I was a big fan of Champ Car back in the late 90's and early 2000's but never paid too much attention to IRL. Well, about the only time I watched an IRL race was to make fun of it since I've always seen the IRL at a rinky dink series surviving off of former Champ Car teams. Then I stopped watching both of them all together since Champ Car switched their races over to the SPEED channel which I didn't have on my cable package, and then the IRL started copying Champ Car by holding road course races. I haven't watched either of them for about 3 years now but I think I'm going to give both of them a chance again this year seeing as both of them will have all of their races shown on either NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. And I'm going to try and watch both of them with an open mind and give both of them a fair chance.
Champ Car schedule April 8 - Vegas Grand Prix - NBC April 15 - Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach - NBC April 22 - Grand Prix of Houston - ESPN May 20 - Grand Prix of Zhuhai (China) - ESPN2 June 10 - G.I. Joe's Grand Prix of Portland - ABC June 24 - U.S. Bank Grand Prix of Cleveland - CBS July 1 - Grand Prix of St. Jovite (Quebec) - ESPN July 8 - Molson Grand Prix of Toronto - ESPN July 22 - West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix - ESPN July 29 - Canary Foundation San Jose Grand Prix - ESPN2 August 12 - Grand Prix of Road America - ABC September 2 - Grand Prix of Assen (Holand) - ESPN2 September 9 - Grand Prix of Zolder (Belgium) - ESPN2 October 21 - Lexmark Indy 300 (Australia) - ESPN2 November 11 - Gran Premio Telmex (Mexico City) - ESPN2 December 2 - First Data Grand Prix Arizona - ABC
Indy Car Schedule March 24 - XM Satellite Radio Indy 300 - ESPN2 April 1 - Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - ESPN April 21 - Indy Japan 300 - ESPN April 29 - Kansas Lottery Indy 300 - ESPN2 May 27 - Indianapolis 500 - ABC June 3 - ABC Supply Co./A.J. Foyt 225 - ABC June 9 - Bombardier Learjet 500 - ESPN2 June 24 - Iowa Corn Indy 250 - ABC June 30 - SunTrust Indy Challenge - ESPN July 8 - Watkins Glen Indy Grand Prix - ABC July 14 - Nashville Indy 200 - ESPN July 22 - Honda 200 at Mid-Ohio - ABC August 5 - Michigan Indy 400 - ESPN2 August 11 - Meijer Indy 300 - ESPN2 August 26 - Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma - ESPN September 2 - Detroit Indy Grand Prix - ABC September 9 - Chicagoland Indy 300 - ABC
Websites One place where Champ Car beats the IRL is on the Internet where the Champ Car website puts the IRL website to shame I think. Judge for yourself but Champ Car's is well put together, easy to navigate, nice to look at, and full of content. The IRL's just looks cheap and is weak on content. www.champcarworldseries.com www.indycar.com
Champ Car teams and livery This year Champ Car will have 17 cars fielded by 10 different teams. Dale Coyne Racing - 3 cars Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing - 2 cars Minardi Team USA - 2 cars Pacific Coast Motorsports - 2 cars PKV Racing - 2 cars Team Australia - 2 cars Conquest Racing - 1 car Forsythe Championship Racing - 1 car Rocketsports Racing - 1 car RuSPORT - 1 car Not all of the teams have their livery finalized but it does look like there is going to be alot of black and red colors out on the track this year.
I think IRL has made up the ground on Champ Car. This year is going to be more competitive too, with other teams winning a few races, not just Penske or Ganassi all year.
It also helps that IndyCar has more cars than Champ Car, along with paying a whole lot more money than Champ Car. I hate Tony George, but having grown up in Indiana, there's nothing like the Indy 500.
Indy League starts tomorrow The IRL season kicks off tomorrow with Miami's Homestead 300 which will be shown on ESPN2 at 8pm Eastern. Here are a couple of links to ESPN's John Oreovicz's breakdown of the season and the teams. http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/columns/story?seriesId=1&columnist=oreovicz_john&id=2804478 http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/columns/story?seriesId=1&columnist=oreovicz_john&id=2805955
Whelden won in a cakewalk at Homestead. Ganassi had that race figured out. Hopefully AGR can improve on a dismal opener.
IRL Homestead Well, for the most part that was a pretty boring race. I'll still watch more of their races since that was only the first one of the year but overall that was pretty bad. I really wanted to see how well ESPN did at broadcasting and producing the thing but I was not impressed. First off, ESPN2 drives me crazy with that damn crawler going constantly across the bottom of the screen. I know that's not the IRL's fault but with that thing going across the bottom and then the constant running order going across the top of the screen I was starting to get vertigo watching the whole damned thing. Also, unlike with NASCAR you can't see the car's number on the car very well anyway so having the car's number stuck with the driver's name on the already annoying running order made it worse. Next, their little pit lane interviews during the race are worthless, alot like Brandi Chastain doing those hideous "Coaches Corner" interviews during MLS broadcasts. But unlike MLS only having Brandi on the sidelines, IRL feels they need to have 3 people down in the pits. Three times the hideousness. And finally, right out of MLS' scrapbook we got to enjoy side-by-side commercial breaks. I know, some people will say they don't want to miss a moment of the action. Sorry, there was very little action in that race, I would have rather have just watched the commercials on the full screen. Overall, I give the whole experience a C-.
Another woman driver in IRL It would appear the IRL feels they need another woman driver since it's current two have done so well. (Neither Sarah Fisher nor Danica Patrick have won a race yet.) Also, poor Danica locked her brakes up going in to the pits last night and put her car into the wall. Meet Milka Duno. Better yet, she has virtually no open-wheel racing experience. This should be fun to watch. http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/story?seriesId=1&id=2810713
Ha! We are talking about IRL and this big political split that happened a few years back. We are hopeful for unification, but it doesn't look like it will happen any time soon. Would you like to add something?
Yes. Everybody here of course wants to see unification but they recognise that it might not happen for a while. 2016 would be nice