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.

Holy Vice Grips! — Speaking of Jimmie Johnson, imagine his chagrin when he went to shift gears and the entire shifter lever busted off in his hand. Not good. So he called for a vice grips — undoubtedly the Kobalt Self Adjusting Locking Pliers available at Lowe’s — to try and remedy that situation. So, at the next pit stop, the crew handed Jimmie some stuff, and then for a minute or so we got to see in-car video of Jimmie trying to drive one-handed while attaching the aforementioned locking pliers. With the helmet and the gloves making it difficult (to say nothing of the whole driving the car thing) it was like watching astronauts try to repair a piece of the shuttle during a space walk. NO JOY for Jimmie, so later a crew member went in the side window like Superman and got that whole shifter deal remedied.

I was kind of surprised that when Jimmie talked about it after the race, he said “vice grips” which is, in fact, a registered trademark (Vice-Grip®) of Irwin tools yet it’s become the universal name for all “locking pliers.” (Think BAND-AID® and adhesive bandage) Carl Edwards, the master of sponsor mentions, would have said “fortunately, we were able to get the Kobalt Self Adjusting Locking Pliers available at Lowe’s in place on the gear shift and keep racing.” Note: from the video it kind of looks like it was an actual Irwin Vice-Grip® locking pliers, but we’ll probably never know the brand name of said tool. Jimmie finished P8.

NASCAR A-Main — A restart with 17 go to provided the A-Main/Trophy Dash for this race. Winner Jeff Gordon outstarted Joey Logano and eventually won. To Joey’s credit, he didn’t go quietly and battled Gordon, even the battle cost him P2 to Kevin Harvick. Logano settled for third. Logano has won twice in 2014, so he’s in the Chase, so maybe being in the Chase helped encourage him to battle for the win rather than just settle for a “great points day” and stay in P2. Gordon notched his third win for the season.

Danica spin and rally — On Lap 26, Danica effed up and spun on a restart and sustaining a bit of damage. The good news for her is the team (including the driver) kept their shit together, used multiple stops under caution to get the car fixed, and managed to drive from P36 and two laps down to finish P18 on the lead lap, thanks to some yellows and the Lucky Dog. A good finish considering the spin-o-ramma. A great team effort for the second straight race. Danica did her part to recover from the spin by putting her head down and driving, getting into Lucky Dog position and staying claim. Crew chief Tony Gibson Jr. and Danica both had praise for the team effort after the race. View the spin and details here.

NASCAR Michigan Race results here.

IndyCar at Milwaukee. Switching from NASCAR on the big oval at Michigan to IndyCar on the Milwaukee Mile was a big adjustment. The two tracks are only 315 miles apart, but as different as the Moon and Mars. Will Power dominated the Milwaukee race and won from the pole.

The Flat Oval Challenge — Milwaukee is a great example an oval track that is FAR better in person than on TV. During the heart of the race there’s action all over the track. In person you can see the entire track from the stands so you can pick the battles to watch. That way if your fav driver isn’t contending for the win, you can still watch him or her race with whomever for whatever position and be entertained. That’s pretty much how I watch every oval race I attend, including all of the IndyCar races ever run at Iowa Speedway. Even back in the day when I would go to Kansas Speedway or Chicagoland, I’d keep an eye on my driver (usually Sarah Fisher back in the day) and also keep tabs on the leader.

On TV they try to show the individual battles, but in my opinion they use too tight of a shot to do so, so you get two cars, one almost passing, the other, but can’t see the upcoming traffic or the relative position on the track and it’s not the same. It’s just very tough for TV to capture it.

Then, when one car dominates and there are few yellows for restarts, the raw excitement element can drop dramatically. That can happen in NASCAR, as well. In fact, if IndyCar had a yellow and restart with about 20 laps to go at Milwaukee it would have dramatically changed the viewer perception of the entire race. Hold that thought for a second.

Power Play — I was happy to see Willy Power win, and here’s why: I think Power’s sometimes bizzaro (OK, “eccentric”) behavior is fantastic for IndyCar. Will is famous for giving race control the double birds a few years ago, and he’s had some similar mental moments and kind of strange post-race interviews and helter-skelter looking moments. He makes goofy mistakes like pit lane speeding and throws Block Parties so Obvious that even IndyCar Race Control calls the penalty. All of that adds a lot of color to the IndyCar series, and I love color.

If Power develops oval skills to match his twisty skills, he could go on a Jimmie Johnson-esque string of championships. That’s a big if, but Milwaukee showed how far Power has advanced on the ovals. “I love winning on ovals!” Power yelled on the radio.

Road Oval — Feeding into that is the Road Oval element of the Milwaukee race. It wasn’t about raw speed — Power had the fifth-fastest lap of the day — it was more about overall strategy including saving fuel and managing tires. Tires tires tires. IndyCar ovals these days are all about tires (for better or worse). Fresh tires won it at Iowa, tire wear caused a 15 mph drop off in speeds during a stint at Texas, and they were the biggest thing in Milwaukee as well. At least based on the NBCSN announcers saying the word “tires” upwards of 2933 times. Getting your car set up and driving in such a way as to go fast while minimized tire drop off was The Key to winning at Milwaukee. Power and Penske delivered that, big time.

NBCSN made the best of the race, and for a while it looked like Juan Pablo Montoya would chase down Power and give us a knife fight for the win, but alas he (say it with me) … used up his tires … before he could reach Willy P. Again, if we had a yellow and restart with 25 to go, the race is transformed from lackluster into “a nail biter at the end.” Sometimes you get the yellows (Iowa), sometimes you don’t.

So Power won, Montoya second, Tony Kanan third. Race results here.

Joe New was THIS Close, Again — Newgarden’s team rolled the dice on fuel strategy, hoping for a yellow, and it came up snake eyes. But, they did recover a bit and bring him in before the last possible lap to refill the car and get new rubber with enough laps left to give him a chance to drive back through the filed. Newgarden went a lap down on that pit stop, but, with fresh rubber was able to pass Power on the track to unlap himself, then carve the field to get back to P5. Impressive. If we were at the track, we would have been able to watch Newgarden carve the field and been entertained. But, since there was a question of whether Montoya would catch Power for the win, the cameras stayed up front and we missed the aforementioned carving.

Boring? Fascinating? — That’s one of them eye of the beholder deals. Some are entertained by tire and fuel strategy. That’s legit. Some are also entertained by classical music and chess. Also legit. If you say the race was boring, be ready for angry reaction, because with some you’re not allowed to think something is boring. It’ just one of them hard-core IndyCar fan rules (and probably one of them hard-core NASCAR fan deals as well). I thought the race was “lackluster.” There were points when we sat up, like at the end when we wondered if Montoya would catch Power and watched (OK, heard about) Josef Newgarden’s fuel strategy fail then almost succeed. But, I admit I dozed a couple of times earlier in the race.

What should be done?? Maybe nothing, as far as tweaking the cars. You’re going to get the Milwaukee 2014-type race on flat ovals, especially with IndyCar lightening downforce or the nature of the DW-12’s aerodynamics (I’m honestly not sure which it is) that creates less downforce, which means more sliding around and more or faster tire degradation. When you miss the setup (which means you can’t go fast and make your tires last) at a place like Milwuakee, you’re screwed. I don’t care if you’re the second coming of Rick Mears, you’re screwed. Throw in long greens and pretty soon you have four cars on the lead lap. It’s the same in NASCAR and IndyCar. I should throw in a shout out here to IndyCar for refusing to reach for the phantom yellow for MENACING HOT DOG WRAPPERS in order to spice it up. Often three or four cars get it right and they end up contending for the win on a flat oval like Milwaukee, but on Sunday only one got it right. Power had the best car, so justice was done on the track at least.

Scanner … please. — Here’s why I watched all of NASCAR races and rarely doze off, even during races that have audiences dropping like flies and BAWLING for yellows: NASCAR RaceView Audio. It’s a subscriber service that I pay for (so I’m motivated to use it) that lets me listen to the radio of any driver in a NASCAR Cup race. So you can listen to your favorite driver, or jump around, I think you can even set it to scan all the drivers.

So what I do is get Danica Patrick on the scanner (act shocked), turn on the TV with the volume down low and watch timing and scoring on my tablet. Bam. SO, even if Danica is back in the pack and getting no love on TV, I can keep track of her on timing and scoring, listen to what she, her spotter and crew chief are saying, and stay engaged in the race.

I’ve begged IndyCar to get a scanner service forever to no avail. It must be an economic thing. Most likely they don’t think enough people will pay for the service to make it work. Fair enough. But, again, the service keeps me connected to the NASCAR race even when it’s not a barn burner.

I hear that you can listen to select drivers via the Verizon IndyCar App, which is great for Verizon customers (which I am), and if it’s reliable (I tried it a couple times and it crashed on me), but web-based is far superior in my view. More reliable, less chewing up my phone data allowance when I am not connected to wi-fi, just more convenient. Not as many infamous IndyCar.com workarounds involved.

Merger Mania -- Big news out of the Milwaukee race is that Ed Carpenter Racing and Sarah Fisher Hartman racing will merge into a two-car CFH Racing in 2015. No word on who the drivers will be. One assumes Ed will drive the ovals in one car. Sarah Fisher Hartman supposedly offered a contract to Joe New, but he's not signing nothing until the end of the season. Hmmmm. Maybe Joe New has some other offers? STAY TUNED. I'm happy about the merger because I'm a huge fan of both Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter. Boom.

That's a lot of spewing from me. Let me know what you thought of the weekend's activities below. Happy Monday.

Comments

[Dylan]

Overall MIS was a decent race because there were enough cautions. Milwaukee was boring, in my opinion. I guess my issue is that there have been too many strategy races in Indycar this season, with too little passing for the lead. If the balance were reversed, I know I wouldn't have been as upset with Milwaukee or Mid Ohio or Pocono or Texas, but taken as a whole it becomes a bit boring, to me at least. It feels like the same story after almost every race, with some people happy with a strategy race and the rest of us a bit bored.

Another issue is that there's been a lot of anticipation with very little payoff this season. We've had a ton of situations, from Newgarden at Mid Ohio to Pagenaud Vs. Helio at the Indy GP, to the battle for the lead at Long Beach to the end of the Houston race where Rahal wrecked Kanaan which could have seen something great, could have had a great finish, and fans were deprived of that. Obviously things happen and racing is unpredictable, but it feels to me that a ton of times as a fan, I've been watching a sub-par race, but there's one or two things keeping me hopeful something exciting will happen, and then it doesn't pan out. The fact that drivers that I really like have generally struggled this year (Hinch, Newgarden's rough mid season, Marco/Rahal/RHR) does not help. The season is redeemed somewhat by ECR's strength.

I am very excited for next season largely because I expect Newgarden to be a lot more competitive. He's shown speed on all types of tracks, and with ECR backing should be incredibly fast. Ed struggles a bit on flat ovals outside of Indy, and Conway struggles some on the natural terrain road courses, but we've seen Newgarden contend on both types, as well as on street courses, and he was fast at Indy for qualifying, so put him in a merged ECR/SFH team and I think he could win anywhere. Speaking of buildup with no climax, Newgarden's been knocking on the door for a win since 2012, hopefully he pulls it out in the next two races.

[cartracer20]

Milwaukee was as boring in person as (I image) it appeared on TV (haven't watched it yet as I was at the race). The first thing I said to my race buddies after we removed our earphones was "if this was this dull here, imagine how it will come across to the viewers at home."

And funny you made the comment about phantom yellows because mid-race I actually was hoping for officials to do just that...yeah, it was THAT bad. Stands were empty and Saturday was so vacant that napkins blew down the outer streets like tumbleweeds.

[Martin]

I was in the stands at Milwaukee, and I am like you Pressdog. I like being able to see the whole track and choose the battles I want to watch farther back in the field. I think the effect of new tires was more visible in-person than it was on TV, especially during Newgarden's run at the end.

I had a couple of stints of boredom, but the pit stop action broke things up and I found the race to be interesting. I watched the race on TV the next day, and I did nod off a couple times.

Interesting thing to note - Of the five cars surrounding mine in the parking lot at the fairgrounds, three had Illinois license plates and two had Indiana plates. I drove up from the Chicago area myself Sunday morning. Clearly there would be support for a race at Chicagoland. It's too bad a deal won't come together. Also, who knows how many fans will actually buy a ticket and show up. A Milwaukee-like crowd would look smaller at Chicagoland since they have more seating capacity.

As for Milwaukee, I had a good experience. Nice clean facility, good view of the pits even from the top of the grandstand. I also liked the atmosphere. It was my first time there and I will be buying a ticket next year.

[Bill]

Was reading Track Forum. Lots of concerns about
Milwaukee attendance. Estimates are all over the place, some as high as 32,000 (wishful thinking?
I believe Robin Miller got it right at around 18,000. The place only holds 37,000 and there were lots (and lots!!) of empty seats.
Apparently the race will return in 2015. But with such a small crowd for a "major" race, and very little TV money, I just wonder who is absorbing monetary loss?

[David]

Bill, thanks for mentioning the Joe Newgarden performance this time. He has been earning the attention for a while.

[Chris Lukens]

I missed the Nascar race, after seeing that Jeff Gordon won it, I wish I had watched.

I watched the Milwaukee race and enjoyed it. I, also think the TV guys spent too much time on the leader. There was some terrific racing from P2 through about P15. RHR went from P19 to something like P5 twice before an unfortunate mechanical issue put him out. Joe N went from P2 to about P14, then back to P2, then P12 on the last pit stop and then ( with a few more laps ) maybe could have won the race. I wouldn’t call that boring, unfortunately they didn’t really show that on TV.

Last thought: IndyCar really needs to clarify what the rule is for hitting something in the pit lane.

[Ron Ford]

I was at the Milwaukee race both saturday and sunday and enjoyed it. There were lots of people in the infield. The new grandstands were build without an overhang except for a small area under the pressbox so sitting under a hot sun for hours gets old in a hurry.

I agree with Bill that races at places like the Milwaukee Mile are more exciting in person than on TV because you can easily see the entire track. You can follow the battles and progress of drivers other than the leader througout the field. After watching TV video today I can see why some may have found it boring on TV.

There were 25,000 fans there including the infield.

[Mike]

I was at Milwaukee as well and while there were some lulls, there were some pretty great moments around the pit stops as drivers who hadn't stopped were battling with guys who had.

Overall I'd give the race about a C+, not the greatest race I've seen, but not bad, either. It was much better in person (I watched the DVR Sunday night and had to fast forward a couple of times) because, as others have mentioned, you can see the track and focus on individual battles through the field. A scanner helps too.

It's unfortunate TV didn't focus on Newgarden after his final stop. The guy was absolutely electric, just as he was in the closing laps at Iowa. Once we got to about 10 to go and I knew Willy P pretty much had it sewed up I was fixated on Josef's driving. Great stuff, and I am really excited to see what Josef will do as his career progresses. He has the talent.