I was just reading some news today, and saw some IRL results. How is it? Any good to watch? If so, can anyone hook me up with a free live stream for the next race...(June 1st, I believe)?

EDIT: Oh, and what drivers should I be looking out for? Obviously, Danica Patrick, and Marco Andretti, who else?

Do you like oval racing? If you don't... then don't bother.

And, frankly, I'm tired of all the Danica Patrick hype. She's a pretty decent racer, yes, but the media and hype makes it seem like she's some sort of female Michael Schumacher because, well, she has a vag.

Well she's won a race, and since she's the first female racer that's competitive, I thought she'd be worth watching. So it's all ovals? Shit...no thanks.

Just got back from the Indy 500, and I've gotta say, its some damn good racing. So much bloody different than NASCAR despite being on ovals. Downforce changes the name of the game entirely - I'd say with CART and IRL now being under one sanctioning body (about goddamn time), this season is probably going to be a really good one. Keep your eyes out for Dixon, Wheldon, Kanaan, (I hope I'm spelling these right), in addition to those you mentioned.

Tony George can go to hell for even fucking things up in the first place.

And it would have been so much better if it was the other way around.... IRL going to Champ Car and reforming CART essentially. More road courses with ovals, unfortunately, sprinkled around... but, nooo, Tony George says American racing's roots belong on ovals. Fucker.

QFT

I watched the Indy 500 and I was surprised that I wasn't bored at all through it, even though I had just watched the Monaco GP an hour before it. Like midnightdorifto, the amount of adjustability on the cars makes for much more interesting variations from car to car and thusly there's more than just a pack of identical cars in a huge swarm (ie nascar). Even if you're not a huge fan, it's exciting to see 3 open wheel cars going 3 wide into a corner at 180 mph.

So anyone have a link to a live stream?

Absofuckinglutely true to the first statement. And the IRL does pick up a couple of road courses - Long Beach and Surfer's Paradise will be new additions. Open wheel racing's roots are in ovals, so it does make sense to keep them.

Personally I don't find oval racing very interesting, once you've seen it once, it doesn't really get any different, other than different drivers in different positions. You could say the same about anything else, but on a proper track there's more variation in this theory.

Danica, good as she is, isn't the first 'competitive' female racer. Take Lella Lombardi, Susie Stoddart, Katherine Legge and Maria Teresa de Filippis for example.
Fangio said Maria Teresa de Filippis was too fast! Obviously that isn't always the way to win, but at least she was trying hard!

Also, Lancer, is thusly really a word? Actually I just checked it and got this: "Some speakers and writers regard thusly as a pointless synonym for thus, and they avoid it or use it only for humorous effect." lol

^I never really went out of my way to find out more about this, but some people were saying a few months back that Danica's advantage came in the way that with her lower than average weight her engineers were able to place ballast more effectively...therefor her performance was partially down to her size, and not entirely her skill.

How much truth is there in that?

I don't really know how ballast works, surely if she weighs less then they have more ballast to place around the car, yet if you want the ballast in the right places, can't you just divide it up a bit more?

I would assume the smaller frame of a woman would allow you to place more ballast weight lower in the car...where a mans frame may result in a slightly higher CoG. Whether this would amount to enough of a difference to be an advantage, I don't know. If I remember correctly, the original comment I read about the issue was in reference to some teams and their complaints.

None, she won her first race after the weight issue had been regulated to be equal. She was a hell of a driver in F3, I'm sure you can find some videos of her somewhere...

Yeah, I fucking hate oval racing, and for that matter drag racing can fuck off too. Its a mechanics sport, why dont they just mount the motors on parallel rails and forget the driver? I just dont get it, 20,000 hours of work and for that you get 10 seconds in the car?

Le Mans 24 hours FTMFW.

Oval racing, not my cup of tea either. A race on a proper road course, preferably in wet conditions, that's what I want to see.


Probably the best female driver of the last decades was Michele Mouton. She got very near to winning the World Rally Championship in 1982 and even Walter Röhrl who beat her that year has some sort of regret about that.

And not to forget Elisabeth Junek, of course.

Oh yeah I forgot about Mouton, she finished 2nd in the Championship that year didn't she?

I didn't know about Junek, pretty interesting!

Yep, Mouton was second in that year. Crashed on the last stage of the African rally, the last run of 1982. She wasn't hurt but the car was totalled.

I think Junek was very special. Dominating her male competitors in those years truly was something extraordinary. BTW, the Ex-Mühle corner on the Nurburgring can be found with the name Junek corner in older publications. That was the corner where her husband was killed in 1928.

Im pretty sure that was the 'Ivory Coast Rally' It seemed more than a cruel fate.