Official Indy 500 entry list. - Page 4

Kicking-back · 12 Apr 2005, 17:03 (Ref:1276488)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

Speed TV has a story today that Centrix has confirmed that it will sponsor two Newman-Haas Panoz-Hondas in the Indy 500...

Bruno and Sebastian will obviously drive the entries....

Here is the link:

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/indycar/16181/

BTW...I like the livery they have chosen...looks sharp!!!

What a dream it would be if they could stay around for the rest of the season.

Sadly it won't happen

macdaddy · 12 Apr 2005, 18:56 (Ref:1276568)

Who's dream? Yours or Sebastien's?

macdaddy · 12 Apr 2005, 19:12 (Ref:1276580)

Joking aside, I'm rather surprised that Paul Newman's name is associated with this effort. Given that they have Centrix backing, I'm assuming that McDonalds was not interested for some reason. That also surprises me.

Tim Northcutt · 12 Apr 2005, 22:05 (Ref:1276697)

The Official List is now published:

36 entries with 33 named drivers...

The three without:

PDM Racing -- a Dallara Chevy

Curb/Agajanian/Beck -- Dallara Chevy

The 3rd Penske Car...

Of course, people could buy into back-ups as well...

rustyfan · 13 Apr 2005, 11:01 (Ref:1277028)

While this is a bit off-topic, I found it interesting but didn't feel that it was worth creating a whole new thread for it... From an interview with the latest Cup star Carl Edwards;

Quote:

Any thoughts of someday trying the Indy 500?

Edwards: Boy, that would be amazing. I'd have to do some serious testing in some open-wheel cars before I ever tried something like that. I mean, I love racing in any respect. I'd like to go do a lot of things. I'd still like to drive a midget at the Chili Bowl. That's one of my dreams. I'd like to run something at El Dora. And, yes, I'd definitely like to run IndyCars sometime. But, man, I'd want to really go wholeheartedly towards that. I couldn't just do that as a one-off race.

Dunno, guess I just wanted to show that Indy still has a special place among some of the younger drivers who haven't necessarily gone the open-wheel route, and perhaps we'll see Carl Edwards in a provisional entry list for a future Indy 500 some day

ensign14 · 13 Apr 2005, 11:03 (Ref:1277033)

Thirty-six entries. Congratulations, Tony George. Way to preserve the 500. Even the junk formula in the Depression got double that.

BootsOntheSide · 13 Apr 2005, 11:13 (Ref:1277040)

Completely different era there ensign. You've got to go back a long way to find this many entries at this stage - plenty more could emerge in the final week as well. The days of small teams being able to enter jsut the 500 simply for the sake of racing were long gone even before the split. At least the rac eis on an upward trajectory and has pretty much all the open-wheel stars worth having. If CART teams hadn't refused to hire Jeff Gordon in the early 90s, it would probably have him (and Tony Stewart/Carl Edwards/Matt Kenseth/Kasey Kahne/most of the other current NASCAR stars who aren't from the deep south)

rustyfan · 13 Apr 2005, 11:23 (Ref:1277047)

Completely agree, although you could scratch Kenseth from your list seeing as he - unlike the others - didn't come from a sprint car/midget background, but rather came up through the late model stock car ranks back home in his native Wisconsin and probably would have ended up in the Cup series sooner or later regardless of how the open-wheel scene in North America had looked like.

Sorry, couldn't keep the NASCAR-nerd from coming out there...

BootsOntheSide · 13 Apr 2005, 11:29 (Ref:1277051)

Istand corrected, but there are other names you can add in his place - isn't Ryan Newman from Indianapolis itself?

rustyfan · 13 Apr 2005, 11:45 (Ref:1277058)

Ryan Newman is definitely one driver who would be racing indycars today if he hadn't been lured to NASCAR. I seem to remember that he has even done some laps at Indy at one point, but I may be mistaken on that.

Casey Mears, Mike Bliss and Jason Leffler (who has one Indy 500 start, in 2000, and has said he'd like to run at Indy again in the future), while not exactly NASCAR superstars, could very well have been racing indycars as well.

Tim Northcutt · 13 Apr 2005, 11:54 (Ref:1277065)

Quote:

Originally Posted by BootsOntheSide

Istand corrected, but there are other names you can add in his place - isn't Ryan Newman from Indianapolis itself?

Born in South Bend, Indiana, about 120 miles north of Indy...but still in the open-wheel USAC hotbed for racing...

He attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, where he studied engineerin (my nephew was a classmate of his)....

Ryan was always on the NASCAR-focused path....going IRL wasn't in his plans....at least that's what my nephew told me...

rustyfan · 13 Apr 2005, 12:44 (Ref:1277131)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

Ryan was always on the NASCAR-focused path....going IRL wasn't in his plans....at least that's what my nephew told me...

Yes, but the question here is whether he would have been if the roles had been reversed and indycar racing had been the motor racing juggernaut in the US right now

Tim Northcutt · 13 Apr 2005, 13:26 (Ref:1277168)

Without the formation of the IRL, it would still be CART...

With its closed-club of self-serving owners....

They wouldn't hire Jeff Gordon in the early 1990s

and Tony Stewart openly says that he would have never gotten a ride at the Indy 500 without the IRL...

So I don't know if ti would have turned out differently or not....

rustyfan · 13 Apr 2005, 13:49 (Ref:1277180)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

Without the formation of the IRL, it would still be CART...

With its closed-club of self-serving owners....

They wouldn't hire Jeff Gordon in the early 1990s

and Tony Stewart openly says that he would have never gotten a ride at the Indy 500 without the IRL...

So I don't know if ti would have turned out differently or not....

Again, yes, but, c'mon, work with me here - think outside the current real-world box for a moment, set your mind free and so on...

Imagine a world - or an utopia that has become reality if you prefer that

- where the north-american open-wheel scene (not CART nor the IRL - just a single championship with the best of the two worlds but without any of the freckin' politics that have infested it for the past 10-15 years or so) was the racing championship in the US today, the one that got all the mainstream attention, had all the big-arse $15-million corporate sponsors etc (and yes, where Jeff Gordon was racing and being very successful & popular)... In other words, if it was more or less in the position that NASCAR is in today.

That is the fantasy scenario we're working with here.

Now tell me Ryan Newman wouldn't have gone for the Indy 500, rather than Daytona 500

BootsOntheSide · 13 Apr 2005, 13:55 (Ref:1277184)

I someone had hired Jeff Gordon, and he'd done as well as he could've done, by 1996 I'm sure USAC and similar guys would have been back in vogue with the top CART team owners. And, I'm convinced that everything else would be very different, and a single united CART series would be holding its own in the US and a cult niché market worldwide.

Tim Northcutt · 13 Apr 2005, 14:08 (Ref:1277190)

Quote:

Originally Posted by BootsOntheSide

I someone had hired Jeff Gordon, and he'd done as well as he could've done, by 1996 I'm sure USAC and similar guys would have been back in vogue with the top CART team owners. And, I'm convinced that everything else would be very different, and a single united CART series would be holding its own in the US and a cult niché market worldwide.

I have no doubt as well....and I agree with both of you on that point....

Kasey Kahne is high on my list...

Dave Steele & Tony Raines as well...

BTW....

Just so that you know, NASCAR owners are currently mining even deeper into the USAC open-wheel ranks right now by signing teenage hot-shoes to "Development Contracts" to secure them, and groom them by running them in the lower stock car ranks as future stars for their teams...

One kid to watch is Bobby East...I think either Hendrick or Evernham signed him???

Hell...maybe it was Ganassi's stock car side of it...

But the kid is a rocket on the race track...

But it has been happening for over a year now...and it will continue to be a feeder system for NASCAR talent...

ensign14 · 13 Apr 2005, 15:12 (Ref:1277214)

But given CART's evident success in 1995 and the haemorrhaging of attendances in 1996 when they went all USAC-type (supposedly) what was the point of fixing something that weren't broke?

Of course NASCAR benefitted hugely from the Split. And NASCAR basically funded it with the BY400. (Another desecration of the Indy heritage, BTW. And I'm a NASCAR fan.)

But now we have an Indy which in 1995 had a number of DNQs - including a certain Roger Penske. Now - pfft.

courageous · 13 Apr 2005, 22:43 (Ref:1277634)

at the end of the day, what happened happened. No point crying over spilt milk. Look on the bright side, now we have twice as many races with 10 cars at least in the leading pack; whatever the situation in non performance-restricted racing (not a pop, I hasten to add, I love touring cars also), you don't get many more potential winners than 10.

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