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And if you're a race fan, once you go to the Indy 500, no racing will ever be quite the same. It's just huge.
Never attended a 500; BUT, lived in Champaign-Urbana IL.
Was a 1 hr drive east to Indianapolis so attended a last day qualifying for BY 400. Even saw Dale E, while still above room temp.
IRP is indeed huge, 4 mi long holding 300K.
Aside from the venue (500 or BY400) itself, traffic after event something to behold.
But the heck with Chevy and Ford, I say make'em race cars with race engines, Offys, Cossies, Drakes, Novis, Millers, Dussies...I could care less about car companies. Purebred racers.
If only Enzo were still alive he'd show 'em all how its done, while charging 5x more for his cars than a top-line Corvette, eh?
W/couldn't disagree if it weren't for the enormous cost of putting together teams/cars etc these days, LR.
If racing venues didn't have factory backing there wouldn't be racing, not on TV anyway and certainly not at the same scale it is now.
Pick your poison.
Where are the smaller 'independent' teams like Dick Trickle, Dave Marcus et al? Gone. Replaced w/ corporate teams who're little more than moving billboards & drivers 'sandwich men'.
'Youngsters' (God Bless 'em) probably can't see this change, all they know is what it is today.
Big Bucks [read: TV], for good or bad, supposedly finance it all & therefore dictate every facet of racing -- open-wheel included.
NASCAR, at the behest of these 'sponsors', have evolved to a point a race is about any & everything except the race. It's now one long contiguous commercial.
OT: I'm certain GM attained enormous R&D toward developing an incredibly powerful turbo 4 cylinder power plant from their IndyCar involvement.
[Example: Our Cad was in for service, got a CTS Turbo 4 loaner.
Frankly I was blown-the-hell-away, outstanding performance + better MPG than the V6 in our CTS4 makes one of these babies our next purchase.]
WTH GM continues participating in a venue w/ a poor R&D POI is beyond me. No one makes a purchase today based on the ol' tome, "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" anymore.
Technology is rapidly coming to mean something much less than what it used to mean in my day, w/ this exception. GM get's their money's worth from IndyCar participation, IMO.
In any event I for one would LOVE to see the SCCA come back. Ponycar racing was awfully entertaining w/ turns R&L. LOL
If it did though it'd be the well earned & final nail in the NASCAR coffin.
had a Mystic Teal Metalic Trans Am with the flip paint a few years back that had some inclusions in the paint on 1 door from factory.dealer painted with paint that was different than factory and color was completely off even after I had told them to use factory paint.they had to strip door and buy 1 quart of BASF flip paint to get it to match.when that paint first came out BASF came to the dealers to do paint repairs and did their own clean up and took everything with them so that no one could examine left over residue of paint and copy formula. some one wanted that car badly enough that a Chrysler dealer paid me the same price I had paid for it 2 years earlier.had about 13,000 miles on it when I sold.anyone that has done BG tours can ask employee's who paint supplier is.they will know as paint comes in very large containers with makers name on it
Thanks man, red meat for thought.
Emboldened above may very well explain why its been so hard to learn what paint(s) BG uses, quite plausible.
Never considered corporate secrecy; but, those were the days of designer paints like my JSB so your hteory has a ring of truth.
as you could guess I am a big Indycar fan. And if you're a race fan, once you go to the Indy 500, no racing will ever be quite the same. It's just huge.
But the heck with Chevy and Ford, I say make'em race cars with race engines, Offys, Cossies, Drakes, Novis, Millers, Dussies.
I could care less about car companies. Purebred racers.
Yea....Indy is definitely a hot ticket, but we here in the good ol US-of-A can't be too much in denial. Formula 1 is the tops. Those cars are absolutely incredible. They say that the stopping power is so great that it would bruise the chest of someone not conditioned for it. And lets face it, the drivers over there put ours to shame. There have been several F-1 drivers come here and conquer Indy. Not sure if any American driver has ever gone from Indy to F-1 and had much success. Only issue I have with F-1 is that theres not much room for passing....
WindyC6. No question that F1 is the high tech and most expensive to run. And NASCAR costs more to run. But for sheer racing excitement, nothing compares with open wheel on an oval track. Indy is the fastest race in the world. And Texas is like seeing Ben Hur.
At least on 4 wheels. Now MotoGP takes it to another level.
03-01-2018, 09:18 AM
