25 June 2016

Motor Racing

I'm but a tepid fan of "ball" sports.  I've been given seats to a 49'rs game but brought along a Sailing magazine 'cuz I know the last 2 minutes of game play takes at least 20 minutes to play.  I like Baseball a little more, I'll put on a ball game if there is nothing better on.   The family used to split SJ Earthquakes season Tix with a co-worker.  I like Hockey more still because they do substitutions on the fly.  I like that.

But motor sports have always held a special interest.  We used to spend Saturday PMs at the fair grounds outside the fence watching autocross racing.  I even worked a couple races.  I think the Disney movies of my youth ("the Love Bug")  featured road racing in California gold country might have had some influence as well.  Awesome.  I wish these races had become a reality.  Forward to the watching the Indy 500 "Greatest Spectacle in motor racing" in prime time.

Which brings me this year to Memorial day weekend this year...  Possibly the acme of the racing season - we had the Indy 500 + Monaco F1 + NASCAR Coca-Cola-600.  Last weekend was pretty awesome close 2nd as well with F1 in Baku Uzbekistan - F1 of "Europe", plus the 24 hours of Le Mans weekend.    I was happy as a pig in slop (with the exception of the juggling of feeds to keep track of where the racing was covered).

This weekend is a close follow on...  Indy Cars are at Road America, Elkart Wisconsin!  Yea a Road Course!  Woot!  This is real racing.  And NASCAR is up in Sonoma at  (not sure the sponsor name these days.) I only know it as Sears Point!  This is possibly my favorite  NASCAR race of the season.  The track is designed and set up for "sports cars".  Not NASCARs, ostensibly American Muscle Cars particularly designed to turn left.  Still the track set up for cars 2 ft slimmer so it's amusing to watch full sized track cars elbow their way around the track.

Yea.. The VCR is gonna be busy Sunday!..  As it has been the past few weeks..

But every network is missing the "big daddy" of motor racing -  RARA (Reno Air Racing Association) and Red Bull Air Racing!  Both of these deserve more attention!  Don't even get me started on High Tech stuff that makes up America's Cup Sailing today!  (Hint "Awesome!")

FTC disclaimer - I have no connection to any entities mentioned here..  I am a motor racing fan.  While I like watching race cars doing ~150-200 MPH on road courses, I would *love* to see airplanes doing the same or +450MPH on pylons!

4 comments:

Merle said...

For me it was always drag racing - ESPECIALLY the drag bikes!!! :)

Merle

Hat Trick said...

I was watching the Sonoma NASCAR race at my in-laws-to-be and was amazed where they could squeeze through three-wide. One time it looked like it was going to be 2.5 wide with the car in the middle becoming the half wide one.
I agree on the new America's Cup boats as being AWESOME!!!

danno said...

Yea there was that 3 wide event coming out of 7A that didn't work and turned into a game of billiards. Bounced the inside car off the inside wall.

Unfortunately the VCR missed the Indy car race.. But there is a replay at 4am tomorrow and the timer is reset.

Thanks for stopping by!

NotClauswitz said...

Day late and a dollar short as usual, but this year's on-bike camerawork of the Isle of Man TT races was freakin' phenomenal.
For about a four-year period I had a pass to shoot pics at Sears Point on the track-side of the fence. Got the film processed at Costco and sold the pics back cheap to the racers - or the race-wives, the ones who still had some money.