Oilpressure

Greetings from an already wet Barber Motorsports Park. It was a cloudy and ominous sky when we left the hotel. Within five minutes, it was raining. Fortunately, it had stopped as we made our way from the parking lot into the Media Center, but it is a sign of what the day will be like – dodging raindrops. The current radar shows that we are currently in a pocket, but looking to the west – it looks bad.

As long as it is a light rain, things will be fine. But this track has poor drainage. If there are big downpours between now and the drop of the green flag, there could be problems. I don’t know what the contingency plans are if there is standing water o the track. I don’t think tomorrow’s forecast is any better than today’s. One thing is certain, if the race runs tomorrow – we won’t be here. Susan and I both have to be at work tomorrow.

The Pro Mazda race is going on as I type. Looking at the monitors in here, they don’t seem to be having any problems. The Indy Lights race scheduled t be run at noon, will now run at 10:45. The Verizon IndyCar Series race has been moved up to 2:01 CDT from 2:30.

I may be hedging on my prediction. While Scott Dixon has driven in the rain many times and may still win this race, if it is a relatively heavy rain, but they still race – my money may be shifted to Sébastien Bourdais. He is starting third and probably has more experience than anyone racing in the wet. We’ll see.

The good news is that yesterday’s crowd set a record attendance for this event for a Saturday. Over 34,000 paying customers were on the grounds yesterday. The bad news is that there are very few fans here so far today. Normally at this time, the hill overlooking Turn Two would be packed with fans trying to jockey for a place to put up their tents. Today, not so much.

Susan is currently finishing up her promised post. She will have it up here shortly. This will be my last post here until after the race, or if there is a determination that there will be no race. Check back for Susan’s post in a bit. In the meantime, for more photos, videos and updates – follow me on Twitter at @Oilpressureblog or Susan at @MrsOilpressure.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 22, 2018 at 10:15 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.