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Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I miss Baltimore.

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Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

George Zimmer posted:

Baltimore owned and was fun as hell.

It reminded me of the old Vancouver which was always my favorite CART street track.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

devmd01 posted:

Probably because Frank Montagny tested positive for cocaine and admitted it. I mean how stupid can you be to do coke within 3 days of a possible random at an event?

Are you calling the entire IMSA paddock of the 1980s stupid?

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Arie Jr was intensely bad

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Human Grand Prix posted:

There was an Arie Jr.?

I mainly remember him for being bumped from a 34 car grid one year.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Tony George was retarded and the Indy Racing League sucked.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Nobody went to Phoenix when the IRL was running an all-oval schedule either.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
McLaren have sponsors?

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Dudley posted:

Is there reasoning for this beyond "They shared a sponsor 2 decades ago"?

well, a few years ago (Vodafone = Verizon)

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Aero hasn't really been a problem with the DW12s, though that might change with the downforce increases the aerokits are supposed to bring.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Human Grand Prix posted:

People also forget exactly how poo poo some of the field fillers were back in the heyday. Sometimes it was equipment (Arnd Meier using a Lola in 1998 for some reason) but certain drivers make Saavedra look good by comparison.

Dennis Vitolo might be the worst driver to ever get a ride in a major American series.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

IceAgeComing posted:

I remember watching the first DW12 race at St Pete which was probably the most boring race that I've ever seen and afterwords thought that they'd somehow managed to make things worse.

How wrong can you get!

I thought that race was OK, funny enough. I actually really hate a lot of their constant-yellow-flag street races- thankfully they got rid of double file restarts on street tracks because: what the hell.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I still love Hiro because he has the best nickname in CART history.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
remember when Shiggy tried to move to NASCAR CTS

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
My favorite random thing about the split is that AJ Foyt rewarded the all-american IRL who basically made the entire series with him in mind by immediately hiring Swedish and Brazilian road racers as drivers.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Marco Greco was legitimately one of the worst road racers in the European ladder of the '90s.

And yeah, he finished third in the 1997 series. With no lead-lap finishes, by the way.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

IceAgeComing posted:

apparently Greco raced Grand Prix bikes before getting an Indycar drive.

Best finish: 16th.

At least like half the teams on his F3000 results sheet that consists of mostly DNQs were actually good teams.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I don't think you can ask "Why do things have to be expensive" and then say that opening up the rulebook will solve everything.

for the record, i'm completely fine with opening up the rulebook (to an extent), but you have to accept that you'll lose parity, and that budgets for a race-winning program are going to skyrocket.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
That's a decent field for Lights IMO.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

IOwnCalculus posted:

It was also, if you believe Beast, funded very little by MB. Ilmor and Penske started it with no manufacturer at all and MB jumped in quite late.

I've got to imagine that someone did it before, though? I guess its what USAC was afraid Porsche and Alfa would do.

At any rate in this day and age its not just the materials that cost megabucks. A highly complex wing is still going to cost a shitload of labor hours to build accurately out of fiberglass or aluminum, and a lot of engineering time before that.

There's just no such thing as an open-spec but cost-controlled racing series and it seems that's what Bobby wants.

They want the 1960s, and that's not coming back. Even if they brought back stupid-rear end roadsters like the old-timers always want, that misses the point of why the sport was popular in the first place- it was about pushing the envelope, and if you're using old technology, you aren't pushing the envelope.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
WEC, probably? F1's current powertrain rules are insanely strict but I wouldn't call the cars spec either.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I wouldn't call them spec, but they are really restricted in how they can be developed. I really think this kind of thing is counter-productive if you want to reduce costs, but hey.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I think race series overall are too concerned that a lack of parity will kill interest in the sport. I don't think this is supported historically at all. A race with 1 car on the lead lap can be better than one with 20.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Cygni posted:

Well, a race with 1 car on the lead lap hurts my interest in the race for sure...

That said, to your point, theres a whole category of racefans that are in it for the engineering side and dont really care about the actual racing. Racing is basically an excuse to spend a lot of money on a rolling carshow, for them. I think they are loving insane, but there certainly seems to be fair amount of them based on the really lovely tryhard comments I see on Racer and whatnot.

Racing was more popular back in the days of "bad racing", though. Even 90s NASCAR has much less parity compared to nowadays.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
I've posted this before as an example but I consider this to be one of my favorite races ever run, and look at the distances between cars.

http://www.racing-reference.info/race/1989-03/R

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Cygni posted:

I think that has way more to do with the times than it does with anything.


but racing is less popular now, and there's more parity.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Human Grand Prix posted:

You can have "parity" if you want, the end result is usually the same; the best prepared and well-funded teams end up winning everything.

F1 is a good example, the laptimes from first-to-last are probably closer than they've ever been and the last two seasons have been some of the most comprehensively dominant in history.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Sam Hornish is a bad driver and he stinks.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

FuzzySkinner posted:

In retrospect, would it have not been for the best for to have just given Tracy the win?

No, because Helio won.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

be nice wicka posted:

what about the "hornish was driving vastly superior machinery" argument, does that one work for you

Sam Hornish, was one of the few guys in an IRL team who could actually hang with the CART teams when they came in.

I mean, gently caress that period of IRL, but that's not really a great argument

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Remember that horrible Ed Hinton series of articles on the split where he basically blamed Hornish beating Andretti for not causing a renaissance in interest of open wheel motorsport

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

Fauxhawk Express posted:

The last time JV could be put in that category was 2000. Dude stopped giving a poo poo once BAR signed Olivier Panis to be his teammate and the team stopped revolving around him.

Hell, Jenson Button was thought to be a total lost cause when BAR brought him on board, and he kicked the poo poo out of JV and saved his career.

I always thought the crash at Melbourne in 2001 that killed a marshal hosed him up more than he would admit.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Phwoar I'm hyped as hell

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

CactusWeasle posted:

That sounds awesome, except the part about Max Chilton

Yeah in all seriousness Carlin is a good operation and them running a full-time Indycar team would be nice.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Max ChiltOwn.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
in all honesty I expect to see the death of "major" motorsport in my lifetime.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

be nice wicka posted:

at some point in our lives they will have to stop using internal combustion engines, the series that survive will be the ones that don't make a huge fuss and just get on with it

it's not that, it's more the whole "people don't give a poo poo about cars anymore" thing. NASCAR's audience is getting older and older and they clearly have no freaking clue how to lure young fans other than maybe having Tony run more people over

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.

go3 posted:

this is why im not really worried. the american motorsports landscape is gonna have a hell of a reset when the bottom falls out of NASCAR

Top-level motorsport might die in Australia in the next decade or so too.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
Daytona has always been a B-tier enduro so that's fine :colbert:

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Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
sounds like a quality grid

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