Draft Day Suit

Well, well, well… Danica Patrick finally won a race.

As a woman I should probably rise up and cheer. Hooray! She is the first female IRL winner. It even makes me feel a little bit better about the whole misogyny in sports media thing.

How come instead I just keep thinking, Oh good, maybe now she won’t have to act slutty for money anymore.

Poor Danica. I think it is too late for you to ever win with the ladies. I know I can’t take you seriously. This isn’t even the sleaziest picture of you I could find.

There is another great post on this subject over at The Big Lead.

So while at dinner the other night the Budweiser shootout was on the TV and of course the 5 year old is entranced. RACE CARS! Oooo What are they doing!

So, to the best of my ability, I start to explain the pace car – the lapping, some basics about racing that I was borrowing from my days as an old school Indy Car fence hanger.

Cuz I’m an Indy Car Girl. Open Wheel racing for me. Life Begins at 225 MPH etc etc etc etc.

And then, they started wearing THIS around the house all the time.
I don’t even know which DRIVER’s hat this is….Kasey Kahne? Why do I know his name?

Oh shit.

Nascar just came to my house.

OUT VILE DEMON! OUT I SAY!

Hey, did you guys hear about the jockey that was suspended for 30 days for kicking a two year old horse before a race? Yeah. Nice.

Why would you kick a horse in the stomach? On TV.

So Victor Molina got suspended 30 days and fined $1000. It doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for kicking an animal – especially since he works with horses every day. But he says he was surprised at the severity of the penalties.

Wait until he finds out about karma.

I am a born and raised Hoosier and I’m not too proud to admit it. That’s right, I’m a cornfed midwestern girl. One of the truisms of being from Indianapolis is that only one thing happens in the Month of May. THE INDY 500 PEOPLE. The Marathon. The Parade. The Mayor’s Breakast (my own grandmother, once attending with my grandfather the mayor, won a mink “checkered flag” collar), the dinners, the parties,the public day at the track where you get to drive your car around the Speedway, Carburetion day – there are no more carburetors but there is still CARB day – an all day drinking event that launches Memorial day weekend on the Thursday prior, the events of all shapes and sized – decorated in black and white checkered flags. Hell, I was once someone who held one of the BIG parties – even as far back as high school a huge INDY 500 party was held at my house, with the finale being everyone loading up into my dads truck (those who weren’t fast enough to fit in had to ride caravan behind) to go cruise the track to people watch and just generally celebrate.
To get tickets you had to sell your first born. Well, not quite. You had to get ahold of a program from the race, and then the day AFTER the race you had to mail in your request for tickets (first time out you could only request the SHITTIEST of tickets) with a check. If you got LUCKY – someone would not renew their tickets and your name would come up in the lottery. You would get tickets and your friends would come OUT of the woodwork.
I once had tickets. 4 of them that I shared with my best friend, we had them for several years. I had 4 seats in the infield in the short chute on the north end of the field – almost into turn 4. I could actually see quite a bit of the main straightaway one year.
NOW I see online that there are tickets AVAILABLE? WHAT ??? WHAT HAVE YOU PEOPLE DONE TO MY RACE?
Tony George……..your grandfather is going to come out of his grave and KICK YOUR ASS if you don’t fix this situation. NASCAR is all well and good but there is ONLY one Indy 500 and it shouldn’t be selling tickets at kiosks outside the track. You signed a deal with THE MOUSE for rights to air the race on ABC for the foreseeable billion years…..surely THE MOUSE has the clout to help us fix this. Because it’s like a sin to me that the Indy 500 isn’t sold out the day after the race.

In some specific Indy Car news, I’m quite put out with the Rahal Letterman team as they are the ONLY team I can possibly root for (Hoosier requirement, they come to your house and take your kids if you root for anyone else) – anyway they’re stuck with a turd for a chassis – the Panoz. The acquired the superfly Dallara earlier this week and despite the fact that it has either rained or been to cold to run MOST of the week they didn’t make the change to the better chassis. Danica Patrick is running the fastest times on the Panoz but Dan Wheldon is kicking it in the Dallara. It’s a similar phenom to the year that Penske showed up with the Mercedes engines which sounded completely different (you could hear their scream a mile away) and kicked everyone’s asses until the next year when everyone made the adjustment. Apparently the problem with the Panoz is that it reacts poorly to the corners at Indy in combination with the harder slicks the indy cars are racing on there.

Ummmmmm – not like the turns at Indy have changed people. Bad choice Letterman/Rahal team. But I still love you!