've nailed it, but all that really means is I probably need to send them my resume .

 

In defense of the broadcast crews, all of us (that I know of) in the stands were confused. Particularly because from where we sat, we couldn't see Hildebrands car skidding against the wall to the finish. Not only did you have the crash on the last lap, but you had Dixon and Franchitti running out of fuel (hey, just like Pole Day!), and I know a lot of people were trying to find Dixon, and completely overlooked Wheldon. It's not every day a car down 30 seconds to the leader with 10 laps to go wins the 500.

 

For sure. I was relatively close to the incident - row 5 (a little low for my liking, obviously) on the outside seats right in front of the Row 1/2 pits. The place was going nuts because an American rookie was clearly going to win. So all of a sudden, you just hear the gasp that kind of travels through the crowd like a wave when there's an incident, and shouts of, "Crash! Crash!" As luck would have it, this is the one year I couldn't find my headphones, and I didn't want to wait in line for a scanner before the race, so my other friend who didn't have headphones and I are just screaming at our other friends, "Who?! Who?! Who crashed?" Of course, no one can hear anyone because it's loud and chaotic, plus Hildebrand's name is a little longer and tougher to say when it's that loud, but finally someone was able to shout, "The leader!" People were just flipping out around me. Nobody could believe it. We saw his car limp across the finish line right about then, and people were still trying to figure out if he was able to hang on and win anyway. For about two or three seconds, I thought so. But then everyone started yelling, "Weldon! Weldon's the winner!"

It was crazy. I never thought I would witness a sporting event, in person, as wild as the 2003 NLCS Game 6. Yesterday topped it. It helped that the last 20-25 laps were an adrenaline junkie's dream. No idea who was going to win it, and sitting in the pit area I was able to see who was coming in immediately and essentially dropping out one by one.

P.S. Props to whoever mentioned Todd Harris's all-star turn as a race analyst. That was the one race I've missed the last 10 or 11 years, and it was Danica Patrick's rookie year. Just my dumb luck. My ears are still bleeding. I seriously think that it was the worst single-even performance in sports broadcaster history, and I think a lot of people here who watched it would agree with me. Stunningly awful.

 

It's just an insult to open-wheel racing to have put Rusty Wallace as an open-wheel analyst. But its ABC/ESPN, so why should I have been surprised?

Cheever is obviously better, but given that his douchebag rating spikes the stratosphere, it almost mitigates it.

Speaking of douchebags, it warms my heart to know that Paul Page had to jump in to save Mike King.

Like many other things, it seems to me the way they do radio for Indy and the series in general is antiquated. They rely way too much on personal observation. Does anyone other than King have monitors? Timing and scoring?

I know it's not easy, especially at Indy with the vastness of the track, but listening to their broadcasts, my mind's eye generates an image of a 50s radio newsman with a big external chrome microphone calling the race in his scoop hat.

 

People write that story every year. It's almost becoming a cliche. The stories are either about how Indy isn't what it used to be (see this year's SI preview) or "Indy's BACK!!!111ELEVENTY!!!111"

I've never been to Daytona, but I can't imagine it's better than Indy. Maybe equal. Maybe different. But not better.

I was thinking yesterday that one problem is that the series needs to stop trying to out-NASCAR NASCAR. I was looking around for merchandise, and there is nothing that would even qualify as middle-brow. Just the same busy, appeal-to-gearhead designs that you can buy at NASCAR races. The series needs to market itself as an alternative to NASCAR. Appeal to people's desire to be sophisticated. There is no doubt you could subtly do that, and no doubt that the seeds of a market for it exists. Yesterday, when TK was flying through the field in the last 20 laps, the crowd at IMS was going wild. The stereotype is that American race fans don't want to see no fer'ner winnin' races. Anecdotally, there seems to at least a good-sized portion of the open-wheel crowd that doesn't look at it that way.

Become the racing series for the wine-and-cheese crowd. It's OK. Really.