The Indianapolis 500 lived up to the hype this year. It pretty much never got boring, and the finish was awesome. I may lack the proper degree of patriotism, or something, but I really don’t care that “an American won.”
The racing was great, but the coverage utterly stunk. They should have people working in television for these events who know at least a little bit about auto racing.
They show every pass from the in-car camera. It is impossible to tell anything about the pass from that angle, because you cannot see where they are on the track. Was it an easy pass or did he really have to work to do it? How deep into the corner did he go making that pass? How much room did the passee actually give to the passing car? You can't tell with the view they give you.
At one point they showed Marco starting to pass Helio from the in-car camera. He had to abort the pass and fall back. Why? Where was he on the track that made him abort the pass? You could not tell from the in-car camera why the passing attempt failed.
At the three car wreck they first said it "wasn't anybody's fault" which was just plain ridiculous on the face of it. Three wide was stupid and of course it was somebody's fault. I was pretty sure it was Hinchcliffe who caused it by diving inside and creating the three wide, but the announcers were saying that it was caused by Townsend Bell. Later they interviewed Ed Carpenter, who said, "I think Bell and I would have been okay, but then Hinch dived inside and made it three wide and caused the wreck," confirming what I had figured but which the announcers had failed to notice.
Kurt Bush, NASCAR driver participating in his first Indycar race ever, finished sixth, which was a major accomplishment. I don’t like Kurt, but credit where it’s due. That was a very well-driven race.
Danica Patrick was going to win the 600-mile NASCAR race because she qualified fourth and has thereby finally proven that she is a superstar. The announcers were having a major case of the vapors over her until the race started, when she promptly started “advancing to the rear,” and was running 24th, one lap down, when her engine went sour. She then managed to wreck her car before the engine exploded.
Her inability to run with the leaders was, of course, caused by a “slow car.” Funny, the car was not slow in qualifying, nor was it slow in any of the practice sessions. No one has been able to explain why it was slow for the race.
The car was tired after the qualifying and practice. Maybe put Ms. Patrick in funny cars and see what she does with those. She might go fast, and it's a straight line, so less to mess up. But nothing is impossible.
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