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Year-End Random Thoughts on IndyCar, NASCAR and F1

 

Butler University grad Ed Carpenter celebrates winning the pole at Indy with Butler mascot Butler Blue III

Some year-end thoughts, one draft, 45-minutes of typing on various forms of racing:

IndyCar -- Insert a Festival of Trepidation here as I talk about IndyCar.

Willy P (Will Power) won the title, which was good to see, because I think finishing P2 in the championship again would have made him a danger to himself and others. I like Will Power. He’s got that volatile streak in him that makes him a threat to go Double Bird and any moment. IndyCar needs more of that. Screw being polite! Flip people off. (Shout out to Sebastian Saavedra for showing the birds to Marco Andretti at Detroit in 2013!)

Hawksworth's Ready for Super Tex and Iowa Speedway

(L to R) AJ Foyt, Takuma Sato, Jack Hawksworth and Larry Foyt will team up for 2015.

Jack Hawksworth of Cullingworth, England, (70 miles northwest of Liverpool) has something on his resume few IndyCar drivers can boast: tractor driver.

During a trip to Iowa before the 2014 IndyCar race at Iowa Speedway, Hawksworth visited the third-generation family farm of Kyle Phillips near Knoxville.

pressdog: “When you went to that Iowa farm did they let you drive the tractor at all?"

Jack Hawksworth: “They did. They let me go in a straight line. I don’t think they trusted me to do any corners or anything like that. But I gave it gas full on the straight and got it up to about 10 miles per hour.”

pressdog: “You gotta be careful … massive low-end torque on those things.”

Hawksworth: “I found it quite intimidating to drive, to be honest. There’s so much torque. I don’t think I’m qualified to drive one of those.”

While American farm tractors are typically around 150 horsepower with top “road gear” reaching maybe 25 mph, on July 18, 2015 Hawksworth will find himself more at home behind the wheel of a race car as he and his IndyCar mates take their 550 to 700 horsepower machines around Iowa Speedway at a top race speed of about 180 mph.

Shea Holbrook Launches Crowd-Funding Effort, ClutchFunded Launches New Platform

The concept of crowd-funding — using the internet in general and social media in particular to raise money for a personal or business enterprise — is on the rise. Forbes.com recently reported that crowd-funding worldwide in 2013 hit $5.1 billion, which is double the 2012 global total. (Details here.)

Race car drivers have previously dipped into the crowd funding market. In 2013 Shannon McIntosh's fans responded to a campaign by donating more than $11,000 to help get her a test in ARCA. (Details here.)

Shea Holbrook is among the latest to try crowd-funding. Shea just launched a campaign using darkhorsepros.com to asking fans to help her raise $30,000 to finance getting a drag racing license. She hopes to add a drag racing schedule to her road racing program in 2015.

NASCAR Melee -- Brand Moment? Idiocy? Staged? Awesome?

By now the video is all over the place, and I’ve read tweets that it’s getting monster air on at least one morning TV show.

In case you missed it, after the NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway Sunday, Jeff Gordon thought he had been done wrong on the track by Brad Keselowski. That’s what led to this ..

OK, a few things …