Indy Zombie

In reply to carguy123:

IIRC, the old IRL rules mandated the sidepods be that wide. Most of it's radiators, I think they've been tweaking the shape for aerodynamic downforce. Can't recall if there's any fuel cells in there, or not.

And yeah.."Carburation Day" is one hell of an anachonism..it used to be real, people trying to re-jet, etc. for what they thought the weather would do, but these days I think they just kept it so that folks wouldn't have to jump in the car Sunday morning without having driven all week.

I wish I could tune in but I will be at work, and while I can turn on my radio and listen to soccer from four continents or cricket from three, the Indy 500 somehow doesn't get aired

In reply to Wally:

Any chance that you'll have internet access? If so, try this link for a live, streaming radio feed:

http://www.wibc.com/listen/

I'm probably one of the few that didn't like the old month long circus. It seemed like such a waste of time to spend 4 weekends to practice, get pole, qualify, race. My heart really left one year, probably in the late 80's or early 90's when several of the drivers suffered devastating lower body injuries due to running on an antiquated, dangerous track. They put grass over the apron the next year, but the shine was gone for me then.

I'll probably watch some of the race.

In reply to oldsaw:

no such luck, I'm working outside this week.

I enjoyed the month long circus back in the 80's when there was some suspense, with a multitude of different cars and drivers fighting for 33 spots, but it along with Speedweeks in february have lost some since they don't have as many people trying to get in.

oldsaw wrote: In reply to bravenrace: At the Indy500, the car qualifies, not the driver. It's been that way for decades and drivers getting ousted after qualifying has plenty of precedents. In fact, one year Mario Andretti never got to the track until qualifying was over; he was competing in F1 in Europe. Another driver qualified and was replaced when Mario showed up to claim the ride. Bruno's case is different only because he wasn't contracted to qualify for someone else, but I suspect there were caveats in his contract that addressed the issue. And, I'll wager Bruno received more than a few dinieros for his efforts.

iceracer wrote:

oldsaw wrote: In reply to bravenrace: At the Indy500, the car qualifies, not the driver. It's been that way for decades and drivers getting ousted after qualifying has plenty of precedents. In fact, one year Mario Andretti never got to the track until qualifying was over; he was competing in F1 in Europe. Another driver qualified and was replaced when Mario showed up to claim the ride. Bruno's case is different only because he wasn't contracted to qualify for someone else, but I suspect there were caveats in his contract that addressed the issue. And, I'll wager Bruno received more than a few dinieros for his efforts.

It basically a driver change. Now the car and driver will have to start in the rear. I'm sure the disposed driver and car owner got generously compensated.

iceracer wrote:

iceracer wrote:

oldsaw wrote: In reply to bravenrace: At the Indy500, the car qualifies, not the driver. It's been that way for decades and drivers getting ousted after qualifying has plenty of precedents. In fact, one year Mario Andretti never got to the track until qualifying was over; he was competing in F1 in Europe. Another driver qualified and was replaced when Mario showed up to claim the ride. Bruno's case is different only because he wasn't contracted to qualify for someone else, but I suspect there were caveats in his contract that addressed the issue. And, I'll wager Bruno received more than a few dinieros for his efforts.

It basically a driver change. Now the car and driver will have to start in the rear. I'm sure the disposed driver and car owner got generously compensated.

I don't think Bruno cares as much about being compensated as he does about getting a ride and a good finish so that some team might offer him a permanent ride.

There are more commercials then there is racing in this thing.

........... and loose wheels

Also Dixon is the luckiest man in the world and Danica is very unlucky with the pits and yellow flags.

I guess I'm a zombie this year. Oh, and I didn't know Jim Nabors was still alive, much less could still sing.

Why do they need yellow flags for some of this? And why are they so long?

+1 for the 2X restarts, should prove to be more interesting as the marbles pile up

Wow what a finish.

well that was sure different

1 rookie mistake... but in the final corner

i'm still thinkin' wtf just happened

great race tho, 2X restarts were a plus, glad i didn't walk away this year

Race sounded great on the radio. Wish I could've watched it.

Heck of a finish, for sure. I'll bet Hildebrand won't get much sleep tonight. I wonder how Danica would have done if she'd had better luck on pit stops.

Hey, at least we now have all heard of JR Hildebrand. FInishing second is pretty impressive for a Rookie. Just not quite as impressive when he had a pretty big lead going into the last corner of the last lap.... oop.

Oh, so nice to see a non- Penske or Ganassi win the race. Stunning how bad Penske did, though.

The retirement of Foyt, the Unsers, the Andrettis, Mears, Sullivan, as well as Dan Gurney, who I always pulled for made a huge difference in how I saw Indy car racing. All the foreign names showing up and dominating for so long also quelled my excitment. However, in the days of the IRL I watched a few oval races and found that these guys were at least as fearless as any of their predessors and in general quite skilled. My interest slowly returned.

I wasn't able to watch all of this years race, but I saw enough of it to know it was worth seeing. What an amazing finish. I'm just glad Hildebrand wasn't hurt badly. For several seconds it looked like he was going to 3 wheel it to first place but it wasn't to be.

When I tuned in,I thought I was going to watch a race. Instead we got nearly 4 hrs of commercials with occasional race breaks. Very poorly done. But the finish was crazy and the big teams didn't win.

iceracer wrote: When I tuned in,I thought I was going to watch a race. Instead we got nearly 4 hrs of commercials with occasional race breaks. Very poorly done. But the finish was crazy and the big teams didn't win.

No kidding. I was so tempted to turn it off because of the commercials

We used and abused the mute button this year. Ms Patrick should seriously dump GoDaddy.

I agree with everyone else about the commercial load. Man, that was nuts. I guess they figure it's less annoying with the side-by-side (not to this guy, it wasn't..).

But WOW, what a finish! Mine might not be a majority opinion, but JR should have known better. "Rookie mistake"? Uh, nobody gets into an Indycar straight out of Drivers' School. Seeing as you have to be competitive in the lower formulae just to have the chance to get into one, he should have known what the hell happens to a car in the marbles. I still think he's got talent, and I definitely feel bad for the guy though.

after watching bits of.Monaco earlier I forgot how wide the indy cars are. what's the track difference between f1 & indycar?