Green Flag 4.04.08: The Split is Over
Posted by Jim Carson on 04.04.2008
Another step toward more relevance for the pointy cars. The next big step would be having Kyle Busch at the Indy 500.
We're coming off of a fender-banging short track race at Martinsville. While it was a sweet bit of redemption for Hurricane Hamlin to win (every September, there's a huge Late Model race at Martinsville which every driver in the class in VA/NC/SC/TN wants to win, but Denny went 0-for-4), the most controversial story from Sprint Cup concerns the Jack in the Hat and a missing Roush-Fenway sway bar that somehow wound up on one of Mikey's tables. Only Jack is trying to keep this in the spotlight, so it's gone from the Green Flag.
I'd rather talk about actual racing, and there was a pretty important race under the lights at Homestead.
OPENING THE DOOR ON THE OPEN-WHEEL SEASON
Less than five weeks after the Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series announced their "merger," otherwise known as Tony George's not-so-hostile takeover of Champ Car, the new IndyCar Series (it finally gets to be called that) held its first race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Not a whole lot changed at the top of the rundown. Only the Ganassi, Penske and Andretti-Green teams were anywhere near the front at any time during the XM Indy 300, except when Vision Racing teammates Ed Carpenter and Little Anthony qualified second and third before having their times disallowed by the tech inspectors. Winner Scott Dixon and third-place Dan Wheldon were in the Chipmobiles, runner-up Marco's from AGR, and the only other lead-lap finisher was Penske dance specialist Helio Crazyclimber. Sorry folks, the most notable thing Danica did in the race was fall backward from the front row and lose a lap.
The hope of the IRL regulars was that the Champ Car guys (who want to be called transitional teams) just wouldn't get in the way. That was going along just fine until lap 192 of 200, when Ernesto Viso went for a loop ... and was clipped by race leader Tony Kanaan. Uh oh, so much for staying out of the way. Anyway, the top transitional finishers were Oriol Servia with Kalkhoven and Vasser's team in 12th and Franck Perera with Conquest Racing in 14th. The only IRL incumbent driver that was slower in qualifying than any of the ex-Champs was Milka Duno, and if that surprises anyone, they should stick to NASCAR.
It's gonna get better for the ex-Champs. This was the first time on an oval for six of the nine drivers from that group. A spokesman for Newman-Haas-Lanigan figured that it'd take six months for those guys to become competitive with the IRL incumbents on the oval tracks. Y'all might want to take that learning curve just a little more quickly, because there's only one more oval on the schedule (Kansas, April 27) before that little thing they call the Brickyard.
The big difference, other than the half-dozen or so road/street courses on the schedule (starting this week at St. Petersburg), is that Graham Rahal will be back starting this week. Bobby's kid is the rising star from the Champ Car world. Servia, Justin Wilson and Will Power are recognizable names because they've won races, but they ain't Rahal, and they've all been overshadowed by four-time titlist Sebastien Bourdais and the flamboyant (and hopefully soon active) Paul Tracy. Rahal crashed out in midweek practice at Homestead, but N/H/L is the top transitional team and they'll have their prodigy ready for the street circuit.
I still don't see any of the ex-Champs winning any races this season, but the Penske-Ganassi-AGR stranglehold on IndyCar victory lane (all but three races the last four seasons have been won by this group) will have company starting in 2009.
Everything else gets thrown into the hodgepodge files this week. And we'll skip the objection by Bryan Kristopowitz of Jeff Burton's verbal berating of first-time Cup starter and eventual backmarker Michael McDowell. Just a little road rage. Maybe Burton was talking on his AT&T cell phone.
QUICK LAPS
- Kyle Busch + Craftsman Trucks = certain excitement. Kyle Busch + guy in front of Shrub on the last lap in a Truck race = more fan hatred for Shrub. The math is pretty simple there. Johnny Benson is a co-owner of a paved short track called Berlin Raceway in Grand Rapids MI, but don't expect Shrub to be invited to Berlin's summer Late Model specials. At least Shrub's admitted mess-up didn't affect the winner and Dennis Setzer's connections to Bobby Hamilton Racing.
- A week and a half ago at PseudoNashville, Scott Wimmer did the world of NASCAR a favor when he won the Buschenwide Series race. (He also did himself a huge favor, because he's the odds-on favorite for the fourth Richard Childress Cup car in 2009 after RCR siphoned sponsor General Mills from the #43.) Anyway, Cup guys had won the last three Buschenwide races on Easter weekend at PseudoNashville (Bowyer, Backflip Boy, Mikey). Wimmer's not even entered for RCR or anyone else this weekend at Texas, but 16 of the 44 names on the entry list are Cup invaders. The last time a non-Cupper won a Buschenwide race that was at the same track/weekend as a Cup race was in 2005, when Martin Truex Jr. won the summer race at New Hampshire. If anyone's gonna do it, I pick Mike Bliss, who was quite impressive with the #22 Armando Fitz Supercuts car and is now taking over the #1 for car owner James Finch; the Finch car won most recently in 2005 at Milwaukee with Johnny Sauter.
- Can the week get any worse for Petty Enterprises? First off, Kyle Petty misses Martinsville and is 0 for 1 after falling below the 35th Parallel, then takes himself (with likely contributions from the King) out of the #45 Sprint Cup car this week at Texas in favor of the talented-but-still-unproven-in-Cup Chad McCumbee; the #45 has shown no signs of being able to make up the nearly-150-point gap to the 35th Parallel, so more DNQs are almost certainly in the future. The Pettys' Dodge information-sharer #49 BAM car switches its alliance to Toyota and Bill Davis. And then the #43 loses its sponsor after 2008 because RCR gobbled up the Cheerios for 2009, and now all sorts of questions are being raised about where Bobby L will wind up after November (the new RCR seat? a Toyota? retire and hang out with Texas Terry and the family?). The King probably wants to stomp on his hat. Maybe some of us can make a contribution to the Victory Junction Gang Camp to offset the moods.
- Imagine if Davidson had gotten a respectable seed like a #4 or #5, then lost in the first round of the NCAAs, two years in a row. That's the case with NHRA Top Fuel driver Allen Bradshaw. The guy with no career event wins and one of the lowest budgets in the Top Fuel class pulled off shockers at two national events in a row by taking the #1 qualifying position at both Gainesville and Houston. Then he lost in the first round of eliminations both times, extending the record of the combined #1 TF qualifiers to a blistering 2-4. Hey, let's turn this into a positive: the Houston TF winner was Antron Brown, who switched over from Pro Stock Motorcycle this season and hasn't lost in the first round in a long and skinny car yet. Folks, switching to/from Top Fuel and Funny Car happens every year (Gary Scelzi and Kenny Bernstein this decade, among others), and to/from Pro Stock has been done. Going from the bikes to the sport's fastest machines is rarer indeed. In fact, Antron became the only racer to win national events in PSM and TF. And his cousin and former bike teammate Angelle Something was one of the first people to greet Antron in the winner's circle (and Antron has the lighter voice).
- This'll tell you how sad all of society is: Max Mosley, the president of the FIA which governs Formula One, has kept his job through fake retirement scandals, possibly-underhanded methods of driving away any possible competition to F1 before it starts, the poo-pooing of the U.S. market, and the tire disaster from the USGP at the Brickyard from three years ago. But now he's been rumored to have a key role in a Nazi role-playing sex orgy (how the hell do the tabloids find THIS out), and that looks like it'll be the incident that forces him to resign. F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone hasn't called for his head or anything yet, but he's insisting that it would be inappropriate for Mosley to attend this weekend's Grand Prix of Bahrain.
Talk to you again next week. Enjoy the racing, the basketball, and the rest of your weekend.
