Live from the Milwaukee Mile -- 7:24 a.m. 6/1/08

Couple of quick items before heading to the track. I may not post again after this since I have to bolt from Milwaukee directly after the race to get home by 1-ish. Us old people are discouraged from driving past our bedtimes.

The huge, outrageous news from yesterday is that I did a 30-minute interview with Rick Mears. Dude, seriously. Rick Mears. Jeff over at MyNameIsIRL.com did a copious analysis of how Scott Dixon stats so far comare to Rick Mears. Rush over and read it NOW.

After the photo op featuring Rick and and a vintage car he once drove, I hung with The Legend for a little bit. Rick has a new biography out with help from Gordon Kirby and did a book signing here yesterday.

OK, for me it was like interviewing GOD. I didn't think I was worthy to even look upon him. I started taking off my boots in the Penske tent because I was standing on holy ground. There was a bush that burned, yet it was not consumed by the fire. I mean, Rick Effing Mears. Roger Penske said there was "none better" than Rick on the ovals. I gotta go with Rog on that one.

I'll crank out a big transcript of that epic interview soon. We laughed, we cried. Rick is a seriously unassuming guy. He asked ME if I wanted a beverage and then fetched them for us. WTF? I'm thinking, "You're Rick Mears. You cannot fetch the pressdog anything. It's an afront to all racing sensibilities." If you met Rick on the street and didn't know him you'd have zero idea he's a racing God, aside from the whoppin' Indy 500 champion ring on his finger.

Definitely not a "look at me!" guy. He said Sam Hornish is the driver who reminds him of him at Sam's age. We talked about the virtue of patients and the concept of "losing less" during the race.

Props to my boy Steve Zautke of the Mile staff and Penske PR dude Adam Hoover for allowing a lowly blogger to approach the throne.

I hear Sarah Fisher is in the hizzouse this weekend. I hope to posse up with her and her boy, Klint, at some point. Sarah's sponsor, Direct Supply, has a skybox at the Mile. So Sarah is meeting and greeting. I'm a Sarah Fisher Sponsor, so I'm sure they'll be coming around to keep the big 'dog happy. Dan the Honda PR Man asked me if I was pleased with my ROI on my Sarah sponsorship, and I gotta say I am. Got a coolio shirt out of it and bunches of warm fuzzy feelings.

I told some of my PR homeys we need to keep Sarah on pit lane of every race she's not in just so she can be deployed if Danica wants to rumble. It would remove that male-female fight barrier and would for sure be GO TIME. Never bet against a former dirt tracker in those instances. They know how to get their elbows up.

Speaking of Danica, pretty sure Buddy Rice is not a fan. Buddy Rice does not appear to be enjoying his IndyCar experience of late. You never see the guy, and when you do he looks like he'd rather be having unmedicated dental surgery than be there.

I think most drivers land in the "she's good for the series" category re: Danica and leave at that. If Danica needed a kidney, I'm not sure there would be a line of IndyCar people to donate. But, hopefully, she won't need a kidney any time soon. She's a business woman. She's moves. She's business. She's here to win races and championships, not make buddies. That's just Danica being Danica.

Random thought 1: I told my youngest daughter (13) that rather than bring her back something from the race, she can just pick herself out something at the merch trailers when the show comes to Iowa on June 22. I told her "then you can get the Danica shirt you were talking about." (See, I'm a race and let race kind of guy. If the daughter wants a Danica shirt, fine.)

Anyway, she said something about the kids making fun of or ridiculing her or something last time she wore her Sarah Fisher shirt to school saying Sarah isn't as good as Danica, yadda yadda. Rather than fly into a race, I was kind of amused by it. The sixth graders in West Des Moines are representing on the quality of drivers in the IRL now. I guess that's awareness progress. Makes me want to walk in there in full Sarah Fisher regalia, though. Bring it, little race fans.

Random thought 2: I drove to Milwaukee in one of my Champ Car t-shirts. I thoughst about wearing some Champ Car stuff to the track, just to make everyone edgy, but decided against it. People are so funny when they see stuff like that. But, they're letting me in on the media deal. No need to rock the boat with some Champ Car stuff. Although the Champ Car shirts I have are cooler than the IRL shirts. There's a cool deficit in the IRL shirts. First thing we gotta do is get rid of that I AM MINDY logo. I'll be in shopping mode at Iowa, so we'll see if there are any driver shirts that are worthy. Again, Danica has the edge here. Cooler stuff.

Speaking of Danica having the edge, Momica (Bev Patrick) and Mr. Hospenthal are in the house. Haven't seen the Teej although I'm sure he's lurking. This is the closest track to Danica's hometown, so they may have a family posse here. Given the way the the Danica family stalked me at Kansas, I expect to share margaritas and scanner headsets with Danica's aunts and uncles during the race.

Some reporter types (I don't even think they were bloggers) got a little churlish in the "bullpen" yesterday. The bullpen is an area in the pit that they block off for the drivers to meet briefly with reporters. The deal is, as with everything, there's a heirarchy. The hard-core, hard-carded media get to stand on the track side of the pit wall and get the first interviews. Then the non-hard-carded, second-tier people (that would be me) stay on the other side of the pit wall and hope for a few words.

This is the nature of all things media, so get used to it. I was thrilled just to be on any side of the wall. But one guy behind me got all in a huff at the leisurely interviewing being done by the hard-carders and stomped off. Dude. Simmer. I will give Danica props for handing the media. She makes sure everyone gets at least one question, but you're not going to swap recipes with her or share the latest story about your son's soccer game. She's got stuff going on, OK? Danica also waits until everyone is packed around to start taking questions, which I appreciate. So she ends up talking to about 24 arms holding little tape recorders and mics.

I gave my card to Security Chief Charles. I know, I'm INSANE. I expect to be banned from the track. If Charles comes at me wearing rubber gloves, I'm running (OK, hobbling) out of there as fast as possible. I introduced myself thusly, "Charles. I'm Bill Zahren, pressdog.com, I love your work." Then I gave him my card and he laughed and said "thanks." No tasers were deployed. Bullet dodged.

Charles got more air at Indy than Davey Hamilton, Will Power and John Andretti combined, times two, so he may want to look into getting some kind of sponsorships.

If you think the IndyCar media posse just drinks tons of beer and lays around on lawn chairs watching whatever's on the track, you'd be wrong. It's a ton of work. Most of them come and go from the media center, do a bunch of typing on laptops, transcribe stuff from tiny digital tape recorders, and then go back to their motels. No beer is swilled that I can see. No wild partying. A few of them will show up today and start stories with "We ended up at some bar downtown ..." but those are the rare 20-somethings. This is a tough gig and I wouldn't want to do it full time.

Speaking of info, you should all RUSH to Tracksideonline.com and subscribe to the news service. Patrick is in the house! Dude, I had 14 email alerts in my inbox from Patrick of TSO this morning. Actual number. All the team PR releases, original-material trackside updates like every 19 minutes (seemingly). A lot of us bloggers just pick up other people's stuff and use it for posts. TSO is original material, baby. Gathered at the track. Worthy of your cash.

If you're a hard-core and want to know first from the original source, the $20 annual subscription is hilariously cheap. PLUS you get tons of photos to thrill to. OMG. Go there NOW and subscribe.

I'm inbound to the track. Enjoy the race. Check out the pdog photo stream of this weekend here.

pdog, out.

Comments

[jdh417]

“Plus, showing up your competitors often comes back to haunt you.”

Dude, you are like totally omniscient.

Great coverage, P-Dog.

(More pictures of Brie-Brie next time.)

[mmack]

'Dog,

I seached high, I searched low, but couldn't find you at The Mile yesterday. I figured you had cornered Danica! for an exclusive Pressdog.com one on one interview, or being an Iowan, you were desperately searching for a pork tenderloin sandwich in a "brat and beer" kinda town.

Re: your daughter and her shirt. You may HAVE to wait until Tony's Amazing Automotive Travelling Circus makes its way to I-o-way. It was troubling to see how FEW vendors there were on the midway compared to last year, or even, dare I say it, the CART years. I wonder if the vendors, and Miller Beer (A-B getting the beer concession in MILWAUKEE?!?!?! The home of MILLER Park?!?!?) took the threat of '08 being the last open wheel race at The Mile seriously and chose not to show up.

Awaiting your take on the race,
mmack

[pressdog]

Sorry I missed you. I'm pretty low-pro at stuff like this, not in full pressdog regalia. I'll be at Iowa and Chicagoland if you make it there ..

[Allan]

Always enjoy your take on the madness PD

Thanks for bringing a smile to my face again

AB