Ah the Chili Bowl is in Tulsa or somewheres near about in an agricultural expo building. The organizers just build a really nice little bullring track and all the big names show up. I imagine Tony Stewart will have three cars there, if his Nascarp minders don't have him on too short a leash he will drive one.
I can think of reading about a lot of drivers getting killed at Salem, read Speed Sport and Open Wheel all my formative years, treacherous place. Not that dirt isn't, Knoxville isn't the place to wreck either, one fellow launched his car last year and is somehow still alive and with us, he was an inch from dead for a few months.
As for F1, they are going to have to go on a major charm offensive, they shut down a lot of U.S. fans with the fiasco last year. I was thinking about impulsively going from southern Virginia, I woulda been a little irritated. I don't think one U.S. driver will do it. The development problems are several, for one we don't have enough affordable road racing in this country. Toyota Atlantic, formula ford and such are all overrun with rich people. Rich people make racing go, but they kill racing too. Why, they are not racers. They want to see their car win, respect for the sport be damned. Spend as much as you can, encourage the snot nosed punk turning the wheel to drive without respect, whine, cheat, and cry. I don't think we will see someone come up from CART into F1 for awhile. They have degenerated into a crashfest of rich whiners. Nobody in the US cares, because we can't say most of their names. I really like what the Georges did with IRL, putting those cars on the little tracks where people don't usually see Indy is getting them a good fan base. And exposing them to SIlver Crown too. Now if they would just call IRL Gold Crown so everyone would figure out how it used to be. Despite that, IRL is a competition level down from F1, and lack of road courses means it would be hard to step from one to the other. So, I think we need more low class racing, especially karting. Of course, soccer mom syndrome sets in and we get a bunch of brat drivers, just like in sports cars. Hmm, I am running out of solutions. I know a root of the problem though...
First, I am glad to see women in racing if they show up to race. I was no Danica fan until I saw some of her interviews post race. First, she admitted to making a mistake and nearly killing herself at Indy, then went on to talk about the car, totally ignoring all the pioneering female crap. Her off track interviews reveal a boundless ego, cockiness, and willingness to talk about race cars. In short, pretty much like many 20 something sprint car jockeys I've seen, I give her credit for being a racer. Sarah Fisher meanwhile is quietly turning wheels in Nascar west, staying below the radar. I've seen some pictures of her taking sprint cars out of the park. Coupled with her desire to show respect by not wrecking everything in sight while in IRL, I give her plenty of credit as a racer. So, where is this going? The reason women can be successful now in racing is the wussification of America. We are in the TV age where some little snot nosed punk(read Kurt Busch) can get on TV, whine, say it's just racing and if he comes near me again I'll wreck him again. A few years ago someone like Jimmy Spencer would have left a Kurt Busch shaped dent in the side of his hauler and the offending party probably would have drove better once his ribs and nose were done healing. In Nascar and on short tracks everywhere it is no longer acceptable to drag some idiot through the roll cage and beat him after he has wrecked your race car. Now we retaliate on the track like cowards, where once the first wheel is thrown there is no control over what happens up to and including an innocent bystander on track or off getting killed. But hey, that is just racing right? Beat a guy in the pits, put him in the hospital where no one else is hurt, get sued. But hey, the track is more civilized. Most women were not encouraged to be in the former environment. This problem(I call it Days of Thunder syndrome) degrades the level of competition. Hey, why learn to drive if we can just root someone out of the way? Now, how many times do you see Michael Shumacher hit someone to get by? I am reminded that in the old days 50% of the champion drivers did not make it out of the open cockpit sprint car era. Those that did certainly did not tolerate someone whose lack of talent and restraint willfully endangered others. Moving racing back to that era of respect would do a lot to help the U.S. turn out some F-1 caliber drivers. Rubbing is most certainly not racing in Open Wheel, the more kids we can teach that, the more will eventually learn how to drive, maybe one of them will get their F-1 shot. [/Rant off]
