May 2005 Racing Wrap

IRL

After a month of paltry crowds, a ridiculously rained out Pole Day, too many beers, mild sunburn and trading pins the 89th running of the Indianapolis 500 took place Sunday. Congrats to Dan Wheldon for the win. As I stated in my last post, Dan is deserving and has been as good as anyone over the past year. If it had not been for TK, he would have won the title last year.

The emotion has started to die down after what has to be considered one of the greatest races ever at Indy and an instant classic for sure.Some of the other stories from the race were the fine run by Buddy Lazier. He took his Panther/Byrd car and was at the front all day. A little bad luck down the stretch put him back a bit, but Buddy was as strong as he has been since winning the 1996 race.

Unfortunately Bruno broke his back making him the third serious back/neck injury of the month. Something has to be done about the design of the cars.Congrats to Vitor for a fine run. I said all month that he and Scheckter were going to win. Scheckter was probably out when Danica whacked him, but Vitor may have been able to pull off the pass had the race not finished under yellow.It was a pretty good month with the exception of Pole Day.

I still think the purse needs to be larger. But all in all it was good. Check out the pictures on my web site if you don’t believe me.

Carb Day was once again just off the charts. Early indications are that the race drew a 6.6 rating which was a 40% improvement over last year. Let’s hope they can keep that momentum going into Texas and long into the summer!

F1

Well what can you say for Kimi? The guy starts the last lap of the race and ka-blooie, his front left tire explodes on him. Kim spun off into the sand trap and ended up out of the points after another dominating performance for the McLaren team. Fred went on to win and increase his points lead.

Now the F1 boys are coming to North America. Next week they are at Montreal for the Canadian GP and will be back in Indy for the USGP the following week. I’m looking forward to it!

Now, however, all the talk in F1 is about tyres. With Kimi’s big wreck at the end of Sunday’s European GP all the parties are up in arms over the amount of tyre failure this year. Grandprix.com is even running an article about how the battle between tyre manufacturers has always caused problems in racing. I find all of this more than ridiculous.The problem is not the tyres themselves or the manufacturers. These people are putting out fantastic product under rules that are beyond stupid. One set of tyres each race? Are you fucking kidding me? The FIA and F1 made rules changes for cars to slow them down. They had to know they had no chance of working, yet pushed forward anyway. Leaving drivers out there for a whole race on one set of tyres is like playing Russian roulette. It’s not a matter of if the tyres will fail, but when they will fail.

The FIA and F1 made a pretty nice rule about engines having to last two weeks. They missed on qualifying, but have rectified that. I know they want to curb costs to help draw new blood into the sport, but F1 is expensive by nature. It is highly technical and very cutting edge. But making a one tyre rule for an entire race is asking for trouble.

F1 missed the boat on this one in my estimation. I hope they have the cajones to step up and make the change. Despite the arrogance of the FIA, they have been pretty good at fixing mistakes.

NASCAR

The boobs put on quite a show the other night in Charlotte. New records for crashes and yellows. Nice job taxi cab boys. Your days are numbered.