TGTBTU@Long Beach

The Good: Sato getting his 1st win with a pretty flawless drive, Rahal bouncing back with 2nd and Wilson, likewise, with 3rd. The Bad: Anyone who we thought was a title contender (Dixon, Power, Hunter-Reay, Hinchcliffe, Castroneves), The Ugly: I hate to say it, but NBC Sports Network were poor last night. Leigh Diffey was missed, although Brian Till was okay IMO, but did they really have to have so many commercial breaks all so close together. I mean they'd go to commercial, come back for 1-2 minutes and then go back to commercial again. Usually, NBCSN are pretty good, but yesterday left me a little disappointed with their coverage. I appreciate commercial breaks are part of the coverage, but space them out, so that we get, at least, 10-15 minutes of action at a time.

The good: King Taco Breakfast Burrito
The bad: Crowd seemed smaller than last year
The ugly: 24oz beer $10.50

Otherwise a well organized event as every year, providing lots of fun and good racing.

Bad: Not as much merchandise trailers/booths from what I remember. I was specifically looking for the ALMS booth but didn't find it.

Bad: Seb Saavedra seems like a young punk the way he goes around on his scooter almost hitting people. Good: Youthful exuberance I guess. =) Ugly: Hitting the wall in qualifying and the race.

Good: Hinch/RHR/Marco seem like the new IndyCar brat pack. They were almost racing each other on their scooters on the way to the Saturday drivers' meeting!

Good or bad? You decide: Not sure who was riding with the 'dinger on his scooter but he was pointing out all the pretty girls to 'dinger. "Look at that one over there..."

Good: The three Ganassi drivers were the only ones that walked from the paddock to the meeting. Ugly: Charlie was the only one walking alone. No one in the crowd recognized him.

Good: Decent pepperoni pizza inside the convention center. Bad: $8.25/slice. Ugly: Finding out there's $2.25 pizza slices at Boston's near Turn 1.

Good:

Sato and AJ Foyt Racing. Great drive, and he would have won no matter what happend behind him. Larry Foyt has really done well in getting the team to utilize more modern resources.

Graham Rahal, this is how your career should be! Grear run, had some help, but was vert fast in the race along with Sato and Vautier. Ditto for the entire Rahal team. All cars were quick, and they won their class on satruday with the Z4's.

Another good run by Wilson. Can you imagine how many wins this guy would have if he were with Penske/Ganassi/Andretti? Still one of the nicest and fastest guys in the paddock.

Vautier just needs some race luck. We are watching a super star in the making!

With all due respects to King Taco...El Pollo Loco gets the nod, along with Sushi of Naples!

Long Beach GP. Great racing, great people watching, great star watching, great parties, and just a great event!!!!! Thank you So Cal!!!!

Bad:

Vautier's botched stop. A solid top three goes away with a crucial mistake. Looked real bad at first, but the replay shows that Power was just in the guys blind spot. Still, SPM has been snake bit.

Kimball/Tag dance into the wall. WTH was that?!

Hinch getting pinched out. Just a racing deal, but it sucked.

Long overdue for standing starts......

Only ten cars starting the lights race. I remember the Altantics back in the day, with 30+ cars (different clasess) and those standing starts.


Ugly:

Three cars finishing the lights race. Imagine if they had taken each other out before the finish.....

LBGP not on national TV. The second biggest open wheel race in North America, in a sexy city, full of excitement, beautiful people, and great story lines. A great race that could have been a build up to the 500. Indycar must make it a priority to get this race on National TV and a bigger audience.

The local news in LA did a horrible job covering the race. The local NBC affiliate did not have an update in the evening news on Sunday which was a disgrace. And how is Fred Roggin still alive?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EagleEye

Only ten cars starting the lights race. I remember the Altantics back in the day, with 30+ cars (different clasess) and those standing starts.

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I remember one of the early races at Toronto, when Indy Lights was still called ARS, there were nine race cars on the pace lap with seven pace cars in front of them. History repeats?