Dario, you’re a two-time Series champion and an Indianapolis 500 champion…

You’ve got the right to request a re-shoot.

P.S. HUGGIES~!

Hopefully it isn’t as big of a failure as King Ralph.

Monday, Lord Randall Bernard, Duke of Bull Racing takes the reigns as the king of our world.

I, for one, cannot wait for the ceremony.  It’s going to be so big that it was, in fact, prophesied 1200 years ago.  Shown, clearly, is King Randy being coronated by Belskus and the sisters.  Nancy knit everyone’s outfit.

Today, I lost something that, to me, is as identifiable to racing as an a white ball with red stitching is to baseball or the pig is to football.

It was something that had been to victory lane at the Indianapolis 500 in nine of my twenty-two races.  It had been driven around the world by names such as:

Mears
Senna
Fittipaldi
Unser
Andretti
Hornish
Castroneves
Prost
Tracy
Häkkinen
de Ferran
Rosberg
Lauda
Mansell

Sure, it evolved over the years, but today Team Penske unveiled their new livery and (at least as far as I know) the classic Marlboro paint scheme has exited racing entirely.

You will be missed.

Update:  George wrote about 20,000 words expressing the same feelings a while back.  Also, my calculations are that the Marlboro scheme had a 50% success rate at Indianapolis when qualified.

All four 2012 proposals are in.   Since you all are so negative, I’ll give you what I feel to be the largest positive of each:

Swift

The Swift Light concept is good, but I think it’s just a little short of awesome.  My proposal to Swift is to incorporate the lights into drivers’ helmets.  Attach them to a driver’s central nervous system and make them analogous to a giant, glowing mood ring.  I mean, sure, Scott Dixon’s helmet will always glow blue, but imagine the colors we’d see with Danica during one of her tantrums or Tomas during one of his glove throwing tirades.  We’d be seeing colors never humanly conceived, and it’d lead towards a logical sponsorship from Crayola.

Delta Wing

The Delta Wing’s best feature is its backside.  You other brothers cannot deny. Delta Wing has got a motor in the back of its Honda. 

That said, I am a little cautious on the Delta Wing when I’m reminded of the words of the great American philosophers Bell Biv DeVoe: "Never trust a big butt and a smile."

Lola

GUNS! 

When I first saw it, I thought that Lola was clearly listening to the fans.  It is indisputable that is a weapon of some sort, and it is indisputable that the Series needs more weapons.  I’m just glad that I wasn’t the only one to see this, as the recently Unsilenced Pagoda observed it as well.

Dallara

I don’t really have any good jokes about the Dallara, but I will commend them for not making their concepts primer gray.

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola.

Long-time IndyCar manufacturer Lola has released their proposal for 2012.   Perhaps fitting to the underlying theme of the Kinks song, this one serves up a duality as one of its primary uniquities.  The tub and nose are proposed to be common for both the IZOD IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights.  I’ve had mixed emotions on the concept, but I can guarantee you that it would probably have a lot more FIL teams looking at the 500.  I can’t say with any confidence that it would, in practice, lead towards any line crossing in a regular single weekend event as the flipping of the tubs between configurations would probably be impossible between sessions.

You’ve got to give Lola some credit.  For certainly being, at least in a relative sense, evolutionary, it does certainly provide a load of sponsor space with it’s large, flat sidepods.

That concludes our prototype drawing releases for the 2012 IndyCar Series chassis.  I’ll see you in 2021.