Indy race at Watkins Glen

[bbrigham]

Wifie and I haven't done anything in a long time so we decided to catch the Indy race this weekend. Turned out to get a bonus, they raced the F2000 Championship a couple hours before. They even had sky divers landing on the track and an Air Force transport did 2 fly-bys, he was real low. The funniest thing happened when they were making introductions before the Indy's, they announced that they had a special guest to start the race. They announced our Governor Paterson and the spectators booed him, not just a couple sections but the whole Watkins Glen spectators

He didn't end up starting the race as planned

I have some Video Here

And a few pics, I have a lot more but didn't resize them.

 

[sstanton]

Brendan, I got to hear the race! I work at the hospital down the road from the track and those cars sound like a whole lot of angry bee's! Corning Leader newspaper has a web slide show of the race that features music by my band that I think got linked to Youtube as well, if your interested. I have lived 20 miles away from that track my entire life and have yet to go to a race there! I would go to see Indy cars because open wheel races ROCK! Patterson isnt really liked all that well in this particular neck of the woods!!!

 

[bbrigham]

20 miles away and you've never been there....

I've been to NASCAR at the Poconos and that doesn't compare, even close. Those Indy cars are loud, glad we were wearing the track scanners. They raced the F2000 in the morning, there pretty cool too. I was looking at turn one and my wife says holy ****, by time I turned my head to the front stretch there were parts over the top of the fence. I tried to get video of that but wasn't fast enough. The Indy's were pretty clean racing, not many accidents at all. Thats what I like about open wheel, they give each other a lot more respect than NASCAR does each other.
There was a lot of pics I just deleted cause I only got the tail of them. Pretty hard to follow them doing still pics when they go by at 170-175 mph. I got a couple more resized I'll post in a bit.

 

[bbrigham]

F2000 race just before parts above the fence

After

Turn 11 Indy car leftovers

My new TV...lol

 

[sstanton]

I know, I know! I even had free tickets the first year they raced Indy cars up there! I think I had to work or something. Good friend of mine does the sports writing for the local paper and he gets paid to go to the races up there! One of these days I'm going to have him snag me a press pass so I can at least say I saw a race up there!

 

[dfrisk]

Wife & I saw our first Indy car race at Michigan Int'l Raceway in Brooklyn, MI in about 1989. Mario & Micheal Andretti both were still racing then. Indy cars on an oval are pretty boring & hard to watch, about like watching a slotcar track from 100 feet away.

SON & I made all the F-1 races at INDY, 2000 season till two years ago. Even saw that joke of a race in 2005 when the 14 Michelin-shod cars took the parade lap then parked in the garages and never took the green flag. My sales person at the car dealership thought I was kidding a week later when I told Her I wouldn't take my new car I ordered out with the Michelin tires on it. I ended up taking it, and as I promised Her it now has BRIDGESTONE tires on it. Son & I watched the six Bridgestone-shod cars out of the 22 cars run hot laps for almost 200 miles and of course Micheal Schumacher won.

Now that CART & INDY Car racing have joined back together again I try to watch the races on TV but I still prefer F-1. The FIA is trying to restrict the rules and budgets the teams can spend for the 2010 season. To put racing at this level into perspective, what ONE TEAM like Renault, or Toyota, or Red Bull, or Braun, or McClaren, or BMW spend to race for one year, 17 races, would fund the entire grid of NASCAR Nextel Cup, all 43 teams for an entire year of racing, testing, & practice. And what Ferrari spends is even greater still. Plus F-1 races in the rain. Now THAT makes for some excitement watching cars race on wet pavement!

 

[bbrigham]

I'll have to look through my pics of the race, I believe there were 2 cars that started the race on rain tires. I thought on a road course they would race in rain

As for any kind of go fast turn left racing...I don't like it unless it's Outlaws. I think road racing says a whole lot more about the drivers and crew. I've been to NASCAR races at the Poconos and won't go to any more roundy races.
Isn't it funny how terribly the Indy cars run under 4 or 5000 rpms....but boy do they sound sweet 10000

I'm sure glad we had the

on, would have had a killer headache afterwords.

Found one so far...Milka Duno..she started with rain tires, will resize one in a few

 

[dfrisk]

BRENDAN - At least at Pocono the Nextel (still always want to call them Winston) CUP cars or at least most of them downshift in the corners. Pretty funky gearbox they run though, 4th gear is always 1:1 direct but third @ Pocono is about a 1.05:1 ratio so there's only a couple hundred RPM drop in engine speed.

The telemetry on the INDY cars show they all have 6-speeds now, but I think they still use a lever to shift, have to take a hand off the wheel to shift. ALL the F-1 cars run 7-speeds and paddle shifters. A book I bought on Ferrari's 2000 season F-1 championship car says the gearbox is actually made from titanium and carbon fiber, and it actually engages two gears at one time, shifts are completed in something like 1/10th of a second?

We always got seats for the Indy F-1 GP in the road course's turn 1, or turn 4 for the oval. The F-1 cars exited the infield road course about in the middle of the oval's turn 2 and accelerated to turn 1 then down the front straight backwards compared to the oval. They ran WIDE OPEN for about 17 seconds running up to 18,000 to 19,000 RPM and shifted about 6 times. SON found a sound bit off the Internet ears ago when F-1 was stll running 3.0L V-10's. They were making about 850 HP back then. Last coupke years the FIA has required 2.4L V-8's and governored the engines to only 18,000 RPM and they're still making 825-850 HP. New rule this year limited F-1 to only eight engines per race car for all seventeen races, practice and qualifying included. Another new feature allowed this year is "KERS", which stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. A genberator/motor attached to the crankshaft of the engine charges batteries while braking and allows for up to 8-10 seconds of an additional 80 HP boost controlled by a button on the steering wheel. Adds about 70-80 pounds to the weight of the car but REALLY nmakes a difference when the cars accelerate out of corners or up hills like at Monoco.

At least F-1 has their tire situation finally figured out this year. Instead of two brands of tires which I've never seen work well in any form of racing, they have one brand, Bridgestone, but two rubber compounds, a hard and a soft tire and required something like eight laps to be run on both compounds.

I have to agree with You 100%, racing in a circle is really boring unless it's WoO cars! I never get tired of that either! Must be fun to steer right to turn left! And to have enough HP to pull the frt wheels off the ground at close to 100 mph seems like it would be fun once You got used to it!

 

[bbrigham]

I did find one of the pics but didn't realize they changed her tires just before the start.

Those WOO cars are awesome, I caught a couple races on TV where they had them on an asphalt track. Now that was something to see, 100mph still sideways and tires smokin with one front off the track. There were a few that by time they were on the front stretch they had both off the ground. It would be fun to have a few laps in one. I got to drive a dirt late model a few times for hot laps ( I worked on the car every day) and that was a blast. Even drove it to the race one day, the car's owner's trailer was busted so I said hey I'll get it there for ya. I wasn't really serious but he thought I was and I was young enough and stupid enough. Hey...it was fun, got a lot of weird looks from people too. It was only 10 miles from the track.

 

[bbrigham]

Now that my wife is done playin honey do......
I used to catch just about every Indy & F1 race on the dish but the last couple years I can't seem to find them very often. Would rather be at a track watching unfortunately the Glen is the only one close. I have always been fascinated with all the technology in those cars. Just the part of those engines staying together at those rpm is something else. The F2000 car that crashed in front of us had my wife worried if he was ok, I think it had something to do with the image of all those parts flying through the air and above the fence. She can't seem to understand that this style of car are supposed to do that to dissipate crash energy. I tried to explain it but it went north of her hairline

I was pleasantly surprised that she enjoyed it, well...other than the race fan tan, lobster red on the front and chicken white on the back. Wonder how she would handle an endurance race at the Glen. I'll try to slide that by her next year, she might start wondering though when they turn the lights on.....
I heard talk of the KERS but never followed up on it. Thats cool how they can use that. When I raced hare scrambles my ATK had a weighted flywheel for the inertial energy, it worked real well. I could feel the difference between it and my YZ 250. I couldn't afford some of the Unabtanium (trick factory parts) that the sponsored guys got although my ATK did come factory with a lot of stuff the other guys had to pay extra for.
My wife's cousin has a nice self contained motor home he takes to the NASCAR races, I'll have to try to turn him on to some F1 or Indy. He asked if I wanted to catch some Cup races but told him I just can't seem to get interested in it. Would really like to catch a couple in Europe where they close down the streets but if I go in the air it better have no more than 4 tires and at least 14" of travel, it's not that I'm afraid to get in a plane it's the sudden stop when something goes wrong......

 

[dfrisk]

BRENDAN - I've done quite a bit of flying and I still get nervous sometimes. Especially when I see the pilot/co-pilot who's barely old enough to shave!

Wife & I have been married 32 yrs and there's only been a couple times I havent drove when we've gone somewhere. First time was coming home from my 10 yr high school reunion. I had WAY too much to drink. Then 5 yrs ago when I broke my left leg and severly sprained my left ankle. I had to catch a ride from here in the AM & PM to/from a gas station a couple miles from home to car pool with a co-worker.

I just have this "Control" thing thats tough to give up about operating cars/trucks/equipment.

NASCAR does have quite a following here in the US but it must be the social scene that's attractive, the racing really isn't that good.
Wife & I enjoyed the couple races We went to 20 yrs ago @ MIS but things were MUCH different back then. There was still a few severely massaged OEM parts left on the cars. Bill Elliot's Coors/Melling #9 Ford still had the OEM chrome grill insert on the front.

 

[kmcconaughey]

NASCAR, ummm, just record the races and watch them later, that way you can fast forward to the crashes.

The only races I've been to have been a few IMSA races up at Brainerd, MN and one at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI all back in the 80's. They raced in the rain up at Brainerd, that was back when Audi was still allowed to run their "Quattro" AWD cars. When it started to rain everyone else started to spin out except the Audi.

 

[bbrigham]

I know a guy that does some secret service work or CIA or something like that, he buys the old single engines planes like Cessna and Piper and restores them as a hobby. When their done he flies them for a few months then sells them. He has offered to take me up for some short flights, I have seen his planes without the skins on them and there is no freekin way I'll get in one of those !
I think you're right about the control part. Sometimes I have a problem with my wife's driving. It's not that shes a bad driver, it's the part that when she does something and I think to myself it should have been done differently. Since I ruined my back I don't drive much so she does most of it. Unless of course we are going into a bigger city, she don't do so well there having to pay attention to directions, watch where she's going, and watch other drivers. Thats when I tell to pull over and I will drive.
I probably wouldn't mind flying if I knew I could be in control. I don't think I would like the idea of pilots that young either, your life is in the hands of a.....child....lol

Awesome Bill from Dawsonville....Thats when I used to watch them. I was real young watching NASCAR with my father. The cars even looked better. I think those guys needed more skill to drive those cars than they do now. Still couldn't compete with road racing though.

A nice vacation to Miami would be nice....when they close off the streets for some real road racing. Heck...I even enjoy the touring cars. Makes for real good racing, sometimes 4 or 5 cars all battling for position. The Porsche's are what I really like to watch.

You're right Kraig, the crashes are the best part. Don't remember who it was but the driver crashed and ended up rolling the car tail on the track and nose on the fence almost the whole front stretch. I used to have that on vhs tape. The addition of the roof flaps stopped most of the excitement.

 

[blanasa]

I almost got ran over by Bill Eliot at Daytona. He was driving his Vette to the under track tunnel and I walked in front of him. I looked over and said "Hey it's Million Dollar Bill". He smiled and waved at me. A brush with greatness!