Oilpressure

Good morning from a cloudy, warm and muggy Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham. Unlike the last two days, this is not what I would call “Chamber of Commerce” weather. It was drizzling when we left our hotel. It doesn’t appeared to have rained here, but reports have some showers hitting here around noon local time, which is about two hours before the start of the Verizon IndyCar race.

Currently the Pirelli World Challenge race is going on. We got here just as the IndyCar morning warm-up was wrapping up. Nashville’s Josef Newgarden topped the morning charts with Helio Castroneves second. Polesitter Will power was fifth. interestingly enough, Juan Montoya was fourth while last year’s winner – Ryan Hunter-Reay was third. My pick to win, Scott Dixon, was fifteenth. Ryan Briscoe led the way for the Ganassi cars sitting in the eighth spot, while Tony Kanaan’s miserable weekend continues. He was next to last, just ahead of Mikhail Aleshin.

Charlie Kimball crashed in Turn Thirteen, bringing the the warm-up to an early finish. Kimball was OK, but his car sustained significant damage to the rear of the car. I’m questioning if the team can thrash that car back together in time to make the grid. If not, he may be relegated to his back-up.

The second Indy Lights race starts at noon. However, we are about to go witness a cooking demonstration featuring Grand Marshall Joe Namath and Josef Newgarden, which should be interesting. Back in a bit.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 27, 2014 at 10:55 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.