Green Flag 4.24.08: What'cha Gonna Do When Danicamania Runs Wild, On A Channel That Nobody Sees
Posted by Jim Carson on 04.24.2008
A Danica win is so important that it gets me to do my column on the scheduled day.
I missed a week, so I didn't get a chance to chime in on a pretty impressive Sprint Cup race at Phoenix and a pretty impressive fuel conservation job by Jimmie Johnson, Supercross points leader Chad Reed taking a header and racing with a separated shoulder, and suspended former Craftsman Truck racer Aaron Fike admitting that he used heroin on race days. Hey Aaron, if Reed doesn't need the drugs, neither do you. There's still hope for Fike, because three-time dope Shane Hmiel is winning races in USAC spridgets on the West Coast.
Let's poke around with the highlights from this past weekend. From south of the border ... are you sure it's not still called the Busch Series? Moving right along WHOAAAAAAA HOW 'BOUT THIS ONE!
THE LITTLE WOMAN CAME UP BIG
After 49 starts in the Indy Racing League where she finished in positions 2nd through 20th and did everything from lead at the Brickyard to shove Dan Wheldon to collide with teammate Tony Kanaan on pit road to boost attendance at IRL races by up to 50 percent, America's motorsports sweetheart Danica Patrick officially earned her keep. The diminutive Sports Illustrated swimsuit model scored her first major victory in the Firestone Indy 300 at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan.
The entire racing community is either on the side of Danica, thrilled because the next huge leg of her journey has been completed (like the AirTran folks), or screaming that it was a fluke and that her win doesn't mean much.
The detractors will say that she only won because it was a fuel-mileage race, because most of the other contenders had to make splash-and-go pit stops in the closing laps. So how many Indianapolis 500s have been won or lost because of fuel strategy? At least two just since the Big Split of '96.
The detractors will say that she only won because Helio Crazydancer slowed down a tad and let her by on lap 198 of 200. No excuse there. Crazyclimber was trying to save fuel and stretch it to the end just as much as Danica was. Helio said he thought she was a lap down. Well, whose fault is that? Helio's team, Team Penske. The Captain and his crew just wasn't on the ball as much in Japan as the Andretti-Green bunch. Next.
Oh, a third of the field wasn't in the race because the Champ Cars had their swan song in Long Beach the same weekend. Keep looking for excuses, folks. Did you see the way the ex-Champ Car teams performed at Homestead? The top finisher was 12th. And Motegi would have been even tougher for the oval-newcomers to grasp.
There's a little merit in the argument that it took Danica longer to win her first race than it did anyone else in IRL history. That's true, although if Vitor Meira (upset), Ed Carpenter (minor miracle) or Little Anthony (same chance as a mosquito has of winning the U.S. Open) manages to crack victory lane, they'll break that mark. But Dario Franchitti didn't win in his first season with Andretti-Green, and it took until his third season for Bryan Herta to win with AGR. On the flip side, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti each won races in their first years with AGR. But that was a huge factor in Danica not winning in 2007, because three of her toughest competitors came out of the same shop as her cars did. In 2005 Danica was a rookie, and one year later Rahal-Letterman team fell so far behind AGR, Ganassi and Penske that she stood no chance of running competitively more than once in a while.
You wanna know who's to blame for Danica's win feeling a little hollow? ESPN and its family of networks. I understand that the Motegi event, originally scheduled for midnight Eastern on ESPN2 and replayed at 3 p.m. the next day on E proper, was delayed by weather and the resulting seepage of water into and on the pavement, to the point that it had to be postponed almost 24 hours. So now it's a Saturday night in the East, so the race had to be farmed out to ESPN Classic. Don't look for that channel on too many cable systems and only the deluxe satellite packages (somewhere the NHL brass is laughing because their primary network is a lot more visible). The race was replayed again Sunday afternoon, also on Classic, so the same Danicamaniacs who missed it the first time got to miss it again 13-15 hours later.
Every previous IndyCar race since many years before the Big Split of '96 has been available (live or same-day delay) on a real network, be it ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, or back in the day TNN. Meanwhile, one of the most important and historically significant non-Indy races since the Big Split gets shown twice on a channel that nobody gets. And it's been four days later, and ESPN or the Deuce still has not aired the race again, even in the wee hours of the morning, and there is NO EXCUSE for that. Fans have probably seen interviews with Danica on at least seven different channels since then, including CBS last night when she made another appearance with Letterman. But very few have actually seen the damn race.
The only chance that most of America will have to see Danica's win will be if this Sunday's race from Kansas Speedway goes into a rain delay. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!
QUICK LAPS
- Unification of open-wheel racing even made me interested in watching a street-course race. That's because of the 11 names at Long Beach that will not be in the new IndyCar series (excluding the Brickyard), so this might have been the last look at accomplished drivers such as Mario Dominguez, Alex Tagliani, Nelson Philippe, and one of my all-time favorites, Roberto Moreno. (Jimmy Vasser still co-owns an active race team.) Then there's Paul Tracy, and I guarantee that he'll pick up a ride with some team for Indy, and then by 2009 he'll wind up in ALMS or Grand-Am and provide a boost to sports car racing. As for the Long Beach GP, Will Power won the thing in about 20 seconds when he went from fourth to the lead in two corners. And maybe the IRL can look into the few good ideas that Champ Car had, such as the Power 2 Pass 60 seconds worth of boost, and the two compounds of tires in which both must be used at least once in each race.
- Normally I don't root for the massive multi-car race teams all that much, but I definitely am this weekend in NHRA. Don Schumacher Racing, which at one time had 11 teams in the four pro categories, is still the king of haulers on the road with seven current teams (his kid Tony Schumacher and Cory McClenathan in Top Fuel, the Funny Car foursome of Gary Scelzi, Ron Capps, Jack Beckman and Jerry Toliver, and Pro Stock Motorcyclist Chip Ellis). Shoe is also a dealer of the ProNitro brand of nitromethane for racers in IHRA and other organizations other than NHRA. NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car teams have to purchase their nitro for event weekends from the series' official dealer, VP Racing Fuels. Some DSR teams had planned on sticking around Las Vegas after the previous weekend's national event, to do some testing at the strip on Monday (very common for NHRA racers ... let's not mention what happened to Eric Medlen last year), and Shoe carried along the ProNitro barrels for those test runs. Well, NHRA has a hidden rule where teams aren't allowed to even be in possession of another brand of nitro during a national event race weekend, even if it's not close to being used. So Don Schumacher was slammed with a fine of $100,000. You know, the maximum fine that's ever been levied on a team in NASCAR. Michael Waltrip was hit with that number last year after his crew USED a type of jet fuel in his intake manifold during qualifying at Daytona. DSR just had the unapproved stuff in the corner of the truck, probably behind the refrigerator where the crews would never get to it. Shoe is naturally appealing this; one of the things he's citing is that NHRA even approved ProNitro last year. But this fine is absolutely absurd. It's like fining a diabetic for driving around with candy bars in the back of his truck. At least the NHRA didn't take away Cory Mac's Vegas victory.
More NASCAR in the next edition of the Green Flag, I'm sure.
