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.