Late Season News

It looks like TK has just about wrapped up the IRL title for the season. The league takes a three week break before heading to California and the penultimate race of the season, but only Dan Wheldon has a chance to catch him and I don’t see that happening given they are team mates and TK penchant for top 5 finishes.
In NASCAR the Chase will begin this week at New Hampshire. How that turd got on the rotation is beyond me. Congrats to Jeremy Mayfield for winning at Richmond Saturday night and getting himself in the mix
Finally, the Sandwich won at Monza as the F1 circus leaves Europe for a couple of races in Asia before finishing the season in Brazil. One item of note is that it looks like Jacques will be in the Renault for the rest of the season while Top Knot sits. Since Renault is set for next year it appears as though JV might end up at Sauber. It also appears as though Ralfie will be back in the car next week at Shanghai. He tested yesterday at Silverstone and seemed to be okay.
Now I come to the real reason of this post. Obviously the posts have tailed off a bit lately and as long as it is football season, they will continue to be spottier. However, the latest news from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway must be addressed.
For the record the changes will be that the race will now start at noon instead of 11:00 am. Carb Day will now be on the Friday before the race and in addition to practice and the pit stop competition, the MIPS race will be held. Practice each day will begin at noon rather than 11:00 am. And finally, the big one, qualifying returns to four days with a completely revised system. Each day only the 11 fastest will qualify. However, bumping is allowed and bumped cars will be allowed to retry. In fact, as near as I can tell by the rules as I have seen them, a car will be allowed up to twelve attempts to make the field.
So far, no change of the traditional Sunday opening of the track has been announced and with these changes I don’t expect one.
So what of these changes? First of all, the 11:00 am start time for practice was fine and I see no reason to change it. Seems gratuitous to me. The start time of the race is fine with me. Frankly they can start it at 1 and give everyone an extra hour in the morning. However, for Robby Gordon and anyone else attempting to do “the Double” it will just about kill any possibility of that. With Tony Stewart being a big news story this past year and him saying he would be there this year, one has to wonder if it is still feasible. The Carb Day being moved to Friday may prove to be fun as long as I am still able to get my cadre of pix!
As for qualifying, well I am going to take a wait and see approach to see if it works. It is such a radical change that I am having a tough time even imagining how well or poorly it will work.
While I am going to hold judgment for now I do have some comments about the changes in general. FTRG says he is doing this to help bring more teams in, entice the smaller teams to not wait until the last minute and increase television ratings. Well FTRG, if you wanted higher TV ratings and more money then you should have just kept your mouth shut back in 1994 and forgot about forming the IRL.
Don’t get me wrong the IRL is wonderful and CART was run by a group of owners who couldn’t agree on shit. But the bottom line is that there was nothing wrong with the Indianapolis 500. Now we have crappy TV ratings, barely enough cars to fill the field (and then only if FTRG pays according to some) and a drop in attendance at every event in May with the exception of Carb Day and the Parade.
FTRG, there is but one way to fix what you have done to the 500 and that is to increase the purse to make sure that everyone who qualifies makes money on it. It can’t be some crap shoot that only the top 5 make any money on. What incentive is there to come to Indy anymore? It costs a half a million to try to make the race and for what? A chance to make a couple million sure, but more likely a couple hundred thousand. It just doesn’t add up.
Once again we have a knee jerk reaction and unfortunately a boob who has no clue. Whether or not this pulls the 500 out of its doldrums and moves it back into the limelight it once enjoyed remains to be seen. What is already assured is that the one guy running the IRL is no better than the group of owners who ran CART.