Well we missed Ike, or rather he missed us. Ike is heading to Texas now it seems, Cat 3 most likely. Time to get prepared if you're on the Texas coast.

Meanwhile, I am off to the last flyaway race of the year for me, MotoGP in Indy. Pit walkabout today, meet up with some friends this afternoon...should be a good weekend.

you start to recognize certain commercial actors from the other spots they've done.

It's kinda scary really.

I understand the need for some websites to either try to prevent comment spam, or generate some data on who reads & comments on their site, even those who would like to send information to registered users.

However, this trend of being forced to register on a site to simply add a comment on an article is highly annoying. Posting on forums is another matter and I'm fine with registering for those.

I have enough passwords to remember, and frankly for a simple news site to make me register means I am not likely going to bother to post.

So ABC News and other outlets are reporting that the State of North Carolina will offer replacement license plates to residents who were issued a plate with the letter combination: WTF

Now, for those of you out there who aren't familiar with the text messaging lexicon...those letters spell out 'what the..." well you figure out the rest for yourself. : )

While I can see how some folks might find this objectionable, much like the friend of ours who was recently issued a plate containing the letter combination 'DIK' - personally I'd be all over this thing, especially considering how driving here is South Florida. WTF is a perfectly normal reaction to what all goes on down here.

Pretty funny stuff.

NBC journalist Tim Russert died today from an apparent heart attack. He was 58.

I know I'll miss Tim's passion for political reporting, the likes of which no other reporter can match. The multiple white boards showing all of the possible iterations of results were always a treat.

This was Tim's season. Elections, politics in full force. It really is a shame he won't be here to tell us about it.

So long Tim, it's been a distinct pleasure.

In order to combat comment spam, I'll be implementing a verfication system soon which means you'll need to enter a code to verify you're not a bot before posting. Sorry but that's how it goes with comment spam getting more frequent.

Right now I am also disabling comments after some period of time, since threads get old anyway and it makes maintenance easier if commenting is disabled.

Scott Dixon of Target Chip Ganassi Racing wins the 92nd Indianapolis 500.

The weather was perfect, and we were treated to a great day. There was no question Scott Dixon was the absolute class of the field today. In fact he was pretty much all month. In my mind he was the #1 contender for this year.

One of the passes of the day was Vitor Meira's bold move going into Turn 1 on a restart that had Dixon and himself slingshot past another car and Meira then slingshot around Dixon. What a move!




The race of course wasn't without incident, and we were especially disappointed to see Sarah Fisher crash out when she was collected in Tony Kanaan's accident. Not that she was in the lead or fighting for the lead but she did already have a bit of a hard day and it would have been nice to see her finish.

I was disappointed to see Graham Rahal crash out, but a few of the ChampCar transplants did perform well, and Indy rookie Ryan Hunter-Reay had a solid top 10.

More pics and other things to come before the IndyCars head to Milwaukee next weekend.

Nonetheless, great day for Scott, congratulations to a great racer.

Today the world converges at the corner of 16th Street & Georgetown Rd in Speedway, Indiana. Indy is by any measure and despite any other track's attempts to claim otherwise...the Racing Capital of the World.

There's nowhere I'd rather be today as we get ready for the 92nd Indianapolis 500 mile race. For now, as I type this I sit here watching the Formula 1 Monaco GP - only made interesting by the fact that it's been raining.

But the focus today - as it should be - is on Indy. In just a few hours time, 33 drivers representing 10 countries (the most of which are the US at 13, Brazil at 7 and Great Britian at 4).

Temperatues are cool this morning, but the sun is shining and weather forecast says we should be beautiful at race time, a stark comparison to what we saw last year with rain shortening the race.

This weekend has been a busy one, Friday was Carb Day, which sadly was cut short by rain. But as I've said before, rain on nearly ever other day in May except race day is ok with me. The cars had maybe 15 minutes of practice. Good thing 31 of the 33 managed to get out to do some leak testing & a few fast laps.

After some shopping we decided to leave around 2 PM and head to the annual memorabilia show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. If you're in Indy on this weekend, and you're a race buff, you absolutely must go. With vendors selling everything from old race tickets, programs from the early days of the 500, bronze & silver badges from days past, crew shirts, driving suits & helmets, there's plenty to look at.

Saturday was as usual, the autograph session, driver's meeting and 500 Festival Parade, followed by dinner with some friends of ours from IU.

I managed to get a few needed signatures, Graham Rahal on the St Pete event hat, Milka Duno, Bruno Junqueria, Vitor Meira. I also had Sarah Fisher sign another photo for me, but part of this was that I wanted to add Regina & I to the list of those contributing to her race fund. We really believe in what she's doing and support Sarah all the way.

If you'd like to help out, they have an address you can send your support to: http://www.sarahfisher.com/5-12-08Donations.pdf

So now it's 10 AM and time to get ready to head off to the track. I'll post photos from the autograph session, parade later.

I might not be the biggest fan of Danica Patrick, but congrats to her for her win at Twin Ring Motegi.

She seems quite relieved, and I can't blame her for being so. She's fielded so many questions over the last several years about when she would win that I am sure she's happy to not answer that one again.

A few comments have been posted about how it doesn't count because she won on fuel mileage. What a pathetic argument.

A win is a win, and that's racing. Too bad if you won't see it that way.

How many times do we see F1 teams change their strategy to 1 stop vs 2 in order to win? That's a fuel mileage game in some sense. If your opponent can't get there and you can...bingo. Every race is a fuel mileage race in some way or another. There are many factors involved in winning a race, and sometimes you win out on track with a great pass, sometimes the leader crashes out on the last lap handing you the victory.

I'll agree the situation with Helio Castroneves was strange at best. It seems he was low on fuel and couldn't possibly fight Danica or risk losing 2nd position. However, there was also his comment that he thought Danica was a lap down and was told to let her through by his team. Odd indeed but again, that's racing.

With this off her shoulders, Danica will likely win again and perhaps it will be in a way that settles the idiots who don't seem to get what sometimes happens in race.

The second set of comments on WindTunnel last night had to deal with the Nationwide Series race in Mexico City yesterday.

There were several callers who believe that NASCAR shouldn't venture outside the US at all, including Mexico and Canada. One of the reasons they cited was that if they do move outside the US then many US tracks would "lose" races and oh the horror that would create.

First off, of course this is partly true. If NASCAR would decide to venture more outside the US to an international audience then certainly even the already packed NASCAR schedule would mean races in the US fall off the schedule. That's pretty much a given, and how things work.

However, I am going to write here why this apocalypse is nothing more than a red herring and not worth the air that was used to speak the words on WindTunnel.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule currently visits (according to the published cup schedule) 22 tracks. Not including special events like the All Star Race or Bud Shootouts, these 22 tracks host 36 events. Now, here's where the "we're going to lose races at great US tracks" falls apart. A total of 14, yes that's right 14 of the 22 tracks host two events.

edit: The number above includes Chase events. I don't consider these "special events." Eight of the tracks used in the Chase are venues hosting two total events.

This is the part these complainers don't get. If there are so many wonderful tracks in the US then why the heck does NASCAR need to visit 14 of them twice on their schedule? And yes I'll say that about Daytona & Bristol as quickly as I would about any other facility.

If NASCAR does decide to move out to more international destinations, then sure a few of these double events might need to disappear. So what, who cares. No, seriously...this isn't a big deal. Find more US tracks or find those outside the US if the financial equation works. Given the duplication on the schedule there's room to eliminate a few existing races.

If you can't handle this logic, be mad at NASCAR, not the people who live in those other countries and stop tossing your bigoted crap their way. No where is it written that only people in the US are entitled to see a race.