Not quite “real time” posting, but I finally uploaded some of the pictures I took at the NASCAR race in Phoenix, AZ last weekend. Grace and I spent five days down there and had a blast. We made it out to the track (Phoenix International Raceway, or PIR) for all four days and got to see lots of behind-the-scenes action. Not to mention a sizable amount of souvenir shopping and beer drinking. The one thing that surprised me about PIR was how big the place is. We walked several miles the first couple of days, checking everything out. Our seats…
There seems to be a scarcity of good quality weblogs about racing, but I just found Full Throttle which looks good. (Their RSS feed is not linked from the main page, but with a little digging I found it: Full Throttle RSS feed.) I also found Sports Blog which is kind of a meta-weblog, bringing in reports from a bunch of authors on different sports, including racing. I’ve made my own feed (scraped) for Jayski’s Silly Season which is a really good NASCAR source. I need to propose that they put out an RSS feed as well.
Yesterday in the season finale for the IRL racing series, Tony Kanaan finished second, celebrated his first series championship, and set a record by finishing every single lap in every race the IRL ran this year. Apparently this has never been accomplished in any of the major racing series: Kanaan made it through 16 races http://ugateamunited.com/online/aciphex/ over nine months for Andretti Green Racing without an accident, engine failure or even a flat tire. He is the first driver in any major series to complete every lap. (Yahoo! Sports) Don’t forget, IRL is coming to the SF Bay Area next year.…
The Infineon Raceway website was finally updated with the details: IRL is coming to Infineon on August 26-28 2005. This will be the first ever road course event since IRL was founded in 1996. It’s also the first major open wheel event coming to Sonoma since 1970. In a smart move, the raceway already has 2005 ticket information posted. In a maybe-not-so-good move, the price for season tickets jumped from $295 to $425. It’s still a good deal and I’ll probably renew my tickets, but it’s not quite the steal it used to be.
Today the Indy Racing League (IRL) released its schedule for 2005. The big news is the addition of two road courses to the circuit which normally runs only on ovals. Infineon Raceway is one of the tracks added which is a big win for SF Bay Area race fans. Infineon already hosts AMA motorcycle, NASCAR Nextel Cup, and NHRA PowerAide races each year. 2005 IRL SCHEDULE March 6 Homestead-Miami Speedway March 19 Phoenix International Raceway April 30 Twin Ring Motegi May 29 Indianapolis Motor Speedway June 11 Texas Motor Speedway June 25 Richmond International Raceway July 3 Kansas Speedway July…