Balls and Tires

                       Helio, Wheldon and Dixon have all won at Richmond before. The rest of the field will most likely chase those three this weekend.

The Suntrust Indy Challenge at Richmond is sure to offer lots of exciting and close racing to its fans. RIR is the shortest track that the IndyCar Series will run at this season (3/4 mi.) and also a very demanding one. Three former winners are in the field, those three being Indy 500 champ Scott Dixon (won @ RIR in 2003), Dan Wheldon (2004) and Helio Castroneves (2005). I firmly believe that all three of these guys are going to be in the front at the end this year, but the question is what order will they be in?

Here’s a statistic that should be noted: The past two races at RIR have been won by Indy 500 winners (Hornish in 06 and Franchitti in 07). I usually don’t really care about stats like this, because both of those drivers dominated the series in that year, anyways. However, another stat that I paid attention to earlier this year, the fact that Indy 500 winners have finished 2nd at the Milwaukee Mile for the past few years now, came true again this year with the Kiwi. And considering that this stat also would involve Dixon, I’m going to make the BOLD prediction that he wins his 4th race of the season at RIR. However, Helio will have the fastest car and lead the most laps. His car has been solid as of late, but at Iowa the result doesn’t show that. He was quick all day, but a tire went down and Viso make contact with Helio’s tire late, forcing him to pit. He won’t change his winless streak this weekend, unfortunately. Wheldon finishes third; Hunter-Reay finishes fourth…he impressed me with his run @ Iowa last weekend and he will build on that; Vitor Meira catches some breaks for once and finishes fifth.

Who will surprise?

Besides Hunter-Reay, who I think shouldn’t even be mentioned as a dark horse because his car is great and he is as talented as they come, my eye is on A.J. Foyt IV aka Quattro to see if he can run another solid race on a short track. His fifth place finish at Iowa was surprising to say the least, but I think he has a good chance to run in the top 10 again this weekend. With some confidence on short tracks, Quattro could be a factor. Look for Hideki Mutoh to have a strong car again this weekend as well. He finished second to Wheldon at Iowa and is on a roll..that’s not really a surprise, but more of a “who to watch for” kinda thing.

Ed Carpenter sees no difference between these two cars.

“I just started working with my car, working towards the front but Danica was doing her normal supreme block job. She is the new Scott Sharp of the series as far as I am concerned. That is two races in a row.”

This was said after Sunday’s Indy Corn 250 at Iowa Speedway, which was won by Dan Wheldon. Eddy had a rough day, finishing 23rd after hitting the wall on lap 38. At first glance, it just seems that Carpenter had a crappy day and he wanted someone to yell at for a few short moments. However, Scott Dixon, who ended up fourth at Iowa, said similar things, calling her a “menace”. Has DP really become the Scott Sharp of the series? I think emotions were running a little too high that day and the comments should be taken with a grain of salt. However, I’ll be the first to say that DP is grossly underachieving this year and in years past. Apparently many drivers were complaining about other drivers blocking (i.e. Marco w/ Dixon) and it just seemed like it was hard to find a good line in traffic. Drivers are still learning Iowa, too. After two years, only a minority of the drivers (DP included) have raced in both races, so it will take a few years to really get a fluent feel of the track.

Also, an extremely classy move for TCGR to give all of their winnings to the flood victims in Iowa. Two class acts in Wheldon and Dixon.

Also, I am looking forward to the Suntrust Indy Challenge this Saturday. It is a 3/4 mi. track that brings a lot of close exciting racing to the table. My pick will come later.