WE INDYCAR NOW!
“All pussy is pink on the inside”
WE FLORIDA AGAIN!
The sweet sound of engines firing up around the globe means winter’s over, race fans. Didn’t enjoy your blast in Bahrain? Then prepare for the series with 70% less corruption, 100% less sex fiends, and 20% more dog murderers: IndyCar is back.
NTT IndyCar Series
Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg
8-10 March 2024
Coverage begins 12:00pm EDT on NBC/Peacock/Sky Sports F1. EDT.
Green flag 12:30pm EDT on 10 March 2024
Dat Schedule:
8 March (Friday)
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM — Practice 1
9 March (Saturday)
9:35 AM - 10:35 AM — Practice 2
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM — Qualifying
10 March (Sunday)
9:10 AM - 9:40 AM — Warm-Up
12:30 PM - whenever — Race
Stuff to Scroll Past:A lap of the track:
Last year's race in 30 minutes:
”Hey, get out of here! I’m busy supporting human rights abuses and sportswashing in Saudi Arabia!”
Well I might not be able to help you there, because we’re racing in Florida, which would probably be famous for having the highest number of blubbery redneck muffin tops and permanent bikini tan lines per capita if it wasn’t famous for banning gay people, but only one of these places is going to feature a racing series that can’t spell its own name correctly. According to the world’s most trusted source of information, St. Petersburg is known as “The Burg”, “Sunshine City” (say it quickly), “Always in Season”, or just “St. Pete”. It’s also known as “Monaco without the tunnel”, which I suppose is better than “a center of venereal disease”, “endless square miles of low-density failure”, “ass-deep in cockroaches”, or even “Crashville”, but after you’ve passed the 50th fat shirtless guy wearing Oakleys in as many minutes you probably won’t be able to tell the difference anyway.
The Tampa Bay area is the thirteenth-largest TV market in the US, which places this race in the smallest TV market of all IndyCar street circuits. Don’t let that fool you into thinking this isn’t a sports town, though—there are barely more fans of mediocre stick-and-ball franchises roaming these streets than there are crackheads wandering aimlessly around Los Angeles, incidentally the nation’s largest TV market and fentanyl boofing capital of the world. The Tampa Bay area and its throngs of Tampans have avoided a direct hurricane strike for over 100 years, but with Romain Grosjean returning to the field that streak might be over this weekend.
Is it true? Is IndyCar still alive?
Hell yeah it’s still alive, and if you’re tired of watching a bunch of rich guys publicly investigating themselves, that means you’re in luck. Sure, IndyCar has its own kinks—we spent way too much time last year imagining this guy swimming naked in whipped cream—but no sport in the world is ever going to get 350,000 people to stand at attention like this one does. IndyCar is the ultimate anachronistic paradox, doggedly lumbering on under the impossible weight of ancient traditions and internal disputes over its identity while at the same time routinely providing the kind of pure, raw, emotionally combustible racing that stirs things you haven’t felt since your last teenage fever dream. It’s the way racing felt the first time you saw it and fell in love with it, and even though it makes every wrong decision you could ever imagine, it somehow makes you love it even more. It shouldn’t exist anymore, and every part of you is telling you it can’t exist and likely won’t for much longer, but somehow it does, in the here and now. It’s passionate. It’s intense. It’s enthralling. It’s ridiculous. It’s IndyCar.
The older and wiser amongst us know that things which rile up these kinds of emotions within you can be fickle, and IndyCar is no exception. I did say it was bad at making good choices, which means if you’re not bullshitting yourself, you have something in common with it to some degree—if you hang around this rock long enough you’re bound to let everyone down eventually. Nobody’s perfect, after all, and some of us are proud of that. Unfortunately, the folks at IndyCar tend to be a little too proud of that. After a grueling 182 days of watching old CART videos on YouTube, dissecting pointless sponsor announcements from anonymous companies, pretending we know how to run a racing series, and bitching about people bitching in Marshall Pruett’s mailbag, we finally have something worthwhile to talk about—and despite what The CW would have you believe, it’s already only 77 Days to Indy. If I never hear the words “business to business”, “activation”, “hybrid system”, or “new chassis” again it’ll still be too damn soon. Even in days of the Novi, a mythical 2 billion horsepower engine that started the Earth’s rotation when it first pulled out of pit lane, the offseason was the most difficult and dreaded part of every IndyCar fan’s existence, and this one was no exception.
But thank sweet baby Jesus, it’s over at last.
So, what the hell happened last
You don’t remember? We got two first-time winners in Kyle Kirkwood and Christian Lundgaard, a first-time Indy 500 Pole-Sitter in Alex Palou, a first-time Indy 500 winner in Josef Newgarden, and the championship finished early for the first time in 17 years, which is a lot more than you could say for a 50-year-old F1 team principal. Honda dominated the street races, Josef Newgarden dominated the oval races, and Scott Dixon dominated the wacky random bullshit races. It may sound predictable, but it sure as hell wasn’t if you were paying attention.
For a time, Marcus Ericsson and Romain Grosjean fooled us all into thinking they were legitimate championship contenders, but both of them wound up hitting walls—the former metaphorically and the latter physically. As they faded, Scott McLaughlin came to the fore, but his campaign was quickly deleted by Alex Palou, who ruined the whole damn year for everyone by winning four out of five races in the middle of the season. Only Newgarden, CEO of oval racing, seemed a realistic threat, but a miserable stretch of races in the end handed the title to Palou.
Elsewhere in the field, Will Power, Colton Herta, and Pato O’Ward went winless while Rinus Veekay, Jack Harvey, and Felix Rosenqvist receded into obscurity. Callum Ilott and Agustin Canapino got in each others’ way at every opportunity, Graham Rahal rigorously avoided the podium all year except for that one time Dixon stole a win from him, and the rest of us who couldn’t afford Ozempic or a personal physio all got older and fatter.
All of this continued in an orderly fashion until the last race, in which everyone did their best to murder one another, presumably in the hope that succeeding would mean fighting one less competitor for an engine lease next year. Thankfully, IndyCar has decided to amend its restart rules this year to reduce the chance of vehicular homicide, never mind any other kind of homicide. Other changes for the year include blinking rear wings, stronger suspensions, and a $1 million exhibition race for tech bros. We’re also going back to the Milwaukee Mile and Nashville Superspeedway after a pair of breakup texts to a reformed Texas Motor Speedway and the marquee Nashville street race, which is kinda like passing up cars and coffee in Sydney Sweeney’s Mustang to play Halo with Conor Daly.
For some dumbass reason, we’re also changing the engine rules halfway through the season, but if IndyCar wasn’t known for making things up as it went along it probably wouldn’t be known for anything. It’s not what we all wanted, but sometimes things work like Hector Rebaque: seemingly lacking purpose and kinda useless only to prove you wrong on the very last lap.
The series isn’t the only thing changing clothes between seasons. The driver market went through its share of upheaval, too:
Changing scenery are…
- ... Marcus Ericsson (Ganassi -> Andretti; paycheck chase)
- ... Romain Grosjean (Andretti -> JHR; last hurrah)
- ... Felix Rosenqvist (McLaren -> Meyer Shank; McLaren’s fourth choice)
- ... Jack Harvey (Rahal -> Coyne; can’t bump the boss here)
- ... David Malukas (Coyne -> McLaren -> bike accident)
- ... Sting Ray Robb (Coyne -> Foyt; God’s will)
- ... Takuma Sato (Ganassi -> Rahal; Indy 500 only)
- ... Callum Ilott (JHR -> McLaren; one-race wonder)
- ... Benjamin Pedersen (return to obscurity)
- ... Devlin DeFrancesco (sitting on a pot o’ gold)
- ... Tony Kanaan (brand ambassador)
- ... Simon Pagenaud (recovering from a concussion)
- ... Ryan Hunter-Reay (second retirement)
- ... Conor Daly (Xbox Live Gamepass)
- ... Linus Lundqvist (Ganassi; talent-spotted)
- ... Kyffin Simpson (Ganassi; tax shelter $$$)
- ... Tom Blomqvist (Meyer Shank; IMSA transfer)
- ... Pietro Fittipaldi (Rahal; bored of F1 reserve duty)
- ... Christian Rasmussen (Carpenter; NXT chmpn)
- ... Colin Braun (Coyne; Indy-curious)
- ... Nolan Siegel (Coyne; big money events only)
- ... Barry Wanser (cancer conquerer)
And now, all the usual features!
IndyCar Fantasy Game
Click the link above to sign up to the IndyCar fantasy game, in which you get to enjoy all the benefits of being an IndyCar team owner without the risk to personal property. You have to pick a new team every race, and the driver market changes more rapidly than the stock market. PM me the e-mail address you used to sign up if you want to enter the forum’s official league. tpatricio is the defending champion.
You wish you had...
… the ability to rap like Mario Andretti.
Take a drink every time...
… “that puts him in the danger zone!”
Useless Indy Fact of the Day:
An IndyCar equipped with a hybrid system is projected to put out nearly 900 hp at its peak. That’s still not enough to outrun the endless chorus of bitching about batteries in race cars.
Do you remember...
... how last year’s race started?
Anagram of the Day:
Alexander Rossi / Oral sardine sex
Are you ready yet?
The 2024 season is upon us, and there’s every indication that for IndyCar, it’s going to be another great year. So long as everyone keeps it within the boundaries of the race course it’s guaranteed to be exciting, and if they can’t, well, it’ll sure as hell be entertaining. No matter what, we win! Whatever happens next, you don’t want to miss it.
Do you remember what IndyCar feels like?
The feeling is back.
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We miss you Andrew.
This thread is dedicated to our fallen comrade Andrew Michael Ainscow, forum alias Andrew Hope, who was tragically stabbed to death in November of 2020. Brother, if you’re reading this somewhere, know that you meant a hell of a lot to me and lots of others here, and we all miss you terribly. Ten years since your last OP, I did my best to emulate your style, but as Devlin DeFrancesco learned after Turn 1 on the Indy road course last fall, you can only pretend to be someone else for so long.
Andrew’s family has requested that interested parties make donations in his honor to the Ontario SPCA. If you enjoyed this post or the ones which inspired it, I would encourage you to do so.
Let’s go racing everyone.
