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

Thanks for posting that link. Interesting to see some of the names mentioned in the story, especially Zak Brown, who supposedly is being pursued as a person to run IndyCar. Or at least, was so recently I believe.

 

Another open-wheel doc coming to Netflix if not theaters...

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/weekend-of-a-champion-poster-roman-polanksi-movie/

If the movie's half as good as the poster, I'll be there:

 

Cool story involving Alex Zanardi, Chip Ganassi and Old Midnight.
http://www.racintoday.com/archives/41130

 

Looks like a perfect day (for once) to be sitting in the stands at Indy.

 

Amazing race, I'm glad that Tony Kanaan finally won.

 

So great to see Tony Kanaan win. I covered the 2007 race, thought for sure he was going to win that one but bad luck struck yet again. I thought one of the Andretti cars would pull it off this year (though not Marco, simply due to the Andretti Curse), with maybe Franchitti duplicating his strategy from last year. I questioned whether Kanaan had the speed this year, but I was glad to be wrong.
I'm sure there will now be plenty of renewed debate on whether Indy should adopt the green-white-checkered ending.

 

Green/white/checker endings...Ugh.

Leave that in NASCAR where it belongs.

 

It was a great day to be at the track. Much better than last year's scorcher.

The finish wasn't anti-climactic in the stands. The crowd went nuts when Kanaan passed Hunter-Reay after the restart, and went nuts again the second the yellow came out.

And 500 miles is 500 miles. I hope Indy never goes the way of the green-white checker. Leave contrived finishes to Nascar.

 

It would have been nice to go under green, but in our section of the stands we knew somebody would likely wreck given the intensity of those last three laps. I've never seen an Indy where no car truly stood out among the rest, where you truly had no idea who could win. Clearly Chevy had the better engine, but all the cars were remarkably reliable: 26 cars running at the end, and lowest-budget Buddy Lazier the only one to depart because of mechanical issues.

Also, great to see TK win, but second-place Carlos Munoz was pretty badass.

 

Crazy silly season in F1 this year. Kimi doesn't go to Red Bull, replaces Massa instead at Ferrari to team with Alonso. That will either be brilliant or Prost-Senna 2. My hunch is the latter, but with the new cars for next year maybe having two drivers so experienced will pay dividends.
Surprise this morning in the IndyCar silly season as well. With all the talk of what Kanaan's future might hold, I was curious why there seemed to be no mention of Kanaan going to Penske. This might be why:
http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/indy500/news/show/type/news/52350-juan-pablo-montoya-to-join-team-penske-in-2014/

If Montoya gets up to speed quickly in an IndyCar, Penske will be potent next year. Ganassi may have to go with Kanaan just to keep up.