Notes from Indy

A neck brace was put on Alex Lloyd after he crashed, and he was taken to the track's hospital before he was transported to Methodist Hospital complaining of neck pain……….Danica Patrick ran over Chuck Buckman on pit lane. He was crew member for Dale Coyne Racing. Buckman suffered a concussion and facial cuts in the incident, which happened at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at about 2 p.m. Patrick was driving on pit lane when she struck Buckman, who is not a member of Patrick's team and was trying to examine one of Coyne's cars. The impact threw Buckman into the air, and he struck his head on the ground ………….Reports of rain headed toward Indy again, not sure we will get a full day of practice in……An interesting theory/rumor in the paddock was related to why Penske moved his team from CART to the IRL. The theory presented by an unnamed source was that Penske was on the board of ISC and part of the 'oval track cartel.' CART was moving away from ovals and towards road racing. Penske and the France family thought the IRL could bring big crowds to races at ISC tracks and make them more money. That is why Penske jumped to the IRL. It was all about money and greed. In hindsight we all know the IRL failed on most of those ISC ovals. This person who had this theory thought that the France family used Penske as a pawn to lure in the IRL to their tracks so they can kill off the races with little to no promotion and make open wheel racing look bad, which of course made NASCAR look good. In reality the split had as much or more to do with those races failing, but it’s an interesting theory nonetheless.