So, for any of you who were able to watch the entire 24 Hours of LeMans, congratulations. You are much more dedicated than I am. I managed to watch the start until IndyCar at Milwaukee finally threw the green flag. As soon as that ended, I caught the end of the Nationwide race at Michigan, and finally resumed my LeMans coverage after that. I watched the rest of it until I finally crashed at the half way point. I didn't wake up until the start of the last hour. I caught that thankfully.
Anyway, enough about my personal viewing habits. Let's get down to recapping the weekend. LeMans started out just as fantastic as it always does. Of course one of the big stories of LeMans was the Delta Wing's debut. Personally, I thought it was pretty interesting, but when it ran around with the prototypes and GT cars, it looked like a tiny child running among adults. Honestly, it saddened me dearly when it crashed out, but based on it's early performance, it was inevitable that it wouldn't even finish the race. The rest of the race was great as always. I was pulling for Ryan Dalziel most of that race. I think he's one of the best out there, and I hope to see him more in the future. And with that said, congrats to Audi on another LeMans win!
Now moving on to the IZOD IndyCar Series at Milwaukee. That, was a great race. The whole race I was keeping an eye on EJ Viso. EJ has always been one to not take it very easy and go for it at the wrong time, but Saturday, he took his time and managed to lead some laps and pull off a 5th place finish. And, to continue the run that the South Americans were on Saturday, look at Rubens Barichello! The Formula 1 vet has barely any oval experience, and he was contending for the win the entire race! He looked bad fast in practice and continued to impress with his 10th place finish. I personally believe that, the more and more the season progresses and the more experience Rubens gets in his DW12, the more likely it will be that he will have a win by the end of the season. Another point I want to touch on is, I believe Justin Wilson's engine inferno was the first in quite some time. I can't even pinpoint the exact time in my head that a motor in the IZOD IndyCar Series blew up. But the thing that surprises me most is that it was a Honda engine. Ever since 2006 when they were the sole provider of engines for the IndyCar Series, they haven't had one failure. Until Saturday. Perhaps the reliability of these engines are going to become more of a factor. And in other news completely unrelated to the race, it looks like there may be a second race in Wisconsin this year. Robin Miller has been reporting that Elkhart Lake is almost a done deal and also Randy Bernard seems confident in it's return.
To wrap up the weekend, let's look at the NASCAR weekend at Michigan. The newly repaved Michigan International Speedway was the place where Marcos Ambrose set a qualifying lap at 203 mph. Which, according to SPEED, was the first time that had been achieved outside of Daytona and Talladega. Of course, the big story before the race was the tire compound changes that Goodyear made. I think Dale Jr. said it best when he was interviewed about these six year old tires. And speaking of Jr., we finally did it. I was like him those last 15 laps. I was just wondering what could happen. Could he cut a tire? Could he run out of fuel? Could a lapped car wreck him? What could happen? And whaddya know, nothing happened. Dale Earnhardt Jr. cruised to his first win since 2008. Jr. Nation of course went nuts and everyone predicted. Those die-hard fans had been waiting too long for that #88 to get back to victory lane. If Jr. keeps up this roll he's on, I bet he could win 3 more races this season and even the championship. He's been one of the, if not the most consistent driver this season. I don't want to start some kind of band wagon, but with the way Junior's been driving this season, it could be a possibility.
And so with that, we move on to the massive road racing weekend (and Iowa!) next week. And boy am I looking forward to that!
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