I’ve read (I think) most of your stuff on your blog, and like I said a couple of weeks ago, you’ve had a couple of good ideas. Again, though, you’re not going to win any followers by coming in here and acting like a…pick your epithet. I’ll go with smartass for the time being. You like to use words like “distraction” when it comes to the month of May. I’ve got news for you: most of us are here because we like the month of May, so coming in here and attempting to crap all over our enthusiasm for it is going to get you nowhere. I’ve read about 15 comments from you where you either directly or imply that people here and elsewhere are fools for not seeing the things that you do and for (gasp!) actually enjoying IndyCar racing. When you’re here because you truly enjoy the sport, as I and many of the rest of us do, being called a fool for liking what you do like isn’t going to be taken lightly, either. Most of us agree that things could be better. Only a couple of people steer every…single…conversation…toward all the things that are wrong.

That last thing is what I’m asking you to take away from this. Give the negative crap a rest. Not every single conversation needs to be a critique of what’s wrong. Randy and his guys are on it. That’s their job. He’s only been here for 60 days. I’m happy to give him a chance to do his job.

But I’m not a seasoned marketing professional. So rather than poke a finger in a stranger’s eye, I’ll wait to read your suggestions.

Geek, you have a habit of pointing me out in a crowd. You can waste a lot less time by looking right where you know you can find me.

Will the fastest outside tire guy allow them to beat a red car out of the pits? Maybe, but probably not.

If they do beat the red cars out, are they going to hold the position and win the race? Not likely, but there’s an outside chance.

Does AJ feel like its worth putting a friend out of his job on an outside chance? No.

George’s point, one which he’s been presenting since sometime last season, is that A.J. Foyt’s team is consistently much slower than most of the front line teams, and a good portion of the time it’s because they’re waiting for the outside front tire changer to finish his work. This makes races like yesterday quite frustrating, because on the occasion that Vitor finds himself able to maintain pace with the front runners (as he did for most of the first half of the race and beyond), he invariably loses spots in the pits. Is the Foyt squad alone in this characteristic? Hardly, but they have one of the most graphic problems in pitlane (yesterday during the race, on Twitter I floated an over/under of 4.5 spots lost by Vitor during one stop; the under won, but only barely). Meanwhile, Briscoe’s problem was an isolated one, the kind that can befall any pit crew, even of the highest quality, even at the highest levels of the sport (IndyCar and F1 included; even Ferrari and McLaren have had similar pit mistakes in recent years). Your comparison, while somewhat interesting, is not an apples to apples one.

As to your other point, as we cover here, at your blog and in many other venues, yes, we still have problems. Does that mean we’re not allowed to enjoy the month of May, the Indy 500 or anything else in our sport? Should we all walk around with our heads down in perpetuity until a new TV contract is negotiated, every race is a sell out, all the races pull a 2.0 rating and every team has a Fortune 500 company on the sidepod? Please let me know so that I can nip my month of May buzz in the bud right now.

I’m not an oval fan and this race justified my long held oval racing thoughts. It did have it’s moments though, they all do. Ryan Hunter-Reay was awsome. Takuma Sato was having a great drive until the end. Milka Duno still doesn’t deserve to be in a car!