Rain, Rain Go Away

If you had your eyes glued to your tv set at home, you already are aware that Ohio and rain went hand in hand today. Mother Nature threatened qualifying today at Mid-Ohio and it seemed like all that could be talked about was the fact that we may not even get through qualifying at all with the storms being overhead the  2.258 mile 13 turn road course. Would Mother Nature be nice in the end or would it cause us to determine the grid via points.

Lucky for us qualifying was underway and we split the field in half and send the cars out on track to battle it out for pole position. The question on everyone's mind was if any of the drivers had anything for Scot Dixon who was pretty dominate most of the weekend with practice and just his success overall at this track. Many big names were in the first group to hit the track such as Pagenaud, Castroneves, Newgarden and Montoya. In usual tradition, Marco Andretti fell short of the top six and landing himself another last place starting position. Not sure if Marco just doesn't have the best parts for his car or if he just doesn't have the talent like her grandfather and father did. About the only thing he has is the Andretti last name and well it has been over 5 years since his last win in indycar. I do wish him the best of luck and would like to see him qualify better and stay out of wrecks.

Nothing too interesting happened on track weather wise of driving wise and by the time the checkards came out we had Pagenaud, Newgraden, Hunter-Reay, Castroneves, Kimbell and Montoya all advancing to the second round. With group one out of the way we reset and get the second group out on track quickly. Still the topic on everyone mind was when the rain would hit if it chose to come at all. The rest of the field went out with Scot Dixon dominating most of the session before playing trade off with Power for fastest lap. Ultimately the fastest lap went to Power with Dixon in an impressive second place with a 0.051 difference. The most impressive thing was Rookie Alexander Rossi who pulled out an impressive lap that edge out Tony Kanaan from making it to round two. What is more impressive is Rossi made a slight mistake and went from in the green to in the red and back to green within a blink of an eye. If you payed attention, Herta is all gun hoe about signing on the Rookie for next year, but I think everyone else understands that his passion is F1. He did after all move to England at 17 years old to race for Hitech Racing. I say that he does whatever his is more passionate about as passion usually translates to success. Enough on that, let's get back to this qualifying session. TK, the fired up Brazilian, was not a happy camper getting out of his car and made a gesture to suggest he was held up on track and that is why he wasn't quick. He was visablly upset that he even asked if they could not interview him afterwards. I can respect that in a person. If you know that what you say might not be the best for the media, by all means decline and make it up later.

Moving on to the second round and the fast 6 cars from both sessions battled it out to compete for the pole position. The rain was much closer and lingered around like Aunt Sally during thanksgiving dinner despite everyone else already leaving to go home. What else impressed me was Rossi making it up to sixth place when the first rain drop started to hit and slowed down the field. Mother Nature would not be kind to the Rookie or to Scot Dixon who had pitted thinking his fast lap would have been fasted enough. The rain never truly hit and it started to let up and the track got faster. Dixon was itching to get back out but guess his pit stand didn't quite get that memo as he never went back out and found himself in 11th and Rossi would end up 12th in the session. A fast six without TK or Dixon, bot whom are well known and received by the fans of racing? I too had to blink my eyes a few time to make sure I was awake too. Montoya nor Castroneves made the cut either so it left Power and Pagenaud to duke it out in the fast six. Seems appropriate considering Power only trails Pagenaud 47 points in the championship and a win here and mistakes for the other could alter this championship race that Pagenaud has been dominate in with his three wins in a row and his ability to not be involved in too many hick ups along the way in the other key races.

The battle for pole was set. Who would come out the dominate of the Penske crew and could Newgarden, Hunter-Reay, Kimball or Rahal have anything to dethrone these two Penske drivers. In the end Pagenaud ended up victorious with his 5th pole of the season edging out Power by 0.0681 of a second. We are bound to be in for a treat as one wrong move could change the entire standings as we know it and many are hoping to get rain so they can try a strategy that may end up with them in victory lane. Race day ins July 31st at 1:45 CST and on CNBC. Also keep in mind that tomorrow the indycar driver battle the Swimsuit Edition ladies on ABC's Celeberty Family Feud. Will be fun to see and Helio, Tony, Will, James and Conor join together as team to win money for the indycar charity.

Until then, stay race-y!

Green Flag Waves for Chicaned

Welcome to Chicaned everyone! For those of you who may not know what a chicane is, and if you do just bare with me on this post, it is is fast left-right or right-left turn that kind of slows down the drivers. They can be added to a track with cones and are added to slow down the cars for turns that may not be safe to be turning into at 145 miles per an hour.

Now you may be asking yourself, why name a race related blog after something that is to slow down cars? Good question! Sometimes the races seem to fly by in the matter of hours and things happen quickly and you kind of forget to slow down an analyze some of the fantastic driving that may be happening off camera or unmentioned by the ones calling the race. I would love to kind of slow down the action in a sense and discuss some of the racing not seen on the tv or some of the amazing talent that is hardly mentioned for their impressive drive from a bad starting spot or being involved in a minor wreck but getting back out there and doing a great job.

Mainly, I will be focusing on Indycar as it is my series of choice, but I do get some info here and there on other forms of racing that I am happy to maybe do a small discussion on. This blog will highlight practices, qualifying and races themselves whenever I am humanly possible to sit down and type it all out while remaining as impartial as I can. I do work late hours as a server, but I will try to post something up as soon as I have time to analyze that race. I know the season is coming to a close soon, but I will include any news I find on drivers switching teams or drivers just not being picked up again by teams. Also will read over the rules and post any thoughts I have on some new rule changes that may or may not come up.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope to have some awesome discussions with everyone in the near future.