The Long & Winding Road

Well, not quite in the same spectacular fashion that Danny Sullivan did but..

Dario Franchitti picks up his third Indy 500 win after a close call with Takuma Sato when Sato dove in under Franchitti in the first turn of the last lap of the race went under the white line and lost it.  Sato not known for his patience on the track once again put himself in a place where he really had no business being. Franchitti’s race didn’t start out all that well when he was spun around in the pits during the first stop by EJ Viso, dropping him to the back of the field. A record 35 lead changes among 10 drivers made for an exciting race with no one running away from the field.  Josef Newgarden was quite the disappointment spending most of his race 1 lap down and eventually dropping out. James Hinchcliffe was among the leaders but faded away towards the end of the race and finished 6th. Unfortunately for Lotus they were black flagged and pulled from the race because they could not maintain safe speeds. The only scarey wreck came when AJ Foyts driver Mike Conway spun and collected Will Power sending Conway upside down along the wall.  Conway had run into his fuel man and was sent back out to not looses a lap with a broken front wing. Seriously AJ? you should know better then that. And the Andretti curse continues when Marco slammed the wall on lap 188, maybe next year.

So all in all  a great day for the Target Chip Ganassi team finishing 1-2 and TK Tony Kanaan finishing 3rd with a touching moment in victory lane when Dario dedicated the race to Dan Welden and Michael Wanser.

With its small 300hp, 1.6-liter Nissan DIG-T turbo engine the Delta Wing will be running in this years  Le Mans 24 Hours on June 16-17 and possibly in the American Le Mans Series in 2013. Backing this project is Dan Gurney’s All American Racing outfit, American Le Mans Series founder and owner Don Panoz, two-time ALMS champions Highcroft Racing and now the might of Nissan in the engine department. The DeltaWing project  carries some serious clout.   They claim the car will use 1/2 of the fuel and tires that other Le Mans cars will use while maintaining the same performance levels as the current batch of cars.  The front tires are all of 4 inches wide with 12.5 inch tires out back,  a little over 73% of the weight is on the rear tires. Lap times in testing seem to be kept quite the secret but in seeing  some of the videos available the car does seem to handle very well. This car was first being sold as the next generation of  Indy Car, I’m not too sure what that would be like. I sure do want to see a full field of these cars going at though. Although I would predict much in the way of carnage based on the arrow like shape of the car. What are your thoughts of this new machine?

So the field is set for this years Running of the Indy 500, “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” as they say.  Well lets hope it isnt another crash spectacle where the pace car gets the points for leading the most laps as it has in past years.   Ryan Bricoe, the first Aussie to win the pole averaged 224.484.  What I am more interested in is the 2nd position of James Hinchcliffe, and number 7 starting position rookie Josef Newgarden.

I think these will be the guys to watch in this race, and as long as the rookie Newgarden can deal with the Indy traffic at speed I predict another rookie win in this years 500.

Unfortunately for Lotus IndyCar has opted, and rightly so, to not allow them to run qualifying boost levels during the race. They had made the promise not to make any changes to the rule before June 18th and they are sticking with that. I love the fact that Lotus is back in IndyCar racing and do hope they find the power they need to keep up with the Chevy and Honda teams.

So there I was cruising along some back roads of Pennsylvania going to one of my favorite amusement parks right around midnight. When I saw them. Blue and red flashing lights right behind me. We all know that feeling, he can’t be after me, what did I do wrong? I wasn’t speeding etc. etc.
Well in this case he was after me. 🙁 So I find a nice place to pull over turn my interior light on and get all of my credentials ready, all the while thinking what did I do. Well it didn’t take long before he walked up and told me why he pulled me over. Apparently I had crossed the ‘white’ line 3 times. White line?? you mean the one on the left side of the road? I never thought twice about crossing that line, what did it matter? I usually only pay attention to the yellow line in the middle of the road. It didn’t occur to me right away but after he asked if I was OK several time I realized that he was checking to see if I was drunk. I guess that’s a good thing, inconvenient for me, but a good thing none the less. As for the white line, I still don’t pay much attention to it.

Back on February 19th 2011, my car hit a milestone. It 4 years and 8 months old it hit 111,111 miles. That is 1984.125 miles per month, or 23,812.9 miles per year. A lifetime miles per gallon of 33.28. That’s 3,392.54 gallons of gas with  a total of $8,779.93 averaging $2.58 per gallon.

Yes I am that crazy.

Have a great day!