I got a feeling that Danica Patrick may get the call this weekend. Why not? The IRL is back on ABC, they are running a big track where weight plays a factor. What better exposure for the IRL than have Miss Patrick steal one? Regardless, she will be on the pole position, I think its safe to say. Again, one of those big horsepower tracks where her weight factors HUGE in qualifying. But how will the AGR guys handle that?? Ahh the Soap Opera that is the Indy Racing League. On a track like Michigan, I just hope everybody walks away clean. They should get good ratings. No question. Which is amazing that one person can add millions of viewers.

Darren Manning out at Ganassi? Seems odd, this late into the season to dump him. That team is just terrible, but I doubt that getting rid of Manning will help any. The guy has a great attitude and could only be beneficial to a team. I don’t know Briscoe and Dixon can be quiet and somewhat demanding at times. A lot of people are down on him for leaving CART like he did. I sympathize, cause he didn’t have an offer in Champ Car and getting an offer from Chip Ganassi would be very hard to turn down for a driver in his position. Of course, the way he got the ride is somewhat bleak, but also a reality of racing. I hope things work out for him in the future.

We are half-way through the season already!! Dang! 7 races, 5 winners. It’s a long cry from my prediction that Bourdais would win every race. Sometimes its good to be wrong. Now its time for these drivers to turn it up! Bourdais and Tracy have made it personal (on the track) and Newman/Haas and Forsythe are full of bad blood toward each other. Rusport is right there, with Justin becoming a legitimate threat and if Bourdais and Tracy get carried away, the big benefactor could be Wilson. Now drivers are not simply driving for podiums and wins, but a few will start driving for a seat in 2006. Oriol Servia comes to mind. He’s doing great right now, but nothing is guaranteed for 2006. Although, I would imagine he’s used to that uncertainty by now and just takes it all in stride. He’s making good money now with all those podiums, so he must be happy. A bunch of other drivers are now driving for the future, so the intensity will be kicked up a notch.

I heard this 12 Champ Car drivers at Indy next year, but don’t quite understand all the details and have made it a point not to get too absorbed about this. We all have different feelings about the Indy 500 today, what it means, how dangerous it is, etc. But find me one racecar driver would doesn’t want to drive the Indy 500 and I’ll show you a guy with little regard for history. We’ll put this ‘story’ in the ‘wait and see’ category before we all get caught up.

I think its at this point that the NASCAR season seems to get long. It’s a good thing they introduced the ‘chase for the cup’ to basically add a new ‘season’ because the current one gets long in the tooth. Its nobody’s fault obviously, but what NASCAR goes through right now is a lot of repetition. Races held on tracks already seen this season. Good fight in the standings, but there’s too many races left to make the points standing an issue right now (save for the 400 points off the leader-thing). It’s also such a complicated points system that its very hard to do quick math during a race. The announcers are very very good at telling the story that is NASCAR. But if I’m watching Newman, riding in 18th, its hard to do the quick math in my head to see how many points he needs to move up to a certain spot in the standing. I think that’s why NASCAR introduced the Chase for the Cup. To eliminate all the points and start at zero. Basically so we can all take a breath and start over after counting in the low thousands.