It’s the Sunday morning after what, I’d imagine, most would consider a successful beginning of a new era. 

However, while it was successful, it wasn’t without controversy.  As reported, the Vision Racing cars of Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV had their qualifying runs nullified yesterday pre-race.  While no exact reason has been released, Curt Cavin reports that it was, according to Chief Operating Overlord Brian Barnhart, a cut-and-dried infraction.  After qualifying, all rear wings were confiscated, which may point to your area of concern.

In the same article, Cavin reports, along with many other sources, that Conquest Racing sponsor Opes Prime Group has had all of their accounts frozen.  To give you an analogy, it’d be comparable to having Bear Stearns as your primary sponsor.

Cavin also reports that Pacific Coast Motorsports is proceeding with a plan to field Mario Dominguez beginning at the 500, confirming a rumor initially reported by AR1.  He says that a letter of intent has been signed between the league and DirecTV.  Finally Penske gives a 30% chance of running a third car at Indianapolis this year.

Also controversial from yesterday’s race was the final restart after the incident between Ernesto Viso and Tony Kanaan.  Kanaan, who understandably stayed out with the pace car, as he was able to keep pace and wasn’t shedding parts.  He should have, however, pulled down the access road into the pits before the restart.  He was responsible for controlling the pace of the restart, and his car was incapable of doing such.  Thus, the restart was entirely bunched and could have had catastrophic results.  Bobby Rahal wasn’t happy with Kanaan’s actions, and the result was Ryan Hunter-Reay dropping from fifth to seventh.  Just as Kanaan’s driving deserved to be commended for avoiding T-bone contact with Viso, he, and more importantly Barnhart, deserve to be questioned as to why he was allowed to take the restart.

John Daly reports that NASCAR fans want side-by-side action during the commercials.  I predict that within four years, NASCAR will have the feature and claim it as their own innovation, just like they do with the SAFER barrier.

Some people don’t believe that Graham Rahal’s withdrawal from Homestead was due to lack of parts.  Many teams say that they would have assisted.  Tony George even reported that they had an unused extra car, as I had hypothesized.  Graham Rahal even referred to the wreck as a blessing in disguise as they get a jump start in car preparation for St. Pete.  That said, it makes sense, but it also makes sense to let the seasoned "rookie" veteran of Justin Wilson approach the track and let the 19 year old kid sit one out and observe before tackling the 1.5 mile high banked ovals.  I don’t know that it was to get a jump start on St. Pete’s as much as it was just to ease the kid in.  Presumably, we’ll see him at Kansas next month.

Congratulations to Oriol Servia for being the highest-placed immigrant, who finished 12th and described the experience "painful".  Similarly, Franck Perera was the highest-placing rookie, finishing 14th and second among the former-CCWS teams.  Trackside Online reports that, unlike Servia, Perera was smiling after his first high-banked oval experience.

Official race results are available here [PDF].  The full Trackside Report, which has quotes and major lap incidents and reports, is also available.

I’ll have my full Indy Race Control review up later today.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 9:19 am and is filed under ICS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.