Saturday, May 10, 2008

Pole Day highlights

Whale, the weather seems to be finally cooperating in Speedway, Indiana, as we’re treated to the “electrifying” Pole Day festiva… As the fastest eleven drivers will lock-in their positions by 6PM Eastern Time today, as we’ve already had 5 cars “BOOMPED” outta the field, I mean isn’t this exciting?

Speaking of Festiva’s, as Y’all may already know? We had three, count ‘em three incidences at the track on “Freaky Friday,” with Rookie Alex Lloyd’s being the most serious on track as he’s still complaining of neck pain after walloping the wall in Turn 1 and will now apparently sit out the first weekend.

Mario “BOOM BOOM” Dominguez tapped the wall with his nosecone, but the most frightening incident occurred when Danica Patrick accidentally struck Chuck Buckman, an errant Dale Coyne crew member who apparently wasn’t paying attention while chatting with fellow AGR members. Ironically Buckman whose 63yr’s old was sent skywards, when Danica’s front wing clipped him, before Buckman landed on his head, receiving a concussion along with facial and scalp lacerations. The good news is that the three aforementioned are all relatively uninjured, although Buckman has a minor broken bone in his skull according to Dale Coyne who was interviewed on Pit lane during today’s festivities…

And kudos to My Name is IRL for catching the lead story of the morning, albeit at 7AM out here on the Left Coast, as indeed John Andretti has found himself as Jay Howard’s replacement at the Speedway this morning… As apparently NOT one, but two top Engineers had LEFT the Roth Racing establishment and Marty “Clean Shorts” Roth was keen to have somebody with “Experience” to lean on this Month of May as the journeyman Andretti has eight previous starts at Indy…

HMM? Why does this make me think of the other Andretti in the field? As I repeatedly tried to tune into the IMS Radio Network broadcast at the appropriate time this morning, the BLEEPIN’ win-dOUGhs Media Player said back to me the Broadcast has NOT Started, please check back at the appropriate time… But it is the RIGHT FRILLIN’ time you BOZOS!!!

And thus I was forced to turn on the Telescreen and listen to a somber Eddie “Under-Uh-Chiever” Cheever play along with Marty “Move over Boyzs” Reid and Mr. Goodyear… And so you’re thinkin’ what’s the FRILLIN’ point, eh?

Well we were graced with an interview after Marco finished his qualifying run which was 4mph off of his morning practice run which topped the time sheets at 228+ mph… So, it’s pretty amazing that you can gain 4mph off of a TOW around the Brickyard! And after his interview we got to see the young Marco resplendent in his Indiana Jones “Temple ‘O Zoom” costume, Err Driving suit… And thus I wondered if perhaps John had borrowed cousin Marco’s bull whip to take over Jay Howard’s seat?

And after Edwardo Carpentier ran his John Menard’s-ville Special RAGGID, apparently up in the grey stuff, as I’ve been ponderin’ sending the following question to ‘Ol Robin Miller’s mailbag;

While I think I know the difference between David Hobbs use of Desert Klag vs. “Regular” Klag… Is Klag just the European version of Marbles?

Since apparently Carpenter was making IMS colour commentator back-up “JP” (Johnny Parsons Jr) quite nervous getting so close to the Safer Barrier… As yeah, by now I couldn’t stand the COMMERCIAL-FEST on the Deuce and had switched back on le internets in hopes of getting less Advertising KLAG!!!

So, it was entertaining to hear Edwardo laugh while he was being interviewed, as he explained that “Juan ‘O” the Kevin Brothers; “K.O.” (Kevin Olson, Kevin Lee) was holding up a sheet ‘O papers of what NOT to say on-air…

NO F-BOMBS!
NO Swearing in Portuguese, Venezuelan or Brazilian
NO mentioning of Princess Danicker’s fuel mileage victory
NO F-BOMBS!
NO saying Helioe’s a lousy dancer
DON’T call EJ Viso a Swarmy Bastardo
NO F-BOMBS!
NO Profanity
And lastly, NO F-BOMBS!

And Thank Goodness that Mr. Whitening Stripes, a.k.a. Dan “SPIKE” Wheldon knocked Danica off of the provisional pole… Or, Oh My God! We’d NEVER hear the end of Princess Danicker’s Greatness, eh? As I’m personally rooting for Sarah Fisher this May, as she’s the ONLY female trying to make the field the hard way… NOT having bought her way into the ride or being given top notch equipment as she struggles to get her own brand new team off the ground so to speak, while her intended primary sponsor hasn’t cut her a check yet…

Yet having gone away from the Telescreen and the IMS Radio portion finished, I missed the mid-day drama as Ryan Briscoe went out and bumped Danny-boy off of the provisional pole, only to be in turn bumped off the pole by eventual Pole Winner Scott Dixon around 3:30PM (EST)

Then Marco withdrew his first qualifying time of P8 in order to take another krack at it… Yet was only able to improve one position, moving up to seventh around 4:30PM. Yet Marco’s move seemed to start the queuing up for Happy Hour as next up was Marco’s Rookie teammate Hideki Mutoh.

Mutoh was the victim of one of the strangest Disqualifications I’ve ever heard of, after having qualified 10th this morning, he was DQ’ed after post qualifying inspection revealed that the team had erroneously left off the dummy camera weight all Non-camera carrying cars are required to carry. This dummy weight is 3.5lbs and Mutoh’s car was underweight by this exact amount, Crikeys…

Happy Hour definitely lived up to its reputation this year… As there was an extreme amount of cars playing the Tech line shuffle, with Mutoh making the first move as he bumped Graham Rahal from the 11th grid spot, putting Tomas Scheckter on the bubble. With 19+ minutes left, Target Chip Ganassi withdrew Dan “Nice Teeth” Wheldon’s time, who was currently lying third overall in an attempt to knock his Kiwi teammate off the pole, but Danny-boy came up just short, thus moving up one position to second and demoting Briscoe to the outside of Row 1.

Next, Scheckter’s time was withdrawn and he ended up going .3.mph slower, but still managed to stay in P11, while many of the cars in the Tech line were withdrawn, Rahal, Power and Wilson all took one last shot at Scheckter, but nobody made it as the six ‘O clock gun was fired…

)Driver’s participating in the Tech line roulette: Mutoh; Hunter-Reay; Rahal; Meira; Wheldon; Scheckter; Power; Carpenter; Dixon; Wilson; Hamilton; Viso; Junqueira and Servia)


DAY ONE (Positions 1-11)
ROW 1Pole: Scott Dixon
Ganassi
226.366mph

2. Dan Wheldon
Ganassi
226.110

3. Ryan Briscoe
Penske
226.080


ROW 24. Helio Castroneves
Penske
225.733

5. Danica Patrick
Andretti-Green
225.197

6. Tony Kanaan
Andretti-Green
224.799


ROW 37. ) Marco Andretti
Andretti-Green
224.417

8. Vitor Meira
Panther
224.346

9. R-Hideki Mutoh
Andretti-Green
223.887

ROW 410. Ed Carpenter
Vision
223.835

11. Tomas Scheckter
Luczo Dragon
223.496