Oilpressure

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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As I watched Super Bowl LIV the other night, it occurred to me how much the two young careers of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and IndyCar’s next superstar Colton Herta parallel each other. Think I’m crazy? Take a look.

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For the past couple of weeks, it has been a foregone conclusion that Fernando Alonso would be running this year’s Indianapolis 500 with Andretti Autosport. It’s my understanding that the sponsors had been lined up and that a deal was imminent. It was assumed by everyone that Andretti and Alonso had received the blessing from Honda’s global headquarters in Tokyo, and that they had finally moved past Alonso’s public trashing of the Japanese manufacturer a couple of seasons ago in Formula One.

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As we headed into this past Super Bowl weekend, my thoughts wandered into a slightly different direction – back when CART tried to have their own Super weekend that sort of combined the Super Bowl with the NFL Pro Bowl. Does anyone remember the Hawaiian Super Prix?

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