We're all road course specialists now

Posted by Iannucci | 3/21/2008 | 4 comments »
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After Day 2 of the refugee testing at Sebring one thing is now blatantly obvious: Scott Goodyear is forbidden from ever using the term "road course specialist" in describing any driver in the IRL. Clearly there's nothing "special" about any of these drivers on road courses, since nearly all of them we brought up racing on these twisty deals for many, many years.

No, now we live in a bizarro world where we have "oval specialists" like Ed Carpenter and Sarah Fisher, for whom USAC gently weeps. Anyhow, here are the combined Sebring final results with refugees in bold.

1. Ryan Briscoe (52.4202 seconds; 114.689 mph)
2. Helio Castroneves (52.4531)
3. Oriol Servia (52.7035)
4. Tony Kanaan (52.8609)
5. Will Power (52.9451)
6. Hideki Mutoh (52.9513)
7. Dan Wheldon (53.0131)
8. Scott Dixon (53.0286)
9. Marco Andretti (53.2452)
10. Enrique Bernoldi (53.2843)
11. Franck Perera (53.3159)
12. A.J. Foyt IV (53.3477)
13. Ryan Hunter-Reay (53.4570)
14. Danica Patrick (53.5015)
15. Vitor Meira (53.5217)
16. Darren Manning (53.5611)
17. Buddy Rice (53.6051)
18. Bruno Junqueira (53.6552)
19. Jay Howard (53.8033)
20. Mario Moraes (53.9831)
21. Ed Carpenter (54.1869)
22. Marty Roth (54.4976)
23. Milka Duno (56.4081)

Lap times this close almost warrant excitement for the competitive possibilities on road courses during the 2008 season. Now, all they need to do is figure out how to pass each other.

4 comments

  1. Mike // March 21, 2008 7:58 AM  

    Milka is only 2 seconds slower than the rest of the field and 4 seconds off of the lead time. She is improving...

  2. pressdog // March 21, 2008 8:25 AM  

    As often as Goodyear says "road course specialist" he says "it's difficult to pass here." Duh. I'm starting to think "road course" is from the Latin for "difficult to pass." Thanks for mentioning Sarah. Oval specialists need not apply to the IndyCar Series.

  3. Justin // March 21, 2008 8:45 AM  

    Look at who is in front of A.J. his '08 season is starting to look somewhat promising.

  4. Anonymous // March 30, 2008 10:23 AM  

    Passing ??

    Start using a P2P button then...