Kentucky 300 thread

[Komahawk]

Kanaan wins, Dixon now within 8 points of Dario. This is going to be a close end of the season!
Franchitti, who looked like the likely winner for quite a while, made an idiotic mistake towards the end, dropped back 5 or 6 positions, then had a terrible pit-entrance and ultimately wrecked his car. Hats off for taking the blame, that doesn't make it any better though. I still expect him to win the title. Next 2 races are on non-oval tracks, so he probably won't be making any mid-air maneuvers.
Team Penske: pale, pale, pale. Hornish (then in 3rd) spins all by himself and collects Wheldon. Way to go, champ! His head is already in Daytona. Castroneves never had anything to do with the race, except that he almost knocked off the leading Kanaan while he lapped him. Guess who I picked for 1st and 2nd: Helio & Sam. Thanx you numbnuts!
Danica almost collected the safety-truck when she spun. Ok, it was a puncture, so it's not her fault. But again she lost a podium. Damn that was close!
Any of you guys in the indycar.com chatroom at the end of the race? It was all AJ Foyt IV! Imagine he had won! But still, I think it's the first Foyt on an indycar podium since the 80s. Am I right? The Vision Team looked pretty good. For a while I thought Scheckter might win it.
Sharp with a solid performance. Great to see him do well.


Alltogether a great race. And no rain delay. WOOHOOOOOO

[mikeearle]

Kanaan wins, Dixon now within 8 points of Dario. This is going to be a close end of the season!
Franchitti, who looked like the likely winner for quite a while, made an idiotic mistake towards the end, dropped back 5 or 6 positions, then had a terrible pit-entrance and ultimately wrecked his car. Hats off for taking the blame, that doesn't make it any better though. I still expect him to win the title. Next 2 races are on non-oval tracks, so he probably won't be making any mid-air maneuvers.
Team Penske: pale, pale, pale. Hornish (then in 3rd) spins all by himself and collects Wheldon. Way to go, champ! His head is already in Daytona. Castroneves never had anything to do with the race, except that he almost knocked off the leading Kanaan while he lapped him. Guess who I picked for 1st and 2nd: Helio & Sam. Thanx you numbnuts!
Danica almost collected the safety-truck when she spun. Ok, it was a puncture, so it's not her fault. But again she lost a podium. Damn that was close!
Any of you guys in the indycar.com chatroom at the end of the race? It was all AJ Foyt IV! Imagine he had won! But still, I think it's the first Foyt on an indycar podium since the 80s. Am I right? The Vision Team looked pretty good. For a while I thought Scheckter might win it.
Sharp with a solid performance. Great to see him do well.


Alltogether a great race. And no rain delay. WOOHOOOOOO

Can't say I agree with the 'great race' call. Was a bore and the only excitiment came when several drivers made bonehead mistakes. Amateur hour this time out.

[Jag_Warrior]

Danica almost collected the safety-truck when she spun. Ok, it was a puncture, so it's not her fault. But again she lost a podium. Damn that was close!

A blown tire that came from a flat spot, which was caused by a self induced spin coming out of the pits.

I saw the replay where she came so close to crashing into the safety truck. That was scary!

[beachbum]

A blown tire that came from a flat spot, which was caused by a self induced spin coming out of the pits.

I saw the replay where she came so close to crashing into the safety truck. That was scary!
Not only was the tire flat spotted, but she reported to the pits that she could see cord after the spin. Somehow in her logic that made it ok to go flying around at a high rate of speed during caution until it blew. Hello, it was showing cord. How long could it last at high speed? Not long. And some say it wasn't her fault? At the least, it was very bad judgment.

There is some difference of opinion about what she meant when she said there was "something on the track". But princess dear, there was - a LARGE safety vehicle, filled with workers who may have needed new underwear after she slid by on the outside. I really wonder if she know just hows lucky she is. A few feet lower off the wall and she could have submarined the truck, which would have been brutal.

In any case, there is apparently no one posting here anymore other than the usual IRL bashers, so who cares about what happened. It may have been boring on TV (it was), but if you followed the video on Indy.com you would have seen, and heard, of some real interesting battles in the pack. DP and Anthony put on a side by side show for many laps, swapping positions many times each lap, and being very clean about it. There was Carpenter's run up through the pack, Marco's recovery to finish 4th after falling down the order after some very slow laps early, and any number of other good stories.

Good job Anthony. And to think how many people on the internet forums a few years ago wanted to drum him out of racing as being a talentless, dangerous hack. Funny, he raced clean, ran fast all day, made no mistakes, and didn't hit anything. The same can't be said for some of the "stars".

[Alexamateo]

Congrats to Quattro on a really good run.

If he'd been the one to run right up the back of Koskue instead of Dario, some people would be howling to take his license, and park him.

That said, Dario just had one of those days where mistakes beget more mistakes. First, he ran up in the marbles and lost a bunch of positions, then trying to make up time, he comes into the pits too hot and swerves into the pit lane marker trying to avoid running into Danica. That broke his front wing and he lost more time trying to fix it. Then he crashed and flipped again after the checkered flag flew. Not really a red-letter day for the Franchitti's I can assure you.

[NickFalzone]

In any case, there is apparently no one posting here anymore other than the usual IRL bashers, so who cares about what happened. It may have been boring on TV (it was), but if you followed the video on Indy.com you would have seen, and heard, of some real interesting battles in the pack. DP and Anthony put on a side by side show for many laps, swapping positions many times each lap, and being very clean about it. There was Carpenter's run up through the pack, Marco's recovery to finish 4th after falling down the order after some very slow laps early, and any number of other good stories.



You know, that's a good point. It wasn't one of the more exciting races of the season, but there was still a good race with a decent amount of passing. Not that you'd know it watching the ESPN broadcast though. There's actual racing and passing going on and they're off playing soundbites about last weeks crash or Danica's almost win or some other BS that no one gives a crap about. You know, this series gets like a 1.3 to 1.5 rating consistently - this isn't a bunch of casual fans popping in that want to hear "stories" all race - they want to actually enjoy the race, hear comments on Marco getting up to the front, etc. But the broadcast is so condescending that they figure the race itself is not enough for the viewers. It's like they have an internal mandate from ESPN "anytime there's not a crash or pass up at the front, talk about something other than the race".

[Jag_Warrior]

You know, this series gets like a 1.3 to 1.5 rating consistently

For cable, divide that by two and you'll be close. For network, subtract 30% or so.

But still, you make a good point: ESPN should catch some heat for the lack of focus during race broadcasts.

[NickFalzone]

For cable, divide that by two and you'll be close. For network, subtract 30% or so.

But still, you make a good point: ESPN should catch some heat for the lack of focus during race broadcasts.

Well it was either this board or another, someone posted the #'s for this season and IRL was doing between .7 - 1.7 for regular non Indy races. The bigger numbers tended to be from the few roadcourses - which is even weirder since IRL overall does better in the ratings than champcar.

As far as the broadcasts, I don't know if it's Marty Reid/Goodyear that have horrible ADD, or it's some mandate from ESPN that they can't just report on the race. Can you imagine baseball fans trying to watch the game and in between every pitch they're running promos or dumbass videos from last weeks games? ESPN - you've got cars racing on an oval at 215 mph with all kinds of passing and maneuvering going on - just comment on the present. If there's a caution and nothing going on, feel free to go on a short tangent, but when they're in green, either stfu or comment on the race. Leave all the extraneous storylines to the beginning or end of the broadcast.

[Jag_Warrior]

It was John21 from the Speed forums who did some nice work to gather and tabulate the Nielsen data. His work was then "borrowed" by others... without credit.

From the last update I saw, the cable ratings were averaging around .7 and the network ratings around 1.1. These averages were without the Indy 500 being included. The 1.7 appeared to be an anomaly or flier.

I agree with you about ESPN. The one racing series where I actually think the ESPN guys do a good job is NHRA. I'm not a HUGE drag racing fan. But I've met several of the drivers over the years, and I think it's a cool way to spend time at a race track. So I try to watch it on TV whenever I can. For whatever reason, I like ESPN's drag racing shows much better than any other form of motorsport show they do. They seem to stay focused better with drag racing than anything else. Maybe the start-stop-start nature of the sport gives them more time to gather their thoughts.