ten ₱esos

I’m watching the Kansas IndyCar race on ABC in high definition.

In the pre-race show, Marty Reid tells us that Silvestro de Simona is one of the women who’ll race. Her name is Simona De Silvestro, Marty.

Marco has surged from 26th to 15th in 9 laps, and teammate Ryan is also moving forward through the field. Good show.

Their teammate Danica has drifted backward. I’m not surprised.

Firestone ad has a slow, elderly voice, grainy sepia-tone still photos, some greyscale video clips and old color footage of Mario Andretti approaching victory lane in 1969 — underwhelming, uninspiring ad that doesn’t move me to purchase Firestone tires

Lap 13 – The Target cars are changing places

Lap 15 – Briscoe Inferno leads the race

Lap 19 – John Andretti passes Will Power

Scott takes second from Dario on lap 21. Now we can see first, second and third on screen – nice.

Wheldon is in 24th place. Will Power is in 15th. Embarrassing for both, I’m sure.

In the pre-race show (half-hour) and the race, no one mentions or shows Jay Howard, Alex Lloyd, Baguette, Moraes, Mutoh, Sato, Tagliani, Viso or Wilson! Sarah Fisher was shown briefly in the pre-race show when the women racers were introduced to the TV audience. Meira has been mentioned once briefly on track. Conway’s blue and yellow car was shown, but I want to see Justin Wilson! How’s he doing? Give his sponsor some air time!

Why didn’t ABC show the starting line-up, two-by-two before the race, as is customary? Alex Tagliani started fifth (good for a new team!), while wonder boy Ryan Hunter-Reay started 22nd! The dominator, Will Power, started fifth behind Hideki, I think (unsure). ABC should have showed and explained the whole grid.

Marco is up to 11th place! Good work!

Wheldon is still toiling in 24th, behind Milka Duno. He started 27th (last).

Meira is mentioned and shown in fourth place before ABC television show promos. Why show three promos for sexcapades that I will never watch?

Local ads follow …

Wheldon is a lap behind the field by lap 42.

More ads shown — national ads, side-by-side with race action (good!).

Izod is showing a good variety of its “race to the party” campaign ads rather than replaying only one one as it did earlier in the season.

First Peak ad, first Honda ad, another ABC show promo

Lap 48 – Briscoe pits

Viso is first mentioned on lap 49.

Lap 54 – Power’s fuel stop is botched. But he wasn’t contending for the lead today-

Hideki Mutoh not mentioned nor shown-

Lap 51 – back to side-by-side (ads and race onscreen)

Lively Brazil coffee ad – I like it!

Slow, maudlin Firestone ad with the voice of a man on his death bed is the polar opposite of the Brazilian coffee ad!

Another ABC promotional spot for a TV show that I’ll never see

NBA playoffs promotion – I don’t care. I want to watch racing!

back to on-track action on lap 58 (!)

Jay Howard is mentioned the first time

Meira dropped from 4th to 5th after A.J. Foyt Racing pit service (too bad)

Power is a lap behind due to his fouled pit stop.

Lap 63 – Dario is seven seconds behind his teammate leading the race. Maybe Dario’s saving fuel, which is his winning custom.

Jay Howard is 3 laps behind the leader by lap 63 (!) Should’ve let Graham race that car unless it’s contractually impossible-

Mutoh and Sato are mentioned then shown on lap 67.

Justin is two laps behind on lap 70?! AUGH!

Dixon passed Whanica on lap 71.

At lap 72, another ABC promo for desperate Housewives

Local ads follow

E.J. Viso’s car pulled into paddock by crew.

Why are the racers circulating under yellow flags?! No wreckage on track!

12 cars on lead lap

Leaders are pitting again — Why? Why not resume green flag racing?!

14 or 15 cars come to pits for service.

Lap 76 side-by-side advertisements and live video during yellow-flag time

Another Izod ad is on.  This one shows Tony Kanaan.

Brazilian coffee “fuels, excites, satisfies..” I don’t like coffee, but I like this ad.

Resume full-screen to show Milka squeezing Sato (why?!) and Briscoe driving a ‘tricycle (why?) Unclear why he had no left-front tire …

Laps 74- 83 yellow/caution (groan)

resume racing on lap 84

Takuma Sato is mentioned and shown again.

Whanica is a lap behind the leader, in 17th place while her teammates march forward through the field

– except Marco, who lost a spot and is 16th, the last racer on the lead lap.

Alex Taginai is mentioned for the first time on lap 90! Good job, ABC!

side-by-side for ads again on lap 90 — GoDaddy.com, Honda and soccer on ABC – Tony Kanaan passes for position!

One more ABC promo, then back to full-screen racing

Mario Moraes is still not mentioned or shown by ABC. His teammates wouldn’t have gotten air time earlier if they hadn’t been in shunts.

Sarah Fisher’s car is not shown on track or mentioned. Conway is ignored … We saw his blue and yellow car briefly near the start of the race — but that’s all.

How to sell sponsors on benefits if their brands are not shown to TV viewers? Only at-track B-to-B hospitality benefits?

Wheldon up to 19th at lap 100 (half way to finish). Dr. Jerry Punch said that Dan’s team had said that tire pressure had been problematic before last pit stop.

Princess Blocksalot, a lap behind, won’t let Helio pass her. She drifts right again and again rather than stay low and let Helio go around her. He is not a lap down! I’ll bet that he remembers this difficulty.

Scott Goodyear: “He’s gotta hold her down so she won’t walk up the race track.” How can he do that? I wonder as he passes anyway. Then Tony Kanaan, Whanica’s teammate, zooms past her like she’s coasting!

93 or 200 laps remain – more ABC promos (V and Cougar Town)

Good ad for Gulf Power Earth Sense followed by a lame Hardee’s ad, Chevy dealer and a charity event

Whanica pits from 17th place on the track.

Scott Dixon has lead 83 laps, and Briscoe Inferno led 31 laps.

Only 12 cars are on the lead lap.

Justin Wilson, Marco Andretti, Alex Lloyd, and Jay Howard are two laps behind the leader, Scott Dixon

Debris on track reportedly, so yellow flags wave, and Honda Accord pace car zooms past TV camera

car part lies on speed-up lane between pit lane and race track

track-sweeping trucks (big municipal street-sweepers) and

Holmatro Safety Crew’s Honda Ridgelines and

Ford and Chevy heavy-duty trucks with huge blower nozzles (owned by ISC/Kansas Speedway? IndyCar Series?)

Racers come to pit lane again!

Helio’s stop is 1.9 seconds longer than the Ganassi teams’ stops

The second time we see Rick Davis’s helmet camera view of Dixon’s pit stop

Pit stops done, but track is still being swept, so side-by-side track view and advertising

Brazilian coffee “drives, fuels, stimulates, excites, satisfies”

Nature Valley ad’s first showing – Oats ‘N Honey granola bars – nice

Peak coolant, ABC’s Desperate Housewives (again), ABC’s Modern Family (again)

Scott’s first, Dario’s second, T.K.’s third, Mutoh’s fourth, & Helio is fifth.

Mario Moraes is mentioned for the first time, as a racer on the lead lap, but he is not shown.

Another replay of Scott’s pit stop. This one’s from the car’s camera.

Why does the caution period persist?!

I see cars speeding past a TV camera so that I momentarily wonder if the green flag’s being waved. Six racers had been waved-around the pace car: Power, Conway, Andretti, Howard, Whanica and another.

Tagliani is mentioned again (sixth place)

Ryan Hunter-Reay has advanced the most in his pit stops (five places!)

Ryan’s “focus is to be competitive.” Really? Competition is his focus? Is that how he won the last race?  Maybe his teammate Danica’s focus could be competition rather than pedaling around …

Tagliani tries to sweep past Ryan Hunter-Reay!

Moraes is shown passing John Andretti, who’s going ‘backward’

Andretti comes forward to Moraes, goes left, below white line, loses downforce, falls behind… comes back to pass someone (Sato?) for 12th, the last position on lead lap

Dan Wheldon is 14th, so he’s gone from 25th to 19th to 14th…

Dario is now much closer to Scott, so I guess that he isn’t conserving fuel.

Lap 136 – back to side-by-side: lively Izod ad, morose Firestone, Verizon/Motorola Droid, Honda

– on the left of the screen, I see Hideki Mutoh holding his own versus Briscoe!

I love side-by-side, in both senses: the racing video beside ads and the side-by-side racing for a position on the track!

Come back to full-screen to show the crowd in the grandstand and NBA promotion rather than racing. ABC/ESPN is full of itself.

Dario is slowing half a mile per hour now. Maybe he’s been told to conserve fuel.

Briscoe’s still vying for fourth!

Hideki Mutoh of Newman-Haas racing is using Graham Rahal’s pole-winning car setup from Kansas race last year. And he’s excelling.

Tony Kanaan reportedly likes his third-place car enough though it understeers slightly and doesn’t have the pace of the Target cars. I guess that means he can deal with it; he can race it. He’s a racer through-and-through.

Sato versus Helio for sixth

Helio for sixth

good airtime today for Sato’s Lotus-liveried car

He started eleventh, now sixth or seventh despite pitting after Milka nerfed him.

Helio used push-to-pass button to take sixth place — now he’s behind 15th-place willpower.

NBA on ABC promotion, Happy Town on ABC promotion, local ads

Fourth-place Hideki Mutoh drafting and using push-to-pass in trying to take third place from Kanaan.

Mario Moraes 11th place – last racer on lead lap — enters pit lane

Will Power follows

31 laps — side-by-side, which I don’t mind peppy Brazilian coffee ad with peppy music

I’m watching three cars together, then two side-by-side, a pass

… another two side-by-side, another pass,  a re-pass

fullscreen, but John Force NHRA promo for ESPN2

RH-R pits

Scott sweeps around Simona

Justin smokes rf tire stopping in his pit

9.2 seconds – not fast — but first airtime Justin got today!

John Andretti pits, Kanaan pits, Mutoh pits, TK exits ahead of him (good!)

Dario stops for 6.9 seconds (compare to Justin’s 9.2)

I feel sorry for Justin.

Jay Howard walls his car -why?  First time he’s been seen today

Inert yellow-and-white car in middle of track and yellow-suited driver slowly emerging reminds me of Ed Carpenter, whose yellow and white cars only got airtime when he crashed.

Sarah’s car is pointed-out for the first time in the video replay of her employee’s crash. She should’ve had Graham in the other car unless impossible. He qualified fastest in Kansas last year!

Marty Reid says that Jay is “walking under his own power.” How else would he walk? With battery power?

20 laps left – more ‘side-by-side’ (ads) during yellow flag running

nice Izod ad with Wheldon, Honda Crosstour ad, slow Firestone ad, Window World ad

return – Helio’s in second place! Scott, Helio, Dario, TK, Hideki Mutoh still behind TK. How did Helio get into second?! No one will tell us.

Crowd is shown in grandstand, still entertained, still happy — nice to see, but I want to see racing

Another, longer Indy 500 on ABC promotion

Accord pace car lights are still lit. Does it take this long to take away SFR car?!

16 laps remain — Let’s have some racing!

TK gets air time — video and radio conversation

2 Japanese guys crash at the green flag! AUGH!

I wanted to watch racing, but “yellows breed yellow.” I had thought that Hideki knew how to race; he ain’t a rookie.

Video replay — whose fault? I would have guessed that rookie Sato was at fault, but I can’t discern from one replay. Show it again slower!

(nope; ABC won’t)

“The field is competitive. This is a competitive series.” (Mike Hull, Chip Ganassi Racing) I had no idea that the field was competitive; I’d thought that this was a downtown parade. And a racing series is a “competitive series.” I learn something new every day.

7 laps remain

NO restart! Why?

Scott Goodyear reports that debris is still on the track.

6 laps remain — restart (glad!)

Dario wants to take second place from Helio! Romancini mentioned for the first time — only because he’s mixed with the leaders…

Helio uses p2p, Dario uses it and takes second (he’s glad, I guess)

25.73 seconds: fastest lap of race (Dario)

Ganassi teams 1, 2 Penske team third, Andretti team fourth

TK sets fastest lap — 25.6 seconds

HC allows TK underneath him

TK wants Dario, looking high, looking low, high AGAIN

Scott wins in Kansas again.

Ganassi wins 4 years at Kansas.

Scott has led 740+ or 100 laps there.

Gorgeous video in victory lane from jib cam

Love high resolution video and the beautiful scene

beautiful video from cameraman standing before Scott’s car (Chip’s car)

Scott has won two consecutive Kansas Speedway IndyCar races.

After  four previous races this season he’s redeemed himself by returning to winner’s circle.

Scott says that winning the (oval) race right before the Indy 500 is good (confidence-boosting, I guess; racers have talked in years past about ‘carrying momentum to Indy 500 qualifying)

Second place in points is good also!

Dario says that he enjoyed racing with his buddy (and former teammate) Kanaan.

I love the jib camera video!

Tony Kanaan got a podium finish! Helio had been in second, Dario third and TK fourth. What happened to Helio? I’m happy for TK, though. He had hated his car setup for days. “We didn’t have a fast car,” he says, and says that his teammates gave him “good pit stops.” He’s obviously a great racer who overcame his car’s deficiencies and was ‘the best of the rest’ after the Ganassi teammates.

Helio in interview has perfect hair as usual for his interview (fourth place)

Too bad about pole sitter Ryan Briscoe (losing a wheel?! In Team Penske?!) He had led 31 laps, I think…

I never knew what happened to Justin Wilson today. Where did Tagliani finish? What happened to Marco today? … ABC sucks.

Suave shown on Dario’s back! perfect! Target, Suave (and Chip) must love that!

Podium celebration (trophies, champagne)? No, not on ABC … “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS”

The next IndyCar race, as ABC reminds us again and again, is Indy 500 at end of the month (on ABC).

Update: I found online what ABC wouldn’t show: Ryan Hunter-Reay had raced from 22nd to fifth (commendable!) while Ryan Briscoe settled for sixth after he lost a wheel and had to pit an extra time.