Sorry guys......

[DBell]

Watched the race on DVR this morning and it was pretty much what I expected. Hopefully St. Pete will be more competitive than AGR, Penske, Gannasi and then everyone else.

[qwinsee]

I watched the first half of the race and I cannot even say it was the racing, maybe the coverage? Just didn't grab me. I don't have an 97 inch TV so when they split the screen and showed half track shot, well you really couldn't get much from the footage they were showing. When the first yellow came out they cut away all together to a commercial. I would like to see more coverage of the pit sequences and information about the different stratagies. I don't know if I wasn't use to the commentators or what, I just thought something was lacking, not sure what, something though!

[nanders]

You can make laps at Homestead flat out, but the fastest guys run a lot less downforce. SInce the 80's there has been enough downforce to run most superspeedways flat, but of course thats on a perfect lap.

Justin was flat almost all night, the leaders were lifting a lot.

Unfortunately at the high banked 1.5's in the past you could not trim the cars enough.

rh

Hoopty,

Do you have the telemetry with "Race Control?"

I'm interested as to what their driving is like from that point of view. When in the corners, you could see from the helicopter shots that, cars could not follow in the tracks of a proceeding car and when a following car would cross an aero wake from low to high, it would get a good push up the track.

Also for those who think the race was boring, that's what you get when there are less cautions. This is where car setup really means something. When an Indy Car oval race has just a few caution it starts to look like a F1 race with too many safety car periods But it's true. The fastest cars drive away ... as they should. Pack racing is only good for a little thrill so you got to wrap your minds around the strategy .... setup, fuel, tires ... like CART used to be.

[Hoop-98]

Yes it has it but was pretty spotty this time, hopefully they will get the bugs out. As far as AERO push, to me this is what much of the research should be about for the next gen car.

IMHO that means wind tunnel and track testing of leading/trailing car interference.

I liked the wing angle setting here, you could definitely trim the car out.

rh

[jarrambide]

The problem for me was the fact that just a couple of cars finished on the leader lap.
Everyone here knows that I´m not an oval fan, I watch them, but I prefer a track over an oval every day of the week (just a personal taste, nothing more, nothing less).
When other racing fans try to sell me oval races they always try to sell the point of how in ovals unlike tracks you get so many cars fighting for the first 3 positions, and with so many cars at the track (after watching races with only 17 cars, more than 20 is a lot of cars in my eyes, and I´m not even counting Milka), I assumed that would be true, but it wasn´t the case.
Hopefully this will change in the future, I´m not asking for 20 cars in the leader lap, but 11 or 12 cars in the leader lap with 15 or 20 laps to go would be nice.

[jarrambide]

The problem for me was the fact that just a couple of cars finished on the leader lap.
Everyone here knows that I´m not an oval fan, I watch them, but I prefer a track over an oval every day of the week (just a personal taste, nothing more, nothing less).
When other racing fans try to sell me oval races they always try to sell the point of how in ovals unlike tracks you get so many cars fighting for the first 3 positions, and with so many cars at the track (after watching races with only 17 cars, more than 20 is a lot of cars in my eyes, and I´m not even counting Milka), I assumed that would be true, but it wasn´t the case.
Hopefully this will change in the future, I´m not asking for 20 cars in the leader lap, but 11 or 12 cars in the leader lap with 15 or 20 laps to go would be nice.

[Hoop-98]

Good post, Helix. jimispeed is just trying to carry the flame that went out a month ago.

Actually, compared to prior posts from that viewpoint, I see a definite positive movement but then I have a good eye for subtlety.

rh

[garyshell]

I enjoyed the race. First oval I have seen for a few years. But the TV coverage stunk. Where was the driver to pit radio coverage? I think I heard ONE segment all night. I miss Jan Beekus in the pits. Where was the technical descriptions of what was going on? Scott Goodyear is like listening to paint dry and his partner, whatever the ***** his name is, was not much better.

It looked to me like the ex-OWRS guys had a bit to much downforce dialed in. But I understand the need to keep your only car in one piece so that you have something to run in St. Pete.

It was nice to hear Dixon lifting for the corners! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I would have like to have heard more incar audio from the others.

But with all that, it was a REAL treat to see 25 cars on track!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And above all, it was just damn nice to be racing once again.

Gary

[BobGarage]

I enjoyed the race. First oval I have seen for a few years. But the TV coverage stunk. Where was the driver to pit radio coverage? I think I heard ONE segment all night. Where was the technical descriptions of what was going on? Scott Goodyear is like listening to paint dry and his partner, whatever the ***** his name is, was not much better.

I enjoyed the race but the TV coverage was sh!t. I only wish we in the UK could have had Goodyear and friends, because the international TV commentators are ****ing aweful! And it didn't help that Sky Sports kept cutting away from them to talk in studio (with "analysts" that know less about the racing than the fans watching do!) and then then going back to them mid sentace so you didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

Bring back Jeremy Shaw and Hinch! The best duo any international TV feed has ever had!

The international TV feed did have a lot of the pit radio stuff. The idiots commentating did talk over it half the time though. Or aknowledged it but came out with comments like "that was Marco, I have no idea what he was talking about".

[downtowndeco]

It was still boring.......

Why was CART at Michigan so much more exciting back in the day??

Maybe the cars, or the type of track, I don't know, it was just boring for me.

From hearing the comments from the Champcar drivers, it sounded like they were learning, but also keeping their noses clean, so they could survive to race another day.

The commentary did nothing for me either. I missed hearing radio transmissions from team to driver every once in awhile. I missed Jon Beekhus' excerpts that always gave us the racers and engineers perspective.

I miss alot of things.....

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the race. I did, as did many others. I'm not sure what part you didn't like. That it was a fairly clean, green flag race? That the fastest (or at least one of the fastest) cars won or that there was not much "pack" racing?

Sorry. If this would have been a CCWS or CART race I feel you'd be proclaimming it was the best oval race ever.