Notes taken on the VERSUS broadcast of the IndyCar Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 19, 2009.
I timed it -- 11 seconds into the broadcast until the first "Helio." I hope this doesn't turn into a 129-Helio Castroneves reference race similar to the Random Danica Mention races we've had in the past.
Because I'm about the race, first and foremost, not the off-track stuff so much. Call me a purest if you must, but that's just how the pdog rolls.
Long Beach is Full of History and Tradition which we should all Appreciate. Montage. "F1" is said right out loud. Andrettis, Unsers get air. Queen Mary gets air. Moored at Long Beach since 1967. With that 15-second aerial footage, the Queen Mary has now gotten more air than half the field will get today
pressdog beer of the race is Ruedrich's Red Seal Ale, North Coast Brewing Co., Fort Bragg, CA. pressdog special-occasion snack of the race is Tostitos scoops and salsa, purchased at Dollar General Store in support of pressdog fav Sarah Fisher. Sarah, let's hang at Kansas!
Programming note: I did these notes from the DVR because I was attending some U14 youth soccer madness during the actual race. So that means I didn't have access to live timing and scoring during DVR replay. No matter, since I couldn't actually connect to live timing and scoring last week anyway.
I also won't have the benefit of witty-yet-insightful Twitter tweets from the Indy Star's Flirty Curty Cavin (@curtcavin) or my boy Jeff from MyNameIsIRL.com (@mynameisirl) who were trackside. Rush to Jeff's site to investigate his most excellent in-person Long Beach coverage.
You can follow me @pressdog and never miss news of the pdog having a tuna sandwich. Or you can join me and be among the more than 1 million following fellow-Iowan and Twitter king Ashton Kutcher and be subjected to an estimated 82 tweets per day.
Anywho, to the business at hand -- this is the first IndyCar race in the 35-year history of Long Beach. Last year's race was the Champ Car lame-duck Festival of Field Fillers won by today's pole sitter Will Power.
Bob Jenkins in the Pit Lane Sky Lair, which is really the Firestone Timing and Scoring Tower or some such. Yo-yo-yo to my homeys in the Firestone PR posse. I'll have a talk with Jack Arute and tell him to please stop throwing his empty beer bottles against the wall just to watch them shatter. Helio Montage that includes him going ass-around into the walls in qualifications. Came away from that with a headache, which touched off the Helio Concussion Watch.
Jack Arute is climbing some steps (to something, perhaps the Long Beach Wedding Chapel) arm-in-arm with Helio, as if this is their Big Day. They are so close I hope Jack had a Tic-Tac before they did this interview. Helio says he has no headaches a day after the crash but does have some muscle aches from not being in the car forever. Team did a phenomenal job with the car. Arute asks Helio to "EXPLAIN THE EMOTIONS" of the recent acquittal/hung jury-ness. Helio says difficult to describe. He thanks everyone for support.
Long Beach has Grid Girls! I see one holding Will Power's sign. You remember Will. The POLE SITTER. Will Power montage. Will doing donuts last year at Long Beach to win the last Champ Car race ever in the DP-01. Down to Robbie Floyd with Will -- Got the perfect starting position. Do my best. Got a great team behind me. Switched everything over to the new car. Everyone doing a great job. (Power continues to say and do all the right things in the face of the Helio thing. Impressive.)
Floyd -- What happened last week (in St. Pete)? Power -- Trying to jump Dario in the pits. My crew was in black and Dixon's was in red. Went to the red by mistake. Bad mistake for me. (For which, you gotta note, there was no penalty.)
Lindy Thackston, New IndyCar Pit Hotty -- Ryan Briscoe -- starting 10th. Tough to pass. Need to get through turn 1 safely and keep cool head and have good stops. Concern on the reds? Balance was out of whack yesterday, felt good this morning. Briscoe St. Pete montage. Drama in St. Pete package. It's a Festival of Packages. Rahal calling TK unintelligent (I am paraphrasing here). TK saying Rahal "stopped" in the road causing the contact. Danica talking about Raphael Matos checking her in a National Hockey League fashion hard into the boards and scaring the shit (literally) out of whoever was in the port-a-potty on the other side. Robert Doornbos hipchecking Wheldon into the tires.
Arute with Rahal -- LB notorious for the first turn crashes. Key is making it through turn 1. LindyCar with Matos who has one of the most aggressive stubble beards ever. Frighteningly realistic in HD. Matos gives his crew props for getting the car ready. Mentions the Air Force sponsor. Nice job.
Ryan Hunter-Reay -- Not happy about qualifications. Morning warm-up much better. Got engaged to Beccy Gordon (Robbie Gordon's sister) this weekend. Met five years ago at Long Beach. Mazel tov!
Paul Tracy gets air. Him and the Geiko Gecko. Geiko is sponsoring Tracy at Indy. Tracy with Arute in the Sky Lair. (Insert the song "Pimp Juice" by Nelly here.) Arute appears to be trying to get Tracy to use profanity. First brings up the 2002 Indy 500 "loss" to Helio. Best Tracy will do is say he got robbed at Indy in 2002 when he said he was "16 feet" beyond Castroneves and in the lead when the race-ending yellow came out, yet was ruled behind him. Arute almost dares Tracy to F-bomb by saying some people think he is old and slow. Tracy ain't taking it though, just refers to "coming off the couch" to get 4th at Edmonton last year. Tracy says he's glad Helio beat the rap because he wants to beat the best. Brassy!
Dario and Jay Leno package marks our reaching the outer ring of package hell. They did look at a photo of the 1930-something Indy 500, so I guess that's the connection. Now we have Dario on the TV talking about The Hair Bet he has with Tony Kanaan. If Dario wins, Tony grows his hair until he wins, if Tony wins, Dario shaves his head. Dario says key is to get through turn 1.
Al Unser Jr. Long Beach Homage. I think there is a race in here somewhere, but not sure. It may just be a Festival of Packages.
Danica Patrick and Mike Andretti package. I call makeup for Versus totally ignoring Andretti Green Racing for basically all of St. Petersburg.
Dixon package. Hot dog vendor package. Random child package. Tire barrier package. Dogs and cats living together package.
Booth posse in the Sky Lair (you can just bearly see Arute in the background tapping the keg). Jenkins, Robbie "Incredi" Buhl, Jan Beekhuis. Jan -- says Will Power may welcome the resolution of the Helio thing since he's no longer keeping someone else's car warm for them and has an end to the uncertainty. Robbie says Will needs to bring it home for Team Penske (so he can ... ah ... sit out the next race). We go through a prediction thing here. Everyone predicts winners. I wrote it down but don't energy to type it here. This week we even had all three pit reporters (sorry, two pit reports and a Pit Strategist) on camera talking about their picks.
Al Speyer, Executive Director for Motorsport at Bridgestone/Firestone North America -- "Drivers, start your engines." I think we may actually race.
Starting lineup brought to you by Trackside Online fan-supported news service. Be like the pdog and subscribe! You'll be flooded with original content PLUS all the team PR releases.
Will Power, Dario Franchitti, Raphael Matos, EJ Viso, Justin Wilson, Scott Dixon, Graham Rahal, Helio Castroneves, Alex Tagliani, Ryan Briscoe, Tony Kanaan, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Mario Moraes, Dan Wheldon, Robert Doornbos, Mike Conway, Hideki Mutoh, Darren Manning, Marco Andretti, Vitor Meira, Stanton Barrett, Danica Patrick, Ed Carpenter.
Cars are away. Will Power is stalled. Did not roll. Circus orchestra doesn't even have their instruments tuned up. Wait, he's rolling again. Three pace laps. Arute in the lair says he thinks Mike Andretti will go off sequence. Thanks for the news flash, Jack. When you start P22 on a street course that's as wide as my desk, you go off sequence (and hope for major circus music and the timely flapping of yellow flags).
Someone (maybe R. Floyd) reports that there is no communications in Power's Verizon car. HAR. Get it? No communications in the Verizon car. Can you hear me now? Nope. That slays me.
Let's light this candle -- standing starts are for the weak -- we are rolling to the GREEN.
Power got a MONSTER JUMP on Franchitti who loses about three places. We're all into turn one. Circus music cued ... CLEAR! Everyone makes it through turn one. No carbon fiber anywhere. Matos is second. Dario had a shit start. Maybe it was the hair?
Jan is impressed with the first corner lack of mayhem. He said Brian Barnhart, the Iron Hand of Justice, sat everyone down and told them not to drive with their heads up their asses like last week. (Paraphrasing, simmer down).
Lap 2 -- Wilson is working on Matos. Matos from Brazil, drives for the U.S. Air Force and Dan Wheldon, from England, drives for the U.S. National Guard. What's wrong with this picture?
Lap 4 -- Franchitti under Wilson for P3 ... CLEAR. Televised overtaking. I grip my chest here.
Lap 5 -- Power, Matos, Franchitti, Wilson, Dixon, Viso, Rahal, Helio, Tagliani, Kanaan.
Lap 7 -- Replay. Overhead shot of the start. Power slows down and then whole shots Dario to the line. It was like he jumped to warp drive or something. Jan gives Power major shout outs.
Lap 9 -- Will Power is .8 seconds ahead of Matos. Jan -- Wilson is saving fuel. You can tell by the sound of the engine from the onboard camera. Lets off the throttle briefly before getting on the brakes.
Lap 10 -- Arute tells us Tony is up to 10th from 11th (presses stopped!). AGR is conserving fuel. (Another shocker.) Expects the front runners to pit at lap 24 to 26.
Floyd tells us Dario is P2 now. Show us the replay! Robbie says "just saw Dario drive by Matos on black tires." No we didn't Robbie.
Replay! Dario inside Matos. CLEAR. Another televised overtake. Hope springs eternal for this race.
Cue the circus music!. Conway into the tires in T1. His ass is sticking out there on the track. Full-course yellow coming. Wait, track stays green. WTF? Jan thought it would go full-course, as did I, but it stays green. Can't figure this one out. IndyCar usually goes full-course yellow if someone hocks a luggie out the side of the car.
Dario dives into the pits. Perhaps in anticipation that it will go yellow. Out on the black tires in 7.5 seconds. Power is slowing! HOLY CIRCUS FESTIVAL -- we got EJ Viso air borne and now bouncing on his wheels into a run off. Got together with Dixon. Looked like Power slowing set off some major bunching there.
NOW we go full-course yellow? WHY now? Dude, Viso is in a RUNOFF AREA. I have no idea why we are yellow here and not for Conway. It's goofy. In any event, Merry Christmas Dario. (Did I see Chippy throwing buckets of nails onto the track just there to get the yellow?) He just pitted under yellow, so he will move up as everyone pits under yellow.
Lap 19 -- Booth guys speculate on Power's lack of Power (HAR). Floyd says Matos is coming in. Power also comes in. Tony stayed out. So did Briscoe and RHR. Jan does a package on brake bias, which is OK with me since we're all yellow and stuff.
Lap 21 -- green. Briscoe looks inside Tony into 1 ... NO.
Lap 21 -- Tony, Briscoe, RHR, Rahal, Andretti, Vitor, Dario, Ed, Danica, Power.
Lap 22 -- Onboard with RHR, shout out from the booth for his engagement, RHR gets fishy coming out of the hair pin. Doornbos is all over that. Inside ... CLEAR.
Lap 23 -- EJ interview -- had a good car. Saving fuel. EJ says Scott Dixon had a terrible exit out of corner and then threw a block party for EJ. Next corner he changed his line causing the contact. Viso said Power thought it was a full-course yellow.
Yellow Yellow Yellow. Now it is a full-course yellow because we got a traffic jam. Moraes, Mutoh, Wilson, Wheldon, Manning are all parked in the middle of the street. Replay -- Dixon into the back of Graham and that causes a Festival of Checking Up and the dreaded "accordion effect."
Lap 26 -- Pits are open. Wilson out. Broken rear wishbone. Arute and Scott Sharp in the Sky Lair. Sharp will be at the Indy 500. Since nothing is actually happening on the track in terms of non-pit-lane overtaking right now, might as well interview drivers who aren't actually in this race.
Lap 29 -- GREEN. Marco leads. Don't look for that to last since Marco will have to pit soon. Conway is back on the track because he's inside Tag.
Lap 30 -- Danica battling with Ed. Justin Wilson is out of the car and with someone, not sure who. Wilson -- Very difficult back in the pack. Everyone out there is so afraid they'll get passed they are stacking up. Stacked up in the hairpin. I got hit from behind and then hit someone in front.
Lap 34 -- Dario Leads. I think Marco pitted to give him the lead. Jan -- Danica and Dario are the great beneficiaries of that first yellow. Anniversary of Danica's win in Japan. Arute -- thinks Dario is saving fuel. Fans everywhere rejoice to know we're saving fuel. Larry the Cable Guy Voice -->"Them IndyCar fellas, they sure can save the fuel! That's excitin', that fuel savings thang, I don't care who you are, that's exciting right there." Makes me long to pay $75 a seat to watch it!
Power is working on Danica. Barrett in the runoff. No yellow? Not for this one. Only yellow for Viso in the runoff area, I guess. Hard to predict. I think they have a bingo ball machine in race control with half green balls and half yellow balls and we draw a ball after each accident.
Toyota Pro Long Beach race recap. Raven Simone into the tires. Keanu Reeves wins it in an android-like fashion. Al Unser Jr. wins in the pro division.
Yellow Yellow Yellow -- Ed into the tires. Ed gets extricated and back under way.
Lap 41 -- GREEN. Dario, Danica, Power, Helio, Rahal, Dixon, Tag, Wheldon, Briscoe, Tony.
Lap 43 -- Helio is nosing Power's ass.
Lap 47 -- Arute says cars have push to pass. This is completely new to me. I had no idea IndyCars had power to pass. I don't actually think they do, but Arute says so, so it must be true. I think -- and this may be way off -- but I think if you are in something other than P1 on your fuel mix and you push a certain button it takes you to P1 for how many ever seconds. So if you are already at full-rich P1, you have no power to pass. I think. Let me know if you know differently.
Lap 49 -- Dario will pit in 6 laps.
Lap 51 -- Danica and Power pit. Floyd says Danicker's team thinks she can go 34 laps on a fill. Jan thinks you'd have to be crazy to try and go 34 green on a tank. Power tries to get out ahead of Danica, but ..... NO, he gets almost beside her as she comes out, but can't pass under the pit speed limit.
Danica out in front of Power, but he's right on her ass (strictly in the professional sense). Cold tires. Looking looking looking, Power under Danicaaaaaaaa .... CLEAR. Power into P2. Just a veteran, cold-tires move from Power there.
Lap 54 -- Dario pits. 8.9 seconds. Out. Conway into the tires again! Full course yellow, of course. That's TWO timely yellows for Dario. Power and Danica are now also officially happy. Somewhere in here Jan makes the excellent point that on an oval the LAST thing you want after you pit is a yellow, but on a street/road course you pray for the track to go yellow the second you clear your pits from a green-flag pit stop.
Lap 55 -- pits are open.
Holy pit circus! Rahal gets waved out before the fuel nozzle is out of the car. We got a fueler down and ethanol everywhere. Able to get Rahal pushed back and now he's away. Fueler appears to be OK. No fire.
Replay --- Left front crew chief dude clearly waves Rahal out before the fuel nozzle is out. I ran the DVR back to make sure. Yep, pretty clear. Jack says Rahal was not sent early (um, yeah he was, Jack) and that Rahal saw the tires go on and the car come down and it was a case of exuberance from Rahal.
A tiny car pulls up and 12 clowns in lab coats jump out and hold eye charts in front of Arute. Nice theory, Jack, but he was clearly waved out. Tune to VERSUS in the Sky Lair, deploy the rewind and check the replay. Address your apology to Mr. G. Rahal, in care of P12, Long Beach.
Lap 58 -- Jenkins says Wheldon is doing a great job. Doesn't say what position Wheldon is in, which may be none of your business. But we know he's doing a great job.
Lap 58 -- GREEN. Dixon looking under Ed. Marco inhales Helio as Ed runs some unintential interference. Not much you can do to get out of the way when the track is three-feet wide in spots. Insert Brazilian swearing here. Dario is 1.5 seconds ahead of everyone. Arute reminds us that the question is can Power catch the leaders. Thanks for that, Jack. It's that kind of keen insight that we're looking for to enhance our viewing.
Lap 61 -- Race control contacts Matos to ixnay on the blocking. Radio transmission from Brian Barnhart, the Iron Hand of Justice HERE.
Lap 61 -- Dario, Power, Tony, Danica, Wheldon, Dixon, Briscoe, Andretti, Helio, Matos.
Rahal gets a drive through for contact with pit people and equipment for leaving early in his pit. Note to Graham: Next time park it in someone else's pit box because there is no penalty for that, or spear someone on the track under green. Just don't bump into your own fueler.
Lap 65 -- Dario is up by 3.4 seconds. Arute tells us that Dario's Lap 17 pit stop was "by design." Good to know the pit stop was not by accident. Watch out for those accidental pit stops are ass-kickers! It's like Dario thought he was going into the (IndyCar sponsor) McDonald's drive through and looked up and said, "Oh shit, I'm pitting!" That would really suck.
Lap 68 --Robbie tells us Marco has the second-fastest lap of the race. We're on board with Marco.
Lap 72 -- LindyCar says Dario's fuel is good. Can go to P1 on The Knob. Full rich. Use all that fantom power to pass. Wings back in the delta and get sssssssssupersonic.
Lap 73 -- Moraes into the tires. And the yellow/green lotto machine comes up .... full-course yellow! So much for the whole "We're trying to stay local with the yellows." Replay. Rumble strips. Robbie calls them "hot dogs" because they are major rumble strips. Moraes hits them and discovers the law of physics are not subject to interpretation like the rules in the IRL and bounds like a freshly loosed cocker spaniel into the tires. Robbie "When your car is up in the air, you're not going to slow down and you're not going to turn." Robbie caused me to chortle here.
Lap 76 -- Dixon dead sick. Toast in the road. Briscoe front-end damage. Connection? LET'S GO TO THE REPLAY.
Holy Bozo Moment! Briscoe ASS ENDS Dixon while under yellow. Dude. Looks like Briscoe was accelerating to warm the tires and totally speared Dixon in in the ass and got him a little airborne. Dixon radios "Dude, I like you as a friend, but seriously ..."(Kidding). It's Watkin's Glen PAYBACK. Briscoe and Dixon are equal now in the Total Mental Freeze that Screws a Competitor department.
Aside from the entertaining video replay, fans are treated to yet more yellow. Wooo-hoooo. Jan: When cars come off the hair pin they gas it to clean the tires off. Don't usually run into the back of someone though. (I appreciate the sarcasm Jan, more than you know.)
My viewing is enhanced right here with some serious Random Speculation Mode action with Arute chiming in like a fourth booth announcer. Arute may have heard they have better beer in the booth and be angling for a place. Didn't listen real close here as the yakking about what may have happened hits the rev limiter. If I were to add to the speculation, I'd say "Briscoe might have come under sniper fire" or the always popular "I bet he has a bunch of snakes in his cockpit."
Lap 77 -- Oh, by the way, we're green.
Lap 78 -- Briscoe will get a 30-second stop and hold penalty. OMG. It's like he ran over an air hose or something. I think he gets this because he didn't damage himself in the brain freeze incident yet hosed Dixon, so the IHJ felt compelled to bring the pain.
Dario immediately leads by about a day. He'll win barring air strike, which is an actual possibility in a street race.
We just learned that today is Ashley Judd's birthday. She'll be 26. Kidding about the age. I actually have no idea. (I'm Google-fluent: Wikipedia says 41. I accept congratulations on my mad Google skillz from Google Master Jeff at MyNameIsIRL.com) If her age equaled the number of square feet of material used to make her ultra-floppy hat, she would be 26 today. Ashley's back gets air.
Lap 80 -- Dario, Wheldon, Kanaan, Danica, Wheldon, Marco, Helio, Matos, RHR, Rahal.
Hairpin. Marco dives under Wheldon. WTF? BONZAAAAIIIII. Contact. NO! Wheldon keeps the position. May or may not be calling Marco a "wanker" and flipping him off here. (Just speculating. I saw no visual proof of that.) We're on board with Marco. Wheldon goes a little wide in the hair pin and Marco says "why not" and dives in there like Greg Louganis.
Lap 82 -- Dario is up by 4 seconds. Get Dashly Cam ready.
Lap 83 -- In a valiant effort to show us something other than lockstepping, VERSUS goes back to P10 and we're onboard with Tagliani where we see RHR throw him a festive block party. That'll get you a warning, buddy. This is a battle for 10th, and we'll gladly take it, frankly, as opposed to watching the festival of non-overtaking intercut with Ashley Judge tight shots up front. Now we're on board with RHR on the white-flag lap. Tag dives under (or outside, I can't recall), RHR gives it some left front lock up but holds his liiiiiiiiiiiine .... CLEAR. Tag under RHR for coveted tenth. Televised overtaking! Props to both drivers for keeping clean. My viewing was enhanced.
Cut to Ashley looking weepy. Dario wins. Vitor celebrates by going into the tires. About now Panther is looking like the salad days for Vitor.
LindyCar with Ashley. Ashley emotes. Says "the good old days are here again." Dario drove a "masterpiece" and did it against the best competition. The hat is massive. I just gotta say. I can't talk very loud at all because because I look like an albino walrus on camera, and Ashley looks better ta 41 than Iooked at 21. But if I looked as good as Ashley, I wouldn't wear The Gi-normous Hat. There must be a reason for it beyond sun protection. But as we say in racing, it is what it is, and Ashley's hat is probably more interesting than 53% of this race.
Ashley is probably weeping at least in part because she is back in IndyCar where her husband can look forward to more than P29 every race and she doesn't get pounded for showing too much cleavage during practice (which actually happened) as she did in N-word. (In fact, the publicity hungry IndyCar would probably be OK with Ash showing more of the girls.) Ash, let's hang in Kansas. We can talk about existentialism.
Ashley continues to talk here. I sense it is some seriously deep stuff she is saying, but that's as much as my notes indicate. Sorry.
Here are the Trackside Online final results: Dario Franchitti, Will Power, Tony Kanaan, Danica Patrick, Dan Wheldon, Marco Andretti, Helio Castroneves, Raphael Matos, Robert Doornbos, Alex Tagliani, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Graham Rahal, Ryan Briscoe, Vitor Meira, Scott Dixon, Darren Manning, Stanton Barrett, Ed Carpenter, Mario Moraes, Hideki Mutoh, Mike Conway, Justin Wilson.
Dario out with Jack. If you can't beat them (Target), join them. Arute: what was the key? Dario -- timing of the first stop. (Thanks for the honesty, Dario. Props to him for inhaling a few people on the track as well.) Called it perfectly (in conjunction with the yellow). Car was great. Crew is great. Says happy birthday to Ashley. Says Kanaan has to grow his hair out now.
Floyd with Power -- I was saving fuel like you can't believe. Had no telemetry and no radio for the race. He could hear bits of what his pit was saying in parts of the track. (WTF? And got second? On a street course? That's amazing.) I was trying to do it off the steering wheel. I heard "full-course yellow" on the radio so I backed off. (This radio transmission was confirmed by several sources, including my homeys at Trackside Oline, to which you should subscribe.) Then people passed me so I figured it was still green.
OK, I gotta say right here I'm a little yanked off. I hate to bust up the Helio Love Fest, but FIRST, Will gets kicked over to the backup car after working with #3 all weekend so Helio could make his triumphant return. Fine, he knew that was coming. THEN he gets the replacement crew that goes with the car. All wonderful people, I'm sure, but not the well-oiled Penske Machine that runs the #3 crew. So what does he do? Stuffs it on the pole only to have the stories be about Helio's post-crash headache usurp his party, again. THEN his radio and telemetry on the "identical" backup car are whack yet he remains P1 then some crew dude screams "yellow-yellow-yellow" when it's green-green-green so Power gives up two spots before he knows what is what. So has to inhale Danica and drive on fumes to STILL get P2. If his name was Andretti, there would be a statue being cast and a TV package being prepared right now.
I hope Roger gives Will a bear hug and festive fruit basket at least for everything he did over the weekend which was amazing and would have had everyone weeping tears of Power is Great Joy if not for The Return of Helio.
Here ends the fun-tastic party-pooper rant.
To Tony -- says they got lucky with the yellows. More honesty. My viewing is seriously refreshed. The pdog loves honesty. Some more about the hair. Look for a 10-minute Hair Package next week.
To Kinder-Gentler Danica -- I think in the race it pays off to be in fuel conservation mode (unfortunately yes, Danica). Great strategy. Great job in the pits. Admits a mistake let Power overtake her then complains about the blend line. "I need to be very happy going from 22nd to 4th." Agreed, especially since some festive Merry Christmas Yellows and pit crew skillz accounted for about 18 of those 18 track positions. (Correct me if Danica overtook anyone on the track.)
Dixon -- Remarkably rage free. "I kind of did the same thing to him (Briscoe) at Watkins Glen." PLUS, Dixon's bozo, no-penalty moment in the hairpin appeared to me to cause the train wreck behind him that did Wilson and others in. Feel free to disagree, but I think Dixon got into the back of someone causing the Festival of Checking Up that led to the Dreaded Accordion Effect.
Dixon -- Looking forward to Kansas. "When you've got a fast car you can definitely make it to the front on an oval." Insert me weeping copious tears of No Shit! here. Finally some Brute Speed. After the first two festivals of strategization and short filling which greater America loves as much as televised chess, I'm all like "Can we finally go fast now?" Scotty. Let's hang in KANSAS where we can all be full-rich and ssssssssupersonic.
LindyCar with Helio. You know what he said. So much fun. Thanks the fans. Not too sore post-race. Ready to go again, in fact. So happy. Fun-tastic. Here I am impressed that Versus went to Power before Helio. AND, I give them props for not having 209 gratuitous mentions/video of Helio during the race. Seriously. I expected it be like Danica in the early days where we cut to her and talked about her every 29 seconds even if she was P19. So props from me for sticking to the actual race, such as it was.
Driver points standings: Dario (84), Power (69), Briscoe (67), Tony (65), RHR (59), Wilson (49), Wheldon (46), Marco (45), Rahal (39), Danica (44).
Your second-place points guy gets to sit for Kansas, come back for Indy and then sit for the rest of the season according to current plans. If only he had an IZOD deal!
That's it for me, kids. Can't say I was wired about this race. I predict TV ratings of 0.2, which IndyCar will say equates to 192 million viewers, but actually is about par for a televised street race in America. Embrace the reality.
Tune in at 4 p.m. Eastern for an OVAL (hosanna, hosanna in the highest) at the most excellent Kansas Speedway. Check the dog blog for deluxe live coverage and photos. Follow your racing servant on Twitter @pressdog. Be sure to tip your waiters, click around the blogosphere for many live blogs and notes, support your kids' youth leagues and peace out from tony West Des Moines.
.
"(For which, you gotta note, there was no penalty.)" For which I gotta note, where was the pissiness about this when it happened last year? Does it only matter when it's Dixon? Where was his penalty for spinning at Watkins for that matter, if you're going to penalize Briscoe that is.
(Correct me if Danica overtook anyone on the track.) Not that it amounts to much but Barret and Carpenter on the first lap. I think. I know at least Barret for sure because both Ed and her got around him (I'm shocked...no not really) on the first lap.
Not to sound like an asshole here, but why make this complaint? It's no worse than a championship driver making every pass for the lead in the pits. Actually it is worse. The championship driver should be able to pass people.
Done beating a dead horse.
Posted by: The American Mutt | April 20, 2009 at 08:40 AM
"Done beating a dead horse." Some how I kinda doubt it.
Posted by: pressdog | April 20, 2009 at 09:13 AM
I'll stop complaining about Dixon if you stop complaining about Danica. Deal?
Posted by: The American Mutt | April 20, 2009 at 09:33 AM
This emailed to me from John:
Unable to post to your website, tech problem. If I could comment, I would comment this:
I was also wondering about: A: No communications in Verizon car and B: your lap 2 comments. Too good to be made up.
John
PS: I miss Jaime Little, still.
pressdog Note: Typepad says if you start a comment and take too long to get it done, it won't be accepted. Goofy, I know, but there you go. I guess you have to comment quick.
Posted by: pressdog | April 20, 2009 at 09:44 AM
OH. I somehow missed your lap two comment. I've frequently wondered about that myself. Although, I do believe there are an equal number of hispanics joining the armed services as caucassions, so I guess it makes sense. I'm bored pressdog gimme some more fun reading.
Posted by: The American Mutt | April 20, 2009 at 09:50 AM
For the record, just to be clear, I'd like to stress that any point of view I express isn't an attack on you--and if you've ever taken issue with anything i had to say I apologize.
Posted by: The American Mutt | April 20, 2009 at 11:38 AM
My favorite off-track moments were from the announcers:
Jack Arute calling Stirling Moss a Formula One champion. (Uh, Jack, the guy is fairly well known among "racing" fans as the best driver to NEVER win the F1 world championship.)
Bob Jenkins giving "a shout out to Sam Hornish for his ninth-place finish at Phoenix." (Go Sam! Woo-hoo! We're number nine, we're number nine!!)
Thank goodness the racing was pretty good and the cautions were minimal. (Otherwise, we'd have hearn more of this crud from Jack and Bob.)
Posted by: Harder Hallwood | April 20, 2009 at 12:27 PM
Several things:
1) Ashley's hat is probably only about 50% of the size of some of the monsters Sandy Andretti used to unleash back in '91 or so. Read into that whatever you will, regarding ego size or whatever else.
2) I am fully behind you on the "party pooper" rant. Will had an AWESOME weekend, given all that happened around him. He should be in a car for the rest of the season, and I'm not just saying that because I have him on my fantasy team. He's one of the most talented young guys in the series, and it drives me crazy to have dudes like Mike Conway wrecking five times in two weeks and Will potentially sitting on a war wagon next week in Kansas.
3) I'm relatively certain that The Jackster was mixing up Sir Stirling with the Actually Late Jimmy Clark, who Dario is a renowned super-duperfan of. For starts, Jimmy is actually dead (hence, the "late" part). For seconds, Sir Stirling in his heyday was known to have...um, many more than one girlfriend. For Dario to have recognized "Stirling's girlfriend" from some photo he saw once...that would be like recognizing some pair of huge sunglasses in a pile of huge sunglasses as being "Danica Patrick's sunglasses".
Posted by: The Speedgeek | April 20, 2009 at 01:02 PM
Nicely said, Speedgeek. Agreed on all counts. I tend to shut down the noting when Jack starts talking about Days of Yore. Caught the Sam P9 shout out Harder. I don't generally note N-word stuff, but you've done a nice job of including it here via comment amendment. Nicely played.
Posted by: pressdog | April 20, 2009 at 01:29 PM
The only comment needed for this race is: Next race, we go fast. uh Race cars going fast, seems like a good idea.
Posted by: John S | April 20, 2009 at 04:17 PM
"Arute says cars have push to pass. This is completely new to me. I had no idea IndyCars had power to pass. I don't actually think they do, but Arute says so, so it must be true."
Between Arute pulling randomly wrong facts out of his ass all day, and Jenkins absolutely butchering 90% of the field's names, I'm convinced the on air crew was passing around a bottle of Patron during the race...
Big Floppy Hat? = Bat shit crazy. Chicks a nut job. Nuff said.
Agree 400% on the Will situation. I've never felt more sorry for a pole-sitter/podium finisher. He had the disposition of Eyore all weekend. Poor bastard.
Damn straight Dixon was rage free. He was a one man wrecking crew the entire race. Any anger on his part would be deeply misguided.
No mention of the looming and plasticly creepy Gene Simmons walking behind Danica during Arute's foreplay.. er.. "interview" (seriously, he lunged at her so aggressively it caused her to laugh out loud nervously!)
Posted by: Meeshbeer | April 21, 2009 at 12:41 AM
Re the shoutout to Sam Hornish - Sam finished 9th out of 43, Danica finished 4th out of 23, which to my mind puts them pretty even in their respective fields. Danica gets the big fanfare for her finish, but Sam shouldn't? Sorry-even if it is the N-word, he did a heck of a job.
Did anyone else notice the look on Will Power's face after the race, before his post-race interview started? I felt so badly for him. He's saying all the right things, and probably for the most part is feeling that way too, but boy, I think he was hurting way deep down at that moment.
Posted by: Sue | April 21, 2009 at 07:04 AM
I feel for Will, but he knew the deal going into it (that he'd get booted if Helio beat the rap, as Paul Tracy says). Unfortunately, the fact of life in big-league racing is you can be Michael Schumacher Jr. and with out a sponsor you're driving squat.
Posted by: pressdog | April 21, 2009 at 07:14 AM
Sad but true Pressdog. I haven't made up my mind on Will being without a ride yet. On the one hand the mans on fire on the left and right turning tracks, but until i see how he does on an oval, in a penske car, for the whole duration of a race, I'm reserving judgment on whether or not i feel either merely bad, or outright terrible. The easy way for me to solve this would be Roger doing the sensible thing and putting him in a car at Kansas, not waiting a whole month to see how he does in the 500.
Posted by: The American Mutt | April 21, 2009 at 10:31 AM
What is the deal with the push to pass? I am not so sure that they do have push to pass. PDog: Get to the bottom of this. STAT.
Posted by: John S | April 21, 2009 at 11:23 AM
Jack Arute is a tool. And I knew LONG before the season that Bob Jenkins is wooden and befuddled, NOT an ardent race fan or student of the sport, and I wondered WHY he was hired to bring-down the booth...
Posted by: Brian | April 22, 2009 at 09:02 AM
Did anyone else notice when Jack Arute was interviewing Helio at the beginning up on the platform, that all the other drivers that walked past ignored them, except Mr. Viso, who stopped, flapped his gums like he was talking (making fun of Helio), and then kept going? OK, pretty immature and insensitive considering the emotional experience Helio has been through (wait - isn't everything an "emotional experience" for Helio?) but man, it made me laugh my ass off.
Posted by: SpeedyRB | April 22, 2009 at 11:42 AM
Totally missed it, Speedy. I need to go back to the DVR for that one.
Posted by: pressdog | April 22, 2009 at 12:03 PM