Calm Before the Storm

The Summer season starts officially next weekend for Memorial Day. Next Sunday in my opinion is the best day of the year for motorsports...the Double Dip between the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 (NASCAR's longest race). Both races are gonna be exciting for sure. The question is why is the title "Calm Before the Storm"? The answer is simple. Qualifying for the most prestigious race took place this weekend for the 94th Indy 500.

Indy Racing League (IRL) CEO Randy Bernard has done a lot so far in his first year operating this sport. First, when the St. Petersburg race got rained out on the Sunday, he allowed free attendance for the race held the next day (good strategy move) and now dropping the qualifying days from 4 to 2 makes it more drama-filling, and that's what we saw for the past 2 days.

The first day locked up the first 24 spots (out of 33) and then had another competition for the fastest nine to top each other for the number 1 spot. Helio Castroneves won his 4th pole at Indy and will start alongside Will Power and Dario Franchitti in row 1. Row 2 consists of Ryan Briscoe, Alex Tagliani (who has had a fast car all month with the FAZZT Racing Team) and Scott Dixon. In row 3, we have Graham Rahal (racing for his father Bobby and the Rahal-Letterman Team), Ed Carpenter and Hideki Mutoh. Other notables include Marco Andretti 16th, Ana Beatriz 21st, Simona De Silvestro 22nd, Danica 23rd and Tony Kanaan 32nd. Kanaan was a pole favorite but crashed during his first qualifying lap yesterday, and didn't have time for another run. Also he crashed his backup earlier this morning in a practice session and had to rebuild a car to qualify and was in danger for not making the 500. This is a sign of the Andretti curse in which any Andretti driver or family member has failed to win at Indy and/or has bad luck at the track. TK for example has crashed out each of his last 3 times in the 500.

It's definitely one of my favorite races of the year and has a great history over the years with close finishes (ex: 2006 Sam Hornish, Jr. passes Marco Andretti and wins by inches) and dominiating efforts. It's an exciting race and with all the preparation drivers and teams go through the month of May, it could end at turn 1 of lap 1, or someone takes the checkered flag and gets their name on the trophy and gets richer. Now my pick, I'm a Kanaan fan but from a 32nd starting spot, it's going to be very hard to get up front early but I'm going with Ryan Briscoe to win.

NASCAR
The other big race next Sunday is NASCAR's longest race...The Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Three drivers includeing Tony Stewart and Robby Gordon have done the double before but now with time differences it's impossible to run 1100 miles in a day. The Coke 600 is always exciting as a marathon (400 laps/600 miles, approx. 4 hours, 30 minutes-5 hours long) and obviously anything can happen as the race starts in the daylight, ends at night and there can be comers and goers for drivers to handle their cars throughout the race, whether their machines are loose or tight. It's not a sprint race like this past weekend's All-Star Challenge, but it's a big event.

One-third of the season is done now and Kevin Harvick leads the point standings by 69 over Kyle Busch.

OTHER NEWS/NOTES
1) Wishes go out to Brian Vickers who will miss the rest of the NASCAR season due to blood clots in his leg. He will return to racing in 2011.

2) The Chicago Blackhawks have won the Western Conference finals and will play the winner between the Flyers/Canadians for the Stanley Cup. This is the first time since 1992 that the Blackhawks have reached the finals.