Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Hopefully, this makes a lot of fans ... Happy.

 

Just saw this clip from the Xfinity Series race Saturday at Atlanta. Driver named Josh Williams got black flagged for something falling off his car (a piece of something called bear bond, which I assume is like Bondo?), so he said, "All right then, I'll just leave it here." Parked at the start-finish line, got out of the car and walked off the track.
With that mullet, though, how can we stay mad at him?

 

There's a degree of prejudice because it's three exits down the interstate from my home, but I love the Indy race at Barber's in Birmingham. Modern road course, not patched together from city streets, easy to move around on if you get bored, good sight lines and places where you can set up and be able to watch a couple of straightaways and multiple turns. It can be hard to pass, but that would seem to be true of most (?) Indy road courses. Willing to be educated on the better ones, not claiming any huge familiarity.

It's a really nice venue, and I greatly prefer race cars that turn in both directions and go over hills and stuff.

 

Outside of COTA, I have to think Barber is the best road course in the U.S. now. The facility looks beautiful.

In a perfect world, I'd love to see an IndyCar series that looked something like:

Indy 500
Indy Road Course
Barber
Sonoma
Laguna Seca
Portland
Mid Ohio
Road America
Watkins Glen
Long Beach
COTA
Road Atlanta
Nashville (with a significant layout alteration)

...and fill it out with whatever your best options are. I don't know if Montreal is an option. Mosport?

 

Barber's is gorgeous. Top notch in every facet I know of. It's a very rich man's... I was going to say toy, but obsession might be a more accurate description. He spent something in the range of $70 million for the land that's under the museum and track. His collection is something over 1,600 motorcycles with around 900 of them on display. I couldn't begin to guess what the collection, reputed to be the largest collection of motorcycles in the world (antique, modern, racing, and custom) is worth.

I remember when it was first built, George Barber brought a couple of Superbike racers in to test the track. Once they'd driven it a bit, Barber pressed them on anything that they had noticed that wasn't quite right, needed to be fixed or could be improved somehow. One of them eventually mentioned a couple of minor ripples in one of the major turns. Barber hired a firm that specialized in paving tracks, particularly banked turns, and completely repaved the track, better than two miles. This had to be hideously expensive and was likely unnecessary in the first place.

I got the story from a patient who worked as a mechanic at the big Caterpillar bulldozer dealership in town. He and a guy he worked with were hired to stand by at the track in case any of the machinery broke while they were working on it. They got paid a ton of money to sit around and drink coffee for several days, basically.

I've said it here a dozen times - if you ever come through Birmingham and are looking for something to do, the one thing in this city that is honest to God world class is Barber's. The place is just amazing.

 

Maybe they need a race official nearby to wave a yellow flag. Or a brown one.

 

Milwaukee. Nashville oval. Phoenix oval. Kansas oval. Bristol.

Your list is all road courses. More ovals, please.

 

Like I said earlier, I don't like ovals. I get why they run them, but I find them close to unwatchable -- and no one attends.

 

I was a fan of the IRL idea. Not of open wheel being torn apart, but offering a way for American short-track racers to climb the ladder.

It failed. Crowds were brutal at most spots. It brought us guys like Dr. Jack Miller and Greg Ramrod Ray. The ride-buying was 10 times worse than what you see today in NASCAR, and that's getting bad.

 

The thing that makes NASCAR watchable, or at least fun, at Bristol is the physicality of it, with cars bumping and banging each other as they jockey for position. How the hell are Indy cars going to run there?

 

I've largely come to the conclusion that 98% of the IndyCar fans who insist the series needs more ovals live in Indianapolis. They're not buying tickets anywhere else.