Auto racing is as important to the Brain as food and water.
Okay, let's get something straight: The IRL should be renamed the Indy Recking League. They do nothing but crash into each other. The officiating is laughable. They only have a bunch of drivers whose reason for racing in the series begs the question: who turned down these drivers to have to take a ride in IRL. Plus the most important thing, Tony George is an asshole. His decision to change the way you get into the Indy 500 in 1996 has only hurt him. Hopefully, he will come to his senses and return the 500 to the glory of the past. The teams are mostly losers from other racing leagues anyway. Okay, I don't want to get off on a rant here, so I'll leave it at that.
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As I stated last week, the start of the Formula One season was not poised to be particulariily kind to McLaren. Congrat's to Shummi for his 'hat trick', and BOO FORD!!!
This is a little background on the best, technologically advanced racing in the world. Some will call it a high speed parade, but they are missing the subtlies. How well you qualify is almost as important as how you drive on Sunday. These days, drivers have trouble getting around cars that are performing at a similar lever. Once in 1997 three drivers qualified for a race with the exact time, down to the .00 of a second! You think NASCAR is close! That kind of performance does not come cheap. The cars cost anywhere between $6-10 million-- each! That doesn't include what it costs in driver developement, salary, promotion and so forth. The money it takes to put the Los Angeles Dodgers on the field for the season would maybe run a Formula One team for one year.Champion prediction of the year goes to........Michael Schumacher. Duh. Suprise of the year will be Jordan, Stewart, Ralf and Alex.
This is another great racing series. It's less expensive for the owners and sporsors. CART will sometime get you a better race than Formula One. CART has had not had the world wide exposure that formula one enjoys. CART is reaching out to different countries more and more lately, so they're not far behind.
The brain enjoys going to CART races whenever they're close enough (i.e. especially when they're in my own backyard). F1 is not close enough for me to go too easily, The price for a Formula One race is considerably more anyway. Compare a $200 weekend for a CART race to $350-$500 for a Formula One weekend.
My early season prediction for champion this season is..........Max Papis
The suprise of the year goes to Max Pappis and Juan Pablo Montoya.
This is a sport that heavy comsumption of beer is vital to thinking the game is moving faster than it is. If you are a fan or somehow coerced into attending this sport in person, I have found these tips to come in handy:
- Drink alcoholic beverages to the point of a 0.1 BAC-- minimum-- before the first pitch.
- Don't give up at 0.1, though. A steady stream of beverages are required through at least six innings of a nine inning game.
- Try not to get hit in the head by a bag of peanuts impatiently hurlded at you by a psychopathic peanut vendor.
- The shoulders of the person in front of you make an excellent ottoman.
- Under no conditions are you to refer to the ushers as 'gestapo' even if they won't let you into the owner's suite or buy a hotdog for Vin Sculley.
This sport has college coeds clad in skin-tight outfits jumping, lunging, spiking, squeeling and generally being sporty. Very nice. I don't men to diminish their talent, butt they are hot. Check out the 'tweener' on number 11!.
This is where the best 40-50 national soccer teams compete against each other for a month or two. The games starts out slow but after a few weeks the fate of an
entire country can be determined by one game! No room for mistakes to say the least. If you lose, they won't forget for at least four years. Is that fair? Who remembers what the New Orlean Saints did three years ago? I don't. If you hail from England or a South American Country, it is in vogue to burn, destroy, loot and riot throughout the entire town after a win or a loss. The Krauts("kraut" in german means a tasty side dish) and the Pollacks ("pollack" in Polish means "Pole") don't riot after a game usually--
the Krauts are too scared.
Football has some of the craziest fans of any sport save English "soccer."
The Brain lives in the Southwest Los Angeles area; so, I can't go to games without one of three things happening: I could drive five to seven hours north to see a game; pay untold sums to fly to a game; or drive two hours south to Mexico to see the Chargers. I konw the Chargers don't play "in" Mexico, but
have you been to San Diego lately? So, I just watch the games at home .
