Oilpressure

Sports fans get excited over some of the smallest things. Baseball season is still almost two months away, but the fact that pitchers and catchers report next week has baseball fans giddy with excitement. Football season doesn’t start until September, but when training camp starts in late July – it’s suddenly football season.

We IndyCar fans are gong through the same excitement right now. Back in the early nineties, it used to be that those of us starving for information had to wait for our monthly magazines to show up in our mailboxes. My two subscriptions were Racer and IndyCar Racing magazines.

Racer was like a gift from heaven when it was launched in 1992. It covered most forms of auto racing. NASCAR had the obligatory big presence, but they gave just as much coverage to CART, Formula One and IMSA. They also covered USAC to a lesser degree. Just like now, their articles and photos were first-rate and their print was of the highest quality.

IndyCar Racing magazine (ICR) had more of a homespun feel to it. Ned Wicker was the editor of ICR, which was published in the Milwaukee area – a hotbed for IndyCar racing. Ned always had a full page editorial in each monthly magazine. I didn’t always agree with what he said, but he always had an interesting take on things.

The January and February issues of both magazines were always my favorites. These were where we fans got our first glimpse of the latest model Lola or Penske chassis; and what new liveries or numbers cars would be running. ICR was where I saw my first glimpse of the Galmer chassis. When the Reynard was first unveiled for the 1994 season, my initial view was in Racer.

Keep in mind this was in the days before the internet. Liveries weren’t leaked through Twitter before the sponsorships were even announced (like what happened with the PNC sponsorship for Scott Dixon). The Prix-View at Phoenix (which is what they used to call Spring Training) doesn’t start until tomorrow, but I believe we have already seen every livery of every car, before it even starts.

Prior to our online world, we had to check our mailbox every day just to catch a glimpse of just a couple of liveries. Back then, most teams tested their new cars as they came out of the box – mostly black with a couple of gold panels. Nowadays, it is rare for a team with sponsorship already nailed down to not be flaunting it.

In the past week, we’ve had official announcement with new partnerships, sponsorships and liveries. To me, the most notable were the ones regarding Sébastien Bourdais, Graham Rahal and Scott Dixon.

With Bourdais, not only is there a new livery and sponsor in SealMaster – there is a new alignment on the No.18 car between Dale Coyne and two of the owners of the now defunct KVSH Racing – Jimmy Vasser and James Sullivan.

Graham Rahal unveiled a good-looking livery which apparently will be run in only one race – Long Beach. That’s too bad because it’s really eye-catching. But Total Petroleum getting back involved in the series is a huge deal.

Then on Tuesday, Chip Ganassi Racing unveiled a new sponsor for Scott Dixon’s car for the entire 2018 season – PNC Bank. That’s big for Dixon, who ran sponsorship for GE Lighting, Camping World and the sponsor for Tony Kanaan’s car – NTT Data – for most of the second half of the season. Finally, there is a permanent primary sponsor for Dixon to fill the void left by Target when they left following the 2016 season after a twenty-seven year association with Ganassi.

My thirst for liveries and views of the new body kit has been quenched with a multitude of photos from last week’s test at Sebring and this week’s test at Sonoma. (All of the following photos courtesy of IndyCar.com)

We’ve come a long way from the days of gazing at a few photos in monthly magazines as we wait for the season to start. I can remember even making special trips to the local bookstore that was known for their extensive magazine section to thumb through other periodicals I didn’t subscribe to. Now all I have to do is check out a few websites or go through my Twitter feed and I can see what every car looks like. Like the other sports during pre-season training, this scratches my itch for IndyCar until the season starts. The new way is obviously better, but which was more fun? I’m really not sure.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on February 7, 2018 at 4:04 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.