OT: Indy 500 and Danica Patrick.

[Robatoy]

[snipped story about NASCAR]

That *IS* the sport. Crashes. Aint it fuhhn? Turn left

turn left

turn left

turn left

Boooohringggggggggggg

[Ba r r y]

Those cars are simply unfriggin' believable! A few years back I got to Montreal, and the acceleration and nimbleness of those cars just has to be experienced to be believed. TV doesn't do them justice.

I also like visiting the local NASCAR modified oval tracks (Stafford and Thompson), as the competition is pretty tight with 1960's technology.

Barry

[Lee DeRaud]

Looks like Jill Hennessy's younger sister: can't go wrong with that.

I just hope she doesn't turn into the Anna Kornakova of motor racing: great pictures, no wins.

Lee

[Lee DeRaud]

Yeah, all it took was for the FIA to make the qualifying rules as Mickey-Mouse as the ones for the Indy500.

Lee

[Wes Stewart]

When you never lift, carbs are just fine. Some of the best are made a few miles from me.

shop is pretty impressive.

Typically something like 43 cars (NASCAR) on a 1-mile oval vs. 24 cars (F1) strung out over a dozen miles, what would one expect?

I was amazed at PIR last Nov. when it took about 90 laps for the first car to retire and that wasn't a wreck.

He's good and certainly had the best equipment. Too bad we couldn't put Sterling, Mario, Juan, Jimmy Clark, the two Stewarts, Jackie and Tony, A.J. and a few others together in identical F1 Ferraris and see who is really the best in F1.

And then take them all to a dirt track and strap a sprint car on them and see what happens. I'd vote for "cousin" Tony. [g]

[Robatoy]

Add Emerson, Prost , Mansell and Thierry Boutsen to that list.

I think they attempted that somewhat with IROC...just that the cars weren't fast enough to make it exciting.

Any minute now and this thread will turn into a Marciano vs Clay..or Lewis vs Foreman...oooops.. I said too much.

[Fred]

I take it from his e-mail provider that he is in Canada - do you know where? It's very interesting living in a border city and having your metropolitan area actually encompassing two countries. My daughter chose to take French all through school here, as many of her friends were across the river and were involved in French immersion classes, so learning to speak French became very important to her.

Regards, Fred Bearman Port Huron, Michigan

[Ba r r y]

Roy vs. Hasek.

Yankees vs. Red Sox

Rangers vs. Bruins (or Flyers)

Giants vs. Cowboys (or Eagles)

Packers vs. Bears vs. Vikings...

Wallace vs. Earnhardt (think 80's!)

Barry

[Robatoy]

Well, Fred, 3 of my daughter all took French immersion, one of them still is. It's very handy here in this 'officially bilingual' country.

My SWMBO (doesn't rhyme with BMBO) gets a few of her favourite groceries in Port Huron. I still do the odd Lowe's or HD visit and stop in and get a pretzel at Birchwood.

My sister, who lives in KC (Olathe) flies into either Flint or Detroit so I'm across that bridge often.

Sarnia is my favourite place on earth. It has everything... just like Port Huron.

[Robatoy]

Yabbut... all those rules apply to everybody. It's not as if the rules include: If you have a red car with a prancing horse logo, your wing has to be smaller than the blue car with the star on it...

But, I agree, this years rule changes sure seemed to have made a huge difference to some teams.

[Max]

Sarnia, right across the bridge. I was born there, grew up in MI. Now living in Texas. My kids all speak Spanish quite well. I struggle with it.

Max D.

[Charlie Self]

And now Robbie Gordon is whining because Ms Patrick is 105 pounds lighter than he is, so has an advantage. It should be interesting, to see if IRL forces her to add 100 pounds of lead in her next race, if she does well in this one.

[Ba r r y]

Some sanctioning bodies weigh the car with the driver, as not only is the total weight judged, but the left to right percentages.

Fat guys can bias an oval car more to the left. The extra overall hit is well worth it on a short track.

Small-time cars have also been known to "lose" some weight from the right side during the race. This weight is usually lead bars slid inside a hollow frame component, blocked with wood wedges, and held in place with a safety bolt. On more than one occasion, the bolt has been "forgotten", causing the weight to unfortunately fall out during a race. It took some bodies years to finally require a rescale after the race of top finishers.

I'm really not making this up.

Barry

[Lee DeRaud]

Well, not quite. But they diddled the qualifying rules last year, and it didn't work: Ferrari found strategies to overcome them. The rule changes this year seemed *specifically* designed to make those strategies obsolete.

Or at least some tire companies. Bridgestone has been behind the curve on tire design for several years now, but the Ferrari-Schumacher combination was good enough to make up for it. This year's rules played right into Michelin's strength: their endurance racing experience.

If F1 was actually serious about reducing costs, they would have gone to a "spec" tire a decade ago.

Lee

[Greg O]

My dad and some of his buddies at work did it a few years ago to another coworker. Add gas everyday for a week or two, but then they started to siphon some out. Really messed with this guy's head! Greg

[Lee DeRaud]

That whole bit is from a Walter Mathau movie from 30+ years ago... "Kotch", I think.

Lee

[Ba r r y]

On some of our local short oval mod tracks, at the end of the feature, it wasn't uncommon to see a couple of weights on the ground, up near the wall.

Great story about the Indy cheater tank.

Barry

[Duane Bozarth]

Mark & Juanita wrote: ...

As long as there is no obvious intent to cause the event it's just racing--stuff happens at 200+ mph.

[Wes Stewart]

[snip]

Nope. That's racin'. Of course in open-wheel cars trying to spin somebody out isn't done. Most, but clearly not all, of the crashes are due to slower, non-competitive cars and drivers that probably shouldn't be on the race track. A.J. Foyt IV leaps to mind.

This is not to say that they are unskilled, just that there are three or four teams with the depth (deep pockets) who can afford limitless hours of development, practice, back-up cars, etc. and dominate. The number of driving positions on these teams is limited so other good drivers are left to drive inferior equipment, with limited practice time, so-so pit crews, and so forth.

[mac davis]

from what I heard after the race, they're going to be looking hard at a few other races that A.J. IV ran and was involved in crashes while being passed... I'd guess that if there is a pattern there, they could suspend his racing license or something??

Like one of the drivers said, if you're doing 180 mph and being passed by someone doing well over 200, you should KNOW where they are and that you need to get out of the way.. especially with the radios in all the cars now..

mac

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