Again ..... A much different situation
It was laid out ahead of time that Mario would race the car
And had wally failed to qualify the car Mario would not have started
It's just different
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Again ..... A much different situation
It was laid out ahead of time that Mario would race the car
And had wally failed to qualify the car Mario would not have started
It's just different
It is a sad day for Motorsport when money can buy you a ride after failing to qualify.
Not much different than that late fall trade deadline in MLB when a lot of players are traded to the contenders for the Baseball championship series.Quote:
Originally Posted by SarahFan
This isn't the only series that allows driver swaps after a car has been qualified. It was far more common when more drivers like Mario raced in multiple series all year long. IIRC something similar had happened at Indy in fairly recent years. Penske didn't buy anyone a ride when his team was shut out at indy, but I'm fairly certain the money was there if he had wanted to.
Junky just doesn't have good luck at Indy.
There's perception and there's reality. Welcome to reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Riebe
Yes, the reasons between the 2 are different. But what I'm trying to point out is that this has been the rule at Indy for a long time, if not always. The car qualifies, not the driver. This isn't IndyCar stretching the rules to include a regular driver and sponsor. The possibility for this happening for this reason has always been there and has already happened to Bruno a couple of years ago. Like I said, I feel for Bruno and hope he gets better breaks in future 500's, but I can certainly understand why it's important to Andretti and IndyCar to get one of the few real sponsors in the 500, the only race with decent exposure for the sponsors. Lord knows the Versus ratings aren't going to do the trick.Quote:
Originally Posted by SarahFan
I feel sorry for Bruno but I've grown to accept this as something unique to Indy. It adds a certain intrigue and creates this kind of discussion. However, I find it much more palatable when it happens within a team (i.e. Groff\Goodyear... gave us one hell of a race and a major sponsor was appeased and kept a marginal team afloat). Indy really mattered back then and maybe it matters again.
I'm getting all nostalgic for 5 years ago. http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/head...buy/index.html
Mario in his F1 days, Goodyear in '92, I'm sure there are more examples. For people to be on here complaining about how this is so horrible for this to happen now, as if this is a new thing, or worse, using this to somehow bash the IRL, is disingenuous at best. This only shows those who still hate anything IRL or Indycar. And those doing the complaining around here are of no surprise to those paying attention. Those people will use anything to disparage Indycar. The only thing I'm surprised about is that they haven't tried to blame Tony George yet.
Who is bashing the irl dbell?
I havent read that here on this thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SarahFan
I'm not saying, I'm just saying.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
Fair enough.... Missed that
Question for the class regarding the RHR/Bruno swap...
Does anyone think it's time for the rule to be amended?
Personally while I know it's clear this was well within the rules and not done without precedent.... I do feel it circumvents the spirit of the rule...
It seems to me the intent of the rule is to allow a team/car to participate if and when a driver becomes unable go fulfill his driving duties due to injury or illness etc
I have to admit this just doesn't sit well with me....
RHR and AA missed the show ..... Simple as that
So is it time to amend the rule ?
IMO it is
Thoughts?
Get you facts straight before casting dispersions.Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck34
Both were different situations and were prearranged decisions in which everyone, including the fans, knew it was planned that way. And in BOTH CASES the drivers switched seats with drivers ON THEIR OWN TEAMS.
Now we have a team and driver that never showed any speed during practice and qualifying BUYING A STARTING SPOT on the grid with A DIFFERENT TEAM.
Even you should be able to grasp the difference.
Get your dictionary straight before casting aspersions.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
Gary
If you see the Indy 500 as the center of all American open wheel racing than the rule should be changed. If you see it as the most important race (by far) in a series, the rule is both fair and sensible.... RHR and AA committed to a full season, are far from a danger on the track and really take nothing away from the field as a whole... Foyt is running a second car for one race with a driver who is not (despite his desire) a full time driver... What is more important, the series or the race? I am on the fence for the most part - but I think the move was not nearly as bad as many here seem to feel... I am not saying it is "good"..... just that it serves a larger purpose.... I would have a lot more trouble with it if they bought out one of the other full timers....
How is this a different situation? Those teams decided they had a better shot of winning with driver A instead of B. A.J. simply thinks that he has a better shot of winning the race with RHR than Junky. Sure there was also money changing hands, but come on does anyone here honestly believe that A.J. would drop a guy he thought could win?Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
And my facts are straight. Perhaps you should check your prejudices.
I think AJ thinks the SITUATION is more likely to win - if anything Bruno might be the better DRIVER for the job (although only by the smallest margin, if any - he seems to have a knack for Indy) - however an Andretti pit crew and some extra $$ are going to make a bigger difference to the chances for that car in the race......, I really had not thought of it in that way before but that car could actually be a dark horse- it was reasonably fast and Foyt knows how to do Indy, better pitstops could easily make the difference.....Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck34
Reay could have said- I am not going to buy my way into a race- but did not.
If anyone is to blame, it is he and his reputation is the only thing that could really take a hit here.
If Hunter-Reay wants to keep his rather enjoyable and probably reasonably lucrative job, he does what he has to (i.e. - what his sponsors tell him to do)... There are those who would criticize him for not wanting to race if given the opportunity - he is in a no win situation.....
Overall it stinks from many angles and that is all there is to it.... It is like the old Howard Jones song "No one is to blame" (or more accurately, EVERYONE is to blame, in this case)
I will explain it to you one more time. Try to pay attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck34
In the case of both Mario and Goodyear the drivers replaced were both driving for the same teams as Mario and Goodyear and were aware that their job was to get the car into the race.
No seat was Purchased.
No Grid position was filled by the "highest bidder"
In the current case we had a driver receiving a starting grid position for the Indy 500 for a team that wasn't his and until qualifying was over wasn't even planned!
Get it????
I'm not sure I can agree with the level of apparent outrage some people are displaying about this. Look at HRT last season and the musical chairs between Senna, Chandhok, Yamamoto and Klein. Not exactly the same situation, but still money buying rides and displacing incumbent drivers. It's always gone on and always will. I've no idea what Foyt's funding situation is, but maybe enough cash changed hands to see Bruno reappear later in the season or again next year, who knows? It sucks he's not driving, but then you could argue he's not a series regular and as such was always going to be viewed as disposable. I'm assuming he bought the ride to start with?
I get it perfectly. RHR, DHL, Foyt, Junky, and Andretti came an amicable agreement which is perfectly legal within the rules as written and the spirit of the rules, and has been done many times before, on who would run in the race. You on the other hand .....Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
Yup. Another example of "Indycar bad/whatever was before Indycar good." Same thing with the people complaining about low skill level ride buyers. This is something that has always gone on & if you were to go through each and every one of the fields since the race started there is almost always a few no name guys in each race that sort of got in through means other than their raw talent. It has always happened and always will.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hornet
And I on the other hand thinks the rule sucks and all that manufactured drama on "bump day" was just that....manufactured.Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck34
I wonder how many defenders here would feel the same way if instead of RHR we were talking about Milka Duno by a starting spot.
If you think that the Andretti cars sucking was done on purpose to "manufacture drama" ... well then I think we're done here. It's hard to talk to someone with paranoid delusions.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
And do you honestly think that AJ would let Milka anywhere near his car, no matter how big the check is? Thanks for proving my point of this being a racing decision, not solely a money deal.
Of course, were there only 28 cars on site, precluding the need for bump day and thus the chance of this sort of drama, you'd be singing the praises of the race wouldn't you? No, you'd be on here whining about the series being weak and how having more entrants than qualifying spots was the hallmark of popularity....Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
Bottom line: It's the car that gets qualified. It's a fairly straight forward rule. It can only be driven by a driver who has been qualified to run at Indy. Everbody knows the rules and apparently Bruno, who should be the most upset by this whole affair, is okay with it. He apparently knew the rules going in.
This rule was around long before IRL\Indycar. Tony George was starting his failed motorsport career on a Big Wheel when it was brought into effect.Quote:
Originally Posted by downtowndeco
If you qualify to run at Indy -- you qualify to run at Indy. I get your point but that's a different issue entirely.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
I can live with this rule for this race alone. With the NASCAR like restart rules this year I'm just grateful we don't have those absurd "Past Champions", "Past Winners" and "Best Smoked Ribs" exemptions that make NASCAR qualifying a joke.
Ok, I can live with AJ Foyt changing out his driver, in a car that his team qualified. However, when i hear details like AJ will get to use Andretti's crew, payoffs, etc. it rubs me the wrong way. That driver trades have happened at Indy for a while does not make it any more reasonable to me, and the nitty gritty of this particular deal seems even more unsportsmanlike than the usual. It won't really affect my enjoyment of the race, unless by some chance RHR happens to win, in which case I will be pretty annoyed with Indycar.
You can replace a driver who qualified with one who didn't because it's the car that qualifies--indeed that's the rule, but that doesn't make it right.
Michael Kinsley has postulated the First Law of Scandals, which is that it's not what happens that is illegal that's a scandal--it's what happens that actually is legal. His idea is validated here.
People are too fixated on how long this rule has been in place--slavery was legal for centuries, and it took 55 years after African-American men got the vote before women of any color did. I would love to hear someone claim that it was OK that women didn't have the vote because they'd known for 54 years that was the rule...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Will Rogers
Oh please! This is just a little bit of hyperbole, don't you think? Swapping a driver, slavery and women's sufferage aren't even close to being in the same category.
Gary
Well if the forecast for Indy is anything like the one for Cincinnati on Sunday (and they usually are pretty close) all the setups are out the window. Predictions are for 90 degree temps by then. This could get even MORE interesting!
Gary
This nonsense over RHR taking Bruno's ride is just a lot of whining. It is a business guys..and this has been done over and over and over and over.....almost every year you would see something like this. If a big sponsor wants into the race and their driver cant get in because he his team screwed the pooch on setup or guessed wrong on air temp, or got caught by rain...well then you saw it.
I always remember reading how someone qualified a car and then got bumped....and it is usually lesser funded teams like AJ's that benefit. What is more, unlike some people (comparing this to slavery or women's sufferage...please kill the hyperbole); I don't see anything wrong with it in this race. Everyone who goes to Indy knows the rules. Everyone when they sign a contract to climb behind the wheel can put a clause in saying they drive or not...and the owners can insist on it and the drivers can make the call then. IT is business..and it is time people quit ignoring that reality.
But....But...... What are the intardnet experts going to complain about now?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
Reading various racing forums I am almost (almost) amazed about how little some "expert" fans know about the rules, the history, and how racing really works. They have forgotten the days when ride hopping on bump day was expected and last minute deals were common. The only unusual thing about this deal was it occurred after qualifying. Had it been announced it at 5:55 Sunday, it wouldn't have even seemed that unusual.
At least it is more transparent that some of the NASCAR deals where a team "buys" the last couple cars in the field to get them to withdraw so some big time team who screwed up qualifying can get back in. Or the "provisionals" that almost every series has or the points buying allowed in NASCAR to get a guaranteed start. Without the points buying, one highly promoted Nationwide driver would not have qualified for many of their first races.
I think one factor that says a lot is that Larry Foyt talked to Bruno before completing the deal. That shows that Foyt at least is a class act.
Yep, and really watch what you complain about, because the solution in this case will be a rule for guaranteed spots for the top 20 or 25 on points(owners) to protect the regulars and their sponsors. I predict that next year there will be a rule in place to do just such a thing.
It might have already happened, but when others in the past like Bobby Rahal and the Penske cars failed to qualify, they were CART drivers in a USAC race, so technically there were no regulars to protect even though CART did actually pay points for the Indy 500 most (but not all) years.
good point - I had not even thought about that un-intended consequence of changing the existing rule... this is, in effect, letting the free market do its job in lieu of socialized allocations of a scarce resource.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexamateo
Dixon leads Carb Day. Tags second and Ryan Hunter-Reay is seventh.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/91781
Anyone who thinks the point of my post was that Bruno getting bumped is the equivalent of denying woman's suffrage...wow, that's some willful mis-reading on a epic scale. My point, which was clear, is that too many posters have claimed that, in essence, the rule under which Bruno lost his ride is valid because it has existed for a long period of time. That's just dumb, and I used some examples of far more important injustices that had existed for a long period of time to illustrate how sad and wrong it is to try to pull the fig leaf of "it's been the rule for a long time" to justify a bad rule. It's OK if you don't agree with me, but it's not OK to make stuff up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
no driver should ever be replaced in the starting grid unless they are unable to compete. Bruno was tossed to the dogs after easily Qualifying for the 100th Indy 500. only 33 drivers get to say they were a part of the 100th. Bruno got the shaft because the corporate greed pushed him out and AJ was money hungry. if by some miracle RHR wins, he would know, he really wouldnt deserve it for not even qualifying for the race in the first place.
I couldn't have put it better myself, h#1. Of course, if RHR doesn't win -- or at least make a really good showing -- he'll have a lot to answer for. I'd say this puts him in a very awkward position either way -- and it's one that they never should have gotten him into.
Then why even bring them into the arguement? You were the one who drew the comparison, and now want to distance yourself from it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Will Rogers
Gary