IndyCar: Texas Motor Speedway Discussion Thread

I vaguely remembered that, so I checked out the Wikipedia page. It was in 2001 and the race was cancelled. It was supposed to be a 600 mile event.

From Wikipedia.......................
You could always count on Paul Tracy to do the insane thing! :roflmao::roflmao:

Yup. It went down like this- Michael Andretti was beyond furious and demanded an impromptu drivers meeting and in the meeting everyone was against the speeds except Tracy and Bräck, they were voted down. So they packed up the car haulers and headed out of the track.

Indeed, Tracy's a mad man, personally knowing him it was no surprise that he thought the show should go on. :laugh::roflmao:
 
Well you can get that through the NBCSN website. Get that and a VPN and you're good to go. It's only Indycar though.

Not quite that easy. Your 10 minutes are up...
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But you could dump the IP, get a new one and clear your cookies then do it all over again :D
 
I know this is an American sport but... today there is so much commercials even for American standard... And the other differance is that normally in Norway we keep the broadcast when they have commercials just without the commentators, but today we also get commercials...
 
I know this is an American sport but... today there is so much commercials even for American standard... And the other differance is that normally in Norway we keep the broadcast when they have commercials just without the commentators, but today we also get commercials...
I honestly might not watch the Indy 500 next year or wait until it's available on YouTube without commercials. It was an abomination this year, about 60% commercials at least.
 
Well you can get that through the NBCSN website. Get that and a VPN and you're good to go. It's only Indycar though.
I was suggesting that he subscribes for 45 bucks a month. That deal is only good in the US, which is why I suggested a VPN.

The free preview didn't work for me; never connected. Didn't think about trying with a VPN. If that works I might buy the package to watch the rest of the season.
 
Watching live on Gold (theres ways) - Herta just did a whopping 222.4mph, albeit a big tow.
So the top guys are doing 220 with no tow.

But Nobody's going to touch what the big boys in CART were doing, not even close.

Paul Tracy / 236.678 mph, lap of 22.542

The difference is only so big because indycar have these engines run to very restrictive rules, are boost restricted and run a more eco friendly fuel. They are capable of producing so much more power.
 
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The difference is only so big because indycar have these engines run to very restrictive rules, are boost restricted and run a more eco friendly fuel. They are capable of producing so much more power.

Yeah, when indycar was about innovation, going fast, building and engineering the best mouse trap of all.
And yes, its all restrictive, micro managed into the ground, SPEC to SPEC. And they are not designed to produce "so much more power". They are built just to last with pathetic HP and low revs.

Todays indycar sucks worse then IROC, if that's possible.
And they are not 'eco friendly'. The bologna "Iowa corn eco friendly fuel" has been gone for years.
 
Is their Youtube stream geoblocked? AFAIK all Blancpain stuff is live streamed for free through their YouTube account worldwide.

I’m in the US and no, the Blancpain GT series stream on YouTube is not geoblocked. I watch it very happily here in Austin, TX. To my mind, Blancpain is the shining example of how to broadcast Motorsports and grow your audience. They have all of the sessions from GT3 and GT4 from all three regions (America, Europe and Asia )on the GT World YT channel, in high def, with excellent commentary in both English and French and no commercials. And the racing is fantastic and unpredictable.

Compare that to IndyCar with teeth-grindingly terrible coverage, non stop commercials and constant references to the myriad of sponsors. Great racing, awful presentation. F1 is better but the racing gets worse every year.

Blancpain GT is head and shoulders better and the fact that we have a licensed sim of it in ACC is the cherry on top.
 
Everything you write makes sense. I think my reaction is more irrational than anything else. I just feel an uneasiness watching Indycars at Texas. I used to watch that race, but now, I always fear a fatal accident will happen eventually. I think it is the configuration of the track and the high banking. Indy is more like a rectangle and the turns are flatter. But you are right to point out it’s just as dangerous. As I said, it’s just an irrational gut feeling on my part. I certainly don’t blame anybody for enjoying the race! ;)
Fast ovals are dangerous, but there is one aspect they at least seem to have finally solved with the current aerokit and which has generally improved the safety of fast ovals tremendously, that is eliminating pack racing which also played big part in Wheldon’s death.

Pack racing dominated Indycar on fast ovals from the late 90s up until the recent years (last such race I remember was 2015 Fontana). Number of 1.5 milers and longer speedways on the calendar has also generally diminished and we pretty much have only Indy, TMS and Pocono.

About the Firehawk 600, that was indeed one huge disaster and cluster f*** from the CART, but good thing is that they canceled the race. It is quite amazing that they could pull such speeds on TMS with Hanford devices and using very low boost. Without that package, CART cars would’ve been totally undriveable on TMS.
 
I strongly disagree that current Indycar is boring. Last season was absolutely fantastic imho. Sure they're not the balls-to-the-walls cars they were in the 90s, but so what? The racing is great, and that's the only thing that matters. "Pushing the envelope" and building a stupid fast car is just a dick-swinging competition that has no real value. I don't watch racing for statistics and records, I watch it to see drivers battling for positions, and Indycar has that in spades.

It's honestly comical that people laud the 90s cars as true brutes; it's not like they were the pinnacle of technology. The cars could have been made much faster if the rules didn't have them reigned in, too. They were a bit faster than today's cars, but it's not like that was the max potential even then. We haven't had real professional level open category racing since the 70s, don't be mistaken.

I don't give a damn that it's a spec series. It produces exciting racing, and in a racing series that's what matters.

I will agree that TV coverage of anything in North America is terrible; we pay out the arse for cable packages and still get saddled with an unacceptable volume of commercials. I don't mind the commentary team that NBC has, though.
 
I strongly disagree that current Indycar is boring. Last season was absolutely fantastic imho. Sure they're not the balls-to-the-walls cars they were in the 90s, but so what? The racing is great, and that's the only thing that matters. "Pushing the envelope" and building a stupid fast car is just a dick-swinging competition that has no real value. I don't watch racing for statistics and records, I watch it to see drivers battling for positions, and Indycar has that in spades.

So what you say? Because there is Zero innovation, creativity, a want to engineer to go quicker. Its so Spec that you receive boxes and crates from Dallara and put the car together with your regular Sears tools. And you must follow all the directions in assembly, no building or modifying anything. So there's zero engineering or being able to build a faster car then your opponent.

Thats what racing is all about isn't it? Going faster then your opponent?

"Pushing the envelope" and building a stupid fast car is just a dick-swinging competition that has no real value.
:rolleyes: Says a fan that enjoys spec racing because he's forced to watch it, or not. Yes, there's no value in trying to be faster then your opponent in motorsports :rolleyes: who would want that? Yes, theres no value in trying to be faster and winning, who'd want that?

People that say this usually are the ones that just take anything the series gives them and smile. Because the racing is so 'close'. Of course it is. Why not get 30 identical riding lawn mowers and have a race? It would produce the same 0.8 second difference from 1st to 30th that indycar likes to boast about.
 
So what you say? Because there is Zero innovation, creativity, a want to engineer to go quicker. Its so Spec that you receive boxes and crates from Dallara and put the car together with your regular Sears tools. And you must follow all the directions in assembly, no building or modifying anything. So there's zero engineering or being able to build a faster car then your opponent.

Thats what racing is all about isn't it? Going faster then your opponent?

Getting a faster car is about setup and strategy, which still require creativity.

:rolleyes: Says a fan that enjoys spec racing because he's forced to watch it, or not. Yes, there's no value in trying to be faster then your opponent in motorsports :rolleyes: who would want that? Yes, theres no value in trying to be faster and winning, who'd want that?

No value in trying to go faster and winning? That's absolutely not the case. If anything spec racing at a professional level puts more pressure on the engineer and driver to perform because they can't rely on miraculous updates to the car to give them a performance cushion against their opponents.

People that say this usually are the ones that just take anything the series gives them and smile. Because the racing is so 'close'. Of course it is. Why not get 30 identical riding lawn mowers and have a race? It would produce the same 0.8 second difference from 1st to 30th that indycar likes to boast about.

I'll take a close race in spec cars over a complete and total blow-out borefest any day (looking at you, F1). That's not to say I only like spec racing, that's not the case, but spec racing is also not the demon so many "fans" make it out to be.

Ultimately, close racing is what makes the event exciting. No amount of creativity or innovation can make a boring race exciting.

All spec, identical cars artificially create the close racing, week after week. Its IROC with open wheels.

It doesn't artificially create close racing, it puts more emphasis on driver skill and engineer setup capability. That's why the racing is better.

DRS, Push to Pass, reward weight, reverse grids, etc, create artificially close racing. Which, still, I don't care. As long as there's passing and battles I really don't care how we get there.

But, whatever. You like engineering wank. That's cool, too. I just like racing. I don't care what formula gets us there; as long as what's happening on track is actually exciting, I'm down.

I love creative engineering and design (it's my job, after all), but if what it creates is a car that's miles ahead of everyone else I won't watch the race. I'll look at the pictures and read the articles and analysis.
 

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