During the press conference in Cleveland at the stadium, I had a chance to speak with Ronnie Bremer in-between his interviews. Now, if you read this blog, you know I’m a Bremer fan. The kid can drive the hell out of that car. He proved it last year in the Atlantics and proved it by earning that spot on HVM. He deserves all the success in the world.
He had just finished doing a brief interview about funding. The reporter in question remembered asking Ronnie the very same question last year, but back then it was about his Atlantic ride. Ronnie made light of the situation to me afterwards, but you could tell it’s a serious issue to him.
The reason we spoke is that I simply had to thank him for attending the Fan Club dinner on Saturday night in Portland. Now, for those who don’t know, these are fan club dinners on Saturdays during race weekends with a Q and A with some Champ Car official or whatever. Well, that particular dinner, a team member of HVM was scheduled to attend. But, if you remember, Ronnie had a very hard crash that day, went to the hospital and the crew member was unable to attend the dinner on account of having to work ‘overtime’ on the very damaged machine. A perfectly understandable excuse, nobody would be upset about the situation and all would enjoy the other guest, have a nice dinner and discuss Champ Cars amongst friends. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Ronnie shows up as a replacement guest. The guy literally came from the hospital after suffering his biggest crash to date, the night before the race, to meet and chat with fans. How many people would have done that? How many would have done that after suffering a hospital-bound crash? How many would have done that the night before the race?

Anyway, I was thanking him and he told me basically that doing these things is important to him. He realizes that he’s not a household name (to which I added ‘yet’) and that he needs to get himself out there. He’s had to work hard his entire life and realizes how privileged he is to be in a Champ Car. He knows that Champ Car is a community and that the fans are very much part of it. That’s why he enjoys doing all these ‘pr’ things. He said to me “if I’m lucky enough to be in Champ Cars in 5 years, I’ll still be doing every appearance I can, I’ll still be doing the dinners and whatever I can in order to be there for the fans.”

And you wonder why I like him!

I had a very good couple of conversations with this man in Cleveland throughout the weekend. He was there with his son, was from the Ohio area, was a big Paul Tracy Fan (his son was a DaMatta fan) and basically enjoyed open-wheel racing. All forms of it.
I know there are many people like him out there, but I don’t often meet people who are completely on the fence, enjoy both the IRL and Champ Cars and try to attend one or two of each every year.
I know I am going to be chastised for this, but it was refreshing to see. We spoke at different times, I saw him at the Fan Forum, I saw him in the paddock and just following the race and every time we spoke of what was going on at that time and the state of open-wheel racing in general. Now, on any given race weekend, I have at least a handful of conversations with fans about the condition of open-wheel racing and unification. It’s a given, and I enjoy talking about it. And of course, most curse the IRL, Tony and to a certain degree Champ Car for, among other things, lack of promotion, lack of sponsors, the usual suspects. But with this gentleman (whom I regret not actually knowing his name) though we covered the usual suspect, it was about racing, it was about DaMatta versus Tracy, it was about Bourdais’ lackluster start of the season, it was about the IRL crashfest race in Richmond on Saturday night.

My point is that it was neat to meet someone who just loves racing, plain and simple. He was in Cleveland with his son to watch the Cleveland GP, he was heading to Michigan in a couple of weeks to watch the Michigan 400 and hoped he could squeeze in another Champ Car race this summer. The thing I noted most from our conversations was when he said “I like two series, I get to enjoy twice as many races”. That struck me as one of the simplest, yet most profound thing ever said about the state of open-wheel racing in America. He’s absolutely correct, two series means some 30 races in a year. And for a fan of open-wheel racing, that’s a heck of a lot of racing to enjoy in a year!

Hey, if anybody wants to publish their racing story on this blog, by all means drop me an email and we'll work something out. At the end of the day I created this blog to share my experiences at the events, so if you want to share yours, let me know!

Cleveland’s hot!

It was hot, no question about it. With my gray shirt and black pants all weekend, I must have dropped 3 pounds in sweat alone. The best was during the pre-race ceremonies for both Atlantic races and Champ Car, where I had the sun right in my face, sweating buckets and trying to maintain some sort of composure. But then again, its way better than rain and its summer, after all. The Atlantic honorary starter was Robert Dole, who works for Yokohama tires and both times during his short speech he said “I know its hot out there, but I promise the action on the track will be even hotter”. Later on he turned to me and said “how cheesy was that!”

wait a minute. His name was Bob Dole? Maybe I’m getting it wrong.

Love the podium set-up in Cleveland. It’s right in front of the grandstands. It’s really intimate. The hat dance was a lot of fun, as the crowd always “awwwwww” when the hat didn’t come there way. Good fun.

The Portland edition of Overheard at the Track is up. Still waiting on the “this or that” feature. Come on Champ Car! 15 different personality questions asked to a variety of drivers and our president Mr. Dick Eidswick! Get it out there!

On Friday night I had to MC the rock ‘n’ roar party, which I knew nothing about going into it. In fact, they told me pretty much right after the Champ Car autograph session that I had to be there. I said sure, not realizing that it was a two and a half live auction! All in all, it ended up going well, and now I can add auctioneer to my resume. A lot of pace car rides were being given away and all the lovely pace car drivers were there. Some of the most beautiful women you’ll ever see. Why? Because they really are the total package!
The evening was held in the Hangar and it was hottttt in theeeeerrrrreee! At first I was sweating buckets, something that Ronnie Bremer noticed on stage! AJ was caught off guard when I called him up on stage which is always the best time! No prep, no cards, no clichés!

The IRL race in Richmond was genuinely boring. I’m sorry to say that, but I watched it in its entirety and didn’t enjoy it one bit. I am very happy for my boy Carpentier. Bout time he got a break. It was a crashfest, of course, but not even a good crashfest. Just a bunch of cars taking each other out. It was sloppy at best. I love how they continued to mention Danica’s amazing climb to a top ten finish. Let’s face it, had 8 cars not crashed out, she would have finished 18th. Actually, come to think of it, the funniest part of the race was when Harris (is that his name?) got genuinely excited about Danica’s climb from 21st to 17th. He goes on and on and turns to Goodyear and says something like “that’s pretty amazing eh Scott”. What the hell is Goodyear supposed to respond? One of the many funny things Harris said during that race. Actually, he was more entertaining than the ontrack product itself.

It amazes me watching the NASCAR show how many of these drivers are just terrible at turning right. I mean, growing up in an open-wheel environment, I guess I just take turning right for granted. For a lot of these dirt track drivers, going on a road course is a totally different experience. Must be for the engineers and the mechanics too, in terms of setting up the car. Personally, I love that race and the race at the Glen. It’s a nice break from just the oval. I love how the broadcast team talks of “ringers” brought in for that race, like they are evil or something. I guess some comments were made and Scott Pruett responded. But what? You’re going to turn down a NASCAR ride? No way. And if a regular NASCAR driver gets upset at these ringers, well, learn to drive the road course and maybe you won’t be substituted for the race.

Average Joe is on tonight baby! We’re back! NBC 8 o’clock!

cleveland part deux

Cleveland.

6 races, 8 qualifying sessions, all in the span of 8 days. Truly, this past week has been an open-wheel fans dream. Okay, maybe not dream, since qualifying isn’t scheduled on television, but for us who are fortunate enough to be part of the team and have a deep passion for the sport, it really was. After all the dust has settled in both the Atlantics and the Champ Car, both have new series points leaders. Charles Swolsman, in the Atlantic took both races this weekend in Cleveland and even had the pole on Sunday. It was eerily similar to what happened last week in Portland, where Tonis Kasamets won both races, Sunday’s from the pole position. The Saturday Atlantic race was a very entertaining race, where once again numerous battles were taking place throughout the track and what better track to have that happen. Its enough for a fan to get dizzy trying to watch all the action taking place. With grandstand views of 90 percent of the track, your eyes had to be constantly scanning the track to watch all the great fights. At the end of the day (Saturday) Swolsman held off Kasamets to take the checkered flag. I hadn’t really talked to Charles Swolsman much throughout the season, but kept reading how “unassuming he is” in the press releases. I got a chance to speak with him on Friday and, well, he is very unassuming in the sense that he is polite and uncharacteristically quiet for a racecar driver, even coming off as shy. He is tall, so physically you can’t miss him, but he is quiet. Nonetheless a very nice and intelligent man and a hell of a racecar driver. He repeated Saturday’s performance on Sunday, this time in grand fashion by dominating the race. I should emphasis though that he didn’t get off to a great start, losing up to 4 (I believe off the top of my head) spots off the notorious hairpin. But he quickly made up those spots (in part thanks to Kasamets running off the track) and once he was leading, he continued to distance himself from the rest of the field. But again though, a great battle for second between Antoine Bessette and Andreas Wirth (it went to Bessette). And the entire weekend, Chris Dyson and Al Unser III always seemed to be trading spots. Both races had those two drivers going back in forth, battling for either 6th, 5th, or 4th position at different times during the race. Two great young American drivers putting on a heck of a show for the fans. Props must also go out to Andreas Wirth, who found the podium twice in Portland and also twice in Cleveland. He’s a model of consistency and is not too far from climbing to the top of the podium.
Toronto marks the first time these guys go back to a tight street course and if Long Beach is any indication, the teams better get automobile insurance. You can expect (and hope) lots of bumping out there!

I want to thank Tom Michaels, whom I had so much fun working with this weekend. A better broadcasting partner I don’t think I could find. We did the pit stop challenge together on Thursday and covered each event together throughout the weekend. The banter between us was so natural, that I’m sure at times we forgot the mic was even on and just went at it, trading barbs back and forth. But we were also able to provide good coverage for the fans and could be serious when we needed too (luckily, that wasn’t too often). If they asked me co-host a radio show with anybody, I would definitely push for Tom. Now, if it was television, I may not, since Tom clearly has a face for radio. Old zing, but I know Tom would expect nothing less from me.

On to Champ Cars.

One of those ‘serious’ times I just mention was witnessing AJ being taking out on the stretcher following Saturday’s qualifying, but at the same time having to read over the PA about the Bridgestone Pole Award being presented by the mayor of Cleveland to Paul Tracy. Our PA booth as right in front of turn 8. we had small windows, but truly had to rely on the television pictures we were receiving cause our view was obstructed at best. We couldn’t see much of the actual track, but we could see turn 8 where AJ hit the tire wall. So as they were putting him on the stretcher, we were witnessing it right in front of us. Meanwhile, on my television screen, the mayor was handing Paul the Bridgestone Pole Award, which was my cue to read the little blurb. Needless to say, my mind was elsewhere and had trouble, at that point, getting excited about Tracy’s pole position. Of course, I read the script, but with one eye on the paper and with one eye on the Champ Car Safety team taking AJ away. I was simply looking for movement on AJ’s part, so I could at least report that. But of course, under those circumstances, the last thing you want to do is actually move and risk further injury. Big props to the Champ Car safety team and big props to AJ for coming out of that accident essentially unscathed. And we all know what happened during the race.
He was cleared to drive that morning and would jump in his backup car, starting mid-field in 9th. What a race it was! Different strategies being used, some bumping out there, 4 different lead changes and excitement right down to the end, with Tracy, thanks to a very quick, short-fill pit stop taking the checkered flag. AJ was right behind him followed by Oriol Servia, who put on a strong, yet unassuming (there’s that word again!) drive all weekend. The sweat coming off the drivers after the race was really notable. Tracy talked of the relentless pace of the race. It was high 90’s for the rest of us, so the track and onboard temperatures were even more sweltering. Each driver in all series earned they’re paycheck this weekend! Tracy (as is my understanding. I am writing this with no notes in my hotel room Monday morning) is now ahead of Bourdais by one point going into his home race (and mine!) in two weeks. I think everybody deserves a short break, but emphasize short, because the season is in full swing and there is little time to relax! It’s the grueling part of the schedule for the Champ Car World Series, but its also the most exciting for the fans. And I know the series wouldn’t have it any other way!

I’ll write more this weekend on what was a full weekend of racing in the States, including Stewarts win in Sonomo (Fellows finished 8th) as well as (I hate to say it) the relatively boring race that was held in Richmond.

Champ Car Baby! Champ Car for life!