INDYCAR – California Dreamin

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray when it comes to INDYCAR and the ISC. The bridges have been damaged but not completely burned as many of the ISC tracks found their way off of the 2011 IZOD IndyCar schedule. However, a little ray of California sunshine has perhaps given us an opportunity to repair some of the damage and the dream of having a more robust calendar and better ISC relationship going forward. The Auto Club Speedway and INDYCAR announced on Tuesday that a night race would…

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IndyCar – Friday Night Sprints at Valley Speedway

Coming to Kansas City for the IZOD IndyCar Series race this weekend, or are you fortunate enough to live in the area? This Friday night, get in touch with the origins of open-wheel racing in the US, good ol’ fashion wingless sprint cars running around on a local 1/4-mile dirt track. On April 30th, Valley Speedway in Grain Valley, MO, will be featuring wingless 305 sprint cars, 1200cc lightning sprints, 600cc micro sprints, and Midwest mod-lites. Valley Speedway is a great small-town track with easy parking, great stands and facilities,…

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IndyCar – Kansas Preview: A look at the history of open-wheel racing around Kansas City

History: An Interview with Kansas City Sprint Car Legend Luther Brewer: Open-wheel racing has always been a major part of the motorsports scene in Kansas and Missouri. After WWII, motorsports throughout the country exploded in popularity, and the MidWest was the center of sprint and midget car racing. That rich tradition hasn’t faded. Every week, you can find winged and wingless sprint cars doing battle on dirt ovals across the Kansas City area. I thought about trying to piece together a review of the sprint car history from around the…

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IndyCar – Kansas Preview: An introduction to open-wheel racing around Kansas City

Introduction: The IZOD IndyCar Series has been coming to the new Kansas Speedway since its opening in 2001. This year with be their 10th race at the 1.5-mile D-shaped oval track, and for the second time in a row it will be the first oval race of the season, and since 2007 it will be the lead-in event to the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race. So far this season, we’ve seen three street races and one road race, two of which were outstanding, one was still pretty good, and the last…

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Firestone Indy Lights – 2009 Season Review – Spring Races

Introduction A dedicated feeder series to the primary American Open-Wheel Racing series has been in existance in one form or another since 1986. The American Racing Series began in 1986 to serve as a development platform for CART, since the Formula Atlantics series which had been around since 1965 had failed to race in 1984, and existed as two separate series, a Pacific and an Atlantic series, from 1985 to 1990. In 1991, the same year that the split Formula Atlantics championship merged back into a single national series, the…

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Star Mazda – 2009 Season Review – Getting Started

Star Mazda Series – 2009 Season Review The Star Mazda Championship is a low-power spec-formula series that started in 1999 in an effort to transition young drivers from karts and F2000 cars to the types of winged single-seaters they’ll see in Atlantics, Formula BMW, GP2, and Firestone Indy Lights, and specifically feeds the Atlantics Championship series. The chassis are all built by Star Race Cars, run the 1.3L Mazda Wankel “rotary” engine, and are shod with Goodyear rubber. Teams are allowed to adjust wing angles, suspension set-up, and brake bias,…

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IndyCar – Danica May Do Double Duty

According to an article on ESPN.com, Danica to try NASCAR in ’10, Ms. Patrick will attempt to follow in Tony Stewart’s shoes by running a full-time IndyCar schedule while also running a significant number of NASCAR Nationwide and ARCA Series races for Tony Stewart’s team. In fact, it looks like she’s be running more races in the taxis than in proper race cars. As I see it, this is very unfortunate. The additional workload will certainly not help her racecraft in an open-wheel car, rather I’d say it will hurt…

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