Well last evening was very busy in terms of trying to keep up with all of the different interviews occurring in regards to Open Wheel Racing, as Indiana Bureau Chief Danny B noted; Do you think that Indy Car will make the top story on The Speed Report? Which of course it didn’t, instead preceded by some supercross event that was run Saturday night at the RCA Dome in the Hoosier state. And although the unification got the second story slot followed up by driver’s first thoughts and Homestead testing notes, we didn’t learn anything new.
Next up, was Wind Tunnel with an interview with Paul Tracy, of course once again OWR got the shaft as the flippin’ RASSCAR race went into extra innings in Los Wages, so Dave Despain got bumped a half hour…
Thus I tried to tune into Indy Racing Revolution’s main man Christopher “CHiP’s” Estrada (Betcha he’s never heard that one before, eh?) who was making his internets debut on Cleveland talk radio, but I couldn’t get the damn internet site to open, so I defaulted to my usual Sunday evening faire, a.k.a. Speedfreaks radio. And guess what? They had the big kahuna himself slated for a 15 minute (“TEASE”) interview, yeah Tony “Serta” George was on the program to reiterate his thoughts about successfully completing his takeover, err, merger and how he’s been sleeping like a baby ever since. Hmm? Wonder if Tony likes his side of the bed firm or soft? But, I digress…
The first subject that came up was Gerald “Take your League ‘N Shove IT!” Forsythe’s withdrawal from Indy Car racing, to which George was extremely diplomatic about, claiming Gerry’s not feeling well right now since he’s just broken his ankle and blah-blah-blah… In an attempt to get some sort of emotion outta Tony, who was extremely serious throughout the interview, Kenny Sergeant asked George if there was any truth to the rumour that Forsythe got his broken ankle from Paul Tracy driving him around in a golf cart. (No Comment) Kenny said; Geez Tony! Work with me here will yuh! Try to lighten up a little…
Then the “Stat man Caruthers” started the stupid questions. So, will any of the Champ Car teams making the switch run at Motegi? NO! ALL of the CCWS teams will race at Long Beach and ALL of the IRL teams will run at Motegi with equal IRL points being awarded at both venues and we just have to make the best of this difficult situation. Well I’ve heard there may be only ten cars showing up at Long Beach; couldn’t that affect the point’s standings? NO, I don’t think it’ll impact things too much over a 19 race season. Tony then said if my senses are correct___________ Pause, insert comment there… There should be 17 cars running at each event.
But they PISSED ME OFF! Speedfreaks went to commercial saying if you wanted to hear the MISSING “18 minutes” of the interview (22 minutes unedited) you should definitely go to their website and hear Tony George’s comments about AJ Foyt and Tracy possibly running for ‘Ol Super Tex. HUH? Don’t think it’s gonna happen… So, SCREW Speedfreaks, let’s go rewind the Memorex and see what Mr. Chrome Horn had to say on Messer Despain’s TV show…
It was a pretty straightforward and short interview, of Tracy saying he’d like to see if Forsythe can be swayed to change his mind as he and his team are like a bunch of caged mechanics starin’ at a piece of bloody meat… And it’s only been 48 hours since the news broke and things change about every five hours. But the interesting part was that Tracy stressed he was still under contract to Forsythe this year and will remain so and thus will be in a car at Long Beach at least. After that he doesn’t know what’ll happen…
Despain asked if he’d like to make a retort to Michael Andretti’s comments:
“Paul is great and all, but he doesn’t have any experience in these cars and he’s getting a little old, We’re looking at 19- and 20-year olds, and he’s almost 40.”
I hope somebody picks him up, because he’s always good for a story. He’s one of those guys you either love or hate, but he’s going to get the series out there. He gets press.”
Well, Michael came out of retirement to run at Indy and I think he’s about seven years older than me. I think I could do a pretty good job at Indy if given the right circumstances. You know I started dead last and wound up watching Helio “Twinkle Toes” Castroneves dance away with my 2002 Borg Warner trophy!
