Today's IRL race

There also was something about a line on the track that was supposed to define the limits. With that much space the track should have been marked better.

GregTivo wrote: I don't understand the HCN blocking penalty. He was leading, why should he let anyone pass? Like alfadriver said, these aren't "time trials". Now, if you're laps behind and being passed, you give way, but not when you're the leader. I mean no need to be dangerous, but blocking is a perfectly fine strategy.

If you really want to be mad- go to www.indycar.com, and check the leading video explaining the situation.

Turns out that it didn't matter that Helio never was that much in front of Power- the fact that he was on the inside half of the race track, he was by IRL definitions, blocking.

So you are not allowed to defend your position, but just are allowed to take the "fast line..."

Wow.

If you are in front- it's a time trial, if you are in back- the whole track is your oyster.

Platinum90 wrote: One more thing before I finish. Do you really think Hamilton in 2007/2008 or Massa 2010 would have the same beneficial development that ALLOWED them to be quick had 'Nando not been in the team? It is proven time and time again, Fernando brings AT LEAST 3 tenths of a second to every team he has entered.

not sure how beneficial Fernando has been for Massa in '10... keep in mind we're talking about the same driver that came 1 pt short of the WC (as the no. 2 driver) in '08... I'd say he got most of his beneficial from playing second fiddle to MS ... don't see his receiving much of anything from Alonzo

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wbjones wrote:

Platinum90 wrote: One more thing before I finish. Do you really think Hamilton in 2007/2008 or Massa 2010 would have the same beneficial development that ALLOWED them to be quick had 'Nando not been in the team? It is proven time and time again, Fernando brings AT LEAST 3 tenths of a second to every team he has entered.

not sure how beneficial Fernando has been for Massa in '10... keep in mind we're talking about the same driver that came 1 pt short of the WC (as the no. 2 driver) in '08... I'd say he got most of his "beneficial" from playing second fiddle to MS ... don't see his receiving much of anything from Alonzo

If you look back on the first half of this year, Massa has been a non-entity. He has been slow, holding up LONG trains of cars. Qualifies well below his teammate, and performs so averagely in the race that he never even gets mentioned. This is the first race all season where I have seen Massa as a contender. I think the spring hit his confidence harder than it hit his head, and I don't think we are seeing 2008 Massa in the F60 this year. 2008 Massa was a hell of a driver, 2010 Massa is a whole other story.

I'll agree with that... but it looks as though we won't be getting a chance to see him overcome his problems .. at least not with Ferrari ...

minimac wrote: FGC- you forgot to mention: lesson four: Have announcers(for TV) who actually know how to announce what's happening on track and speak American English. And get rid of the ridiculous fluff pieces.

I tell my buddies that are NFL fans (a lot of them are angry about Fox's coverage with all those zoomed in shots on the "star" 's eyes during the snap count lasting so long that they don't even show the formation before the ball is snapped) that TV coverage of racing "invented" bad sports TV. I recall watching Emmo Fittipaldi winning the Indy 500 in 93 or so. There was a party with a bunch of my SCCA buddies, and ABC kept cutting away to Emmo's wife shouting something in Portuguese every time he crossed the line. Some idiot reporter asked her what she was shouting, and all of us (at the same time!) shouted, "..it's Portuguese for `SHOW THE DAMN RACE!' "

The English/Australian accents & terminology don't bother me (one world, one sport! ), but everything else you said, I've said m'self.

iceracer wrote: There also was something about a line on the track that was supposed to define the limits. With that much space the track should have been marked better.

From what I've read in the day or so after the decision, Brian Barnhart (Earl Chief Steward) divides the track into two "lanes". Cutting from one to the other gives the driver the "blocking" penalty. Might make sense at The Glen or Mid-O, where the place is only 40 or so ft. wide...but at Edmonton (an airport runway, remember?), that's insane. And don't forget that Will (who I actually like) followed Helio down on the "low" line, instead of going wide & taking the "fast" line like Scott & damn near everyone else in the field on the restart..

Replay of the restart at about 2:43 or so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmx6wp_cioY

GregTivo wrote: I don't understand the HCN blocking penalty. He was leading, why should he let anyone pass? Like alfadriver said, these aren't "time trials". Now, if you're laps behind and being passed, you give way, but not when you're the leader. I mean no need to be dangerous, but blocking is a perfectly fine strategy.

alfadriver wrote: If you really want to be mad- go to www.indycar.com, and check the leading video explaining the situation.

Oooh. I didn't really want to be any angrier..but hearing Barnhart actually attempting to defend the "tail wagging the dog", I can't help it. Jeez. That man must live in a complete vacuum if he thinks preserving his own "bad call" is more important than restoring the Indycar series to the heights they acheived in the mid 1990s. I thought such amateurish behavior from Stewards only existed in amateur sanctioning bodies. There's a very old joke in SCCA..amateur drivers who wish they were good enough to be pros drive in Club Racing. Amateur polititicians who wish they were Senators and Congressmen become officials for it.

alfadriver wrote: Turns out that it didn't matter that Helio never was that much in front of Power- the fact that he was on the inside half of the race track, he was by IRL definitions, blocking. So you are not allowed to defend your position, but just are allowed to take the "fast line..."

Yeah, sounds like it. Once again, I have to admit that IMO, that's a very bad choice for the officials to make in a Pro series that's had so much trouble selling tix in the last decade & a half. Some of these Pro series officials forget that racers would be racing anyway, even if they were just running Formula Fords on their own nickel after the sponsors decide that it'd be a better "return on investment" to go sponsor something like Beach Volleyball instead. I hate to admit it, but honestly, professional racing is just as much of a "show" as it is a sport. If the sanctioning body's rules don't have enough "wiggle room" to understand that fact, they're committing public suicide for anyone who's poured money into the series. Again, IMO, that includes not only the sponsors, but the fans and the TV networks as well.

Anyone else with a long memory notice that PPG and Fed Ex dumped their "series sponsor" position in CART for "stickanball" sports, and (in the case of FedEx) a single NASCAR team?

alfadriver wrote: If you are in front- it's a time trial, if you are in back- the whole track is your oyster.

Well said, sir. Sums up the entire inequality in the rule much better than I did.

I think with the HCN thing, it depends on how you look at it. Apparently he did technically violate a rule, so that's one way of looking at it. However, from what I could tell, it didn't give him any advantage over Power. What aggrevates me is when people strictly follow the letter of a rule without giving any thought to it's intent and whether or not that intent was violated.

bravenrace wrote: I think with the HCN thing, it depends on how you look at it. Apparently he did technically violate a rule, so that's one way of looking at it. However, from what I could tell, it didn't give him any advantage over Power. What aggrevates me is when people strictly follow the letter of a rule without giving any thought to it's intent and whether or not that intent was violated.

Oh, yeah...that's what I was (poorly, I guess) trying to say. "Zero Tolerance" is "Zero Thinking". Yeah, Barnhard applied the rule he'd created for this season. He just forgot that different racetracks are different environments.

And IMO, he also forgot that very few people watch the Indycars anymore, and maybe he should try to help to restore it to what it used to be. After all, Will did get around Helio for half a second, and there was no contact. The incident wasn't exactly Mark Webber at Valencia, was it?

Well it was one of the worst calls I've ever witnessed in racing, period.

"And IMO, he also forgot that very few people watch the Indycars anymore, and maybe he should try to help to restore it to what it used to be. "

Absolutely correct. He forgot that he's trying to get fans to watch these races.