It's that blasted curse again, I know it!
I did not have a good Sunday.
I did not have a good today, either, because I had a long post about the Indy 500 that I spent half an hour typing up and my computer shut down on me and I lost it. Here is my rewrite, which I'm not sure is as good and as detailed:
~ Yay, Dario! I rather like him, so it was nice to see him get his first 500 win. Yahoo could have announced it using his name, though. What did they say? Ashley Judd's Husband Wins Indy 500. For crying out loud, he has a name! Call him Dario, not Mr. Ashley Judd!
~ Poor Tony Kanaan just can't seem to catch a break, can he? This totally looked like it would be his year, too. (He hit Dario with a pie, though, so I guess he didn't take it as hard as he could have.) His skid into the pit lane could have been much worse, and he proved what a good driver he is by recovering from it and not crashing into the divider.
~ The Andretti curse at Indy struck again. For those unaware of it, let me explain in brief: Mario won the race in 1969. Since then, none of the family members have been able to win it. (Those who have tried include Mario, Michael, Jeff, John and now Marco.) Three of them were out there on Sunday, Michael, John and Marco. Michael didn't make too much of an impression during the race, despite how good he felt about his car. John crashed out before the first rain delay. And Marco...deserves his own paragraph.
He ran a strong race from the beginning. He made some of the most aggressive passes I've ever seen, and he executed them so well that he seemed like a veteran driver (remember, he's twenty, and this is only his second season in the IRL). He even led the race for some time. After the first rain delay, AGR was running 1-2-3, with Tony in first, Marco in second and Danica in third. (Dario was in fifth, behind Vitor Meira.) Things were looking great for him until late in the race, when the pitting strategies everyone used muddled up the track. Then Marco and Dan Wheldon touched wheels on the backstretch.
His car flipped over. Literally. He slammed into the wall and then flipped over, rolling back upright on the grass in the middle of the oval.
Needless to say, I was petrified. I relaxed when I saw that he was able to walk - he walked away from the accident - but I was still really nervous. Fortunately, the cars are just that safe now.
A few other points of interest:
~ Milka Duno won the Bombadier Rookie of the Year trophy. I found out yesterday that she has four Masters degrees and earned three of them at the same time. Wow, I wish I could do that! She crashed out, too, but she hung in there for a long time for somebody who's not an open-wheeler by trade (she normally drives in a different series - she's done endurance races, too).
~ RAIN. Stephen Colbert wouldn't be too pleased. Rain really is influential! Actually, the weather played a huge factor in the race - many teams based their pitting schedules around it, and it may have inadvertently led to the traffic jam that ended with Marco and Dan's crash.
~ Two races are coming up soon - one on the 3rd and one on the 9th. The first one is on the Sunday after the school prom, but all my friends are either older than me or younger than me (I went to my friends' prom last year with them as a guest). Honestly, I'd rather watch IndyCar than go to the prom anyway. I'll be at a local car show on the 9th, but I'm going in the morning so that I don't miss the race later in the day. (Let's hope Marco can turn things around...he's having an awful season, and he drives better than his standing shows. That last crash also worried me so much...)
I did not have a good today, either, because I had a long post about the Indy 500 that I spent half an hour typing up and my computer shut down on me and I lost it. Here is my rewrite, which I'm not sure is as good and as detailed:
~ Yay, Dario! I rather like him, so it was nice to see him get his first 500 win. Yahoo could have announced it using his name, though. What did they say? Ashley Judd's Husband Wins Indy 500. For crying out loud, he has a name! Call him Dario, not Mr. Ashley Judd!
~ Poor Tony Kanaan just can't seem to catch a break, can he? This totally looked like it would be his year, too. (He hit Dario with a pie, though, so I guess he didn't take it as hard as he could have.) His skid into the pit lane could have been much worse, and he proved what a good driver he is by recovering from it and not crashing into the divider.
~ The Andretti curse at Indy struck again. For those unaware of it, let me explain in brief: Mario won the race in 1969. Since then, none of the family members have been able to win it. (Those who have tried include Mario, Michael, Jeff, John and now Marco.) Three of them were out there on Sunday, Michael, John and Marco. Michael didn't make too much of an impression during the race, despite how good he felt about his car. John crashed out before the first rain delay. And Marco...deserves his own paragraph.
He ran a strong race from the beginning. He made some of the most aggressive passes I've ever seen, and he executed them so well that he seemed like a veteran driver (remember, he's twenty, and this is only his second season in the IRL). He even led the race for some time. After the first rain delay, AGR was running 1-2-3, with Tony in first, Marco in second and Danica in third. (Dario was in fifth, behind Vitor Meira.) Things were looking great for him until late in the race, when the pitting strategies everyone used muddled up the track. Then Marco and Dan Wheldon touched wheels on the backstretch.
His car flipped over. Literally. He slammed into the wall and then flipped over, rolling back upright on the grass in the middle of the oval.
Needless to say, I was petrified. I relaxed when I saw that he was able to walk - he walked away from the accident - but I was still really nervous. Fortunately, the cars are just that safe now.
A few other points of interest:
~ Milka Duno won the Bombadier Rookie of the Year trophy. I found out yesterday that she has four Masters degrees and earned three of them at the same time. Wow, I wish I could do that! She crashed out, too, but she hung in there for a long time for somebody who's not an open-wheeler by trade (she normally drives in a different series - she's done endurance races, too).
~ RAIN. Stephen Colbert wouldn't be too pleased. Rain really is influential! Actually, the weather played a huge factor in the race - many teams based their pitting schedules around it, and it may have inadvertently led to the traffic jam that ended with Marco and Dan's crash.
~ Two races are coming up soon - one on the 3rd and one on the 9th. The first one is on the Sunday after the school prom, but all my friends are either older than me or younger than me (I went to my friends' prom last year with them as a guest). Honestly, I'd rather watch IndyCar than go to the prom anyway. I'll be at a local car show on the 9th, but I'm going in the morning so that I don't miss the race later in the day. (Let's hope Marco can turn things around...he's having an awful season, and he drives better than his standing shows. That last crash also worried me so much...)