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.

It’s their biggest race, and it’s probably their most boring.  A lot of people flip it on because it’s the second major race of the year.  Whatever.  Here’s what you can do during, or instead, of watching that Durrtona Five-Hundy.

First off, good god look at those hideous tacky jackets they’re making everyone wear.  I hate NASCAR.

- Watch a Samurai movie

That’s what I’m doing after this entry is posted.  Today’s selection will be Sanjuro, Akira Kurosawa’s sequel to Yojimbo. Netflix streaming is your daddy.

- Make a pie

First and foremost, pie is delicious.  Second, it usually requires some semblance of effort. I was going to make a coconut cream pie, but then I remembered that I’m traveling for work Tuesday.  Certainly not enough time to consume pie. This idea also gives you something to comically throw at your television in a fit of rage.

- Clean out your ears

Well, you’ll probably be inspired to do so as Darrell Waltrip makes ridiculous claims that you are convinced he didn’t actually say (like Dario’s four NASCAR races are the reason that he won the 2009 IndyCar Series championship). Luckily, we’re IndyCar fans.  We’ve heard of things called q-tips.

- Hate

Really, there’s so much to hate about this race: it’s boring, no one races until the last thirty laps, it’s on Fox, it has Dale Jesus. The only things connected with it that I can come up with that I don’t hate are Max Papis and JPM. 

- Take a nap

It’s the most acceptable nap of the year.  You can get half-a-night of sleep and still wake up for the end.  You can dream about the moonlight on the Wabash.

(I usually don’t write long entries on this site, and this turned out longer than I expected…Just call me Georgie)

OK, when you first look at a car, then look at a car again the next day, and repeat that process for five days, you’ll end up where I am now.

I can tell you that my opinions on the Swifts and the Dallaras has remained pretty much unchanged since they were first revealed. For you calculus nerds, my d(opinion) / dt is zero on those.

I can also tell you that my opinion on the Delta Wing has improved greatly. The time rate of change of my opinion has been positive.

That’s not to say explicitly that I like the Delta Wing the best. In fact, I’d say that visually, it needs to be changed. That said, I don’t think it is as ugly as when I first saw it. In a chaotic world, first-order linear extrapolations are not realistic, and I’m probably never going to find the Delta Wing to be completely beautiful.

Is it wingless? Sure. Is that unlike any race car I’ve followed with any great passion since my birth? Certainly.

I’m not here to make C&B jokes, which is why I went with the more abstract Wayne’s World reference initially. I try to keep those off my website.

The reality of the situation is that the anti-proprietary nature of this car is the same that revolutionized the software world in the mid-1990s. No one ever thought that a Swede’s pet-project would evolve into the most powerful operating system in the world. Many of you have no idea what Linux is, but I can tell you that without it, you wouldn’t be reading this right here. I could make an argument that the open source software movement of the 90s led to the slightly lagged internet explosion.

But this ain’t no freaking nerd blog, and I’ll punch you in the FACE if you suggest anything otherwise.

This non-proprietary movement is key to the evolution of the series. If you have all the specs and designs readily available, they can be incorporated into a boat-load of aerodymanics-type classes in engineering programs across the country. That, in turn, can develop fans.

That and beer, but I’ve covered that before.

They’ve explicitly said it’s on the 18-35 or whatever year olds that they want. As a latter part of whatever defined demographic, or at the very least, one somewhat recently removed from it, I get this concept. I thought iPods were stupid, but I now own one. I thought iPhones were stupid, but I don’t know how I lived without one. I really don’t know what people did before the internet, even though I lived 13 years without it. I thought HDTVs were a rip-off and bought a 52" Sammy a few weeks ago. A lot of things seem silly at first.

I don’t get the looks, but I get the concept.

It’s just a real shame that something that I truly looked forward to has devolved into a split-era whine-fest. It has already become tiring.

Here’s an exchange between Chip Ganassi and noted IndyCar fan Garth Algar:

Chip:  "You know, Garth, you and I have never really talked."

Garth:  "….okay."

Chip:  "You know I love what you do for the Series.  I mean, I look at you and I just laugh and laugh."

Garth:  "Uh huh."

Chip:  "Let me run this by you because you’re a sharp guy.  I’ve funded Ben Bowlby to make a new car.  It will be a dramatic change."

Garth: "We fear change."

Welp, the Delta Wing is out.  Honestly, after sitting on it for a night’s sleep, I don’t think it looks that bad.  It’s a change.  It’s a dramatic change.  That said, if it really can run 220+ mph at Indianapolis, I’ll be interested in it. 

Wait, no it isn’t.  Apparently, the website has been suspended.  This is after its countdown apologized to me after flipping zero for being too late.  Y’all need to reevaluate your internet presence strategy.

They did wedge the car into Papyrus’ 1993 smash-hit video game IndyCar Racing. Color me convinced! 

I guess I’m rather indifferent towards it.  After Dallara and Swift made their drawings public, the ball is in your court, Lola.