Observations from Michigan

The weatherman is calling for HOT weather, 94 degrees with high humidity on race day. Look for this to kill walk-up sales. Saturday has a chance of thunderstorms, which has the potential to kill qualifying which doesn't start until 2:45.

We hear that the walk-up cash sales for 2002's IRL race at Michigan was 2,000 seats. That's right… 2,000. The rest were comps and corporate deals. This lagged far behind the previous year's CART sales.

IRL CAR COUNTS AT MIS:
2002 – 25
2003 – 21
2004 – 22
2005 – 23
2006 – 19

Bill Janitz is leaving MIS after the August NASCAR race. He's going to be the PR guy for Tony Stewart's business holdings (Eldora, etc).

Absolutely no one mentioned moving the MIS race to Detroit today. Detroit at Belle Isle wasn't popular with drivers, but as the DetNews article pointed out, many of the current IRL drivers never raced at Detroit.

Quite frankly, we can't see anyone getting excited about open-wheeled racing in Detroit if none of the Big 3 are represented. Having a bunch of Hondas racing in Detroit would be like having NASCAR race Fords, Mopars and Chevys in Tokyo. Tim Wohlford reporting from Michigan