JrCanuckFan did a quick write-up of last night's IndyCar race at Kentucky Speedway, but I wanted to elaborate a bit much, and frankly, get on my soap box a bit.Admittedly, this has been a terrible year for the racing in general, particularly on the ovals. The Dallara chassis has been around for 7 years, and with a rule book that keeps tightening, the cars have gotten more and more equal, and as such it's gotten harder to harder to pass. The result has been boring racing dominated by the big two teams: Penske and Ganassi.
IndyCar, to their credit, realized things couldn't continue this way, and made some aerodynamic rule tweaks, allowing the teams to experiement a little. Push-to-pass, an extra 5-20 horsepower 12 second boost everytime the drivers pressed the button, was also implemented.
If any specific change did it, or a combination of, it worked last night in Kentucky. The side-by-side racing all through the field that IndyCar is known for returned. While the race was eventually won by Penske's Ryan Briscoe, the big teams didn't dominate. Five different teams ended up in the top six, and Vision Racing's Ed Carpenter came oh so close to winning his first race. After spending the final 10-15 laps side-by-side, Briscoe nipped Carpenter by .0162 seconds, the 7th closest finish in series history.
Below in a fan video of the closing laps. I have a feeling many here wonder why I love IndyCar so much, and admittedly there's a lot of (mostly off-track) things messed up about this series. In the end, you just can't get this kind of side-by-side action consistenly anywhere else.
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