Milwaukee is fun; I’ve been many times. The track is only a 1 mile oval, so it’s much smaller than Indy - tighter turns and shorter straightaways. Because of this, they go a little slower and don’t reach quite the speeds as at Indy. It’s still a blast, though.
I haven’t followed IndyCar closely for some time, so I can’t really speak to the drivers anymore. You won’t go wrong keeping an eye out for Dario Franchitti, Helio Castro-Neves, or possibly even Marco Andretti, though. More interesting can be the strategy - since it’s a shorter race, there’s more strategy placed around when to pit and refuel. Teams may try to get away with only 3 stops, depending on cautions. If you’re anywhere near the pits, it’s a ton of fun to watch the drivers make their stops.
I disagree with Snickers’ suggestions on drivers to watch; Franchitti is not having a great season.
Marco Andretti is the points leader right now, so that would be a driver to watch.
Ed Carpenter is having a great year and would be good to watch.
Ana Beatriz is amazing and came up from Indy Lights only two years ago. She and Simona de Silvestro tend to run up front in the top ten much more consistently than Danica ever did.
Takuma Sato is also having a good year.
If you have a stopwatch function on your phone, play around with taking lap times. That’s always fun. Compare this driver to that driver, etc.
Personally, I prefer the slightly shorter races 200 or 300 mile, over the 500 mile races. I think it’s at Milwaukee where they tend to go three wide through the corners and that is just spectacular to watch. I went to the Kentucky race a few years back–also a great track, fun to watch there.
WRT the 2013 Indy 500, I said this to my sister (who went to the race and goes every year) after I watched it: “Okay, so first. Y’all had this crazy race swapping leads, swapping, swapping, then a nice long caution, 30 seconds of WOOOOOT, and then you got to cum all over the track for three laps while TK drove it home on a caution? How awesome was THAT race?” She lolled and told me she thought it was one of the best races in years. I have to agree. Typically, I watch with about half my attention on the race until the last 30-20 laps or so. This race sucked me in right away; it was truly a 500-mile race, as in mile one was every bit as exciting as mile 500. If you thought that only the last 20 laps of this race were worth watching, I don’t think you were paying very close attention or maybe you just don’t watch enough Indy. My opinion.
All that said, my congratulations to TK. Very well deserved. He is an outstanding human being, a great driver, a very hard worker, and is easy on the eyes.
Unfortunately mkecane there’s no IndyCar at Road America any longer, not since Champ Car bit the dust. Michael Andretti runs the race at Milwaukee now, and apparently as part of the deal he got for saving the race at Milwaukee from oblivion a few years back is that there can’t be any other Indy races in Wisconsin. (article with no caption in the gallery | RACER)
The NASCAR Nationwide race at Road America can be a hoot to watch if you have four hours to kill (but way too much crawling around under yellow, typically), but a sad shadow of watching full-blooded open wheel cars there. I’m sure NASCAR brings in as much money, if not more to Elkhart Lake as CART did back in the glory days before the split. It probably says a lot that when GrandAm and ALMS merge in 2014 you can bet they’ll still be racing at Road America while IndyCar has other priorities (e.g., not pissing off Michael Andretti).
Thanks for the responses. I’m glad to hear the shorter & wider oval should make for a good race. I’m pretty excited. I’m looking to sit up in the grandstand, probably higher up, so I can get a good picture of the full race. Depending on the security people, I’ll see if I can get down low for at least a bit of the race to just get a better sense of the speed.
I respectfully disagree. My bona fides are having watched every IndyCar race since 2010.
I thought it was boring. I’m not that big of an oval fan anyway, but this was pretty lame, except for the win by TK, which is awesome. Leads were being swapped not because of great racing, but because no one wanted to lead due to drafting advantage. I’m sure there was fantastic racing going on mid-pack, but ABC only showed the top five guys who were trading leads. No big crashes (which is good, but makes it uneventful) and no big movers to the front to root for and track.
I don’t know - despite going there since I was a kid, I now find the Indy 500 one of the most boring races on the schedule. There are some good final laps, like Hildebrand/Wheldon and Sato/Dario, but most of the race is just grinding off laps. Although it was nice to see Rahal fail yet again.
YMMV (ha!) but Indy is boring, and this race was super boring. The Shootout at the time trials was way more exciting.
Milwaukee is fun, and I agree that the shorter ovals are more fun than the long ones.
Marco is leading in points, and doing well, so watch him. Will Power is the perennial “bad luck Chuck” and is not having a good year. His strength is in road courses, so if he’s doing well, then it will be exciting. James Hinchcliffe and Sato are both good characters who are having great seasons, so watch them. And maybe keep an eye on Dario and Scott Dixon - they’re doing lousy, so a good race for them will be cool to watch.
They usually have the qualifying on NBC Sports network, so if you get that, check your guide and watch it. It’s only a hour, and you’ll get to see the names and the cars, and the Shootout at the end is exciting. Plus, their coverage is excellent, so you’ll get some background on the drivers and their season.
Also! It’s been a big year for the Chevy engine cars, with Honda just not quite getting it done. There will be a lot of pressure on Honda drivers to do well.
This just in! JR Hildebrand has been cut from Panther racing, to be replaced by Briscoe at least for Detroit. Crazy. He’s not been producing much for them, but he’s totally the face of the National Guard. And Briscoe’s not exactly an American…
I remember Dan Wheldon not getting paid, or having to sue to get paid for his time spent at Panther from 2009-2010.
Too bad for JR. When I first heard the report the replacement wasn’t announced and I was thinking Oriol Servia would find a ride again (unless things have changed, Team Panther/Dreyer & Reinbold shut down after Indy).
Belle Isle today and tomorrow at 2:30 pm CDT on ABC.
It looks like Dario took the pole for the first race, but will start in 11th due to a penalty for an unauthorized engine change at Indy, along with Rahal and two other guys (Newgarten and someone else). Then this morning, they had some weird qualifying for the second race (I couldn’t find any television coverage, maybe I missed it somehow), and Mike Conway will be on the pole for race 2. Ug. I don’t like Conway.
There’s a lot of strange names for the top qualifying rows in race 1 - Jakes, Viso, Tagliani. I sure don’t know what’s going on with the big teams, but they’re sucking this year.
