Nice smooth race. Nice new cars; a new design. A few wrecks, but nothing tragic. Mostly it was about racing. With identical cars now, nobody ran away with it. Nobody could stay out front for long either. With evenly matched cars it was all about lead changes. Sometimes the lead changed every lap.
I do miss the intrigue of the old days. Different cars. Different chassis. Different kinds of engines. There was room for secrecy and sneak-attacks like Andy Granatelli’s STP gas turbine car surprise back in 1967. Remember that? He developed it in secret. He stuck an aircraft engine in a redesigned Indy car and competed against all the conventional cars. Took the field by surprise. Took the entire establishment by surprise. He led 172 of the 200 laps. He would have won easily, but a $6 bearing broke in the rear-end before he could finish. By the next season they had updated the rules to eliminate his advantage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRr-DGO2sOw
Now they’re going 220mph plus and they have to keep changing the rules to keep the cars from going faster. In the early days they allowed engine displacement of 7,400cc’s. Now it’s all the way down to 2,200.
Judy made us a nice picnic lunch so I didn’t have to get up, and I got to watch the race with my son in Colorado. We texted back and forth through it. Altogether a good time.
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