Tomorrow it begins!

So if you're reading this, chances are you're an information junkie and have already heard Graham won't be running tomorrow because of the lack of time and parts since he spun his (right now) only car on Tuesday and bashed the car up pretty badly.

Its unfortunate, and obviously I'd like to see them put something together to get on the track, but its obviously the smart thing to do. No sense in hurrying up fixing his car in the late hours or last minute paying for a loan out car only to have it starting from scratch in a race they generally would only be using for some experience. Take time show up at St. Pete and have a shot at the podium there, get through Kansas and then get the real time in May when you can practice all month for ovals...

Indy Pro has finally changed itself to Indy Lights, which is not only a less confusing name to partner to the main series but it sounds cooler and is a name with some serious history to it. It looks like Direct TV is going to be announced as a sponsor tomorrow of the series which is great because if you've ever witnessed Direct TV, they don't throw money at sponsorship and sit on it.

So with that news out of the way and all of us in serious anticipation of Qalificiations tomorrow and March Madness continuing tonight, lets bring out some fun facts:

#1 My favorite thing about the IndyCar Series, it is not only the most diverse tracks to race on making it easily the best test of overall skill in a race driver, its also the most diverse in its drivers, not only backgrounds in all kinds of minor league style... this year the series is sporting drivers from 11 different countries.

7 - USA
6 -Brazil
4 -UK (add one if TCGR ever actually lets Alex Lloyd race)
2 Australia
2 -Venezuela
1 - Spain
1 - New Zealand
1 - Canada
1 - Japan
1 - France
1 - South Africa (Scheckter currently part time)

Obviously we're a little heavy on the US for obvious reasons (plus the US is about as big as the European Continent so being from different states is basically different countries there... geographically speaking) its far more diverse than basicly all the other Top level series and thats without any kind of campaign or effort to create diversity.

Now lets take a look at something else.... what are the car color break outs... (since I've been whining about too much red and white and blue in the series)

so if you forget that white is in most all cars as a base color, here is how we break out this season:

5 - red
4 - red/blue
3 - black
2 - orange
2 - bare (though technically Jay Howard is sporting Red numbers at the moment)
1 - red/gray
1 - red/black
1 - blue/orange/silver
1 - blue
1 - black/blue
1 - black/yellow
1 - black/blue/green
1 - green/yellow
1 - green - some red
1 - yellow

that would be 13 of 26 cars sporting the color red to some extent, blue and black tie for second finding their way onto 7 cars.

So for this season I'm starting by giving 1st props to Ed Carpenter/Vision for going day-glo Yellow all over that car and not just a yellow stripe surrounded by red, black and blue.

2nd props go to Conquest Racing who could teach Chip Ganassi and Penske how its entirely possible to differentiate two cars on the same team with the same colors.

3rd Props seriously go to Panther, because even though they went for the Red, white and blue, its by far one of the best paint jobs I've seen.


So, just in case time gets squeezed tomorrow, happy racing everyone! and good luck to all of you in your NCAA pools... may Davidson and Western Kentucky run amok over all the brackets of the world!