"like a used car"

[rabbit]

I didn't catch Windbag on Wednesday, but last night Depain said PG was saying something to the affect that this is like "when you have to drive a used car until you can afford to buy a new one."

It sounds like things are going to be a little lean in the paddock this year -- no surprise there. I'm not saying that we're going to have a second-rate series. What I'm saying that, while a lot of the glitz and glamour may be stripped off, the core product, the reason we buy tickets, is still the same. I don't know about you, but I don't go to races to see hospitality tents. I go to see guys driving the wheels off a car.

The spit and polish will return. It just may take a little while. But in spite of that, I'm stoked. This whole thing, the reason this series keeps hanging on, is because it's all about the racing. No more stockholders to please. No more Indy-centric team owners to please. Just racers. I just wish Long Beach was a little sooner 'cause I need a fix!

Drop the flag! (©Railbird)

[JT265]

Actually, I think that's more of DePain taking things out of context. 1st thing he did was ask Paul why CART would lend him 63million dollars. Paul set him straight about that, and then Dave asked about budgets, PG told him that after the intial 15 mil, it was a private matter but stressed that they had a five year plan and a budget in place which they were gonna follow to the letter.

That's when PG made the used car analogy.

[mueber]

DePain :D has going for him the same distinctive quality of most talk radio blowhards: an absolute grasp of half of the facts.

To his credit, however, unlike Wednesday's show, he didn't brown-nose boy george on Thursday. The question of where the money is going to come from is a legitimate question, and that is as far as he went.

[cartcanuck]

I'll be interested to see how Speed covers CCWS news in the next few months. They really seemed to treat CART as the ugly stepchild lately, but now it's a viable series that going to have a series in 2004, so we'll see what they do.

The same with Despain. I like his show, I like his take on a lot of things, and I loved his rant at the end of last season where he ripped into a lot of callers about his being "shill" or whatever. Already on Wednesday night his tone and approach towards CART seemed more favourable. Let's hope this continues in the future. He seems to know more about racing than most of the *ahem* journalists out there, so I'm hoping he'll be giving CCWS it's fair shot on his show.