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IndyCar at Fontana – The Morning After

Will Power celebrates his 2014 IndyCar Championship. (Photo: Chris Owens, IndyCar)

IndyCar finale rapid reaction ..

Congrats to Will Power on the championship. I was glad to see Will win because losing it again in the finale may have made him a threat to hurt himself and others. I like Will because he has a unique personality and a bit of “screw it, I’m going for the win!” streak in him. Both are refreshing.

IndyCar Should Grab the STEM

 

Collete Davis

IndyCar should become the IndyCar Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Series in 2015.

I give Collete Davis -- science brain, race car driver and Woman of pressdog® -- full credit for this idea. It was Colette who first made me realize that racing in general and IndyCar racing in particular is rolling STEM. IndyCar should use that fact to reach out to young fans, differentiate itself from other forms of racing, and simultaneously encourage the next generation to pursue careers in STEM fields.

What Collete did while a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was go to high schools and use racing to drive home the point that science can be dead sexy.

How Much Information is Too Much and Criticizing the Critics

If you’re a life-long student of mass communications like I am, two tragic incidents recently — the death of Kevin Ward Jr. when he was hit by a car driven by Tony Stewart, and the death of Robin Williams — provide opportunity to observe The Media in action and, more interestingly, public reaction to the media in action.

Twitter and Facebook have a lot of downsides, but one of the big upsides is they allow people to voice opinions, and allow the world access to those opinions like never before.

Usually these media critiques come down to a few main themes:

• Too much information
• “Sensationalized” information
• Inaccurate information
• Willful attempts to use the power of The Media to damage someone
• A relatively new one: lack of standing to comment
• An oldie-but-goody variant: intentional laziness or favoritism because the media are complicit with one side or another.

In general (please see discussion below for all the caveats and nuances) 1) people don't get that the media is a business and that it's VERY market-driven and 2) I tend to error on the side of more information over less, within reason.

Let’s break it down (I wish I was getting graded on this term paper …)

Reactions to NASCAR at Michigan and IndyCar at Milwaukee

 

Will Power puts on his gloves before carving the field, surgeon-like, at Milwaukee.

Couple of ovals on the schedule this weekend, which turned my Sunday into a Mr. Sluggard on the Couch day. Insert wife chagrin here. So let’s recap …

NASCAR at Michigan. UMBRAGE TAKEN! Remember that umbrage is good, and we had some umbrage after this one. Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson spent several minutes face-to-face, looking unimpressed with each other, gesturing more wildly as the conversation went on, but no pit brawl broke out. Each was unhappy with the other’s alleged gratuitous paint swapping on the track.

Tammy Kaehler Doesn’t Just Turn Laps with Her New Book, Avoidable Contact

The best compliment you can pay Tammy Kaehler after reading her third book, Avoidable Contact, is a big one: she’s not just out there turning laps.

One of the dangers of multi-installment series featuring the same protagonist is they can morph into a sort of same-story-different-location exercise. That is, the fundamentals of each book start to replicate -- the protagonist pulls out the same bag of tricks to solve the mystery, the same types of characters appear -- and all that changes is window dressing like location or time of year.

But in the racing vernacular there’s no “holding station” for Kaehler in book three. She’s not just doing the literary version of saving fuel and tires trying to make it to the end of a several-dozen-book run of her Kate Reilly racing-themed mystery series. Instead she’s driving for the win, even in the early stages of what fans hope is a long run.

There Have Always Been Crazies, They Were Just Harder to Hear

Inevitably, with every controversial event, the outrage flows. Umbrage is taken. People are pissed about what other people say or didn’t say, implied or didn’t imply, etc. People leap to “set the record straight” and defend the honor or this person or that person. Millions of words are sent to battle from every corner (and mine now join them).

So it is with the death of Kevin Ward Jr. who was hit and killed by a sprint car driven by Tony Stewart.

Kenzie Ruston Drives from P15 to P2 at Iowa Speedway

Kenzie Ruston on her way to P2 at Iowa Speedway

Kenzie Ruston credited her drive from a starting spot of 15th to finishing second at Iowa Speedway to great car adjustments that gave her "tons of drive" on the high line. She drove to P4 before a late caution let the field pack up and gave Ruston her opportunity for the win. She said the victory probably slipped away when she spun her tires on the final restart.

Brandon Jones held on to win by half a car length. Story here.

Transcript of Ruston's comments after finishing second at Iowa Speedway on August 1: