Let's see......Julian's lost somewhere around Hollywood and Vine...T-K's giving Kapel flying lessons(essentially traveling from LB to Santa Catalina Island....
, and RE30B#16's got great seats to the race.....anyway, here are some of the observations from Friday's events at the TGP-Long Beach.
1}Seen and heard.........One surprising sight was the number of drivers from other series who were present in Long Beach. For the F1 community, there was Scuderia Toro Rosso driver Scott Speed, who saw some of the festivities on Friday. Former IRL driver(and Toyota F1 tester) Ryan Briscoe was present(and probably wondering why he turned down the Team Oz drive....) and current Ganassi IRL driver Scott Dixon, who has also driven for the Chipster's Rolex Series DP team, was seen aroundst the paddock as well.
2}What's with the number? Everyone thought that rookie Dan Clarke would be driving the #55 for CTE-HVM Racing, so it was interesting to see his car carry the #14 on the front. (In case anyone's interested, the #14 is associated w/one of NA motorsports greatest, Anthony Joseph[A.J] Foyt, Jr.). But team co-owner Keith Wiggins had a more circumspect reason....."The #55 takes up almost half of the wing end-plate, and we wanted as much space as possible for sponsors." That makes sense.....I think.
3}So that was the reason.....For former F1 driver Antonio Pizzonia, it wasn't the best qual. session he's had, but his reason was interesting...."The last time I shifted gears in a race car was five years ago, so it takes a little while to adjust. On my downshifts I tend to over-rev the engines a bit which tends to get the engineers' attention but it'll be fine."
4}It'll take time. There's an old saying, "Any job worth doing is worth doing well." Just ask series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven. When asked by reporters about whether there was any progress in the merger talks between him and Indy Racing League founder Tony George, he said....
The important thing is to get it done right. When it comes to mergers and acquisitions in recent years, there hasn't been a high rate of success. The very worst thing that could happen for the sport would be for us to merge the two series and have it not work. So if we can get it done in time for next year that would be great. If it takes a little longer then that's OK too.
By all estimates, if a merger is to be done in time for 2007, chances are that it will have to be agreed to by both sides by early August. My advice.......let them do their thing. If if brings a merger now, good. If it brings one for 2008, okay. As long as there's a merger eventually that works.
