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

If it's anybody not named Brian Barnhart, I wouldn't be shocked it Tony Cotman moves back into a race-officiating role. He was widely praised for his work in that role with ChampCar and has had various jobs with the IRL since the merger.

Johnny Rutherford drives the pace car during yellows every race. Wonder if he'd be interested in such a position.

 

JR might have radioed in that it was still wet. Were the wipers of the pace car going during the yellow?

 

On a side note to all of this, I wasn't near the TV during the race, so I watched this all unfold on a marginal video stream on my computer with commentary in Portuguese. The picture was iffy enough that I couldn't really tell it was raining, which made the events confusing as hell.

 

I believe they actually started the race early, in an effort to beat the rain.

 

They did. Blew off the prerace stuff. Green flag about five minutes in.

 

How can Barnhart claim he only had information from track observers? Michael Andretti ran down to confront IndyCar officials about the restart, telling them it was too wet.

That decision came straight from the tower, as in, "Hey everybody, we're good to go, right?"

 

I thought exactly the same thing as it was happening. One of the 5 ABC races (which in theory deliver higher ratings/potential viewership), NASCAR was rained out so the casual race fan might have tuned in, you know the Mouse shoehorns you into an extremely tight time window, you've just signed a long-term extension with them in spite of that and you're at a track where Indy-style cars hadn't raced in years in a region of the country that is dominated by stock/modified racing, at a track where the GM (who is from Indiana) has really stuck his neck on the line for you.

Lots of factors working there, and I really think BB wanted to give them a good finish. They did everything -- including start the race early and go yellow for about 30 laps when the first shower hit -- to get it in. But prudence has to dictate that you don't do that, especially given the number of problems getting tires up to temperature when the track was dry. It would've been wiser to just keep it yellow for those 5 laps and send everyone home with a sense of closure. You can't control the weather, and so you hope the fans will give you a pass on that and come back again the next year.

That said, I've never seen Will Power show that much emotion, much less morph into Paul Tracy. A little bit of animosity is what's getting people talking about IndyCar right now -- and it's had a lot of animosity this year. Since Paul Tracy went into semi-retirement (and he's been much more mellow since he's started driving the self-dubbed crapwagons again), there really hasn't been that guy.

 

NASCAR does that all the time if they believe rain is on the way.

 

Can you hear me NOW?

 

Awesome.

 

I hear Danica is NASCAR bound next year. Yawn. When she goes to NASCAR and consistently runs in the middle of the pack, she will be called a bust even though that is where she runs in IndyCar. The worst part of her move to NASCAR ... she'll be in even more commercials.