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Happened to be down in Florida and managed to get some good turn 1 tickets for Sunday, had a great time. When I first got there in the morning, didn't even know where I was going and went straight to the garage and saw plenty of drivers like Hinch, Franchitti, Dixon, SeaBass and I was just walking along and looked up and Castroneves nearly crashed into me on his scooter, and even saw Roger Penske and Michael + Mario Andretti. Thought it was really cool cause only race I've ever previously been at was Monaco '08 and never got even close to any of the drivers there. Then the first support race I watched was Star Mazda, and about 5 mins into that race two guys made contact and one of them barrel rolled and hit the wall and had a little fire, it was one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen, wish I could figure out the driver's name though. All the supports were good, and the indycars weren't to bad either, a caution in the final few laps would've been nice, and maybe a wee little mix up in turn one but it was a good race none the less. Oh, and the cars sounded and looked absolutely fantastic in real life. Overall was an awesome experience. Here's some pics, I took like 1300 so I got lots to go through and I'll probably post more when I get some time in the motorsport photos forum.

Castroneves giving me a 10/10 pre-race smile:


Hinch!


Rubens!




Rollover crash:

Nice pics!

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I'd have another option in the poll: No, this car is terrible.

It has all the problems the old car did, with more reliability issues (despite 9 months of testing), and more ugly. I don't understand how we've gotten to where we have.

Great photos F1Peter.

I only saw the last 26 laps, and it seemed pretty much like last year, they could have quite easily taken last years car and put a different body kit on it

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

This wasn't a bad race, it was unpredictable and we had quite a lot of battles. Most was missed by the TV director but I enjoyed what I saw from the new car.

I for one have no real problem with the new car. More power would be nice, but as far as asthetics go, much better in action that I would have thought. Bring on Barber!

[youtube]5LKcm4V8l7I&hd=1[/youtube]

I loved all the onboard cameras in this first race. It was a true spectacle!

My favorite onboard shots were frm Dario Franchitti's car.

Here are a few other photos from the race for anyone who is interested: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 117&type=1

That gave me the chills...

Yep, I'm a bit depressed about it tbh, I was hoping this was Indycars great moment of transition.
I know Champcar is long dead and that formula will never come back but I was hoping for something slightly more racy than what we've got, not just more of the same shit with wheel guards on it...

I don't know if the whole wanting to see less downforce and more power is becoming an old fashioned notion, and I'm just getting older.
Its not just Indycar either, GP3, F2 and a few other series have gone down the removing horsepower and huge wings route, so maybe that's just what racing is becoming and I have to get used to it?
Heck even F1 is rev-limited up the wazoo now too

Maybe I'm getting old fashioned, and I know St Pete isn't the best track for passing and ABC did a terrible job, blah blah blah, but the product served up by Indycar is just more of the same old over-downforced crap and I'm not sure I want to bother watching it.
I'm definitely not watching Texas based on what we have now.

I too was disapointed with the race it'self, but IndyCar needed this race to go the way it did.

-No First corner BS
-No Scary crashes
-Drivers using their heads
-Helio climbing THAT fence

Yes it was kinda dull, but St Pete has always been kinda dull. Barber, with it's undulations, and blind apexs, maybe that will be something else, we don't know yet. All I know is that everyone got through OK, and helped IndyCar back on it's feet.

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"Every day on Memorial weekend, comes the chance to cross these bricks, and live forever. No votes, no politics, no thanks to the Academy. Nothing. Just driver, machine, and pursuit of immortality"

It's interesting that the cars can now rub side to side without any obvious consequences - once the drivers realise that it could make the racing a lot more interesting.

Only sideways car I saw was Marco Andretti after he got wide onto the marbles - agree it'd be nice to have more sliding cars, especially given how much sideways action an average F1 race has now. Can the organisers turn up the boost for more power if they wanted to?

Probably not an option at the moment, due to unreliability and not many engines available to begin with.

But if the Menard V6 was the most powerful engine at Indy, 17 years ago, I don't see why this engine formula wouldn't be able to produce at least 100HP more than what it does now.

Yeaa, I would keep them as they are for now until Chevy and Honda are comfortable with the reliability of their engines. Best not to wait for Lotus.

Josef Newgarden was my man of the race. Any questions?

I understand you and agree with every line you've said. But that's it, I think we'll have to get accustomed to this car, at least this year. Pretend there wasn't IndyCar in the past, pretend that this is the first IndyCar season ever, that you'll get used to the new car. If it depended on me, IndyCars would all look exactly like 90's Reynards, Lolas and Swifts again.

Unfortunately the responsible for racing series cannot see things the way fans want (because actually fans world wide do not complain officially either). I'm sure If there were organizations of fans asking for changes on IndyCar races, they would at least think twice before making a decision about a new car, a new track and etc.

The situation is so serious that to think there were people imagining a DeltaWing on IndyCar, it gives me panic! DeltaWing attempt on IndyCar gives us a little notion of how many stupid people surrounds racing competitions around the Globe....crazy people who don't understand Racing as a media spectacle (Not only technology and development).

Anyone who expected greatness from the new car at the first race or judging its ultimate potential on the first race is either completely new to motorsports or clueless. The introduction of major rule changes always has a period of adjustment - see F1 2009, NASCAR 2007.

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Yeah, aesthetics aside, it's way too early to panic about the performance of the cars. The engines are new and nowhere near unleashed to their full potential yet, and the teams have really only had two months to get themselves accustomed to the new chassis. Look at it this way. They had ages and ages with the last chassis and had it pretty much maxed out everywhere they went. And the first official race weekend with the new car featured a track record in qualifying.

Of course there's no guarantee the DW12 is going to blossom into a beast, but there's no logical reason whatsoever to write it off after one race.

You know, if this were a new series launching today, based on the car I would not be interested.
Its the same reason I went off F2 after a few races
"Hey this series seems alright....oh wait no, the car is boring and the racing is boring"
And yet despite its stupid concept its the opposite of why I followed Superleague Formula, proper racing cars putting on some of the best open wheel on the planet.
Again, as was the case with the series with the best on-track product, the marketing men make a hash of selling the series and package it in such a way that turned off everyone who could've been a fan of it, but the on-track package was sound.

Its only the history and tradition of the series that keeps me watching in the vain hope we'll someday get back to those golden days.

ATM it seems the resolution to the great split gave us was IRL racing formula on Champcar street tracks, which imo is the worst possible combination of what we had back then.
I'd even have been happy with Champcar machines running the all oval IRL schedule if it meant that on-track product was saved over the high downforce formula of the IRL....

In most other aspects it seems Indycar wants to be what CART was but they don't seem to get the majority of what CART was wasn't the street and road course racing or even the "star" drivers and teams of the 90s, it was the quality of racing that made it big.

It seems those days are long, long gone now.