NASCAR on TV this week

IndyCar

IndyCar Edmonton Indy Preview

by

*Whats News?*

The IZOD IndyCar Series continues it’s trek through Canada this Sunday with the Edmonton Indy. The biggest and perhaps most curious news coming out over the past week was the revelation from IndyCar race director Beaux Barfield that the sanctioning body was heavily considering introducing an “overtime format” to IndyCar racing, similar to that of NASCAR’s Green-White-Checkered finishes. IndyCar officials will make a decision over the off–season as to whether or not GWC’s will make their way to the sport. Another very important piece of IndyCar news this week actually came from Washington DC. The U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of letting the nation’s military branches continue to sponsor sports teams. This is great news for IndyCar’s Panther Racing, who has a very lucrative sponsorship deal with the United States National Guard.

The Comeback of the American Driver: Ryan Hunter-Reay

by

Ryan Hunter-Reay is in many ways the poster child for the plight of the American driver in open wheel racing. He currently sits atop the driver standings in the IZOD IndyCar Series and if he can hang on to win the championship, it will not only be the realization at last of the wealth of potential Hunter-Reay has always shown, but perhaps it will also signal the comeback of the American driver.

Here’s an encouraging stat: of the 21 drivers to win three races in a row from 1979 to 2011, only three (Paul Tracy, 1997; AJ Allmendinger, 2006; Scott Dixon, 2007) failed to win an Indy car title in the same year. In defense of Tracy and Allmendinger, it might be worth noting that in 1997, Alex Zanardi, who also won three in a row, took the title and in 2006 it went to Sebastien Bourdais who won the first four in a row.