So with the season officially ending we're looking at 5 months of non-race/non-official-practice activity. So what's a fan to do? Well I think I'm going to spend time handing out some fun things for fans to undertake.
So Offseason fun #1:
I think its time we try to get some outside coverage as well as put Scott Goodyear's much repeated downforce' IndyCars on the ceiling' theory to the test; MYTHBUSTERS style!
For those of you not familiar with Mythbusters; it is a Discovery Channel TV show and the name says it all, they take theories/myths/movies and test them as far as scientificly possible. Well today I proposed a theory/myth on their official messageboard (which is actually where they get most of their myths, and where they tell you to submit them for consideration).
MY fun mission #1 for IndyCar fans; go here and stir up you ideas on Scott Goodyear's upside down indycar theory, drive the hits for this part of the board so it'll get some traction and maybe it'll get looked at by the show, who knows? Either way its fun to see all the theories.
Bring in your offseason ideas too and I'll gladly post it and spread the word to whatever IndyCar fans read this thing.
NEXT TIME ON FUN IDEAS: IndyCar Scavenger Hunt!?
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Just under 24 hours for the IndyCar starved
from IMSOnline:
Yes, we will have live streaming video for Practices and Qualifying.
Below are the times converted to the Eastern Time Zone.
Thursday
6 PM Practice 1
9:20 PM Practice 2
Friday
7:50 PM Practice 3
11:10 PM Qualifying
Saturday
6:35 PM Final Practice
Yes, we will have live streaming video for Practices and Qualifying.
Below are the times converted to the Eastern Time Zone.
Thursday
6 PM Practice 1
9:20 PM Practice 2
Friday
7:50 PM Practice 3
11:10 PM Qualifying
Saturday
6:35 PM Final Practice
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The correct course of action...?
For being the off-season, and with only the Surfer's Paradise pre/post-season exhibition coming up you'd think there wouldn't be much news but we've got Rafael Matos signing on to be Luczo Dragon Racing's first full time driver. A good choice by LDR, picking a guy that has won the championship in 4 of the last 6 years in whatver series he was in, clearly he's got talent.
Helio is of course making headlines, but I'll wait for that to develop more before I delve into it. What are to come of Tomas Schecket and Darren Manning and Paul Tracy, who knows, what of Surfer's Paradise's future? no one knows yet, what of that Turks and Caicos pre-season agreement we all saw a while back that never showed up again, anywhere? who knows... but we all most assuredly know this:
To whatever degree or reason given behind closed doors, it looks as if Marty Roth's days as an IndyCar driver are over, and he is closing his team down in anger.
First off, I want to say I will miss Marty the driver. I am certainly of the belief that a person can do whatever they please with their own money, and I can honestly say I am all for a person, and jealous of any person able to, chase a dream that I too share. For this reason I've never felt any ill will towards Marty for being on the track; he had to qualify for each race, and he passed physicals and met whatever demands asked of him these past years.
But for whatever reason, he is no longer meeting the standards required, and that is something he is hardly the first to ever have happen to him; however unlike the many others he is not taking it in stride whatsoever.
My thoughts towards Marty couldn't be more different when we talk about his selfishness, most notably visible in seeing the 2008 operations of Roth Racing. In 2007 we heard the news of the formation of Roth Racing, a new full-time two-car team; one car for Marty, and one to give past Indy Lights champion, Jay Howard, his much deserved oppourtunity in the ICS. RR hired a LOT of the right people and bought all the right equipment to start up a formidable team, it looked as if Marty was immersing himself into what he seemingly loved, motorsports.
It seems, however, that all along Roth Racing was formed solely to be a bargaining chip to hold over the IRL's head along with giving a facade to all of it being a formation of a new team. He's threatened to pull the team if he couldn't race, but worse, he argued with and ran off multiple crew members and throughly screwed Jay Howard out of the oppourtunity he deserved.
Normally I wouldn't be so sure about this except the news now that he has laid off all but 3 workers at Roth racing in anger/retalliation of a decision by the IRL to not renew his racing liscense. This isn't some conspiracy against Marty, just check the history. Of his career 21 starts he's only been running at the finish 10 times, of those 10, he has never finished on the lead lap or even close; and in most cases, dropped like a rock once each race started and in numerous occasions crashed all on his own, and brought out over 10 yellow/red flags at road courses.
I've personally witnessed this exact scenairo myself in my career in the IMPBA; many racers went to lower engine power and speed as they got older or just stopped when they could admit to themselves they didn't have the reflexes required anymore, these guys didn't leave the IMPBA, they became race directors and pit men for other racers, why? because they loved racing.
Again, as a driver, I do not fault Marty... but it seems that all this time its never been about a love for racing, its been about self-love for Marty Roth, and in all honesty that's just fine.
As a race fan however I will say good riddance, because I love racing, and anyone who actually loves racing does whatever they can in whatever capacity for it, even if their driving career is not there; just ask Chip Ganassi, Patrick Dempsy, Larry Foyt, Jason Priestly, Bobby Rahal, Michael Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Robbie Buhl, and the list goes on and on and on...
Helio is of course making headlines, but I'll wait for that to develop more before I delve into it. What are to come of Tomas Schecket and Darren Manning and Paul Tracy, who knows, what of Surfer's Paradise's future? no one knows yet, what of that Turks and Caicos pre-season agreement we all saw a while back that never showed up again, anywhere? who knows... but we all most assuredly know this:
To whatever degree or reason given behind closed doors, it looks as if Marty Roth's days as an IndyCar driver are over, and he is closing his team down in anger.
First off, I want to say I will miss Marty the driver. I am certainly of the belief that a person can do whatever they please with their own money, and I can honestly say I am all for a person, and jealous of any person able to, chase a dream that I too share. For this reason I've never felt any ill will towards Marty for being on the track; he had to qualify for each race, and he passed physicals and met whatever demands asked of him these past years.
But for whatever reason, he is no longer meeting the standards required, and that is something he is hardly the first to ever have happen to him; however unlike the many others he is not taking it in stride whatsoever.
My thoughts towards Marty couldn't be more different when we talk about his selfishness, most notably visible in seeing the 2008 operations of Roth Racing. In 2007 we heard the news of the formation of Roth Racing, a new full-time two-car team; one car for Marty, and one to give past Indy Lights champion, Jay Howard, his much deserved oppourtunity in the ICS. RR hired a LOT of the right people and bought all the right equipment to start up a formidable team, it looked as if Marty was immersing himself into what he seemingly loved, motorsports.
It seems, however, that all along Roth Racing was formed solely to be a bargaining chip to hold over the IRL's head along with giving a facade to all of it being a formation of a new team. He's threatened to pull the team if he couldn't race, but worse, he argued with and ran off multiple crew members and throughly screwed Jay Howard out of the oppourtunity he deserved.
Normally I wouldn't be so sure about this except the news now that he has laid off all but 3 workers at Roth racing in anger/retalliation of a decision by the IRL to not renew his racing liscense. This isn't some conspiracy against Marty, just check the history. Of his career 21 starts he's only been running at the finish 10 times, of those 10, he has never finished on the lead lap or even close; and in most cases, dropped like a rock once each race started and in numerous occasions crashed all on his own, and brought out over 10 yellow/red flags at road courses.
I've personally witnessed this exact scenairo myself in my career in the IMPBA; many racers went to lower engine power and speed as they got older or just stopped when they could admit to themselves they didn't have the reflexes required anymore, these guys didn't leave the IMPBA, they became race directors and pit men for other racers, why? because they loved racing.
Again, as a driver, I do not fault Marty... but it seems that all this time its never been about a love for racing, its been about self-love for Marty Roth, and in all honesty that's just fine.
As a race fan however I will say good riddance, because I love racing, and anyone who actually loves racing does whatever they can in whatever capacity for it, even if their driving career is not there; just ask Chip Ganassi, Patrick Dempsy, Larry Foyt, Jason Priestly, Bobby Rahal, Michael Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Robbie Buhl, and the list goes on and on and on...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Lots of news for all
Unfortunately very bad news about a lot of people's favorite driver. In case you hadn't heard, Helio Castroneves has been indicted for $2 million in tax evasion; or failure to report $5 million in wages. We really have to wait for more details to come out to know how this will affect Helio's driving, and more specifically, his driving for Roger Penske as most assume the feds will not allow him to leave the area, let alone the country (Surfer's Paradise race).
The fact I can tell you though is this; the feds do not bring out cases they can't win and don't have surmountable evidence for...e.g. Michael Vick.
Of course there is more to this as it progresses, but as more details come out it looks worse and worse...
---
In College football news, we can say goodbye to yet another top 10 Undefeated BCS conference team as the University of South Florida went down to the staunt unranked Pittsburg Defense, and most likely eliminating the Big East's hopes for a National Championship participant. And to my very delight, Utah managed to get its act together and beat Oregon State in a game containing possibly one of the most understated pass 'interference' calls you'll see...
... or since Utah isn't a BCS conference school and we're all going to pretend that Oregon State, the team Utah just beat, didn't just beat the #1 ranked University of Southern California just last week.
Let's just give a lesson to all secondary defenders; when the reciever stops to turn around for the ball; don't, I repeat, don't just run him completely over and flatten him to the ground... in fact, in this particular case (Utah's 2-point conversion attempt) had you just turned your head slightly to your left you'd have been able to simply intercept the ball that was thrown short of the receiver's route.
---
lastly, though this has no news about it; Mrs. Wedge and I have been netflixing the TV show 'Las Vegas' and once before I had noticed on an episode that in the sports betting area that the Indy 500 was on one of the TVs and I thought that was cool.
Well we just started the 5th season today and again the Indy 500 was in another episode and I once again though that was cool.... however in that same episode, as the day progresses into afternoon, and then again into night... the live Indy 500 is still on TVs...
The fact I can tell you though is this; the feds do not bring out cases they can't win and don't have surmountable evidence for...e.g. Michael Vick.
Of course there is more to this as it progresses, but as more details come out it looks worse and worse...
---
In College football news, we can say goodbye to yet another top 10 Undefeated BCS conference team as the University of South Florida went down to the staunt unranked Pittsburg Defense, and most likely eliminating the Big East's hopes for a National Championship participant. And to my very delight, Utah managed to get its act together and beat Oregon State in a game containing possibly one of the most understated pass 'interference' calls you'll see...
... or since Utah isn't a BCS conference school and we're all going to pretend that Oregon State, the team Utah just beat, didn't just beat the #1 ranked University of Southern California just last week.
Let's just give a lesson to all secondary defenders; when the reciever stops to turn around for the ball; don't, I repeat, don't just run him completely over and flatten him to the ground... in fact, in this particular case (Utah's 2-point conversion attempt) had you just turned your head slightly to your left you'd have been able to simply intercept the ball that was thrown short of the receiver's route.
---
lastly, though this has no news about it; Mrs. Wedge and I have been netflixing the TV show 'Las Vegas' and once before I had noticed on an episode that in the sports betting area that the Indy 500 was on one of the TVs and I thought that was cool.
Well we just started the 5th season today and again the Indy 500 was in another episode and I once again though that was cool.... however in that same episode, as the day progresses into afternoon, and then again into night... the live Indy 500 is still on TVs...
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