Just a few final thoughts towards this year’s 92nd running of the Indianapolis 500, with IMS claiming the “BUZZ” is back in INDY!!! Whale there’s certainly been a buzzin’ over Danicker’s theatrics on Pit lane… Somme-thung ‘bout a Bee in a Bonnet? But I’ll refrain from any further digs towards the Princess for at least the rest of this story…
So you wanna be an Indy Car mechanic? Well it’s NOT all glitz “N glory while your driver potentially pours the milk over his head in victory lane… As one article in the USA Today noted that the KV Racing Technology crew members had been doing 14 hour days straight for several weeks since the unexpected merger became official in late February. As their shop manager said they spent 5,400+ man hours preparing their first two Dallara chassis, as the strain has apparently gotten to some of the crew as three employees have now left the organization. But, all of this hard work seems to have paid off, as I’ve noted previously, KVRT was the highest finishing Champ Car Refugee squad at Indy with Servia 11th and Power 13th.
And not to be outdone, Honda Performance Development in Santa Clarita, CA has also been running non-stop the past five months, working employees up to 14 hours a day to build-up enough of their vaunted Fire Breathin’ Eithanol consumin’ Lumps for this years Unified Indy Car World Series… With HPD producing around 93 engines alone for the Memorial Day classic.
HPD started off with 80 engines produced prior to Homestead and is projecting to build a total of 365 engines for the season… As part of the Unification talks incentives was the offer of free $250,000 Honda lumps…
Also, said Open Wheel curmudgeon Robin Miller has noted that with the dyer scarcity of completed Dallara chassis… As several of the Transitioning teams don’t even have spares… We’ll most likely see a dip in the number of entries for this weeks upcoming ‘Ol Milwaukee speedfest on the Milwaukee Mile…
And amazingly USA Today had a total of nine articles printed in their sports section on the Friday before the greatest Spectali in racin,’ which seems pretty impressive to me… While according to the Indy Star, which I believe is a Pro-IMS news rag… The Nielsen Brothers (Inside Joke; As I believe there’s an outfit by that name that sells carpet up here…) Err, Nielsen ratings claim an overnight rating of 5.1 for this year’s Indy 500 vs. the Charlotte 600’s 4.4 rating, with the final tallies being a 4.5 rating for Indy and a 4.7 for Charlotte… While I believe that IMs’s number for last years overnight rating was a 4.8? And although initial reports claimed that the ratings were up this year nationally, they’ve now gone silent on the part about the local Indiana results being down… But, hey, like Danny B always tells me… Nielsen ratings DON’T mean CRAP!
