Recently in IndyCar Series Category
That said, congratulations to Denny Hamlin for his win at Martinsville this past weekend. I only got to see about an hour of the race, but reports say he really used his strategy well.
I did, however, get to see - get this - a MotoGP race in which numbers one and two (Alvaro Bautista and Marco Simoncelli), who had been seriously leading most of the race, got into each other on the last lap, slid off the track, and let Mika Kallio win. That's gotta hurt. (You can read about it here, but mind the expletives.)
And, of course, I can't let you go without some more business news:
1) Coca-Cola has become an IndyCar Series sponsor through 2010. “We’ve been involved in the Indianapolis 500 and the Indianapolis Speedway. This just involves us with the entire series, not just the one race,” Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling said. (That's here.)
2) This is big: Richard Childress Racing will expand to four cars next season with General Mills as sponsor, a partnership that leaves Petty Enterprises searching for financial backing for its famed No. 43 for just the second time since 1972, according to the AP. For those of you worried, however, Petty's pretty sure Bobby Labonte's gonna stay with them, though his contract is up this year, too. It should also be noted that all three of Childress' drivers are currently in the top 12. I didn't see you note it... That's better.
And that's all from me.
...other than me, obviously.
On this past Monday's episode of the Speed Report, a few of the drivers weighed
in on the idea. Most were in favor.
(For those who don't know, the two open-wheel racing series, Indy Racing League
and Champ Car have been racing separately since 1996.)
The oddest comment came from, in my mind, Richard Petty, who - I think - meant
to say something about American viewers wanting to watch American drivers, but
it turned into a comment about not being able to pronounce drivers' names.... I
think his point was that a higher percentage of open-wheel drivers are foreign,
in comparison with NASCAR drivers. I think that was his point.
Regardless of how he phrased it, you might have noticed a few non-native
drivers in NASCAR in recent years. In fact, Dario Franchitti, Patrick
Carpentier, and Juan Pablo Montoya all came from open-wheel.
So NASCAR isn't just stealing their viewers, it's stealing their top drivers.
Most experts are of the opinion that reunification is the best answer to both
series' respective problems. Most experts will also tell you that getting the
IRL and Champ Car to agree on even basic combined standards (a common car, for
example) is akin to brokering a health care deal between Democrats and
Republicans.
I did find one guy, though - check his blog out here - who's got an idea of how it could happen. It says
a lot, though, that it's a four part series, and part two is split into
sections a and b.
But, of course, even if they do reunite, there's the question of whether the
fans will return. As Richard Petty told the Associated Press, "Now they've
got to go head-to-head with [NASCAR], you've got to go head-to-head with drag
racing, you've got to go head-to-head with a lot. It's like opening up a coffee
shop next to Starbucks. I mean, how successful can you be?"
So that's what I'm thinking about.
