Bahrain may be the first pure grand prix of the season. As always, Melbourne was a safety-car stunted crash fest where the only true pace we got to observe was the FIA’s snail speed bureaucracy which still hasn’t finished its proceedings with the hapless McLaren team. Sepang has traditionally been the race that everybody starts to see how the championship is going to unfold, but this year Bernie, in his infinite wisdom, decided to push back the start of the race so that it would end at twilight despite protests…
Read MoreAuthor: mike
IndyCar – Attendance and Ratings
Attendance figures have been released for the Long Beach Grand Prix with a weekend total of 175,000. This is up from last years 170,000 for the Champ Car World Series finale. On the surface, a bump of 5,000 doesn’t seem to carry much significance, but with the stagnant economy, the numbers should be read as a win for the race promoters. But the numbers only tell part of the story. This event’s headline act is far more stable than CART or CCWS was in their last few visits here. The…
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IndyCar – Kansas City Preview
The IndyCar series makes it’s first visit to an oval this weekend on the hectic return trip from Long Beach. Kansas City is one of the five 1.5 mile ovals on the circuit this year, including Texas, Homestead, Chicago and Kentucky. And while the usual suspects (Ganassi, Penske & Andretti Green) are expected to continue their total domination of the ovals, there might be more hope for the other teams this year. An excellent article was posted today on IndyCar.com describing how the IndyCar series has fixed the wheelbase of…
Read MoreIndyCar – Official Indy 500 Entry List
IMS has released the official Indy 500 entry list which puts the car count at 40. 28 of the entries have a drivers name attached to the seat, while the rest are listed TBA. We released our own updated entry list on Friday after the PT and Davey Hamilton press conferences where we listed 29 confirmed car driver combinations, but we got one wrong. Alex Tagliani with Conquest was left off IMS’s version of the list. We heard rumors (from Trackside Online) that Conquest would not be returning for Kansas,…
Read MoreIndyCar – Dario Wins Long Beach
Dario Franchitti showed everybody this weekend that a season in Nascar did not dull his abilities on the street courses. On the tight streets of Long Beach, he displayed his dominance by putting up more passes than anyone else. It certainly didn’t hurt matters that Dario’s two pitstops occurred just moments before full course yellows, allowing him to take the lead and comfortably stay there. But the stories coming out of Long Beach this weekend don’t stop with the top step of the podium. Take your pick. Helio returns to…
Read MoreIndyCar – 500 Update
Going into the day, we knew that KV racing had scheduled a press conference. We also pretty much knew exactly what they would talk about since Robin Miller told us he was sworn to secrecy about it on Wind Tunnel last Sunday, and then proceeded to act like he wasn’t leaking it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that KV had put together enough hamburgers and hot dogs to lure Paul Tracy out of his Forsythe induced retirement. Jimmy Vasser (part owner of KV racing with Kevin…
Read MoreIndyCar – Helio in for Long Beach!
Robin Miller is reporting that Helio will be driving for Team Penske in his familiar #3 this weekend. Will Power will drive the #12 entry that as of yet, Team Penske hasn’t even unpacked. We incorrectly assumed that the #12 would be for Helio, not for Will Power. Trackside Online reports that Team Penske has called a press conference for later this afternoon to discuss the situation, but currently the media and even Brian Barnhart are swarming the Penske operation at Long Beach for quotes and information. It will good…
Read MoreIndyCar – Helio Acquitted!
The AP is reporting that Helio Castroneves, his sister and his lawyer have been acquitted on all charges. However, the jury was hung on the count of conspiracy against Helio. The US government may choose to retry him on the conspiracy charge at a later date, but it looks like for now Helio is a free man. Open Paddock will keep you apprised of all developments to this story as it unfolds, but what we are most interested in is how quickly Helio can get to Long Beach. As we…
Read MoreIndyCar – Versus Telecast Thoughts
The IndyCar series kicked off their season two weeks ago at St. Petersburg on the Versus network, and while the on air product was vastly superior to anything ESPN/ABC have given IndyCar fans over the last decade, the TV ratings are initially telling a different story. The final Neilsen ratings scored just 235,000 households. Granted, this was Versus first race with the IndyCar series, but the ratings were down significantly from last year despite Versus’ noticeable efforts at advertising the series. The on air talent alone was a vast improvement…
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