IndyCar – Briscoe Wins Foot to the Floor Fest in Chicago

Chicago Winner

Ryan Briscoe took another step towards the IndyCar Series title with a win in Joliet on Saturday night, the fourth closest finish in series history, beating Dario Franchitti to the line.  The “racing” essentially consisted of holding your foot to the floor and trying not to crash while waiting to hit the overtake button on the last lap.  Talentless lump Mario Moraes managed to finish third after not bothering to crash into anyone for the two hours.  The entire race was relatively incident free, with only the soon-to-be unemployed Hideki Mutoh and Helio Castro-Neves finding their way into the wall, the latter after what looked to be a suspension failure pitched his car into the wall.  Expect more of the same on the final two ovals of the season and beyond…if there is a beyond.

 

IndyCar: Dixon Obliterates Field At Mid-Ohio

Scott Dixon made it look painfully easy on Sunday afternoon, winning at Mid-Ohio by nearly thirty seconds over championship rival Ryan Briscoe.  Dixon lurked behind Justin Wilson for the first stretch of the race before switching to the harder black tire compound and leaving the field in the dust afterward.  Briscoe’s runner-up finish sees him slip three points behind Dixon in the overall championship picture while Dario Franchitti finished out the podium and now sits twenty points behind his teammate at the summit of the series.

The win for Dixon was his twentieth in the IRL, eclipsing Sam Hornish Jr.’s previous mark but still some way short of challenging the all-time open wheel mark.

Justin Wilson looked to be in with a serious chance of winning for the first third of the race but a costly mistake on his last pit stop erased any chance of a good finish for the Brit.  Wilson stayed out for one lap too many, had a fuel pick-up problem and coasted into the pits before stalling the motor trying to pull out of the pits.  The team managed to get him back going, but Wilson’s race was ruined, the road course ace finishing up in thirteenth after a day that had begun with so much promise.

Ryan Hunter-Reay had a brilliant drive in the AJ Foyt machine, taking advantage of mistakes in front of him to finish in fourth place while Hideki Mutoh, perhaps spurred by rumors of his Formula Dream sponsorship moving to Gil De Ferran’s prospective new team and ex-F1 driver Takuma Sato, rallied with a fifth place finish.  Marco Andretti worked out of sequence with his pit stops to finish a respectable sixth.

There was disappointment elsewhere for drivers who made silly mistakes to cost themselves in the final order.  Graham Rahal was looking at a potential top-five finish before a silly shunt while unpressured sent him off course and dropped him to eighth in the final order.  Rahal’s maddening tendency to ruin good drives with stupid errors must surely be driving NHL personnel crazy.  Helio Castroneves endured a similar excursion that all but ruined his afternoon, leaving the Penske driver to finish a lowly twelfth.

None of the three drivers in new places this weekend made an impact with Paul Tracy doing best out of the trio, finishing in seventh place on short notice.  Oriol Servia didn’t make waves and ended up in eleventh, while the man he replaced, Robert Doornbos brought the second HVM machine home in fourteenth one spot ahead of teammate EJ Viso.

Finally, Danica Patrick experienced another day to forget at a road course, though no fault of her own on this afternoon.  Mike Conway tried a suicidal passing move into a corner and ended up punting Patrick into the gravel, forcing a tow that left the AGR driver down multiple laps.  Conway was penalized with a drive-through penalty and dropped out later.  Patrick never recovered and finished in a disappointing nineteenth place.

 

IndyCar Series Preview – 5 Things To Watch at Mid-Ohio

Briscoe On Pole Again

After last week’s rather bizarrely entertaining affair at Kentucky (watched by approximately six people on Versus), the IndyCars return to making right turns at the natural road course of Mid-Ohio.  Ryan Briscoe captured the pole with an IRL record lap and will lead the field of twenty-one on Sunday afternoon.  Here are five things to watch:

1 – The Title Race –Ryan Briscoe, Scott Dixon, and Dario Franchitti are separated by just eleven points at the moment with time running out for either of the three to pull away.  With both Penske and Ganassi bound to be heavy favorites at all the remaining ovals due to a clear technological advantage, it’s going to be crucial for each to perform as well as humanly possible on the road courses to try and outdo their rivals when other teams have a chance to contend.  Briscoe took a big step on Saturday by winning the pole.

2 – Old Faces, New Places – The silly season that has failed to blossom over in NASCAR in 2009 has instead come to roost in the IndyCar Series at the moment.  Robert Doornbos has taken his helmet and moved across the paddock to HVM to team with EJ Viso and surely give the team fabricators no end of nightmares.  NHL has managed to dredge up the money to run Oriol Servia in the second team car.  It’s a good choice considering Servia usually takes care of the equipment and should be able to overwhelm the Danica Patricks and Ed Carpenters of the series.  Paul Tracy gets a one-off ride at KV while Mario Moraes grieves for his recently departed father.  The Canadian has been practically begging for a full-time ride, but his efforts have hardly warranted consideration for such a ride as he was mediocre at Indy, made a foolish mistake at Watkins Glen and was relegated to also-ran at Edmonton.  And I’m ignoring his poor luck at Milwaukee and Toronto.  With Moraes probably returning for the next race, it might be the forty year old’s last chance to impress.

3 – Double The Fun for Dale Coyne and Justin Wilson? – It took decades for Dale Coyne to score his first win as an open-wheel racing owner when Justin Wilson piloted Coyne’s car to victory at Watkins Glen.  It might take just weeks for Coyne to double his wins total.  Wilson has been fast all weekend at Mid-Ohio and will be eager to impress after a disappointing eighth place finish at Edmonton.  He’ll also surely be shopping himself around for a better ride in IndyCar…or elsewhere.

4 – The Rise (and Fall?) of Special Ed – Ed Carpenter’s shocking near win in Kentucky last week was certainly a testament that on any given race day, anything can happen with the right break of luck.  Or the right mish-mash of rule changes.  Carpenter won’t have the luxury of being able to keep his foot on the floor and only having to turn left.  He’ll be starting dead last on Sunday afternoon and will do well to finish on the lead lap.

5 – How Bad Will Milka Be? – Poor Milka Duno.  The hapless driver of the Citgo sponsored D&R machine had at least looked like she could keep up with Ed Carpenter and whoever was driving the insipid #98 car that weekend but has looked utterly lost at Mid-Ohio thus far.  Duno wouldn’t have qualified under F1’s 107% rule and one has to wonder whether Brian Barnhart will pull the plug on the moving chicane before the leaders have to be troubled with getting around her.  Then again Barnhart will likely be too busy bungling another start, so who knows.

 

IndyCar at Kentucky – Five Quick Thoughts

1. For Better or For Worse… – After the debacle in Richmond earlier this season, even the stubborn idiots running the IndyCar series realized that a change in the oval package was necessary to avoid the parades that the oval races had turned into.  So the series essentially threw a whole bunch of changes at a proverbial dartboard in hopes that something stuck.  The most publicized change was a half-assed “push-to-pass” button that provided a whopping five extra horsepower per push.  Needless to say your friendly bloggers were just a little bit skeptical.

After the race in Kentucky, it’s become apparent that the changes have tilted the racing on ovals back to the style of the “good ol’ days” if you like lap after lap of wheel-to-wheel, side-by-side racing with close finishes or the “bad ol’ days” if you like to see any driving skill being used other than that of keeping your car from plowing into a rival’s machine.

The problem is that since the cars are so hideously underpowered now, such artificially created racing is the only way to keep things remotely interesting since the drivers aren’t using their brakes around the track.  Is it better than watching a dull parade?  Yeah, probably.  Is it a long-term solution?  Only if the series wants to continue on a road to nowhere.

2. Ed Carpenter – You’d get better odds of hell freezing over than Ed Carpenter winning an IndyCar series race before this evening.  And yet “Special Ed” came agonizingly close to one of the biggest upsets in open wheel racing history.  Is this some kind of turning point for Carpenter’s career?  Or was it just a glaring example of the new rules artificially bringing the dregs of the series back to the median along with the standouts.  It’ll be interesting to see if Carpenter can replicate the form on the other remaining ovals.  It’s safe to say he’ll be as hopeless as ever when having to hit the brakes and turn right.

3. Ryan Briscoe – Remember when Briscoe was a mistake addled youngster who looked more likely to be washed out into Grand-Am or ALMS?  Yeah, seems like forever ago.  Briscoe has now rounded into the series’s best all-around driver and would have totally eclipsed more famous teammate Helio Castro-Neves had it not been for the latter’s win at Indianapolis this season.  It’s unlikely that anyone racing in the IndyCar Series has a prayer of making it to Formula One (unless teams stop fearing Justin Wilson’s tall self), but Briscoe has a faint chance.

4. Does Anybody Know How To Conduct A Proper Start? – For what seemed like the umpteenth time this season, a lap one start was waved off because of Brian Barnhart’s inability to control the field for a proper start.  The front row of Ganassi cars were split well before the start-finish line and the waved off start was well warranted.  But the second start was even worse than the first one but was allowed to go on inexplicably.  If you’re going to wave off a start, punish the idiots who ruin it by forcing them to the back.  Otherwise, you’re just going to get the same jumbled messes as you saw tonight at Kentucky.

5. The Sad Tale of Mario Moraes and Mike Conway – Mario Moraes had another fast car in practice but was taken out on pit road by Mike Conway in a rather stupid incident.  Moraes has been rumored to be shopping his sponsorship to Andretti-Green but with the struggling AGR group already dealing with the rather limited Marco Andretti and Hideki Mutoh, it seems questionable as to if they’d take on a driver who has a proneness to mistakes and finishing well down the order despite reasonable equipment.  Considering Mike Conway was rumored to be on the chopping block earlier this season after numerous smash-ups, tonight will have done him no favors.  He better hope the checks keep clearing.