Hooray VERSUS! The mere fact that so many folks want to discuss the VERSUS/IndyCar spots that started airing yesterday show the new broadcast partner is already taking a step in the right direction. Right now thousands of hockey fans are already jotting down April 5th in their calendars as the day something fast and loud will happen.

(Nice touch of using raindrops for promoting the St Pete race by the way. Not sure if it was intentional, but I certainly chuckled.)

In case you missed them our buddy Will at Is it May yet? pirated uploaded two of the ads in Quicktime format here and here. Turn your audio WAY UP for the full effect.

Now if we can just figure out out to get a few million more people access to VERSUS through their cable provider we'll be set, right?

After an inexplicably prolonged absence your humble host has returned behind the microphone to chat up a fellow word butcher. This time the guest is the personable Meesh from "So...here's what i'm thinking...", who graciously shared her thoughts for nearly a half hour - without swearing like a sailor.

Here is the show. Enjoy.

Our esteemed colleague FuriousWedge (his parents thought that would be a fine name) is attempting to do the impossible: blog the entire 24 Hours at Daytona. Follow along on at his site The Furious Wedge for frequently amusing updates.

It looks like The Speed Geek will also be joining in on the fun, although that will be on the Twitter simulcast. Follow them with @FuriousWedge and @TheSpeedGeek as they track past, present, and future IndyCar drivers like:
· Jeff Bucknum
· Ryan Briscoe
· Scott Dixon
· Tomas Enge
· Dario Franchitti
· Memo Gidley
· Ryan Hunter-Reay
· Alex Lloyd
· Darren Manning
· Raphael Matos
· Juan Pablo Montoya
· Max Papis
· Danica Patrick
· Buddy Rice
· Jimmy Vasser
· Jeff Ward

All these and Patrick Dempsey, too! Oh, and don't forget Marco Andretti and Robert Doornbos in A1GP racing later today. Might want to pack an extra bag of Doritos for all of these festivities.

Despite several driver protests to the contrary, recent test results seem to indicate EJ Viso has a heart, a brain, and is an otherwise fully functional human being. Many tests have been applied and documented on camera for the curious, although it appears this year’s physical failed to provide conclusive proof as to whether or not his braking foot works.

He is however completely cleared of having Mumps, Dysentery or Ebola. Hooray!

I’d love to embed the video for you to watch but it’s not available at this time. Consequently you’re going to have to watch it yourself here. Be sure to compare it to Helio’s physical last year.



“The goal is to make sure your hearing stays the same even though you work in a high noise environment.” What she means, EJ, is that we don’t want you to lose your hearing from being yelled at so much by all of those other drivers you hip-check out of the way. Keep those ear molds in and you’ll be just fine.

In the NHL (that's National Hockey League, not the racing team) there is a pair of brothers who have decided they will only play on the same team. Presumably this prevents Daniel and Henrik Sedin from making more money individually, but they're so full of brotherly love they wouldn't have it any other way.

Perhaps racing now has an equivalent in JC and Kristy Kester, who thanks to a partnership with new IndyCar's Team 3G will be teammates in the Star Mazda series for the second year in a row. Now that's something you don't see every day.

Team 3G co-owner Steve Sudler said "We see this as an opportunity to introduce new marketing partners to the sport at an affordable level and work with the drivers to develop a sponsorship value proposition that leads them towards Firestone Indy Lights and then the IndyCar Series."

You can read more about them in this article from SpeedTV last year. And in case you're wondering, it appears Kristy might be the better driver. She's two years younger but finished 9th in the Star Mazda standings last year to JC's 13th ranking.

Photo: Star MAzda PR

I swear, this isn’t a slam against stock cars or their drivers. I know it requires not only skill but an immense amount of patience to drive 15,000 laps of caution every year, which is why it it’s so funny when a driver gets down to the business of actually driving fast.

This just in: Greg Biffle hit 218 on the speedometer in testing at Texas World Speedway.

"[It was] very fast," Biffle said. "A little bit bumpy, which is to be expected of a race track that the pavement is that old, but just a very fast place. It's kind of a fun race track, but our cars today are probably pretty dang fast for a race track like that."

Biffle said his Thursday afternoon speeds in College Station on Jan. 15 were the "fastest I've been in a race car before -- 218 miles an hour. That's getting her done, if you want to say -- 195 mile an hour average, so it was a pretty fast place."

Hey Greg, just for reference doing 218 for a full lap might get you qualified for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. If you’d like to turn even faster laps I'm sure there’s always a ride and a pay cut waiting for you somewhere at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this May. Come on – do it for your dogs.

With Curt Cavin absent from his own podcast, Trackside co-host Kevin Lee chatted up the IMS Radio's Mike King, who rumor-mongers so much in th einterview he ought to have his own blog. I mean, you can't just drop stuff like this and be nonchalant, Mike.

"Certainly, Kevin, if you pay attention to what Mike Lanigan from Newman/Haas/Lanigan rcently said, it certainly sounds like that team is going to go to three cars. It looks like Graham Rahal...this is a guy who's gonna have some company on that team. It looks like Robert Doornbos is probably going to wind up on part of that team, and it looks like Sebastien Bourdais...is probably going to be back in the fold there as well."


I thought it was either Bad Bobby OR SeaBass - not both! Doornbos and Bourdais on the same team? In the immortal words of Dick Enberg, "Oh my!" If this happens then move over AGR, there's a new circus coming to town.

Oh by the way, King also fills us in on the latest with Oriol Servia, Buddy Rice and a few others. Lend him your ear.

(Photo: AP/Paul Chiasson)

UPDATE: It appears that once again Mike King's Crystal Balls have failed him. In the past he declared Danica Patrick would win at Michigan in '07 and Sam Hornish Jr wouldn't leave the IRL. I guess we'll add this to the list since reports (thanks meesh) are that Sebastien Bourdais will be driving in F1 again next year.

All of this begs the question: How do I get into Mike King's NCAA bracket?

First, a little revisionist history.

Way back before even AJ Foyt walked the earth, mankind’s preferred method of written communication was through hieroglyphics etched on the walls of darkened caves. Soon thereafter it was decided that this wasn’t a fully effective way to communicate with the neighbors, so the stone tablet was created for portability. But like early cell phones that were equal in size to actual phone books the tablet proved too heavy, and so lamb skin and other forms of parchment were developed for the written word.

Then came the printing press, which gave birth to the newspaper, allowing people everywhere to read news and commentary on events that had actually occurred as recently as 24 hours ago. Unfortunately there was nothing to write about, so autos were developed, predominantly for racing purposes.

And so it was until Al Gore invented the internet, which allowed everyone not only to read racing news but actually write about it. That’s where you and I enter the picture. It’s a lot of fun, but it seems the evolution of communication is about to take another step.

Welcome to the age of Twitter, which is basically a way for all of us to talk to at each other all the time, collectively sharing life in 140 characters or less. Yes friends, it’s just like jacking into The Matrix, except you don’t have to actually plug anything into your head. That’s likely the next advancement in communication.

Anyhow, for those of you who have Twitter, you can now follow my EVERY thought on IndyCars by adding @MyNameIsIRL to your Twitter feed. Not that I have that many thoughts, but consider this yet another value-added service your humble host is providing to you.

Also, be sure to add a couple other bloggers (@FuriousWedge, @whatimthinking) since they jump all over breaking news, as well as the official IndyCar series feed (@IndyCarSeries). I'm sure it will all be a hoot once we actually have racing to discuss.

There was a time when Dreyer & Reinbold was a competitive team in the IRL, a championship contender even. That was way back when Mario Moraes was still in grade school, and in the days that have past the team has steadily drifted into a last island of refuge for drivers trying to stay in the IndyCar series. Hey, everyone has a role, right?

Well out of the blue yesterday - while absolutely no one was paying attention - D&R proudly introduced their newest driver, who shockingly appears to be at the beginning of his career.

Dreyer and Reinbold Racing announced today that it has come to an agreement with British racer Mike Conway to become the team's first confirmed driver for the 2009 IndyCar Series campaign.

The 25-year old rookie comes to the U.S.-based open-wheel series after spending the majority of his career in the European formula car ladder. Most recently, he completed his second season driving in the GP2 Series with Trident Racing in 2008. He was also a Honda F1 Racing test driver for the past two seasons.

Conway has been one of the top up-and-coming British drivers for the last several years, having won the prestigious British Formula 3 Championship with Raikkonen Robertson Racing in 2006. That year was also highlighted by a win in the famed Macau Grand Prix. His most recent success was winning a round at the famous streets of Monte Carlo in Monaco in the GP2 Series in 2008.

I gotta be honest - I have no idea who this guy is. I remember reading something about him having a test with Panther Racing last year, but I figured that was for the Indy Lights ride. The again I also figured that Buddy Rice or Milka Duno or Townsend Bell would be driving for D&R. Dude could be the second coming of Michael Schumacher for all I know, although I suspect our British bud Patrick at Too Much Racing might have an actual clue as to what kind of driving we should expect from Mr Conway.

With full humility I ask: Anyone here know anything about him?

As most of you know, I have the utmost respect for our buddy Bill "pressdog" Zahren. His site actually predates this one, so if push comes to shove he can legitimately claim to be the "original" IndyCar blogger*. He can have the title if he wants, and if he wants to use it to print up all sorts of t-shirts, coffee mugs and mouse pads then I'll certainly buy one.

And since lately pressdog has had some fine posts that no one apparently has seen I thought it worth noting what's going on over there. It's the off-season (read: no racing) so no one really ventures around our sites much (check the Site Meter yourself) and as such I just wanted to direct the attention of the five of you here to the more enjoyable posts he's had over the last month.

IndyCar Teams Offer Advice to Ailing Stock Car Organizations

A classic take on the financial perils of running a $25M stock car team.

"Frankly, we have no idea how to get by on less, so we put them in touch with some teams who do," said an AGR spokesperson. "We thought maybe 'shop Danica around for more sponsors' but then we realized they don't have a Danica, so we transferred them to Pacific Coast Motor Sports."

SI, ESPN Puzzled by pressdog Ratings

For real, Bill actually handed over the blog to the Tree Hugger herself, former Indy Lights driver Leilani Münter. As much as I enjoyed her savvy sense of humor in calling Jayski "fendered racing's Perez Hilton", I'm fascinated with the hold prospect of turning over our blogs to drivers.

Think about it - these drivers do everything else. Race, sign autographs, go to sponsor shindigs, try to track down more sponsors - work work work. Let's just have them handle the reporting aspect of it as well. I've said before I'd turn this site over to Tony Kanaan in a heartbeat, but if we can get Dan Wheldon to take over for Curt Cavin or Darren Manning to unseat Robin Miller, then this is a trend that needs to happen.


IndyCar Glitteri Offer Big Hairy Audacious Predictions for 2009

Some predictions for 2009 by Cavin, Miller, Oreo, the braintrust at TSO, as well as a few of the word butchers. Ironically, your humble host was one of the few to actually make SERIOUS predictions. What the heck was I thinking?

Regardless, bookmark that post so you can laugh at our poor prognostications. Truly, I insist, since we don't need to be encouraged any further to pretend as if we have any clue what's going to happen in the future.

(*Technically though, the late Miles Nelson of "Ovalicious" gets this title.)