Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Look, they're not a '91 Lola T9100, but I think they look pretty good. At least they don't look like the current F1 cars. Those cars are completely butt-ass, horrible looking.

The best racetrack in the world...PERIOD...Even in it's shortened configuration.

Member of this message board since 1997

Absolutely. 

After Knoxville of course

The name's not Dick, Chumpy.  And I doubt if 20M people read your post, but if they did they would agree with me.  Let me elaborate.

'Yellow finish.'  Obviously you are not at all familiar with Indy Car or you would know that unlike Crapcar, the races finish at the stated distance whenever possible.  The Indy 500 has finished under yellow numerous times without diminishing its prestige.  A 500 mile race should include a winning strategy, and waiting for your opponent to run out of gas obviously was the wrong one this time.

'Ugly closed cockpits'  You are aware they are open on top, right?  You are aware they are an interim fix to a serious safety issue, right?  But sprint car cockpits are soooo open, right?

'Mostly bought ride foreigners'  So, which is your biggest beef, the bought part, the foreigners part, or the poor grammar part?  Tell me how great the talent is in Crapcar, with the likes of Richer Children Racing, and the prep school brigade that nobody cares about.  Who was the last domestic talent to EARN their way into Crapcar, Kyle Larson?  And how's that working out?

'Empty Covid Grandstands in August'  Unfortunate definitely, but not sad.  What would have been sad would have been to try some compromise of allowing 'X' number of fans in and then dealing with the fallout.  How did that work out for Knoxville?

'Far removed from what it once was, not seeing anyway it can ever come back'  Too much ground to cover in a short post but, I'll try.  When you say 'what it once was', are you talking about say the 60's when it it featured front and rear engine cars, turbine powered cars, and OMG, 'foreign' invaders like Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Jackie Stewart, etc.  Or maybe the 70's when the speeds kept climbing and climbing, or the 80's when CART was flexing its muscle, or the 90's when Tony George tried to reinvent the wheel and the track went from a one event facility to hosting Crapcar and then F1 in the early 2000's.  It will never be any of those things again, but it will be the Indy 500 for many years to come, under the guidance of the Penske family, and it will be just fine.  If you've ever been there, duriing any of those periods, or all of them as I have, you would know that.

'Very sad'  Hmmn, lets talk about ratings which you threw in later.  So you think comparing the ratings for pre-Covid Daytona held on its usual date and ratings for the I500 held on a make shift date far removed from its traditional holiday spot are indicative of a failing Indy 500?  Hmmmm, seems a little contrived to me.  By the way, how were the ratings for that last Crapcar race at Daytona, you know, the one on the road course they started out with a demolition derby.  Hell, they had to add another chicane so they wouldn't be going as fast as them ride buying sporty car drivers do at the 24 hours.  Now, THAT'S SAD!

Amazing track, even scares me playing the F1 PS4 game, can't imagine what it must be like going up Eau Rouge at 200 mph plus in an F1 car.

Uh..............................No............

Member of this message board since 1997

Amazing track, even scares me playing the F1 PS4 game, can't imagine what it must be like going up Eau Rouge at 200 mph plus in an F1 car in the wet.

Fixed it for you...lol!

Member of this message board since 1997

Did you happen to see the video of Kimi Raikkonen driving the car up Eau Rouge through a clowd of smoke after someone blew an engine? He has no idea what's on the other side and he keeps driving at 200 mph plus. It was from the early 2000s, just crazy courage.

The Iceman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnOOqY8huvA

Member of this message board since 1997

https://youtu.be/seget3zOj_8

Here's my favorite Eau Rouge clip. Back in the naturally aspirated v8 days. If you listen close you can hear the Ferrari grab 7th gear right be entering the corner. At about 180mph. Goosebumps everytime...

And apparently I don't know how to copy and paste a link on hoseheads.  Search: "BEST F1 exhaust sound v8" on YouTube.  You're welcome.

I have a few questions and comments about the Indy 500.

First, this is a weird year with the whole corona thing.  I wouldn't put a lot of stock in any ratings for this year.  Had this race been run 2 months ago or whenever it was before all the other sports started, I think the ratings would've been higher than any other Indy 500 before or possibly any auto race ever, maybe even rivaling the Super Bowl?  Simply because I think the whole country was starving for any kind of live sporting event.  But now that it's 2 months later and all the sports have went into overdrive to try to catch up to where they were, there's a lot of competition right now for ratings, not to mention it's summer.  Right now there's NBA and the NHL which typically aren't doing anything now.  Baseball scheduled 60 games in 66 days and with the corona outbreaks on a few different teams there's going to be a lot of double headers.  NASCAR in an attempt to get there 26 races in before the chase did some mid-week racing as well as some double header weekends.  I honestly think right now (I never thought I would say this 4 months ago) there's too many sports on for people to follow.  My point is ratings are going to be weird this year.

I have never gotten into the Indy 500, which is a shame because I think it's probably the most famous or prestigious auto race in the world?  Or maybe a better way to word it is more people have heard of this race than any other, even people who have never seen a racecar?  But I just don't know anyone which makes it hard for me to follow.

My questions are, what's the deal with the Indy 500?  Years ago I thought it was an IRL points race?  Is the race sanctioned by any series at all?  Or is it a one off race.  If it's sanctioned by a series, do they have 33 full time teams?

I would love to make the Indy 500 great again lol (no I'm not trying to make it political).  Since Roger Penske now owns the track and I think this race is probably very special to him, there could be a few changes.  Some that I hope for are, why not make it kind of like IROC was?  I don't mean turning it into IROC where you have to be invited, I mean encourage drivers from other series to try it out.  I realize it's a "pay to play" thing for the most part but what if Roger could somehow give owners some kind of incentive to hire drivers that aren't traditionally Indy car drivers just for this race?  I think it would be awesome if there were a few drivers from NASCAR, the WOO, F1 or any other racing series.  It would certainly give me a reason to watch.

I realize in the current format this would be tough.  Don't they do practice and qualifying for a month?  What if Roger could somehow work this out with the other series?  For example, what if they only had track time on Wednesdays for 2-3 hours?  I don't think this would interfere with any other series going on other than the WOO.  What if Penske worked out a deal with the other series' that for the month of May they wouldn't do any races Tuesday or Wednesday?  That should give them enough time to get there and back.  This day and age with simulators, I don't know that they need to practice as much as they used to?  As for the race itself, what if they moved it to Monday?  NASCAR would get to keep it's original date and hopefully he could talk the other series' into not racing on Monday? 

I also realize there's probably not enough grid slots for this to work but couldn't they increase the amount of cars to start?  It's a big track and isn't there usually less than 20 cars running at the end of the race?

I know some of these ideas break tradition but if it made it more fun to watch who cares?  What are your guy's thoughts?