I Don't Want to Hear About the Labor Pains
The Indycar Series begins Sunday, March 25th, so I’m tentatively scheduling Sunday, March 18th, to reopen this site for the season. I’d make it definite but I have some personal goings-on (nothing bad, but hectic) and things may change as the day approaches. But March 18th is the plan.
I’ll update this post if the date changes.
To paraphrase James Goldman from his play The Lion in Winter, this Indycar season, when it is written, will read better than it lived. It started early with the debacle at Sao Paulo and ended with the disaster in Las Vegas. The winner of this year’s 500 couldn’t get a ride for most of the rest of the season and then died violently (he did not “pass away”) on the track in Vegas. And even though Ed Carpenter and Sarah Fisher got their first win, the season was dominated yet again by Penske and Ganassi: like society, the rich kept getting richer and the poor got poorer.
2012 looks promising because of the new engine and chassis, and I’m hoping to hell that it will break the Penske-Ganassi lock that I believe is stifling the sport. But I’m also guarded in my optimism and I’m weary. It seems like the past several years have offered promise without payoff. For a long time it was waiting for CART to collapse and reunification. That finally happened, and then it was waiting for the new teams to get up to speed. They have, but it doesn’t really seem to have changed anything. They pushed past weak teams like Foyt, but they can’t seem to break into the second tier, which is still claimed by Andretti, much less do anything about P & G.
2011 was different because I knew going in that this would be a repeat of 2010, which I thought was a poor year; as much as I would like an individual race here and there, I thought the seasons were uninteresting and the driver’s championship uncompelling. About the only thing I can say that truly surprised me this year (besides Wheldon) was my turning against Will Power.
So it’s time to see how I did with my predictions. I had two sets, one from the beginning of the year and an ammended set from the beginning of the season.
Out of the 17 races, Penske/Ganassi will combine to win 14 of them. Penske will take 8 and Ganassi 6
Actual: Penske – 6; Gannasi – 6. I overestimated by two (both Penske) but I’m pleased at how close I came.
Of the remaining three, one will go to Andretti. The other two are wild cards.Depending on how you count it, there were 18 because Texas counted as two separate races. But since Las Vegas didn’t go long enough to be official and there’s no winner (literally nor figuratively), we’re back to 17. Anyway, three went to Andretti (one each to Marco, Mike Conway and RHR), one to Bryan Herta (Dan Wheldon @ the 500) and one to Sarah Fisher (Ed Carpenter).
Danica™ will not win another race.
I got that right.
This will be Danica™’s final season in the series.
That too. But I think even Stevie Wonder saw that coming.
The winner of the 500 will not be a Penske or Ganassi driver.
I was right.
Winner will be Tony Kanaan
Wrong-o. Another frustrating, winless year for TK. Particularly since he was looking very good at Las Vegas.
Vitor Meira is either going to be a serious force to be reckoned with this year, or it’ll be his last with Foyt.
He wasnt—but it remains to be seen. I’m going to table this one for the beginning of the 2012 season. I still think it’s highly probable.
The Lucky Dog rule will get dumped before the end of the season.
Heh. Does anyone remember the Lucky Dog rule?
At least 6 races will be won from pole position. At least six more will be won from a driver who starts no farther back than P4.
Seven were won from pole (Barber, Sao Paulo, Milwaukee, Mid-Ohio, Sonoma, Baltimore and Montegi). Another 7 from within P4: St. Pete (P2), Long Beach (P3), Texas 1 (P2), Texas 2 (P3), Toronto (P3), Edmonton (P2) and Kentucky (P4). Only at Indy (P5), Iowa (P17) and New Hampshah (P5) were the winners farther back. And two of those were from P5!!!
The TV ratings (regardless of channel) won’t improve.
True. I’ve said plenty on that subject.
One driver will sustain injuries serious enough to end his or her season.
True (Wheldon), though I really didn’t think it would be a death. I was really predicting a broken back or some other slow-healing injury.
Paul Tracy will not win a race, will not get a podium finish anywhere.
True. You know who got three podium finishes and seems to get no press? Oriol Servia. For shame.
I think a Penske driver will win the driver’s championship. I’d like to see Helio do it, but I tend to think it’ll be Will Power.
Wrong. I’m not going to argue this. Power was involved in the wreck, and even if they’d green-flagged the race and made it official, Power would still be out and Franchitti would have won. I’m glad Franchitti won, but like everyone—I didn’t want to see it decided like this.
Milka Duno will make another attempt at the 500
Nope. I was very surprised.
John Andretti will probably make the field
He did. Go figure.
So there it is. I think I did very well. I’m not happy with a lot of things that happened this season, but I think I called it correctly. Which is why I wasn’t very happy with this season.
Unlike last year, I’m going to take the winter off. Unless something really noteworthy comes up, I’m going to plan on coming back in late March for the season opener in St. Pete.
Be seeing you.
————-
Late word: Vitor Meira and AJ Foyt have parted ways.
My deepest condolences to the family and friends of Dan Wheldon.
Also my best wishes to the others who were injured (albiet not so badly), e.g. Pippa Mann.
I make no secret of the fact that I like spectacular wrecks, and that the danger of the sport is part of the appeal. But I like the wrecks where Dario lands upside down and then walks away. Even the people I don’t care for, like Marco and Will Power—I don’t want to see them hurt. Out of the race—yes. But it’s just a race.
I was going to do my season recap today, but I’m going to wait a decent interval and do it next Friday when levity won’t be disrespecftful and tactless. On Tuesday I’ll write a serious post about the Vegas race.
See you Tuesday.
or something like that.
Every race, I ask myself: if I were trying to get a new fan interested in this sport, would I use this race as a way of getting them hooked? Most of the time the answer is NO.
This one, at least, I’d say yes—provided we start around Lap 165 when Beatriz Arthur went into the wall, because before that it was mostly awful. I never completely understood why people tout ovals as being so great because there are plenty of oval races, particularly tri-ovals, where there’s no on-track passing and the leaderboard may as well be permanently painted. But at least this one got interesting toward the end, and I really thought Ed C. wasn’t going to make it. I still don’t know how Dario went from having 3 or 4 push-2-passes more than Ed, yet went through them faster. But there you are. Of such things upsets are made, and I think upsets are Good for the Sport.
* Thank God for the pits, because until Beatriz Arthur went into the wall around Lap 165, the demolition derby along pit lane was the only thing worth watching.
* Congrats to Scott Dixon for winning the “Oval Championship.” But does anyone really care? I don’t.
* I was very pleased to see Will Power knocked out early. As much as I was sad to see Simona lose it and almost take out her own pit crew. Bet she wants this season over faster than I do.
* Glad to see Sarah win. I had no respect for her as a driver, but plenty as a car owner. If I were AJ Foyt, I’d be seriously looking at my own team…
And so all that’s left is Vegas. Thought about going but really don’t feel like watching another road course in person (I’ve done that with Long Beach and it’s far better watched on TV). I hope to God there are passing zones.
I guess I’m the only one, but I thought the Baltimore race blew. To me, it was better only because the last one was so incredibly bad.
I guess I’ve become what I’ve been avoiding: one of the legions of the miserable. I’m not going to spread it: there’s enough snark on the net already. I’m just going to squelch it and take some time off for attitude adjustment.
To: Randy Bernard, CEO, Indycar
Sir,
I’m one of those fans who thinks that the greatest strength of the Indycar series has been and will be the diversity of tracks that it competes on. Let NASCAR compete on ovals (nearly) every week. Let Formula 1 have all road circuits. I want a healthy mix.
One of the chronic complaints that many fans have with the Indycar series is with the street and road courses (i.e. non-ovals). Some people claim that ovals are much larger part of the American heritage of auto racing, whereas road courses are more European. Frankly, that part of history doesn’t interest me, and I think it’s irrelevant to the majority of fans. What we want is an interesting race. I believe that when many fans complain about street and road courses, the complaint is about the racing results, not the venue type.
Racing is dull when it appears to be a parade, as we saw at Sonoma on August 29. This can be fixed. It is not that difficult.
Two words: Passing Zones.
The annual races which elicit the biggest groans from fans because of dull racing–such as Twin Ring Motegi and Infineon, all suffer from a distinct lack of passing zones.
Street and road courses can be reconfigured, and often are. Last week at Sonoma, the pre-race show featured the various configuations at Infineon.
Next time, configure in some passing zones.
You want people to watch Twin Ring Montegi? How about the finale at Las Vegas? You want people to care about next year’s race in China? Give them passing zones.
Passing zones allows the cream to rise to the top and the sludge to settle at the bottom. It keeps the viewers occupied lest something interesting actually happens on the track.
Incorporating passing zones into street and road courses would revitalize them for fans. They’d give us a reason to tune in or stay tuned to a race when we might otherwise be outside grilling hamburgers, washing the car or watching Tiger Woods’s tailspin on the PGA tour. If half of the Indycar schedule is going to be non-ovals, you have to figure out a way to make people want to watch; and just trying to get people in the stands at the event isn’t enough. It’s a national sport; most of us aren’t going to be at any given race; we’re going to be watching on TV.
You have the resources. You’ve got two dozen active drivers and far more retired or inactive ones, not to mention other experts, many of whom ought to be able to come up with some reasonable, workable changes to layouts that will create better on-track racing. Please! Use them!
I’m sick of watching that Indycar fan commercial with Dario asking some shlub what he wants from Indycar. More autograph sessions? A chance to go swimsuit shopping with the Izod model? An opportunity to toss that dumb Firehawk mascot into a tire barrier?
Here’s what I want from Indycar:
Passing zones.
Passing zones.
Passing zones.
The seedlings you plant with passing zones will bear great fruit.
Regards,
-me
And that’s all I’m going to say about it.
Jalopnik ran an interesting op-ed piece by Mike Spinelli about Mazda’s recent decision to mothball their rotary engine. I thought it was an interesting read for a variety of reasons. Partly because I also had a Wankel Rotary Engine model when I was a kid. But I put mine together and it (sorta) ran.
More to the point, Spinelli likens the Mazda engine’s demise as a further move away from cars as something more than just utility machines, and into the realm of appliances. Specifically he uses the Mazda RX-8 and the Toyota Camry as the yin and yang examples. It’s short and worth reading.
“The Camry has gotten a pretty decent little upgrade. Its design looks a little nicer, the steering wheel is a little nicer to hold, the dash cluster is a little nicer to gaze at, it drives a little nicer, it gets a little nicer gas mileage and it costs a little less, which is always nice.
“And that’s nice. Such details are monumentally important when you’re competing in a volume-sales segment, where competitive tweaks amplify across a span of millions of cars. But for those of you who don’t get off on P&L centers or the sum total of compartmentalized bits, it all may sound a little, well, inconsequential.”
I was thinking of Indycar as he talked about the dullification of making automobiles, particularly how reliable the engines have gotten, how reliable the tires are (more reliable than the fire extinguishers, it appears), and so on. And in general, how bland Indycar feels to me these days; and the technology, even though the cars are better, may be part of the problem.
I’m fighting this apathy as we move to Sonoma this weekend. I’ve never been much of a fan of Laguna Seca or Infineon. The races always seem lackluster to me. I think they’re the world’s ugliest courses, for one; they’re in a very picturesque part of the world and yet it always looks like they’re driving on a giant ant-hill in West Texas. For two, they always seem like parades. So even though last week’s debacle was an embarassment, a farce and a fiasco, at least it was unpredictable. I think this year the pole-sitter will win at Infineon. As long as the pole-sitter drives for Ganassi or is named Will Power.
Anyway, the point is: Indycars are toasters with downforce. I like my toaster (I’ve got a nice Kitchenaid), but I can’t say I care about it the way I do my cars, my good cameras, my old Zenith Transoceanic.
There really is something great about being better and being different.
Part I
and Part II
Senna, the documentary, is finally playing in wide release. I’ll be in a theater at some point in this weekend, and I typically avoid going to the movies as much as possible.
There’s also this, which I suspect is probably just as good on a per-minute basis.
You may or may not have seen this–I know BBC America cut it when the originally ran this episode of TOP GEAR. They may (or may not) have restored it for reruns (I suspect not).
I’m not going to complain a huge amount because it feels like that’s all I’ve been doing lately. But I will make a few key points.
1. It was a surprisingly turn of events to find Marco was a man at the pit interview after being taken out through no fault of his own, while Will Power seems to have taken on the mantle of petulant child. On the one hand, I do like drivers to be more animated because it is more fun to watch; but I respect people who can keep cool.
It wouldn’t be so surprising on another team, but Penske’s drivers are usually like the old astronauts: clean shaven, smiling, calm and cool under all circumstances. Will Power is turning into a skate rat.
2. Saw something about the aero kits being pushed back a year, but I thought that was old news? Either way, I’m seriously considering pushing my interest in Indycar back a year.
3. Unhappy to see the split in TV coverage between ABC/ESPN and VS will continue for another seven years. But it was nice to see Gary Gerould working the pits again.
4. and finally—what a mess. Sao Paulo doesn’t seem so bad now…