first thoughts, post race:

Well, I am sitting in my hotel room in lovely Milwaukee on Saturday night. All my colleagues have returned to Indianapolis. It was actually funny seeing all of Champ Car rush out of there as quickly as possible following the Time Warner Cable RoadRunner 221, er, 225, presented by US bank. After reading some comments from crapwagon with regards to the race broadcast on television, I’m glad that it wasn’t only us PA announcers who were a little confused with the ending. We realized it was going to be timed, but didn’t know how many laps remaining, until we saw the white flag from the starter. All of a sudden we go from “AJ has a few laps left to catch him” to “AJ has to do it NOW NOW NOW”. Naturally, nobody is a fan of timed events. Even though 220 laps would make a fine event on its own, you still feel cheated of those last few laps. It could be the Milwaukee 750, you’d still feel cheated if it ended at 745. nonetheless, with any new companies trying to get back to prominence, they have to make sacrifices, and buying television time is the reality at this point. At least it was on network television, which is more than Champ Car has been able to say for the last couple of years. Baby steps, my friends. Baby steps.
You know that the IRL deal is strictly because of the Indianapolis 500. when you have that card in your deck, you hold a strong hand. ABC/ESPN is clearly willing to throw away many hours of airtime for IRL broadcasts in order to retain the rights that one broadcast in Indianapolis on Memorial Day weekend. NASCAR is a different beast altogether at this point. They have reached point where networks want them. Same with football. You’ll notice a lot of the basketball playoffs are on cable television and, as mentioned on PTI, have been trounced in ratings by golf when going head to head. It’s a cyclical world. You need them at one point, they want you at another and eventually it comes full circle.

The race itself was more entertaining than last year’s race at the Mile. I always enjoy the races at the mile. The track has so much tradition and one mile ovals are fine for Champ Car. Nevertheless, if I was to critique the Mile for anything, it would be for the lack of the SAFER-barriers. They are one of the last major tracks remaining that don’t have it. I know it’s a public track and there is a lot of red tape when the state is involved, but we are talking about the safety of drivers. We all saw Ryan Hunter-Reay smack the wall very hard today. The last I heard, they were keeping Ryan at the hospital overnight and he was given a CT scan for precautionary purposes. He probably suffered a form of mild concussion, but that is it. He complained of stiffness in his neck, but again, that’s good news, all things considered. And I shouldn’t we all saw Hunter’s hit, cause I didn’t. let me paint the picture, because as a track announcer it was a horrible experience and quite embarrassing.

We had two scissor-lifts that we used as our ‘offices’ this weekend. After the pre-race festivities, I went to my lift and went up ready to call the race for the good folks in Milwaukee. As the drivers were taking the first ‘parade’ laps around, my colleagues were making their way up on the other scissor-lift. Well, just before going green, their lift hit some cords and essentially unplugged my microphone. So, silence during the start of the race as Tracy got off to that great start. Well, one of their microphone is working, but they aren’t really using it while I am yelling at the tech guys bellow us. Finally, my colleagues offer me their mic, which requires both of us to go back down, switch places and go back up. I have a television monitor in front of me, which I keep on the timing and scoring screen, so I can relay times and positions to the spectators. As I switch scissor-lift, the tech guys arrive and look for the problem. That keeps us on the ground. I have absolutely no idea what is happening. I see the television screen go yellow, but I have no idea why. Naturally I don’t jump to any conclusion, but nevertheless feel compelled to say something, so I spew something about it being too early for the backmarkers to pit. Finally, I’m told its Hunter. As I go back up on the scissor lift, I can’t see Ryan’s car from my vantage point and can’t make what the champ car officials are saying on the radio. All I see are a couple of safety trucks on the track. I switch channels on my television and to my horror I see Ryan being put on the stretcher. At this point, I mention how Champ Car’s safety team is the best in the business and that they will take him to the medical unit and that we will try to get an update as soon as possible. I am feeling horrible inside. These accidents need to be handled with care by officials and often, much like in this case, LOOK a lot worse than they end up being. Well, as we go back green, my heart is in my stomach, because Ryan was taken to the medical center and I had no clue what happened and how it happened and essentially couldn’t keep the spectators up to date on what, at the time, looked like an extremely serious accident. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t have run my mouth had I witness the entire thing, but I could have been more sensitive to the situation. What seemed like an eternity later, they fix Bill Michael’s mic and the moment he goes on the air, I rip my headset off and call a colleague to get an update. That’s when I was told that they were not life threatening injuries. I told her to call me and leave me a message the moment they have more updates. I then apologized to the nice crowd in Milwaukee, quickly explaining why we were silent at the beginning of the race and give an update on Ryan’s condition. A few moments later, I get another message to which I quickly relay to the crowd, that Hunter was awake and alert and was taken to the hospital for tests. After that I was able to get back into the race, enjoy it and call it.

It was also particularly hard to see Ryan hit the wall and be taken to the hospital during the race, because I got to spend some time with Ryan this weekend, more time than I had before. I interviewed him for our ‘this and that’ feature and had the most fun of any drivers I talked to. He even mentioned how it was ‘good’ after it was all said and done. I spoke with him during the autograph session and shook his hand to wish him luck before the race. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the most I talked to him of any other race weekend and got to know him better. I found him genuinely hilarious, much more ‘open’ than he sometimes comes off on television. He’s got a great personality and I wish him a speedy recovery. And I’ll definitely put up my ‘this and that’ feature with him sometime this week and I hope he sees it and enjoys it as much as I did.