By David G. Firestone
I’ve been on vacation for the whole of July. I’ll discuss it on Friday. Today, I want to discuss some racing news that has been going on during the month of July.
For the first time since 2004, IndyCar will be returning to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in 2019. I’m kind of shocked it took them this long to return there. There are a lot of tracks currently on the circuit that aren’t working, and they should have never left Laguna Seca. On that note, I’d like to see something like the Winston Million, but in IndyCar. If a driver wins 3 of the four races at Laguna Seca, Indianapolis, St. Petersberg, and Long Beach, they get a big bonus. This could be used to generate competition, and interest, since IndyCar needs both.
In the NHRA, Matt Hagan debuted the new Dodge Hellcat SRT body. I was wondering why Dodge would come out with a new body, since the current DSR Dodge body isn’t that old. Here is what Matt said about the new body:“We improved on the body design. It was already a great design, a great body. But now, we’re going to have a little more downforce, a little more traction on these racetracks, and it will be a huge performance advantage. We will be able to press harder, with more downforce on the nose, which translates into huge amounts of downforce on the run.” So this new body makes sense on paper. Yet Hagan didn’t make it past the first round in the two races he first ran in. I’m not seeing the advantage here,
Now on to Formula 1. It was announced that there would not be a Miami Grand Prix in 2019, so the focus is going to be having one in 2020. I don’t get this move at all. Why is Formula 1, which doesn’t have anywhere near the fan base in America than they do internationally, focused on holding TWO different events in the US? If you are going to hold a second race in a country, I have some suggestions on which country where it could be held: Italy, England, Germany, Australia, or Mexico. Pretty much any country could hold a second event, and I think that these countries would love to hold a second race. I’m not saying that F1 isn’t a box office draw in the States, I’m saying it would be a bigger box office draw in a country with a much larger fan base.
Finally on to NASCAR. The rumors are true, the Toyota Supra will become Toyota’s entry in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. I think it’s a great design, it’s a step up from the Camry, and it’s a better fit for the series. The question now becomes, will the Supra make its way to both the Cup Series, and the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series? I see the Supra in the Cup Series soon, but when it comes to the NHRA, the jury is still out. Toyota teams in the NHRA has just gotten new bodies last year, and I fail to see how this could improve.
That does it, I’ll be back on Friday with my vacation story.
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