With more than 2000 dead and 20,000 wounded American soldiers in Iraq isn’t it about time we called the “War” a failure? What have we done to make it a success? Sure we got Hussein out of power, but has the killing stopped? How many Iraqi’s are dead? You "patriots" probably don't care, but you should care about the Americans.
The Bush administration has gone unchecked long enough. Those who say this wasn’t about revenge, oil and money are deluding themselves. War on terror my ass. Bush is a liar and his cronies are all full of shit.
The GOP is a mess with scandals that make it look like the biggest bunch of hypocrites ever. Hell , we all know the Democrats are perverts, thieves and crooks, but the Republicans act as though they’re above it. Folks let me tell you, they’re not.
What we have is an ineffective leader in Bush. The fucker has this country so divided it will take years to repair it. A VP who is sitting back getting rich on his war tiem contracts and business interests and a tough talking Secretary of Defense who in actuality probably couldn’t fight off a cold.
Hey dickheads, tell you what, why don’t you try to win this fucking war or get the fuck out. We allegedly have the greatest weapons ever invented to fight a war and the highly trained and “motivated’ US soldier, yet we can not get an edge on a group of people who use rocks and Molotov cocktails as their main weapons. Rumsfeld talks a great game, but we just keep losing bright young men and women, and for what?
And before any of you so-called conservatives think I am endorsing the Dems or liberals you can take your heads out of the sand and wise up. Fuck the democrats and the liberals, but at least we know where they stand. Allegedly the Bush administration was for the US and making things right in the world. All I see is a failed war in Iraq, the head of Al-Queda still running around free as a bird and a country and world divided over our idiotic actions.
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
2006 Racing Mid-Season Report
Well we are truly immersed in the 2006 racing silly season. Driver changes are occurring, firings have taken place and the rumors are swirling. Some changes have already proven beneficial for certain drivers, while others have been treated poorly in my opinion. Here is a brief view of my thoughts as we move forward into the second half of the 2006 racing season.
First up is the release of two drivers from their IRL teams this week. Buddy Lazier was released by Dreyer and Reinbold Racing (DRR) and AJ Foyt has released Felipe Giafone (Mike).
I suppose there are a couple of ways of looking at these firings. One, is that the results simply have not been there. In Lazier’s case, the top finish was 12th at Indianapolis. At the tracks with fewer cars his top finish was three 15th place finishes. Not exactly the kind of results one expects from the 1996 Indianapolis 500 champion. Mike failed to post much better numbers. His 5th at the Glen was his season high along with a couple of top 10 finishes in the first two races. While the numbers were better than Lazier’s, his 16th, 17th and 19th place finishes over the past three races have to be viewed as disappointments.
On the other hand, Lazier and Mike were given little chance of success when they climbed in the cars of DRR and AJ respectively. These two teams have been at the back of the pack for most of the decade and I don’t see how any of that is going to change. DRR is simply a small budget team competing against teams who are exponentially larger than they are. You know Dennis Reinbold and Robbie Buhl want to continue to race, but you really have to wonder how long they can spend money on the venture.
In AJ’s case, he has a serious sponsor so the lack of results on the surface seem more intriguing. However, AJ himself seems to be as big of a factor in their performances as anything else. AJ is known to hate the engineers and technology that comes with today’s racing and refuses to embrace it. Of course by doing this he gives his team little or no chance to win. AJ was one of the greatest drivers the Speedway ever saw, but he may be the worst owner it has seen. How long he sticks around is a big question.
I hope Buddy and Mike land rides in the IRL, but I have my doubts. I think Buddy just never fit the mold for the big teams and Mike just doesn’t excite fans or sponsors. I think they were both wrongly fired by their crappy teams, but that doesn’t make them the first or the last to be held out as the scapegoats.
While on the subject of DRR, they have hired Ryan Briscoe as their driver for the next four races. Briscoe was unceremoniously dropped from the Target Chip Ganassi Racing(TCGR) team last season after hitting everything but the pace car. DRR may not have liked what Buddy was doing in their car, my feeling is that they will like what Briscoe does even less. Unless this guy has changed his mindset he’ll be the undertaker for DRR. I like DRR and I hope he does okay. I just have my doubts.
Let’s keep it in the IRL for the moment. My favorite driver, yeah right, Danica Patrick has been in the news this week. Seems her father was poking around the NASCAR garages this week and announced to the media that his daughter was looking for a Cup ride for 2007. Her contract with Rahal Letterman Racing (RLR) is up at the end of the season. RLR has really struggled this year. They lost Paul Dana in a freak wreck at Homestead. Since that time they replaced Dana with Jeff Simmons who has not found any traction. Patrick and team mate Buddy “FITP” Rice have made little impact on the season. Sure they are not a factory Honda team anymore and yes they lost a driver. But it seems as though there may be more to it than that. I don’t know, but the team is a damn sight off of where they were a year ago. Of course with the dominance of TCGR and Penske Racing, most teams are off, but RLR seems to be in more trouble than the others.
Anyway, the “sis-boom-bah, rah-rah IRL” cheerleaders were all up in arms over the news. Many were in denial at the story, some were ready to hang themselves while others ran and hid.
There was a piece that Derek Daly said Patrick leaving would be a good thing for the IRL in that it would speed up unification when they saw the direness of the whole thing. For his part Daly, who does Champ Car races and F1 on TV, as well as covering Indy in May, was lambasted by the rah-rah’s as a traitor and a person who never liked Indy. Face it fans, he hates the IRL almost as much as I do, but like me, he loves Indy.
Ultimately the story, while true, was more of a ploy to get a better contract for Patrick. Danica announced yesterday that, while NASCAR is still a desire for the future, she fully intends on staying in the IRL.
Two thoughts on that. One, this is good news for the IRL. FTG still has his number one marketing tool, even if it is a gimmick. His hiring of Gene Simmons has produced nothing but the ridiculous “I am Mindy” anthem. Two, with all of the money that is bound to be spent in NASCAR when Toyota gets there next year, how wise is it to hire a gimmick like Patrick who will never be able to compete. Roush may make his money off of the merchandising of Patrick, but she’ll be a joke otherwise.
To wrap up the IRL let me say this about the whole Simmons/Abrahamson deal. Seriously, what have these people done? When the season started we had 20 cars and have gone to 18 for this weeks Nashville race. Carmelo Anthony lent his name to Hemelgarn Racing and that was supposed to attract sponsors. It failed and Hemelgarn is “parked”. FTG and his crew have once again completely missed the boat on this thing.
On to NASCAR. Frankly I don’t follow this that much, but there was a huge announcement this past weekend that compels me to write about it. Juan Pablo Montoya(JPM) is coming to America and he is going to be racing in the Nextel Cup Series (NCS) for Chip Ganassi. You may remember JPM won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 with TCGR as they cherry picked the 500 from their lofty perch in CART. JPM went on to win that series and was soon headed to F1.
While there, JPM did manage to win 7 races, but he probably ruffled as many feathers as he did excite team owners. Most of his success came with the Williams BMW team. When he moved to McLaren he struggled with the car and being second fiddle to team mate Kiwi Raikkonen. When it was announced that JPM would be making the move to NASCAR for 2007, McLaren made quick work of releasing the Colombian. With extra time now on his hands it will be interesting to see when JPM starts his NASCAR career. He is supposed to run some Busch races this season and possibly a Cup or two, but now he has half a season and I doubt Ganassi wants to have him sitting around doing nothing. JPM who makes his home in Miami hasn’t said what the extra time means as far as racing is concerned.
What is sure to happen is a big swell of interest from the US F1 fans as well as US open wheel fans when JPM gets to Daytona next year. Go Juan! I think he’ll do fine. It’s going to take a little practice to get the feel of the car, especially after the F1 cars, but he is a great driver and will succeed whether the good old boys and girls like it or not.
JPM’s replacement at McLaren is Pedro de la Rosa. Not a name to generate any interest here in the states and interest ought to be a thought. With the potential demise of the USGP, F1 ought to be kissing our asses for the money they make here. But since that is unlikely here are my thoughts on the future of the USGP. It will be back and back for a long while. I don’t say that because I love it, but I think FTG and FBE know a good thing when they see it, well maybe not FTG, and aren’t willing to screw it up.
Finally, it has been suggested and disputed and rumored to death the unification of the IRL and the Champ Car World Series. These rumors reared their heads the past couple of years, but this year FTG and FKK gave credence to the talk by admitting they had been meeting. They cautioned that the talks were in the early stages and that nothing had been decided. Anyone with half a brain can see that the continued split in open wheel will have even more devastating effects than it already has had. The sponsors that are here will leave and the car counts on both sides will continue to drop. 18 entered at Nashville this week, 17 were at the CC race at Toronto last week. Both numbers are down and the likelihood of them going up is doubtful. I’ve been all over the split so I will not continue to discuss it here, but the end must be soon or open wheel racing will be a distant memory in just a few years. More importantly the Indianapolis 500 is losing luster as the days roll on. As it is, barely 33 cars even show up and some are so far off the pace it isn’t funny. If the two sides can get together these trends can be stemmed. Now I don’t think anyone with half a brain thinks there will automatically be 35 cars at Kentucky and 50 at Indianapolis, but the car counts should improve. With that improvement means more competition and it probably will signal the end of teams like AJ Foyt, Hemelgarn and even DRR. The bottom line is that it is no longer necessary to unite to fight NASCAR, that ship has sailed. It is necessary to unite to give some hope to the future of open wheel racing in general and the Indianapolis 500 in particular. I don’t want to see 33 fucking Silver Crown cars running the 500 no matter what these so-called purists assholes think.
First up is the release of two drivers from their IRL teams this week. Buddy Lazier was released by Dreyer and Reinbold Racing (DRR) and AJ Foyt has released Felipe Giafone (Mike).
I suppose there are a couple of ways of looking at these firings. One, is that the results simply have not been there. In Lazier’s case, the top finish was 12th at Indianapolis. At the tracks with fewer cars his top finish was three 15th place finishes. Not exactly the kind of results one expects from the 1996 Indianapolis 500 champion. Mike failed to post much better numbers. His 5th at the Glen was his season high along with a couple of top 10 finishes in the first two races. While the numbers were better than Lazier’s, his 16th, 17th and 19th place finishes over the past three races have to be viewed as disappointments.
On the other hand, Lazier and Mike were given little chance of success when they climbed in the cars of DRR and AJ respectively. These two teams have been at the back of the pack for most of the decade and I don’t see how any of that is going to change. DRR is simply a small budget team competing against teams who are exponentially larger than they are. You know Dennis Reinbold and Robbie Buhl want to continue to race, but you really have to wonder how long they can spend money on the venture.
In AJ’s case, he has a serious sponsor so the lack of results on the surface seem more intriguing. However, AJ himself seems to be as big of a factor in their performances as anything else. AJ is known to hate the engineers and technology that comes with today’s racing and refuses to embrace it. Of course by doing this he gives his team little or no chance to win. AJ was one of the greatest drivers the Speedway ever saw, but he may be the worst owner it has seen. How long he sticks around is a big question.
I hope Buddy and Mike land rides in the IRL, but I have my doubts. I think Buddy just never fit the mold for the big teams and Mike just doesn’t excite fans or sponsors. I think they were both wrongly fired by their crappy teams, but that doesn’t make them the first or the last to be held out as the scapegoats.
While on the subject of DRR, they have hired Ryan Briscoe as their driver for the next four races. Briscoe was unceremoniously dropped from the Target Chip Ganassi Racing(TCGR) team last season after hitting everything but the pace car. DRR may not have liked what Buddy was doing in their car, my feeling is that they will like what Briscoe does even less. Unless this guy has changed his mindset he’ll be the undertaker for DRR. I like DRR and I hope he does okay. I just have my doubts.
Let’s keep it in the IRL for the moment. My favorite driver, yeah right, Danica Patrick has been in the news this week. Seems her father was poking around the NASCAR garages this week and announced to the media that his daughter was looking for a Cup ride for 2007. Her contract with Rahal Letterman Racing (RLR) is up at the end of the season. RLR has really struggled this year. They lost Paul Dana in a freak wreck at Homestead. Since that time they replaced Dana with Jeff Simmons who has not found any traction. Patrick and team mate Buddy “FITP” Rice have made little impact on the season. Sure they are not a factory Honda team anymore and yes they lost a driver. But it seems as though there may be more to it than that. I don’t know, but the team is a damn sight off of where they were a year ago. Of course with the dominance of TCGR and Penske Racing, most teams are off, but RLR seems to be in more trouble than the others.
Anyway, the “sis-boom-bah, rah-rah IRL” cheerleaders were all up in arms over the news. Many were in denial at the story, some were ready to hang themselves while others ran and hid.
There was a piece that Derek Daly said Patrick leaving would be a good thing for the IRL in that it would speed up unification when they saw the direness of the whole thing. For his part Daly, who does Champ Car races and F1 on TV, as well as covering Indy in May, was lambasted by the rah-rah’s as a traitor and a person who never liked Indy. Face it fans, he hates the IRL almost as much as I do, but like me, he loves Indy.
Ultimately the story, while true, was more of a ploy to get a better contract for Patrick. Danica announced yesterday that, while NASCAR is still a desire for the future, she fully intends on staying in the IRL.
Two thoughts on that. One, this is good news for the IRL. FTG still has his number one marketing tool, even if it is a gimmick. His hiring of Gene Simmons has produced nothing but the ridiculous “I am Mindy” anthem. Two, with all of the money that is bound to be spent in NASCAR when Toyota gets there next year, how wise is it to hire a gimmick like Patrick who will never be able to compete. Roush may make his money off of the merchandising of Patrick, but she’ll be a joke otherwise.
To wrap up the IRL let me say this about the whole Simmons/Abrahamson deal. Seriously, what have these people done? When the season started we had 20 cars and have gone to 18 for this weeks Nashville race. Carmelo Anthony lent his name to Hemelgarn Racing and that was supposed to attract sponsors. It failed and Hemelgarn is “parked”. FTG and his crew have once again completely missed the boat on this thing.
On to NASCAR. Frankly I don’t follow this that much, but there was a huge announcement this past weekend that compels me to write about it. Juan Pablo Montoya(JPM) is coming to America and he is going to be racing in the Nextel Cup Series (NCS) for Chip Ganassi. You may remember JPM won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 with TCGR as they cherry picked the 500 from their lofty perch in CART. JPM went on to win that series and was soon headed to F1.
While there, JPM did manage to win 7 races, but he probably ruffled as many feathers as he did excite team owners. Most of his success came with the Williams BMW team. When he moved to McLaren he struggled with the car and being second fiddle to team mate Kiwi Raikkonen. When it was announced that JPM would be making the move to NASCAR for 2007, McLaren made quick work of releasing the Colombian. With extra time now on his hands it will be interesting to see when JPM starts his NASCAR career. He is supposed to run some Busch races this season and possibly a Cup or two, but now he has half a season and I doubt Ganassi wants to have him sitting around doing nothing. JPM who makes his home in Miami hasn’t said what the extra time means as far as racing is concerned.
What is sure to happen is a big swell of interest from the US F1 fans as well as US open wheel fans when JPM gets to Daytona next year. Go Juan! I think he’ll do fine. It’s going to take a little practice to get the feel of the car, especially after the F1 cars, but he is a great driver and will succeed whether the good old boys and girls like it or not.
JPM’s replacement at McLaren is Pedro de la Rosa. Not a name to generate any interest here in the states and interest ought to be a thought. With the potential demise of the USGP, F1 ought to be kissing our asses for the money they make here. But since that is unlikely here are my thoughts on the future of the USGP. It will be back and back for a long while. I don’t say that because I love it, but I think FTG and FBE know a good thing when they see it, well maybe not FTG, and aren’t willing to screw it up.
Finally, it has been suggested and disputed and rumored to death the unification of the IRL and the Champ Car World Series. These rumors reared their heads the past couple of years, but this year FTG and FKK gave credence to the talk by admitting they had been meeting. They cautioned that the talks were in the early stages and that nothing had been decided. Anyone with half a brain can see that the continued split in open wheel will have even more devastating effects than it already has had. The sponsors that are here will leave and the car counts on both sides will continue to drop. 18 entered at Nashville this week, 17 were at the CC race at Toronto last week. Both numbers are down and the likelihood of them going up is doubtful. I’ve been all over the split so I will not continue to discuss it here, but the end must be soon or open wheel racing will be a distant memory in just a few years. More importantly the Indianapolis 500 is losing luster as the days roll on. As it is, barely 33 cars even show up and some are so far off the pace it isn’t funny. If the two sides can get together these trends can be stemmed. Now I don’t think anyone with half a brain thinks there will automatically be 35 cars at Kentucky and 50 at Indianapolis, but the car counts should improve. With that improvement means more competition and it probably will signal the end of teams like AJ Foyt, Hemelgarn and even DRR. The bottom line is that it is no longer necessary to unite to fight NASCAR, that ship has sailed. It is necessary to unite to give some hope to the future of open wheel racing in general and the Indianapolis 500 in particular. I don’t want to see 33 fucking Silver Crown cars running the 500 no matter what these so-called purists assholes think.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
2006 Indy
As we race towards the 90th running of the Indianapolis 500 the landscape of open wheel racing may be getting ready to change. Talks between the IRL and Champ Car have been taking place and both sides have acknowledged as much. Where those talks lead us is likely to shape the future of the sport or doom the sport to no future.
We all know the history of the war between the former CART and the IRL. Tony George felt slighted when he was offered a non voting seat on the CART board. George had a “vision” to get the open wheel world back to its North American roots of oval racing and to develop those young sprint and midget drivers eventually leading them to Indy and try to keep some of them from bolting to NASCAR.
We all know of the infamous 25/8 which was hastily abandoned, albeit a little too late. We know the “vision” has changed several times. We know that neither the IRL nor CART/OWRS/CC is able to draw any TV ratings and that the IRL has suffered from poor attendance. In fact, the once venerable race at Phoenix is now completely gone from the schedule after drawing about 8000 fans last year. Phoenix used to be the race before Indy and the winner was usually the favorite when the track opened in May. We know that CC has all but abandoned oval racing and for that matter, road course racing for street racing. We also know that Long Beach and Monaco are the only ones who really can pull that off. We also know that driving a front engine midget or sprint car lends itself much more to the front engine NASCAR cars than it does to the rear-engine, more nimble and faster Indy Car, thus making the whole point of the original “vision” moot.
All of these are points the fans of open wheel racing, or should I say Indy Car racing (be it IRL or CC) have come to grips with. We also have heard the past couple of years about a possible unification of the two series, but they ended up being smoke and mirrors. At least this time the parties involved are admitting to talks.
But where do we go with these talks? IRL fan is certainly not going to stand for a schedule even half and half oval/road course. CC fan may never return if it goes oval heavy. I have posted my dream season at Indystar.com so I will eschew doing it in detail here, but suffice it to say some of the tracks in the IRL will have to go away just as some from the CC schedule. I think it is imperative to be in Canada at least once and preferably twice and I’d like to see the series in Mexico once. As long as Honda is involved I think you have to keep Motegi. I’ve never been a big fan of the Australia race so as far as I am concerned it can go. Europe? Forget it.
As for the cars, well I will leave that to those who know about such matters. Frankly, it matters little if the cars are turbocharged or normally aspirated.
The biggest issue to me is who is going to run the show? This isn’t the NFL/NBA/MLB so a commissioner in that traditional sense won’t work in my opinion. Racing is a different animal. Drivers can and do get hurt bad or killed. Of course people get killed doing all sorts of jobs, but racing has an inherent danger not found in other sports. If a team suffers a streak of bad luck with injuries/deaths they will leave. Then again if teams suffer lack of funding they will leave. Looking down the pit lane this past weekend at Indianapolis gives me hope that the sponsors are coming back, but I wonder if it is proportionately the same to sponsor a car as it was in 1995. CC is really hurting for sponsors so unification may not exactly set the open wheel financial world on fire.
When CART was formed the team owners wanted the power and the say so. When I think about that it is hard to find fault with it. It is their asses on the line. Still it is wrong when some of those owners also decide to be promoters at their tracks and even worse when races are guided to tracks purposely because of an owner.
The commissioner in CART never worked because he was a puppet to the owners and there weren’t two sides such as labor and management in the traditional stick and ball sports. Unfortunately the owners in this high stakes game rarely agree on anything. Ultimately CART went under and lots of people lost a lot of money. Was it mismanagement or simply a matter of trying to corral owners who did not want to be corralled?
ext bring on the IRL. Tony George had the track, he made the rules and he ran the shows. I thought he was acting low budget, but he isn’t very smart and needed help that he must have refused. Face it, everyone and their brother knew TG was subsidizing teams in the IRL and especially in the 500. He tried to get out of it one year by proclaiming “33 is just a number”. Had he mumbled that in front of a crowd of race fans he probably would not have survived the day. He was stuck then subsidizing teams to bring the count to 33 for the Memorial Day weekend classic.
Apparently tired of doing that, he started his own team. Vision Racing! My question is how is this any different than what was happening in CART? A lot of people are still convinced Paul Tracy won the 2002 Indianapolis 500 and that George unilaterally ruled against him. IF and it is a big IF at this point, one of his cars was involved in a similar situation, how would he act? Even if Barnhart were to rule, he is in lock step with TG so how would he rule?
These are issues that have to be resolved, but rest assured, I hope they do resolve them and get this thing back together. In 1995 the track was packed on race day, now we have many areas with empty seats and scalper prices are at an all time low. Each year the Speedway talks about ticket sales being up, but it certainly is not evident.
Face it, the race ain’t as big of a deal as she once was. It can recover, but greed, paranoia and mistrust have to be taken out of the equation to make it happen.
We all know the history of the war between the former CART and the IRL. Tony George felt slighted when he was offered a non voting seat on the CART board. George had a “vision” to get the open wheel world back to its North American roots of oval racing and to develop those young sprint and midget drivers eventually leading them to Indy and try to keep some of them from bolting to NASCAR.
We all know of the infamous 25/8 which was hastily abandoned, albeit a little too late. We know the “vision” has changed several times. We know that neither the IRL nor CART/OWRS/CC is able to draw any TV ratings and that the IRL has suffered from poor attendance. In fact, the once venerable race at Phoenix is now completely gone from the schedule after drawing about 8000 fans last year. Phoenix used to be the race before Indy and the winner was usually the favorite when the track opened in May. We know that CC has all but abandoned oval racing and for that matter, road course racing for street racing. We also know that Long Beach and Monaco are the only ones who really can pull that off. We also know that driving a front engine midget or sprint car lends itself much more to the front engine NASCAR cars than it does to the rear-engine, more nimble and faster Indy Car, thus making the whole point of the original “vision” moot.
All of these are points the fans of open wheel racing, or should I say Indy Car racing (be it IRL or CC) have come to grips with. We also have heard the past couple of years about a possible unification of the two series, but they ended up being smoke and mirrors. At least this time the parties involved are admitting to talks.
But where do we go with these talks? IRL fan is certainly not going to stand for a schedule even half and half oval/road course. CC fan may never return if it goes oval heavy. I have posted my dream season at Indystar.com so I will eschew doing it in detail here, but suffice it to say some of the tracks in the IRL will have to go away just as some from the CC schedule. I think it is imperative to be in Canada at least once and preferably twice and I’d like to see the series in Mexico once. As long as Honda is involved I think you have to keep Motegi. I’ve never been a big fan of the Australia race so as far as I am concerned it can go. Europe? Forget it.
As for the cars, well I will leave that to those who know about such matters. Frankly, it matters little if the cars are turbocharged or normally aspirated.
The biggest issue to me is who is going to run the show? This isn’t the NFL/NBA/MLB so a commissioner in that traditional sense won’t work in my opinion. Racing is a different animal. Drivers can and do get hurt bad or killed. Of course people get killed doing all sorts of jobs, but racing has an inherent danger not found in other sports. If a team suffers a streak of bad luck with injuries/deaths they will leave. Then again if teams suffer lack of funding they will leave. Looking down the pit lane this past weekend at Indianapolis gives me hope that the sponsors are coming back, but I wonder if it is proportionately the same to sponsor a car as it was in 1995. CC is really hurting for sponsors so unification may not exactly set the open wheel financial world on fire.
When CART was formed the team owners wanted the power and the say so. When I think about that it is hard to find fault with it. It is their asses on the line. Still it is wrong when some of those owners also decide to be promoters at their tracks and even worse when races are guided to tracks purposely because of an owner.
The commissioner in CART never worked because he was a puppet to the owners and there weren’t two sides such as labor and management in the traditional stick and ball sports. Unfortunately the owners in this high stakes game rarely agree on anything. Ultimately CART went under and lots of people lost a lot of money. Was it mismanagement or simply a matter of trying to corral owners who did not want to be corralled?
ext bring on the IRL. Tony George had the track, he made the rules and he ran the shows. I thought he was acting low budget, but he isn’t very smart and needed help that he must have refused. Face it, everyone and their brother knew TG was subsidizing teams in the IRL and especially in the 500. He tried to get out of it one year by proclaiming “33 is just a number”. Had he mumbled that in front of a crowd of race fans he probably would not have survived the day. He was stuck then subsidizing teams to bring the count to 33 for the Memorial Day weekend classic.
Apparently tired of doing that, he started his own team. Vision Racing! My question is how is this any different than what was happening in CART? A lot of people are still convinced Paul Tracy won the 2002 Indianapolis 500 and that George unilaterally ruled against him. IF and it is a big IF at this point, one of his cars was involved in a similar situation, how would he act? Even if Barnhart were to rule, he is in lock step with TG so how would he rule?
These are issues that have to be resolved, but rest assured, I hope they do resolve them and get this thing back together. In 1995 the track was packed on race day, now we have many areas with empty seats and scalper prices are at an all time low. Each year the Speedway talks about ticket sales being up, but it certainly is not evident.
Face it, the race ain’t as big of a deal as she once was. It can recover, but greed, paranoia and mistrust have to be taken out of the equation to make it happen.
Friday, March 3, 2006
Lose the Battle, Win the War!
A couple of weeks ago my fiance and I were at a small get together with what I have to describe as my friends. I'd like to call them our friends but I am no in the least bit convinced she likes my friends. Be that as it may, we were having a good time playing cards and having a few drinks and some food. It was a pleasant evening even though we had arrived significantly late. To a certain extent I have given up the fight for being on time as my honey just will not make herself be on time. That pretty much goes for anything; work, church, parties. You name it we are late. Any of you who know me know that I have always been very punctual as I find it a good trait and above all else, courteous.
Well, as it turned out I placed second in the card tournament we were playing. My honey finished fourth or fifth, can't really remember. As I was playing in the final three I noticed her begin to yawn. Mind you it was not yet 10:00 pm and we had not been there for three hours yet and our hosts had fed us. Now before I go on I should say that while my baby really liked watching the World Series of Poker last fall on TV, she really likes to play dealer choice poker better.
As it turns out I finished second in the tournament at about 10:10. I know my friends and I knew there would be a second game. When I asked my babe if she wanted to play she said no, knowing damn well I wanted to. She gave a couple of half-assed "go ahead and play" remarks, but I knew what that meant. So being a person who likes to get along I decided we would not play. Of course I pouted for the next 20 minutes and basically wouldn't look at her. I acted like a spoiled baby, which meant two of us were doing it, because I couldn't play.
All week this has really bothered me. Mainly because I just think she doesn't like my friends, which she better get over, because I am too old to get all new ones. But second it bothered me that she had so little regard for me and my feelings. I felt hurt that night, but am over it now, or am I?
There will be a next time to play poker and it will come up soon. And I am playing. But looking back I am sure I did the right thing by capitulating.
You see I have come to the conclusion that manners are not everyone's strong suit. I can't help most of them, but I can help my honey. In life there are battles every day. In a relationship, one or both parties can make proverbial mountains out of molehills. Thankfully we are not like that.
I honestly believe that there are battles that are and are not worth fighting, let alone winning. I also believe that with a little effort EVERY battle is winnable. But why? Why win every battle? Where does that leave me? I have watched my friends who are married and I see the pitfalls of their relationships and how they are smoothed over. I know that this is all a give-and-take and have found I really like to give. Trying to win every battle and giving the effort needed to win them made me forget what it is like to be happy. Last August when my honey and me got together formally I gave up winning them all. Hell losing a few can be even more rewarding!
I love my honey and next time there is a poker game I will simply tell her we will be playing two games and she can choose to go or not go. I love her and I want her there, but I gave up the last fight to retreat to a better strategy one that takes both of our feelings into account. After all, that is what the giving and taking is all about
Well, as it turned out I placed second in the card tournament we were playing. My honey finished fourth or fifth, can't really remember. As I was playing in the final three I noticed her begin to yawn. Mind you it was not yet 10:00 pm and we had not been there for three hours yet and our hosts had fed us. Now before I go on I should say that while my baby really liked watching the World Series of Poker last fall on TV, she really likes to play dealer choice poker better.
As it turns out I finished second in the tournament at about 10:10. I know my friends and I knew there would be a second game. When I asked my babe if she wanted to play she said no, knowing damn well I wanted to. She gave a couple of half-assed "go ahead and play" remarks, but I knew what that meant. So being a person who likes to get along I decided we would not play. Of course I pouted for the next 20 minutes and basically wouldn't look at her. I acted like a spoiled baby, which meant two of us were doing it, because I couldn't play.
All week this has really bothered me. Mainly because I just think she doesn't like my friends, which she better get over, because I am too old to get all new ones. But second it bothered me that she had so little regard for me and my feelings. I felt hurt that night, but am over it now, or am I?
There will be a next time to play poker and it will come up soon. And I am playing. But looking back I am sure I did the right thing by capitulating.
You see I have come to the conclusion that manners are not everyone's strong suit. I can't help most of them, but I can help my honey. In life there are battles every day. In a relationship, one or both parties can make proverbial mountains out of molehills. Thankfully we are not like that.
I honestly believe that there are battles that are and are not worth fighting, let alone winning. I also believe that with a little effort EVERY battle is winnable. But why? Why win every battle? Where does that leave me? I have watched my friends who are married and I see the pitfalls of their relationships and how they are smoothed over. I know that this is all a give-and-take and have found I really like to give. Trying to win every battle and giving the effort needed to win them made me forget what it is like to be happy. Last August when my honey and me got together formally I gave up winning them all. Hell losing a few can be even more rewarding!
I love my honey and next time there is a poker game I will simply tell her we will be playing two games and she can choose to go or not go. I love her and I want her there, but I gave up the last fight to retreat to a better strategy one that takes both of our feelings into account. After all, that is what the giving and taking is all about
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
