Indy 500: Thoughts

[xtlm]

I thought it was a very good, competitive race.

But.............rain hindered it, along with a few crashes (that I believe happened in fear of the rain)


The winner really was not the one who should have won....but what are ya going to do, thats racing...lol, GJ Franchitti
- Castroneves was comming on stong

But the racing and competition was intence!, so many cars were still there at the end, the field proved to be strong!



Message to ABC...........Stop showing commertials when the action is going on.....toooo many....stop using side by side as an excuse to go green from yellow without comming back from commertial....bah...bad broadcast


but good racing! just a shame....

[uncre8tv]

I liked the race. I was rooting for all the AGR guys, so I am happy with Franchitti, but disappointed with the rest of them. The Marco crash was at least fun to watch. I am pro-Danica, but admit that her "good job" in victory circle sounded a bit forced. It made me chuckle. At least the Andretti curse isn't rubbing off on the whole team.

[Marbles]

I enjoyed the race... both the original and the sequel. Unfortunately, the weather and the ever increasing cautions turned it into a bit of a crap shoot... but that's motor racing, more often than not.

Points of interest for me:

I don't recall back markers ever taking themselves out in such an orderly fashion through out the race before! It was very... uhmm... soldierly of them. .

Good, if not exceptional, behavior by the drivers up front for the most part but for... I'm gettin' old and losing my memory but I don't remember drivers forcing one another down to the inside wall so often before... not at Indy. It was sickeningly NASCAR like. Not only did it seem acceptable, it was practically encouraged by the lack of any warnings on the part of race control. Oh well, one seriously dangerous, if not fatal crash in the years to come will straighten that out.

I wish L'il Al did better.

Marco was making everybody forget about his very questionable performances earlier in the season until he did something very Andretti like. He was absolutely clueless as to the whereabouts of a competitor when he drove into the side of him. He did drive great up until that point, though.

[Hoss Ghoul]

Good race, that could have been a great race if not for the rain and flurry of cautions at the end.

It proved to be far more competitive than many prognosticators forecast.

If the race had gone green it looked like Penske was going to win, Castroneves and Hornish were fast at the end.

Great save by Kannan, very impressive.

Nice run by Danica, she clearly knows how to get around this place.

Unexpected winner, which was to be expected once the race was restarted with the expectation of rain again-similar to the Cup race with its fuel mileage finish.

[call_me_andrew]

I'd like to point out that I predicted a good race and an AGR winner.

I can understand the drivers being so agressive. The way the weather was acting it seemed like the race could get called at any minute.

And Marbles, you're forgetting that Marco did have a broken right mirror, so he couldn't really tell that there was someone comming up on his right.

[IMSAFAN1]

It was a good race...not a great race just a good one. The guys in the booth are brutal...Rusty doing an open wheel race??? He seemed lost. Bring back Paul Page. The female pit reporter also seemed a bit out of her league. Have to agree with Marbles...I wished that Al "Hamster" Unser and "Fidel" Castroneves did better. The crowd looked good. Marco is the real deal. Get him in F1 soon...

[Sandfly]

I miss Harlan Fingler doing the very visiible and dramatic track inspections during the morning hours before race time.

The crowd can't sing ... even with the words in front of them.

100% Throttle, High drag racing... 4,000 insignificant drafting lead changes In only 4 laps...suggestive of NASCAR - .. by the way did I hear someone mention that this was just like a NASCAR race???

Spare me all the Mom shots - but that Ashley is OK

Glad they got it done and nobody got hurt.

Way to go Flower of SCOTLAND!!!

See you guys next May

[mark123]

It was a good race...not a great race just a good one. The guys in the booth are brutal...Rusty doing an open wheel race??? He seemed lost. Bring back Paul Page. The female pit reporter also seemed a bit out of her league. Have to agree with Marbles...I wished that Al "Hamster" Unser and "Fidel" Castroneves did better. The crowd looked good. Marco is the real deal. Get him in F1 soon...

I didn't see anything today that suggests that Marco could go to F1. Any of the drivers in the front 3 cars YES, but Marco a resounding NO. each driver has 2 spotters, maybe Marco's spotter was grabbing a cold one at the bar when that accident happened.

[RGM Fan]

I have to say it was better than I expected it to be, but still it was pretty dull.

First the Good: The field fillers were stouter than I expected. I expected 10 cars to retire for BS reasons before the halfway point and they all stayed on the track as long as they could. In that way the field was deeper than I thought.

There were more on-track lead changes than I expected.

The AGR cars were competitive for the first time this season.

The bad: The field was still weak and it showed. Seven yellows for single car accidents. I would say none of the people who crashed would have made the field if OWR was as healthy as it was 11 years ago.

Cautions, almost a third of the race ran under the yellow flag. I think this race has one of the lowest amounts of green flag laps ever. I felt a few of the single car accidents should have been cleared faster as no one was hurt.

Television coverage could have/should have been better

Not enforcing the speed differential rule. There were several teams that were consistently running laps 10 mph below the leaders speed and should have been pulled from the track. If they had done this they would have cut down on the number of cautions.

Attendance: The crowd was clearly down from previous years. There was a lot of bare seats, a lot of "Red Hat" sections and the infield wasn't close to full. It's clear the Brickyard 400 out draws the 500 now.

Overall I would say the race was a C, it was better than my expectations, but after Kansas my expectations were pretty low.

[cobre]

RGM,maybe if the field were as strong as say ' 92 there would be more green flag racing and everybody would be happy, other than that I agree with your points >out.