Oilpressure

The month of February is normally a boring month for me. After the Super Bowl, there is not a lot going on in the sporting world to hold my interest except for the Daytona 500. I’ll always watch the Daytona 500, mainly because it’s racing and there’s not much else on. Usually I’ll watch it and a handful of NASCAR races throughout the year – and that handful always includes the Brickyard 400 at IMS. This year, I watched the Daytona 500 and not another NASCAR race. That’s not necessarily what was intended, but I just didn’t find any motivation to seek out another one.

I watched a few sports car races. I caught parts of the Rolex24, Sebring and Le Mans and some of Road Atlanta. But it’s safe to say that my motorsports viewing in 2018 was confined almost exclusively to the IndyCar Series. Again, that’s not what I intended – that’s just the way it worked out. So my racing offseason is particularly long since I saw my last race in September. That’s what makes what we learned last week even more special.

We are not even to Christmas yet, and we are already starting to get a taste of the 2019 IndyCar season. Last week, we learned of a second pre-season test scheduled for February. Earlier, we had learned that the official IndyCar Spring Training would take place at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) at Austin, Texas on Feb 12-13.

In case that wasn’t soon enough to satisfy your IndyCar thirst, we learned late last week that there will be another test at Laguna Seca on Friday Feb 8, I am expecting some type of live video to be available for the Spring Training, but I would be surprised if there was any video at the test at Laguna Seca.

It doesn’t matter. There will be enough photos and videos made available to us during and after the test that we will get a feel of what went on throughout the day and how these cars take to the tight track at Laguna Seca.

Those of us that are older and were IndyCar fans before the internet was readily available, can appreciate whatever coverage we get at a test like this.

In the early nineties when a test like this took place, I had to wait a few weeks to read about it in my monthly issue of IndyCar Racing magazine. They would have a writer/photographer on site to document the test. We would go over each photo of the latest version of a Lola, Reynard or Penske chassis usually in blank livery with only the name of the sponsor in while letters on a black sidepod. That’s generally when we found out which numbers the drivers would be running for the upcoming season.

Our expectations have risen quite a bit over the past quarter-century. But just days after the Super Bowl, I think most IndyCar fans will be happy with any morsels we can get from the Feb 8 test from Monterey. That will serve as the February appetizer, while Spring Training at COTA will be the main course. My only complaint is that Spring Training is scheduled for the next Tuesday and Wednesday, instead of the following weekend (which, of course, is the weekend of the Daytona 500). If you recall, last year they held Spring Training at Phoenix on a Friday and Saturday. The Friday practice went well into the night. Although Susan wasn’t thrilled about it, that provided our Friday night TV viewing. As I recall, we had snow on the ground that weekend so I spent most of Saturday watching Spring Training from Phoenix as well.

There was only one camera that was stationary and mounted high over Turn One. There was also one hand-held camera for pit road interviews. It was bare basics, but for that time of year – it worked.

With the twenty turn, 3.427 mile layout of COTA, it’s pretty obvious they will need more than one camera. But I still think it will be bare-bones coverage. But that’s fine. It will be February.

We are just past the halfway point of the IndyCar offseason. The season ended at Sonoma on Sep 16 and the next race will be at St. Petersburg on Mar 10. It’s a weird phenomenon, but once we get past Christmas and New Year’s – things suddenly seem to pick up rapidly. Once the bowl games are over, we’ll only be a month away from that first test at Laguna Seca. When Spring Training wraps up the next week, we’ll be less than a month from the drop of the green flag at St. Petersburg.

So the takeaway message of all this is that if you are going nuts and starving to see Indy cars on track; once we put the Christmas decorations away – the test at Laguna Seca will be just around the corner.

So enjoy the holidays, because once they are over – things will get serious. Get ready!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on December 17, 2018 at 4:02 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.