Infineon IndyCar Saturday Notebook

Hello from a sunny and beautiful Sonoma, California where the Indy Lights and IndyCars are in action this weekend. The weekend schedule is just two days, instead of the traditional three days, that road course events sometimes are. IndyCar has gone to a 2-day format to most of its races to save the teams some money……..The Historic Grand Prix F1 cars just finished their 30-minute session and it's always good to see the cars I grew up watching. They bring back many good memories…….Ran into Memo Gidley who tells us he will probably drive in 2 of the final 3 Grand-Am races. He won't be in the Montreal race because the team is going to run a couple of NASCAR drivers who bring much needed money to the team. Between races Memo continues to race Jet Skis and Go-Karts…….For safety reasons the IndyCars do not run all the way down to the final hairpin turn like NASCAR and some other series do. Instead another hairpin was created about 200-yeards up the road. Too bad because the run down to the real final turn is a good place to overtake under braking. I remember doing a lot of passing into that corner under braking when I raced the Jim Russell German F3 cars here last year. More as the day progresses. Mark C. reporting from Infineon Raceway