Thank God for Long Beach!!!!!!!

Ok, last weekend I gave ChampCar a swift kick to the nutz. Apparently they listened to just about everything I said and put on a decent show in Long Beach. Good News for ChampCar is that after next weekends Houston-night street race ChampCar drivers, teams and officials will have 2 months to figure out any wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

The Good

Oriol Servia makes a great story and hops in to Tracy's car with little practice time and finishes on the podium. Take a look at the photo above. Those are your championship contenders. Its too bad that Servia will be knocked off by Tracy once he returns. If you recall Oriol was the only driver to keep Bourdais honest in 2005. ChampCar put on a decent show. Besides Seabass dominating the field all day long, there was some serious racing going on throughout the field and congrats to NBC for actually showing the "Race" and not the leader all by himself like ESPN!!!!! One last note of honor goes to veteran CART champion Jimmy Vasser for making a smart decision as an owner. Vasser decided to leave his driver(Can't pronounce or spell his name) of sequence to gain some experience leading. He did just that keeping Bourdais behind him until it was time to pit. Not only did he get some face time but Pay By Touch got some TV time. If you can't win at least you can get some face time for your sponsors!

The Bad

NBC still has some work to do but made small improvements in Long Beach. Note, we know that the two Forsythe cars look alike but if you are going to talk about a driver for 2 laps at least follow the right car!!!! And don't look for anyone to honestly challenge Bourdais. Once NHL racing gets a grip on the new car don't look back because you might not find another driver within reach.

The Ugly

Panoz still has plenty of work on their hands to improve the safety. You would think that after 5 + years of IndyCar racing that they could figure out a thing or to about crash safety. Perhaps their long string of injuries in the IndyCar series led to them exiting and looking for a new cheap business venture in ChampCar??

ChampCar will always suffer from a disconnected series in the US with drivers that are unkown and the consumer participation as well as sponsors are thin. Bottom line, IndyCar racing has drivers, teams, sponsors and the Indianapolis 500. Its hard to compete with that unless you are NASCAR