bad news

A great race and a media favorite spells bad news for the Champ Car World Series.

There isn't room for two and the IRL looks like the favorite to win right now.

I attended the first race up in Michigan when Cart broke away from Indy so I was rooting for them back then. The whole feud hurt open wheel racing in the U.S. and gave NASCAR the opening it needed to really explode on the scene.

Now if Indy Car can maintain the momentum then we can get back to the great open wheel racing that we use to have. I'm not placing any bets.

the races

• What an incredible finish to the F1 race!
• The tire rule is stupid and dangerous.
  
• Indy is Back! It makes the race better when you have a favorite to keep track of and the media had a favorite in Danica Patrick.
• The Indy pre-race show really sucked! Let Jim Nabors sign, launch the balloons, tell them to start their engines and then get on with the racing. What's this Speed City crap? Show business would make racing into pro-wrestling if given the chance.
• I'm a Foyt fan and I wish those boys better times in the future.
• The cut-away car was a good idea but I didn't see it very much.
• A 500 mile race is so different from a 50 mile or 200 mile race. This was a good one and you could really see the ebb and flow of good fortune in this race.
  
• Back in the thirties Ralph Hepburn told Jim Davis that he had figured out how he was going to win Indy. Ralph said he was going to drive for an average speed higher than the last years race and therefore he would end up out in front. Jim told him it wouldn't work and it didn't. Danica showed how to do it when she lost time in the pits, you come back out and your racing against one car, the one in front of you. When you pass him you do it again with the next car.
• Stupid headline today in the Columbus Dispatch, "Wheldon spoils it" is just nonsense. Of course this is the home for Rahal Letterman racing so I guess I have to forgive them.
• Speaking of the Dispatch it was a little comical to see a commentary recently in favor of a Nascar track here in Ohio. These guys aren't seen too often at the local short track, Columbus Motor Speedway so it is obvious that they don't really care for racing.
  
• Dan Wheldon came to the U.S. with nothing more than a helmet a few years back and he has worked to get this win. That's a bit more interesting than the rich latin guys who have been getting rides over the last couple of years.
• I had a friend at Indy, Tom Frison, he's been going for something like 25 years. Tom says they aren't allowed to run the race without him.
• Motorsports isn't through with Indy. The Hot Rod Power Tour will go through town this weekend and the USGP will be there next weekend.

Springfield

It's a big show, no doubt about it. Wore me out!

Primary focus at this show is the swap meet, acres and acres of stuff if your building a hot rod or restoring an American car. Forget it for just about everything else. Good place to go if your looking for a project, probably four times as many cars for sale as cars on display.

Here are some pictures form the car show.

The MGB is a runner, looks like it gets used all the time.

The XKE coupe has too much chrome, looks like it spends its road time on a trailer. I owned 2 Jaguars when I was 19, a young man could do that back then.

A car show is no place to take pictures of cars. This is a pretty hard and fast rule.
At almost all car shows the cars are parked just like they are in any other lot.
Way too many owners leave the hoods open all of the time and there are always
people in the way.

next stop

Cars & Parts Magazine Springfield Swap Meet and Car Show

I'll be there Saturday, cameras loaded and looking for stories.

I'll have only my little digital cameras this time, no film cameras. I did shoot over 50 pictures on film at Mid Ohio and will post the best of them in coming weeks.

in the paddock

Here is a formula car in the paddock at Mid Ohio. Everybody had tractor-trailers, full canopies and these weight scale jigs like you see here. After walking around for a while, I decided that I wasn't going to find any regular people at this race fielding a car and making sacrifices to do it. Too bad this event happened on the same day as the NHRA event, there are hundreds of people at the drag races who work for a living by day and work on their own cars at nights.

I didn't get everyone in the picture but there are eight guys working on this car! The engine was off song, they depended on the notebook PC for analysis.

Here is a Porsche with with the front end being rebuilt. Porsche went to the trouble of really tying the front end together with a lot of sheet metal. Nevertheless someone thinks it is necessary to add a bar tying the towers together anyway.

Don's Duck

I met Don at the races today while taking a good look at his Ducati.

He's the second owner of this bike and I think it's found a home. Don is just the sort of enthusiast I want to write about, he's got something nice and interesting and he takes care of it himself. There didn't seem to be too many guys like Don at the races this weekend so I was lucky to run into him.

Don is a pretty lucky guy himself, his wife bought the bike for him!

They've had this bike for a number of years and the work gets done a little bit at a time, by Don. The bike isn't handed over to some shop, it stays at home and gets the best of care.

Don rides the bike every season but it has a rival, there's a Z1 at home too. Don and his wife also have a modern bike for longer trips.

In their day, these Ducatis were the best handling bikes you could buy. The magazines always used the Ducati as the benchmark when they tested other bikes.

It's a great bike, I always stop and look at them when I can. Here is another picture.

seen at the races

A right hand drive Morgan.

A Volvo P1800ES joined by an original Mini.

A Pontiac Can Am.

all gone

Here is my car parked in the infield.

Seems to me, and I might be wrong, but there use to be a lot more sporting cars in the parking lot than we see here. I know people don't bring their MG's and Triumph's out as much as they use to but a sports car racing event seems a worthy enough occasion.

There were no MG’s or Lotus, no Healy’s, no Jaguar 2 seaters, no Datsun roadsters, no original Z cars, no Fiats, no Spitfires. I saw one Triumph TR6, a Volvo P1800ES and a Morgan.

Among the moderns, I did not see many Miatas, they were there but not in great numbers. Porsche, BMW and Corvette all made a good showing but I didn't see any Crossfire’s or MB 2 seaters.

I guess I'm being a little sentimental about the good old days. It just seems to me that people who do own sports cars are as interested in road racing as they once were.

Here is my car keeping better company.

good vibrations

I was about to throw this can away when I noticed something interesting.

As the cars passed by and headed down the original start/finish stretch the empty can vibrated. Cool! You can guess which cars generated the greatest reaction, the Corvettes and their big V-8's.

These cars didn't seem as fast as the turbo Porsches were back in the late 70's early 80's. I think the turbos had about 100 more horsepower and it all hit the ground right about here in a most astonishing manner.

I'll bet the lap times are similar though, I would like to know but I can't find any historical information on the web.

season tickets

I have a plan for this site but I expect it will evolve.

I want to write illustrated features about people who are car or motorcycle enthusiasts. The stories will be about regular people who work for a living and enjoy their version of motorsports.

I don't want to write about people who have become professionals in motorsports nor do I want to cover races, others already do that.

In order to find stories I have to go looking for them and that happens this week. I hoped to attend some of the NHRA races at nearby National Trails Raceway but I'm going to miss all of it. This is really too bad because there are hundreds of racers there this week besides the pros. Maybe I'll catch some of them while they're in the neighborhood.

There are two reasons I am missing this event, one is that my employer feels that my talents are indispensable this week and the other is that I have season tickets for Mid Ohio and they are holding an event.

Saturday and Sunday will be spent at Mid Ohio with the sports car crowd. I'm sure that there are more potential stories than I can handle so come back next week and see how I managed.

that's racing!

WOW! That's racing!

If you want to know what racing is all about be sure to see today's Moto GP race.

Valentino Rossi versus Sete Gibernau fought each other to the end.

Racing is all about passing, It's not about wrecks or long lines of cars that don't seem to pass each other. Racing is passing.

The best racing I've seem lately comes from the Moto GP circuit. I am pleased everytime I see one of these races.

Speed TV will air the race again at 4 P.M. Sunday June 5th.

I'm allergic to most complainers but I do have one long-standing gripe with motorsports.

Why is it that many events I'm interested in fall on the same dates?

Now I'm not just a fan of any one part of the moto world so this is more of a problem for me than for most people. When I say the moto world, I mean all types of car, bike and racing events and this problem can be illustrated by a choice I made 31 years ago.

I went to the Canadian Grand Prix in 1974 and wanted to go to the U.S. event too but it fell on the same weekend as the big show at Hershey. I went to Hershey.

I face the same problem next weekend. I want to go to nearby National Trails for the big NHRA event. This track is so close that I can hear the Top Fuel and Funny cars from my deck. I would really like to spend the whole weekend in the pits and work up some stories on some of the participants but it just isn't going to happen.

My first problem is that Friday is inventory day at work and I am considered essential. I dispute that but it doesn't get me anywhere and I have to participate every year.

My second problem is that Mid Ohio is holding American Le Mans races on the same weekend, and I have season tickets!

Somebody tell me why two big racing events have to be held on the same weekend in the same state.

Anyway I’ve tipped my hand, you can expect some sort of story from the sporty car crowd in a week or two.

street tracker!

Well I'm going to look at a street tracker project today with my nephew Geoff.

I'd like to have one of these myself for short jaunts near home. It would be so much more pleasant to saddle up on a lightweight twin instead of a full size liter bike for little trips.

Alas we are looking at this one as a bike for Geoff's girl friend so my time with it will be short.

It's a 650 Yamaha of course, an unfinished project, picture of it looks like it might have started out as a cruiser.

If the geometry is okay and the engine is strong, we might have to buy it. Pictures to follow.

snippets

This blog will feature stories on people and their machines.

Until I can work up some of these stories I will post some observations so my readers can get an idea of where I'm coming from.

I watched the F1 race in Spain Sunday. I've been an F1 fan for years and years, went to Mosport in 73 or 74 for my first F1 race. Camped at the Glen for years, showed up on Wednesday a couple of times.

I like all forms of racing, if I had it on cable I would be watching the Giro d'Italia bicycle race this week.

I'm not a NASCAR fan but you might bump into me at the short tracks here in Ohio.

I'm an X man.

My bike.

oops!

After 4 months of steady writing I screwed up and deleted my real blog!

This is an option I'm working on.