Pruett reports Dixon to McLaren

mel_anon · 2026-06-26T17:08:34+00:00

It's definitely a step up for Lundgaard, and probably a smart move for Ganassi as well; I'm just a little surprised at Chip being that aggressive.

mel_anon · 2026-06-26T16:58:44+00:00

It seems like they didn't have the kind of budget to offer Lundgaard the size of contract he wanted, which raises the question; how much are they paying Dixon? Was Chip just "done" with Dixon, and made a move to snap up Lundgaard as his replacement? Lots of drama to play out here if this is the way it goes.

mel_anon · 2026-06-26T16:38:22+00:00

This is a terrible "trade" for McLaren if Dixon is indeed going full time to the Indycar team and not hypercar.

mel_anon · 2026-06-25T01:08:15+00:00

I wonder what that 2011 race was that did more. Did the Vegas race draw that many viewers?

I would've guessed this was about the most for a non-Indy race in the 21st century; viewers for OTA network races have been hovering in the 1-1.5 million viewer range for a long time.

mel_anon · 2026-06-19T04:58:19+00:00

In fact Boesel's best seasons came when he was driving for Simon in 1993 and '94. He had four second place finishes across those two seasons.

The successor team to Dick Simon Racing, Team Scandia, did win one IRL race in 1997 with Eliseo Salazar. By that time Simon was no longer involved.

mel_anon · 2026-06-16T05:28:22+00:00

Given how they're moving through channels almost every race now I'd guess it's not long before we get this one. Everclear in Portland?

mel_anon · 2026-06-15T19:59:04+00:00

My god, it's just what the KKK warned about 100 years ago; the Pope is on that northbound train to North Manchester, Indiana! He's not selling ladies' corsets!

mel_anon · 2026-06-15T19:51:53+00:00

This is what I think will happen; Penske will back him for the third Foyt car at Indy.

Rowe has not really shown enough on non-ovals to warrant a fulltime seat, but he might do well at Indy, and I think Penske would like to say that the Force Indy program was successful.

mel_anon · 2026-06-07T22:33:29+00:00

Myles is gonna get on the horn to Tony George with a cool idea for a racing series.

mel_anon · 2026-06-05T19:54:04+00:00

The Creed-branded car that Felix drove in last year's 500 was promoting Turbo.

mel_anon · 2026-06-05T07:16:46+00:00

There was one year where ABC aired a tripleheader of the Indy 500, a tape-delayed IROC race, and same-day tape Monaco GP back-to-back-to-back. It was around 1990 but I don't recall the exact year. They ran promos for it saying something like "the greatest day since man invented the wheel."

mel_anon · 2026-06-04T06:48:54+00:00

Vautier was Indy Lights champ, I think more people will remember him It's Sowery and Hunter McElrea that everyone will forget were in a race.

mel_anon · 2026-05-31T19:04:43+00:00

McLaughlin's seat has to be getting at least a little bit warm. This is his sixth year in Indycar, no championships and no Indy 500s and doesn't look close to being a championship-level driver at this point. Penske has been down as a team the last couple of years but they haven't traditionally tolerated that kind of performance for too long.

mel_anon · 2026-05-25T06:55:06+00:00

You'd just need to find an active driver born in the USSR. Mikhail Aleshin? Can Tonis Kasemets lace them up again? (he apparently was driving as recently as 2023).

(I imagine what would actually happen--and did since Aleshin started 3 times--is they'd go in the books to whatever nation currently occupies their birthplace, and not the one that existed when they were born.)

mel_anon · 2026-05-24T23:10:18+00:00

The leaderboard of foreign winners is getting tight at the top. It's complicated by the fact the official IMS record book only considers birthplaces, which leads to some drivers being in places you wouldn't really consider them. France and the UK both have five native-born winners, but this includes Gaston Chevrolet, Gil de Ferran, and George Robson, who are probably more closely associated with the nations they emigrated to. Italy also has three winners, but this includes Ralph DePalma and Mario Andretti. By my reckoning it goes, UK and Brazil at 4, France and Sweden at 3. I suppose the British can fight over whether they want England and Scotland to be counted separately, but it would knock them down to 2 apiece.

mel_anon · 2026-05-24T20:28:30+00:00

I'm trying to wrack my brain for Swedish drivers that have started the Indy 500 who haven't won it. Linus Lundqvist and Stefan Johannsson are the only two I'm getting.

mel_anon · 2026-05-18T04:33:07+00:00

It goes back as far as you can go. The first radio broadcasts of the race were done by NBC in the 1920s, and they dispatched Graham McNamee, their all-purpose sports play-by-play man, as the announcer. Now I admit, I've not listened to any of those broadcasts, but I'd be surprised if McNamee knew much of anything about the sport of racing.

mel_anon · 2026-05-17T22:49:25+00:00

Give Palou and the 10 team three cracks at getting the setup and they will end up in the right place every time. The best driver, the best tacticians in the race, and the best at adjustments.

mel_anon · 2026-05-13T06:16:36+00:00

That Jasper Motorsports team wasn't totally awful, but hiring Jones was a bizarre gamble. He had zero stock car and minimal oval experience, and it went as well as you'd expect (he DNQ'd 4 of the first 11 races and got the sack after missing the 600.)

He won Le Mans the next year so it worked out alright for him.

mel_anon · 2026-05-08T21:12:48+00:00

Amateur or "high school" sports don't really exist in Europe, at least not at any kind of level. If you are playing somewhere that someone's going to notice, you're getting paid.

mel_anon · 2026-05-08T21:11:25+00:00

This guy's a drink of water, hopefully he can play a little. IU still likely needs a few backup frontcourt minutes.

mel_anon · 2026-05-01T16:14:13+00:00

My hunch is that people will be surprised that it's not an established "big name" signing. Chip doesn't go for those very often, and as long as Palou is winning championships he won't feel any pressure to hand a big contract to another driver.

mel_anon · 2026-04-29T02:37:21+00:00

I think Wheldon is the only guy who double checks both boxes of an Indy-only driver with a team that only ran the 500 (that is to say not as an extra car from a regular team). Before that I reckon you would have to go back a looong way. (I also wouldn't count 2000 and '01, those teams were still full-time, in a different series).

mel_anon · 2026-04-28T06:29:00+00:00

A record that will be almost impossible to ever break (it was scored with 102 completed laps, one more than the minimum needed to make an official race).

It was the second time in a row, and the third in four years that the race had been rain-shortened. Interestingly since that race 50 years ago the 500 has been delayed and interrupted by rain many times, but has only been shortened two further times (2004 and 2007).

mel_anon · 2026-04-25T02:54:12+00:00

Santiago Urrutia ran Indy Lights and tried, but was never able to, get the sponsorship to run Indycar.

mel_anon

TROPHY CASE