you know, I really enjoyed calling an oval race on Sunday. Its entirely different than calling a road course, that's for sure. I mean, here you see everything at all times. You can watch the action on the track and point out good battles taking place throughout the track. I can still do that on road courses, but for that I have to look at my timing and scoring and figure out who is neck and neck and then point it out, without ever seeing the battle until they zoom past near me. I suspect watching an oval live in person is better than watching it at home on television, while watching an road course would be equally satisfying to do either.

One thing I am glad following this weekend? the lack of doom and gloom. Remember last year after Milwaukee? it was the end of ChampCar as we knew it! Everybody fan on the internet was so negative towards the series. everybody seemingly so mad at it. Of course, last year the Milwaukee race was held on Saturday afternoon BEFORE the ARCA race, therefore the fans weren't there. This year, the crowd was decent and the race was good and despite the fact that we only had 16 cars on the track, there isn't this doom and gloom outlook this week. The good news is that for Portland we will have 18 and who knows how many from now on, but I think its safe to say that we'll have 18 or more for the rest of the season.
Of course, as I write that, Andrew Ranger, if you can believe it, still was hoping to MAKE it to Portland! the kid is great! He needs a secure full-time ride so he doesn't have to worry about this every freakin' race!
Portland is always an interesting race, there's the first turn of course (but every track has that!) and the weather, i.e. you never know what you are going to get. It may be sunny and 90 degrees one moment and cold and wet the next. It just makes the engineers work that much more significant. I look forward to seeing Tonis in that Rocketsports machine. Remember, this is the track where he dominated last year in the Atlantics and it was the start of his season not just as a driver, but as a championship contender. But more importantly is that Tonis is such a nice person and his career story is a great story. One of those stories of a young man coming to America in search of a dream with little or no money at all. And the good thing is that Tonis is aggressive, but he's not a kid, so he's also mature. that's good news for the veteran drivers contending for the Vanderbilt Cup. He won't get in their way (unless its a battle for position, of course).