*infinity

*I know nobody else cares


http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/report-champ-car-indycar-deal-done/

2/19/2008 9:02:14 AM

good, i've already got my 500 tickets ordered

2/19/2008 9:56:08 AM

word man. I may go this year, of course i have family in the heart of Indianapolis anyway

2/19/2008 4:58:45 PM

Citizens Rejoice! After 12 long years our national nightmare is over!

Hopefully, I'll wait til Thursday before I accept it because racing fans have gotten burned on possible reunification so many times.

As a fan growing up of the great Rick Mears and the semi-great Teo Fabi, there is nothing that brings more joy to me than the prospect of one open-wheel series that can be relevant again!

[Edited on February 19, 2008 at 7:42 PM. Reason : /]

2/19/2008 7:38:58 PM

sittin at the top row of the bottom grandstand at the beginning of the 1st turn. Nice and covered for when it rains

2/19/2008 10:31:59 PM

it is about fucking time

2/19/2008 10:45:15 PM

Danica v Paul Tracy

but really it will be Rahal v Andretti, about the same age, both want to go to F1, and NOW can be compared in the same series and car type fairly *

(except Andretti drives for his dad and may be given preference on the team. G Rahal will compete AGAINST his dads team. Interesting)

2/20/2008 8:49:26 AM

so how about IRL teams having 5-7 years of experience that champ car doesn't?

here is a report

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/special-vertically-challenged//P1/

2/20/2008 9:11:41 AM

so does this mean that the main two open wheel series are F1 and IRL?

2/20/2008 9:26:06 AM

No it means that the main open wheel series is as it has always been F1...
but the now there is one less "bush series" in Nascar terms.

2/20/2008 10:11:30 AM

^^ It means that the Europeans do their own thing with their own open-wheel series and are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things to this country after Bernie Ecclestone said, "Singapore > USA" and after Scott Speed showed that the worth of a Formula One career is the ARCA series, and the North Americans are going back to pre-1996 by only having one open-wheel series in North America.

How's this though for a haphazard first year? They're going to run Japan on April 19th, and Long Beach with the CART Panoz chassis on April 20th. Both will be IRL races. It was the only way they could satisfy the Long Beach and Japan promoters.

[Edited on February 21, 2008 at 1:23 PM. Reason : /]

2/21/2008 1:22:09 PM

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/open-wheel-unification-announcement-postponed/

ok fucking get it over with already

2/22/2008 1:22:18 PM

GOT HER DONE

time to phone my uncle in Indianapolis that is into racing

(I have 8 blood uncles in Indianapolis anyway lol)

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/open-wheel-unification-announced/

today was a good day. Good job interview, found a suit for like $35, clearance camera battery, just miserable weather

and now this. I am stoked.

2/22/2008 4:55:28 PM

its on indycar.com official IRL website front page story.

2/22/2008 9:46:47 PM

this article has a chart of what happened to drivers, chassis, engines, number of races during the split

at the bottom

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080224/SPORTS0107/802240419/1052/SPORTS01

Last night on SPEED's Wind Tunnel it was pretty much said that Long Beach and Japan will be the same weekend and no way around it. Wednesday both 'sides' will have the 'official' press conference at Miami.

2/25/2008 9:09:58 AM

Quote :

"Citizens Rejoice! After 12 long years our national nightmare is over!"

hard to believe its been that long.

2/25/2008 1:57:17 PM

official press conference at 12:20 ish today on indycar.com will have it


also live on Speed.

2/27/2008 9:17:19 AM

To give you an idea of how long it's been, this is a video of the last laps of the last unified Indy 500, way back in 1995.



[Edited on May 12, 2008 at 9:11 PM. Reason : psi]

2/27/2008 9:30:18 PM

So what races has everyone been to? I went to every IRL race at Charlotte, to 5 of the IRL races at Richmond, and to the following Indy 500s:

2000-won by Montoya
2001-won by Castroneves
2003-won by Gil de Ferran
2004-won by Buddy Rice
2005-won by Dan Wheldon
2007-won by Franchitti (stupid rain)

2/27/2008 10:24:39 PM

2001 Indy 500 Castroneves
2004 Richmond Wheldon
2006 St Pete Castroneves

this year Richmond for sure, maybe Indy (I can literally decide this the weekend before because I have like 100 relatives there too)

I've been going to VIR a lot for SCCA and GrandAm stuff since its so close.

youtube vid- I have a dvd collection of the 1960s through 1999 of the 500 races. Villenueve thinks that he actually drove an extra lap during that race thus lapping the field because they were penalized or something like that. My sister went to that race and my brother in law always remembers being in turn 4 and Goodyear is like flying by and everyone else is just getting up to speed.

[Edited on February 28, 2008 at 8:53 AM. Reason : youtube 95]

2/28/2008 8:51:51 AM

i've been to about 10 Indy 500's since about 88 (I was 3)
Elkart Lake
Michigan 3 times
Charlotte twice (who else was there when the guy got his head taken off by the flying tire?)
Formula 1 at indy twice
kentucky once

2/28/2008 11:32:15 AM

yeah f1 at indy in 2003 and 2007 as well

2/28/2008 6:48:02 PM

Here is an Indianapolis-based weekly radio show on Indycar/F1. It's on the local ESPN radio affiliate and has an Indy Star racing columnist as one of the two anchors.

They've only done two shows so far, but they store them like podcasts if you wish to listen to previous ones.

http://www.1070thefan.com/trackside/

3/24/2008 8:30:43 PM

Saturday night

26 cars for Homestead

ESPN2 in HD!

weeeeeeee

season pick: Scott Dixon

ONE former champcar team will win a road or street course this year but 0 ovals

3/25/2008 7:34:10 AM

They need to get Tracy a ride early in the season.

3/25/2008 9:03:15 AM

too bad we have those ugly-ass cars

3/25/2008 9:31:37 AM

yeah cars eh

Friday at 7pm ESPN2 will have an hour long program -season preview

3/26/2008 6:59:42 AM

if anybody plays rfactor, they just released the IRL 2007 mod. Its great.

3/28/2008 9:03:32 AM

I'm pretty sure I'm going to the 500 this year

Last week's race was pretty much awful for the transition teams, but today in practice on the St Pete street course they faired pretty well. I still think that Justin Wilson can pull out a win on a road or street course this year. No way on an oval though.

I still plan on going to Richmond if I do or don't go to Indy. That is going to be awesome, 26ish cars on that little track. Should be interesting.

[Edited on April 4, 2008 at 8:56 PM. Reason : 500]

4/4/2008 8:35:55 PM

they need to bring turbos and shit back.

4/5/2008 1:41:24 PM

turbos on big ovals is the greatest sound ever

I'm excited to see todays race in HD. ex champcar teams looking good too.

4/6/2008 12:24:12 PM

wow

Graham Rahal wins

in his first start after not starting last week

of course he did OK in 1 year in champcar

4/6/2008 4:54:00 PM

Good job Graham Rahal.

4/6/2008 6:12:28 PM

I just love how a "new" team and "rookie" driver won in a car that all of the older IRL teams already had figured out.

4/6/2008 6:24:46 PM

its actually a really good thing, hopefully some teams on the fence (Forsythe) will take notice and figure they can actually run with the IRL guys

4/6/2008 8:01:42 PM

well, it was raining... definitely gives the edge to the cart guys. At the least, it evened the playing field for everyone. It was an entertaining race, even though their wasn't much passing. I enjoyed the 2 hour time limit, made it seem more urgent. It made the nascar race (which started before and ended later than) seem extremely boring by comparison

4/6/2008 10:31:09 PM

Quote :

"It made the nascar race (which started before and ended later than) seem extremely boring by comparison"

no. nascar being at fucking texas cookie cutter piece of shit track made it boring.

4/6/2008 10:37:19 PM

Yeah, I've never liked Tejas for NASCAR. Plus, Bruton Smith just makes it worse. It's like he's trying to convince everyone it is one of the great races, when at the end of the day the event feel just feels watching New Hampshire.

So in 2 weeks we get the split feature, and after that is done there will be no split events again...ever. Here's your tentative entry lists:

Long Beach:

Newman/Haas/Lanigan-Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson
Forsythe-Paul Tracy, Franck Montagny, David Martinez
HVM Racing-Nelson Philippe, E.J. Viso, TBD
KV Racing-Oriol Servia, Will Power, Jimmy Vasser
Rocketsports-Antonio Pizzonia, Juho Annala
Dale Coyne-Bruno Junqueira, Mario Moraes
Conquest-Franck Perera, Enrique Bernoldi
Pacific Coast-Alex Figge

Motegi:

Penske-Helio Castroneves, Ryan Briscoe
Andretti Green-Tony Kanaan, Hideki Mutoh, Danica Patrick, Marco Andretti
Target Chip Ganassi-Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon
A.J. Foyt-Darren Manning
Rahal Letterman-Ryan Hunter-Reay
Marty Roth-Marty Roth, Jay Howard
Vision-Ed Carpenter, A.J. Foyt IV
Dreyer & Reinbold-Milka Duno, Buddy Rice
Panther-Vitor Meira
Greg Beck-Roger Yasukawa

[Edited on April 6, 2008 at 11:28 PM. Reason : .]

4/6/2008 11:22:57 PM

so anybody want to go to Richmond?

4/10/2008 8:30:55 AM

^ I am, but I'm going with my dad.

4/11/2008 9:33:22 AM

About 2 to 3 years before my time of races I remember, but a blast from the past courtesy of YouTube, the 1987 Long Beach Grand Prix.

Part 1/Pre-race: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WjYWQbDStk

Part 2/Grid & start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXOwaKjqpzs

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfh2tlm-6ZI&NR=1

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDolB_1IcCo

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHXHBnZxLHM

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axkdkpfslRI

Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNzH7l4Lv1k

Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZn7ylYJask

Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th78eQvG7X0

Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPffxsDx774

Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2MOeJJagIg

Part 12/Finish & Post-race: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYz8ZUuydiY

[Edited on April 13, 2008 at 6:15 PM. Reason : /]

4/13/2008 6:14:59 PM

word. I am always hitting up youtube for such things. I've got the Indy 500 box set as well

4/13/2008 6:17:26 PM

Rumor is Hornish will drive at Indy this year since he will be outside the owner points in NASCAR anyway

4/13/2008 7:27:53 PM

how sad

4/15/2008 8:46:09 PM

Marco Andretti

stop fucking yourself up son

4/19/2008 10:13:39 PM

Danica

4/20/2008 1:07:55 AM

ok i just woke up and watched my recording of the end

um yeah its like wait a minute

if Helio is slowing

everybody is pitting

uh hold on she can make it

its like no build up, oh hey Danica to the lead and the win

WAIT DANICA JUST WON WOW

4/20/2008 7:52:31 AM

I watched it with my dad live and we were trying to make heads or tails over who was going to win if it went green to the end, which it did. There were only three of the ten cars on the lead lap that topped off late in the caution, Danica Patrick, Helio Castroneves, and Ed Carpenter, and we figure they're the only 3 that have a chance at making it. As they're going through the last green flag run, and Carpenter was up 6 seconds on Castroneves and 12 seconds on Danica.

My dad cheers for Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV, so he was excited at the prospect of Carpenter winning. But we couldn't understand why he was right up on the leaders in 5th and had such a big lead on Castroneves and Danica. 10 laps to go and all the people leading start to pit, and then Carpenter pits and my dad's distraught at this and goes: "All the same people always win!" Castroneves takes over the lead at this point but he was going noticably slower. And then it was like you said, "Oh hey, there's Danica behind Helio. Oh look, she just passed him. Wow, there's only two laps to go!"

It's good for Danica to get that monkey off her back, like Marty Reid said last night, no one can call her Anna Kournikova from now on cause she's a winner now.

If you watched the post race, did you notice the trophy was as tall as she was?

4/20/2008 5:46:02 PM

i am going to call my grandad for today's Indy Star paper so i can have it

4/20/2008 6:29:20 PM

34 names on the entry list at Indy with like 6 cars TBA

oh yeah

5/1/2008 2:23:32 PM