Indycar series begins

[CPMaverick]

Well the first race of the season is in Miami on Sunday. 3:30/2:30 Central on ABC.

It's shaping up to be an interesting year. Gene Simmons is promoting the IRL this year. He's brought in a crazy guy from World of Outlaws who has a loud mouth but has been quick in IPS (PJ Chesson).

The cars are all Honda powered this year, which takes one aspect out of the equation. But it should make competition closer.

ESPN has been promoting this race like crazy. I've seen several ads and ESPNEWS had live driver interviews on all day yesterday. We'll see how the turnout is.

I was a bit down this season without competition (and they took our toys like TCS, assisted shifting, etc away!) but now that it's about to start I'm excited to see what happens. Lots of new stuff.

http://www.indycar.com/ for more info

[Nstig8r]

Gene Simmons?

http://www.mrbeaver.net/images_weird/simmons.jpg

Oh wait... I know who you are talking about now... :D

Sorry, I know you like your job, but I hate the series. IRL is trying/tried too hard to market an open wheel series to sophisticated NASCRAP fans. I know marketing pays the bills, but some series are too driven by it. (pun intended in the case of NASCRAP?)

Hopefully the renegotiations between CART and IRL will form a new, more powerful series that will go in the direction CART was going before the "split". I think at the time, if CART had kept developing, it could have been a series to rival F1, especially with the direction that F1 has been moving towards.

[CPMaverick]

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but as far as I can tell IRL is not targeting fans of any particular series. Where'd you get that from? And if you 'hate' ANY racing series, in my opinion, you aren't a real racing fan...

Anyway I love Champ Car and agree that the split hurt open wheel, but CART collapsed on itself in early 2000's and IRL didn't cause that. You can talk on and on about this stuff, and reach no conclusion. But in my opinion what really hurt open wheel racing is fans that hate one series but like another. True fans ought to be happy- it means more racing! Popularity just makes tickets more expensive. :cheers2:

[ActiveAero]

Like I've always said if I'm going to watch cars go around in a circle I'd much rather be watching the ones that do it the fastest.

In reality I actually don't mind NASCAR but I'm not a big enough fan to sit through an entire race. Racing is racing and a lot of those NASCAR drivers kick ass behind the wheel of any car. They are just like anyone else who needs a paycheck and NASCAR happens to shell out the largest ones in the U.S. I just like to tune into the last 20 laps or so were things get the most interesting.

IMO it's the fans of NASCAR that are so close minded and ignorant to other forms of racing that make it hard to get into. If you try talking to a majority of NASCAR fans about any other form of racing they usually look at you like you're retarded. The fact is majority of NASCAR fans seem to know NOTHING about cars in general. No offense to the females out there but with NASCAR's fan base split almost 50/50 between gender it's not hard to see why. This just doesn't seem to be the case with fans interested in a majority of other racing venues.

But like Charlie said racing is racing. The more of it the better.

[Grider]

I'll watch pretty much anything racing-wise. F1, CART, IRL, ALMS, GRANDAM, NASCAR in order are usually the ones I will watch. Some races will take precedence, such as I like watching racing at Bristol, because its a minor bloodsport. ;)

NASCAR drivers get a bad rap sometimes, but some of those guys can drive the wheels off of anything they get in.

NASCAR fans are the Alabama Football fans of the racing world; most of them live in a state of denial that some other series could be better than their beloved NASCAR.

And in reference to the IRL, starting a season under a black cloud of an on-track death is terrible. My condolences. I don't think a lot of the racers really want to be out there today.

[CPMaverick]

What a cursed day this was. I had worked with Paul at the last two tests and was supposed to work with him for this race. It is evident that he made a bad judgement and that caused his crash, so at least that makes his crew and people like myself know that nothing we did was a contributer. Still, doesn't make you feel much better.

After Pauls death Rahal withdrew thier other two cars from the race. Ed Carpenter was injured in Pauls crash so he wasn't in the race either. 16 cars gridded for the race. One didn't leave the grid. Shortly after another caught fire, and still another lost an engine. I swear this day was just not meant for a race.

At least the finish was memorable and made it seem like something good happened for our efforts.

[Grider]

They interviewed Herta while his team and Honda were attempting to get his car to start. He was like "I'm just doing my job. I don't want to race this car today. I'm pretty sure most every body else was that way."

Marco Andretti blew his shit up after his first pit stop. He also jumped the start. Youthful Exuberance, although his dad and his grandpa were looking mighty pissed at the boy when he got out of the car.

The last 20 laps were some damn good wheel to wheel racing.

Sorry Charlie, it was a shitty day to be at the race track, more so if you were involved with the guys race team. Here is hoping next week in St. Pete is a smooth race.