Damn, tough break for him. He's a very talented driver, I mean driving at race pace with half a front wing? That's crazy. Anyways I just wanted to hear some thoughts from the canucks. lol

 

I was there with Pit access...it was damn awesome, my first time to an indy race.

tracy was doing good with the ripped wing, he had the entire long stretch to himself. It was dumb that he ran outta gas...everyone in the stands didn't even know wtf happened until after the race.....

P.s. tracy was a grumpy SOB before the race started...he wasn't signing any autographs and was basically ignoring people...

 

He was in the zone.

 

To be honest Tracy has seemed a little off so far this year (Milwaukee excluded), but his performance today was incredible. Apparently they weren't planning on changing the wing at all. His fastest lap was quicker with the wing off than with the wing on. I know TO doesn't have many high speed corners, but I would have thought that the last two and turn 2 (where AJ crashed) would be very costly without the other half of the wing and the half that was left on an angle. PT is one of the best in the world on cold tires, today we saw just how good his car control is.

It's a shame about his wing and the fuel mistake by the team, but he he won everyone's admiration. Wilson was a deserving winner and it was a good race.

Tagliani has blown me away this year as well. His team's budget is so small that he is the engineer for his car! I wonder what Craig Hampson @ Newman-Hass (Bourdais' engineer) gets paid to make his cars with superior aero bits 0.1 a lap faster than Tag's car?

 

No comment on Paul other than he is one of the best at aggression and car control. He is not the best when he has to actually think in the car. If I had to pick a driver to win a 5 lap race, Paul would be right at the top of my list.

Anyways don't know if you guys heard a comment that explains a ton about Tags. Last year was off interms of consistent performance and people were wondering if he had "lost it" or if Forsythe's cars had flattered Tags. This year he is doing extremely well on a tiny budget. Walker is known for being able to squeeze a penny to make it work like a dime, but still the results are there.

Ryan Hunter Rey was interviewed about why he is no longer putting up the results like he had last year with HVM. He responded that the team this year is basically lost on setup. He is driving for Rocketsports, hmmmmm same team Tags drove for last year.

Basically Rocketsports is out of their depth in Champcar, at this time. They are also struggling to maintain consistently good results in the glorified GT1 races masquarading as the Trans Am series these days, even though they write the rules and run 4 cars.

 

I look at Tag this way:
2000 - Awsome rookie debut, looked like a future champion.
2001 - Performance tailed off a bit, but still outperformed Carpentier.
2002 - Carpentier put together a nice season and Tag seemed to lag.
2003 - Rocketsports was a new team, but Tag seemed like a new man relative to his slowish car. Inconsistant, but the car was an easy explaination.
2004 - Similar performance to 2003 from the car, although Tag looked very strong again. Often charged through the field after a slow qualifying. eg. Monterrey.
2005 - Tag is driving extremely well and somehow managing to setup the car with the best of them.

I don't know what the deal is with Rocketsports, they're the worst team in Champ Car this season, when in the prior two seasons they were more like the 4th best. Do you think they've just spread themselves too thin? Glock is clearly very talented and I think there's little doubt he could be challanging at the front if he had a better car. RHR is having a ridiculously tough time even with that lousy car. It wouldn't be fair to critisize RHR given his car, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

I do think they've spread themselves too thin. An 11th hour 2 car champcar team and a 45 car Trans-Am effort.... Ok - maybe not that many lol. Really t hough I think that they have zero engineer-driver rapport or even trust right now. RHR made a couple of comments to the effect that "They are completely lost on setup". And that the car seems to come off the trailer further away from race setup at each race. To me, a lot of that is a problem with the race engineer. Look how well PKV is doing now they swapped out their engineers.

I think that once the team settles down a bit, they will have a chance to build the proper rapport between driver/crew. The problem is that once you have a bad race, it rolls into the next one and so on. When you start at the back, you get caught up in other people's problems (Cleveland) and then you loose the chance to develop the car in a race condition.