Oilpressure

What was a highly unpopular rule in the NTT IndyCar Series back in 2012 and 2013, is making an unwanted return for 2020, albeit with some improvements. How do you improve on a bad idea? Does the improvement make it not as bad? It doesn’t suddenly make it a good idea, mind you – it’s still a bad idea. I guess we’re just not supposed to gripe about it as much.

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On Monday, I wrote of the surprise announcement by Citrone/Buhl Autosport to participate in the two races at IMS during the Month of May and possibly more races during the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series season. I’m sure they have realistic, yet still high aspirations for what they can expect this season and beyond.

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With the internet, social media and the never-ending quest to be first – it’s hard to keep a secret in the racing world these days. Without a doubt, the best-kept secret I’ve seen in a while was when Roger Penske announced that he was buying IMS, IndyCar and IMS Productions from Hulman and Company back on Nov 4. Never had I seen such an announcement of that magnitude kept completely under wraps like that one was.

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Wouldn’t you know it? I take off for a few days of rest and relaxation and all the news breaks in the racing world. Fortunately we had internet access throughout our cruise to Cozumel so I was able to keep up with everything. Since the news broke a week ago, most of you know all of the news that Roger Penske broke in his “100 Days From the 500” press conference last Friday. Among the highlights announced was a bigger purse for the Indianapolis 500, that is increasing by $2 million to a record $15 million. He also announced upgrades to the facility including new video boards for the Paddock seats and improved video boards elsewhere in the facility; and much needed improved restroom facilities.

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Most of you know that Susan and I spend practically all of our available vacation going to IndyCar races. While Susan loves going to races almost as much as I do, she has wanted to go on at least one vacation that did not involve going to a race track for a few years now. So I splurged and gave her a cruise for Christmas on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas.

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Most of you know by now that the Open Test at COTA yesterday was mostly a non-event. Cold temperatures and drizzle did not make for a good test session. A few installation laps at slow speeds was about the only running that anyone did, before they called it a day just before 3:00 local time. That did give us a chance to see the new liveries and most importantly – our first real glimpse of the aero-screen on all the cars. Although I’ve been critical on how the car looks with this contraption – I’ll admit that I didn’t think it looked that bad while the cars were actually moving around. If you take a still-shot from head-on, that is just simply not a good look. But yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised how the cars looked while moving (although, not at speed). IndyCar will try again today, when the forecast looks better than yesterday’s.

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Although we in the south don’t catch the brunt of winter as many parts of the country, we get our share. Just this past Friday, we woke up to about three inches of snow on the ground in Nashville, with more coming down. We had temperatures in the sixties just a few days earlier, so it didn’t stick around very long. It was just the second time this winter for us to have snow on the ground this winter, but it served as a stark reminder that we are still in the throes of winter. We’ve mostly just experienced just a lot of cold rain this winter. In fact, this past weekend was our first weekend in 2020 that we didn’t have any rainfall all weekend.

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