Racing Of The United States Variety

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Some info for you, from another forum (who got it from some guy named Randy Bernard):

Vegas

25 drivers have an official intent of being the 5 invited to race. One has been invited. Alex Zanardi. Chip Ganassi has guaranteed to prepare him a car, too. All Zanardi needs to do is agree. Too cool, and if you don't think that's a story to attract some interest in the sport, well...

2012

The car was shown to a select few at a presentation. Apparently it's rather nice. Something new about it? No mirrors. Six cameras instead. I'll wait to see driver reaction to that, but I personally don't like the idea. Adds cost, less effective than mirrors, just strange altogether.

Car will be unveiled May 11 on Letterman. The fact it hasn't leaked yet is pretty impressive.

[HandyNZL 1]

Camera's? That is pretty techy!

I guess a camera can be made to eliminate vibration...mirrors, sadly not....but where to the screens go? Not like there is that much room for a screen in a c#ckpit...hardly enough room to scratch ya nuts to be honest.

And why six? Surely one facing rearward is enough, with a fisheye lense to get some width on the view. I think it's doable, but like you say Eric, another thing to go wrong. What happens if it stops working, ot someone hits it? Mirrors at least tend to stay on the car.....

Hey - guess this is more innovative than F1 - get rid of those stupid aero inefficient mirrors....gotta wonder why no one in F1 has even tried this????

BAck to you Eric

[JHS 1]

The Zanardi story is cool, but I'm not sure it'll happen. I thought he'd retired from racing to concentrate on his paralympic career? I guess he could come out of retirement to do one race, I'm not sure.

One thing is for sure though, I'll certainly be interested in watching Vegas to see how the 5 invited drivers do. It's exciting for me to hear guys like a certain Petter Solberg are interested in doing it.

Quick question for you Eric: will the invites get any testing prior to the weekend? I doubt any of them will win if they're just thrown in to it for the weekend.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Zanardi said earlier this year he wasn't ready to retire from racing; he left the door very much open, and Randy's only inviting people who asked to be invited (the 25), and Zanardi was one of them. I'm pretty confident he'll be there.

I'll cry tears of pure testosterone if he wins.

Maybe.

Solberg is one of the 25; you're right on that. So is Jean Alesi, who will, in fact, attempt the 2012 Indianapolis 500 in a Lotus (or at least a Lotus-powered car, depending on the aerokit situation).

Bad a## Wilson has a little attitude this weekend. Love it.

Like this, too. I just wish they had given mics to Will and Ryan, not just Hélio; Will's got some great comments, so always have your volume adjuster handy to put Hélio at negative 20 dB and Will at max:

Qualifying from São Paulo heading into the final round, Firestone Fast Six about to go out are Hunter-Reay, Rahal, Dixon, Franchitti, Briscoe, and Power. Pretty meh, but we've gotten a lot of variety at the front so can't complain that we finally have a wash-out.

Simona was P2 in practice, so she could pull a surprise here this weekend. Newman/Haas have not looked as strong; Hinchcliffe a little better in qualifying though.

They've widened turn one for the double file starts and to improve the racing; the revamped track looks great. It's going to be a good one, so you better watch. I even have two feeds for anyone who needs one this weekend; one in English and, in the event that gets taken down, one in Portuguese that will likely not.

Gonna need the spotter's guide if you watch, though...a few special liveries.

http://www.indycar.com:8080/var/assets/brazil_spotter_web.pdf

Playoff hockey and INDYCAR on VERSUS this weekend. Not bad.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

James, realized I totally ignored your question. My bad there.

Nope, no testing planned that I know of, but that doesn't mean there won't be an extra practice or anything. Nothing's been announced, though, and I assume if there is testing, it would be confirmed once the five drivers are to make it work with their schedules. But that's a big if; I don't know if they plan to give them any extra time. They should for safety reasons, but not so much so that it's an advantage, and they ought to do the testing with a team like BHA that isn't running Vegas (as testing is banned).

I don't think you'll see any of the guys win, between the quality of the cars they're in, the level of competition, the large field (30+ for Vegas; I suspect we could see up to 33 entered, not sure how many they'll let run). And the goal definitely isn't for them to win; looks bad for INDYCAR and costs $5,000,000.

I suspect Alex Zanardi and A.J. Allmendinger will be two of the drivers. The other three, well, I don't know. A lot of names to choose from.

Qualifying:

1. Power

2. Hunter-Reay

3. Dixon

4. Briscoe

5. Rahal

6. Franchitti

7. Castroneves

8. Wilson

9. Conway

10. Sato

11. Hinchcliffe

12. Bourdais

13. Meira

14. de Silvestro

15. Servià

16. Kanaan

17. Kimball

18. Andretti

19. Tagliani

20. Patrick

21. Hildebrand

22. Matos

23. Jakes

24. Saavedra

25. Viso

26. Beatriz

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Mazda6 NASCAR stock car. Pretty cool.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

IZOD IndyCar Series from São Paulo:

Sébastien Bourdais is tool of the day regardless of how the rest of this thing unfolds.

I've never seen that kind of rain coming down on anything that wasn't news footage about flooding. Sweet mother of Montoya skies lit that place up.

Might go back racing...they were aiming to be racing again now but that doesn't look so good. Ehh...

Watch it here or here. Not going to tell you which one's the English one (first one). Also, the NASCAR channel here is airing it in English.

I think they're letting the cars that wrecked repair and restart, but I'm not entirely sure. Been at the gym for the last hour and change, so I can't really tell. They'll still be some number of laps down though (i.e. Danica is 9 in the hole).

Drivers in the car...umm...gonna go put this on the TV and see where it goes...hope we see some racing.

AND HUGE KUDOS TO VERSUS FOR STAYING LIVE AT SÃO PAULO FOR THIS LONG DELAY! OUR OLD TV PARTNERS WOULD NEVER DO THAT, AND THEY'RE DELAYING PROGRAMMING, INCLUDING LIVE SPORTS, TO SHOW THIS RACE! THANK YOU VERSUS!!!!

Please contact them and tell them you love them as much as I do.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Race is tomorrow at 1 PM my time.

Really sucks to clear up space in your afternoon to watch, only to have the thing aired next day while everyone's working/at school/grocery shopping. Not even worth recording it because I just won't have time to watch it until next weekend, and by that time, I don't think I'll care.

Blows big ones, but c'est la vie. Track was too wet and the drainage just isn't good.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Twitter says the race has not been postponed.

Well, uh...

Does this mean they'll run the race with no TV coverage? Because VERSUS say it's on at 1 PM tomorrow.

Which means I'll have to watch this one in Portuguese.

If they're running it.

WTF.

I love the IZOD IndyCar Series and Randy Bernard, but outside of him, the management is being silly. Barnhart and Cotman should have been fired long ago, but they should be fired today.

Are they running this race or are they not? And if they are, you're going to tell the TV audience you aren't, and then use Twitter, where only a handful of us will see, to tell us you are?

Learn to communicate.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Heard the city hasn't signed off yet on closing the streets to run tomorrow.

So if they don't run today...

[lewisthegreat2 0]

The race is tomorrow at 8 AM my time now? What? Is this F1?

[lewisthegreat2 0]

So it's 9 AM local time. Do people go to work earlier/later in Brazil? Seems that would be prime traffic time; dumb to just close some city streets.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

And is it on TV?

Do I care? Can I watch? No.

But this is just silly...

[lewisthegreat2 0]

And this, my friends, is why governments should not be involved in auto racing.

If INDYCAR were putting on event, it wouldn't have been this messy. When they have to deal with a city government to do it, waaaaay too many complications. Can't get proper drainage, can't cancel the race, can't postpone it, can't do this, can't do that, blah blah blah. It's a shame for everyone involved that they can't put on a good show for the really passionate fans in Brazil. The government did nothing wrong, and neither did INDYCAR; it's just that together, they aren't able to solve big problems because they both have completely different goals/means, so that's why I don't like the involvement, but if you're gonna run city streets, well...**** happens.

[JHS 1]

I went to Justin after the BTCC had done, shame about the conditions. The race would have been really good had they run it, but safety of drivers, marshals and spectators alike is the most important thing. Strange as you say that they originally said the race would now happen tomorrow and then still be trying to race today when there's no TV coverage. That doesn't make sense. I can understand that I bet they are desperate to put on a show for the fans who have been so patient, but running a high profile race when there's no TV coverage would be silly, to say the least.

UK gets this Monday off, so I'll try to see if I can watch it.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

They wanted to postpone it, and told the networks they would, and unfortunately the mayor rejected that proposal right after they went off air.

Hence the reschedule.

Not sure if it will be televised live, or if the 1 PM ET airtime still stands.

Just sloppy. Nothing they can do about it, but I would have liked for them to have maybe worked things out before announcing them. I do hope their next discussion involves drainage, because we have a 100% record of rain (though they could race last year as it was not this heavy).

No racing until the 500 now. Sucks I'll miss this one.

[JHS 1]

Wow, real bad management of the whole situation then - a serious break down in communication, or simply failing to communicate at all.

Real shame. I guess they won't be able to race now anyway, before it gets dark. Plus I've just read elsewhere that the forecast for tomorrow is rain anyway.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

The race is tomorrow at 8 AM GMT -5; I think my post was confusing on that. It was never cancelled at any point; it just got the time changed.

But yes, it may rain again tomorrow, and the natives of São Paulo are really angry about the roads being closed again.

[JHS 1]

Understandable, but I bet the ticket holders who sat out in the rain for ages to see only a few laps behind a safety car aren't too happy either.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

We paid a few hundred USD to go to a NASCAR race (that's just tickets, lodging, gas, food, etc make it an expensive trip) and sat in the rain for six hours. It happens. They keep telling you they'll get it going again, you keep staying...and then finally they call it off and you ****ed a day away. Running it on Monday was nice, and we went to it, but...the place was largely empty. Only people like us who were on a vacation from hours and hours away took Monday off; people who just drove down to the race for the day who live nearby had work and other obligations, so very few of the residents in São Paulo will go to the race tomorrow, and most will just get screwed by traffic.

I just don't want INDYCAR's image to be hurt in São Paulo or in Brazil, because it's a huge market for the sport. The racing's really popular and the 500 gets millions of viewers in the nation. In fact, they will go back to Brazil in September 2012 for a second race in Porto Alegre one what appears to be a 5-mile (you read that right) street circuit. Wild! Can't wait for that.

[JHS 1]

In fact, they will go back to Brazil in September 2012 for a second race in Porto Alegre one what appears to be a 5-mile (you read that right) street circuit. Wild! Can't wait for that.

Hopefully it doesn't rain for that then.

[lewisthegreat2 0]

Race will air live at 8:05 AM my time. Presumably you can find a stream on one of the three I linked to earlier. Enjoy the racing!

Also, E.J. Viso's an idiot. He says it's "barely raining." The problem isn't that, E.J., it's the standing water on the track and the fact the straightaway is so long that no one can see the corner with all the spray, and there's no room for error, you go smack into a concrete wall, something Viso knows a lot about. Kid's crazy.

[HandyNZL 1]

Mazda6 NASCAR stock car. Pretty cool.

Wheres the MAZDA in that? At least they could have used the Mazda bonnet....talk about sticker racing....

Whats the engine? A Ford? (That being legitimate considering the tie between Ford and Mazda)

[HandyNZL 1]

I was watching them buzz around behind the safety car, and the though that crossed my mind was that these cars are half the downforce of F1 and they're trying to get a race going...then it was red flagged, and then postponed...good call as water on concrete is really bad.

However, why are they not racing at Interlagos....FIA thing perhaps? Street races are cool and all that, and the race last year I thought was a good one, but like you say Eric, road courses don't have the drainage of a purpose built track, even one like Between the Lakes where it becomes a lake.

I'll be recording it...just so long as it has gotten scheduled into normal programming here of the fifth replay of the weekends rugby....

[JHS 1]

I was watching them buzz around behind the safety car, and the though that crossed my mind was that these cars are half the downforce of F1 and they're trying to get a race going...then it was red flagged, and then postponed...good call as water on concrete is really bad.

However, why are they not racing at Interlagos....FIA thing perhaps? Street races are cool and all that, and the race last year I thought was a good one, but like you say Eric, road courses don't have the drainage of a purpose built track, even one like Between the Lakes where it becomes a lake.

I'll be recording it...just so long as it has gotten scheduled into normal programming here of the fifth replay of the weekends rugby....

I doubt they'd be allowed to race at Interlagos for safety reasons. Apparently some changes are having to be made to the track after a couple of recent deaths at the track.