Indy 500

acquiescefc

Im going. Cant believe its happening. So excited, got seats high-ish in Turn 3.

My first IRL race, have followed this with a passion over the last few years, converting from Champ Cars about the time Franchitti did.

Have been to one similar race - Champ cars@ Rockingham - but this is going to be so much better.

Anyone else been, any recommendations. Should be driving down on Saturday and staying locally then going to the track early on race day.

aidan_dunne

Lucky you. Would love to go to it myself. It's one of the events I have down on my list of races I someday hope to attend, along with the likes of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the Le Mans 24 Hours, the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa (I've just got to get seats for Eau Rouge! ) and a few others. Hope you have fun!

By the way, have you heard that Tony George (boss of Indianapolis and the IRL) and Kevin Kalkhoven (boss of ChampCar) have entered negotiations and apparantly are close to finalising a deal to re-merge the two series into one again? It seems that the ever-rising popularity of NASCAR has really hit both series hard and both men now seem to be of the opinion that two rival series' isn't doing the cause of open-wheel racing in the States any good and that the only way to get people interested in open-wheel racing again is to put the past differences between the two series aside, join forces again and launch a rejuvinated series that will perhaps eat into NASCAR's viewership figures once more.

I hope this does happen because, since the split in 1996, open-wheel racing in the States has been literally torn in two and has been completely wrecked, in my opinion. ChampCar was the leading series up until about 2001 when the lure of the "big-one", the Indy 500, was too much for a lot of the big teams in ChampCar and they decided to defect to the IRL. This certainly helped increase the popularity of the IRL over ChampCar then but even having big names like Andretti, Ganassi, Penske, etc., wasn't enough to stop the rising popularity of NASCAR. Having two rival series' competing against one another definitely hasn't done open-wheel racing in the States any good, that's for sure. So I do hope we will see an agreement to merge both series' and we'll get to see a strong Indycar series again like we had in the past with all the top teams competing against one another again and competing on some of the great tracks like Indy, Long Beach, Surfer's Paradise etc. again.

gs39t

Hope you enjoy it. I had the pleasure of being at this years Daytona 500; a lifelong dream come true. I'd love to head to the Brickyard one day, too

Corben Dallas

Hope they do join Champ Car and IRL up again, pretty much all the IRL has to offer is the INDY 500, other races arent as good, plus Indycar racing needs the 500 + legendary road courses such as Long Beach, Watkins Glen, Mid Ohio, Portland etc. Plus they could bring back the Michican 500 >the fastest of them all Average lap speed 240mph+ :O

Jonny Arson

I'd love to go to the Indy 500!

Lets just jope there will be 33 cars this year because teams are struggling financially big time this season.