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Bob McMurray catches up with the US military - Source: ONE Sport -
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May 18, 2009
As Robbie says today at the track is "bump" day.
I had to explain to a friend of mine once that the "bump" referred to the bumping of the slowest car off the Indy 500 grid by a faster car, not that all pregnant women got into the track for free!
Today is also Armed Forces Day.
We are surrounded by tanks, guns, armoured personnel carriers and Hummers from the National Guard, Blackhawk, Chinook and Apache helicopters and a very impressive fly past from the Air Force, rescue boats from the Coast Guard but strangely no battleships or aircraft carriers from the Navy. Just a huge amount of brass on lots of obviously very important Admiral's uniforms.
We can see more military equipment in one small part of this stadium than the entire New Zealand military can put against any potential invader of our glorious country.
In a sport where the appearance of the team and the turnout of all the members of that team is vitally important, and sometimes a source of one upmanship and enormous ego in some Formula 1 could mention, it was with not a little pride when we, as a team and decked out in our Chicane supplied clothing from NZ, all resplendent in black, white and silver with TVNZ proudly displayed, were congratulated by at least two IndyCar teams and a few IndyCar officials on how "sharp" we looked.
Makes you feel good that. One team even asked where and how they could get hold of the style of trousers that we wear.
Mr Rakete is even considering giving up his career as an imitation IndyCar race driver to start a new one as an imitation male model Stick to the day job Rob!
A lot of doom and gloom around the car dealers of America at the moment (well more than is normal anyway) as Chrysler has just announced closing around 1800 dealerships nationally and that announcement was closely followed by GM announcing the closure of around 1700 dealerships. Many of those are in the Indiana State and around Indianapolis.
Strikes me that if you don't have a dealership near you that sells the sort of car want then you will go to a dealer that is close to you that sells something else. Companies like Daihatsu are apparently contacting some of those dealers that may become ex GM and Chrysler.
Funny old world! Ford has today announced that they are in better shape than they thought and that there sales are running ahead of predictions.
Incidentally, if you are thinking of visiting or touring America then make sure you look at visiting the Indianapolis area. You will be very pleasantly surprised. It's a great place to visit.
The bump day has just finished for us here and really exciting it really, really was!
The John Andretti/Richard Petty number 43 car has just made it onto the grid and into the show for the 93rd running of the Indy 500. Andretti/Petty/Indy - kind of has a romantic centennial ring to it doesn't it?
Andretti was bumped in and out of the grid more often than a kid on a pogo stick but finally got the number 29 qualifying spot just seconds before the end of the day leaving Ryan Hunter-Reay on the track as the gun for the end of the day sounded.
Hunter-Reay managed to complete his qualifying run and bumped Alex Tagliani out of the show completely leaving Tagliani with no time or opportunity to come back.
A very exciting, if time consuming, way to ensure that the fastest 33 cars get on the grid to start the race.
Pic of the day for me today is playing soldiers with the National Guard Armoured Personnel Carrier.
Took me about 30 seconds to get in the thing and around 20 minutes to get out!!!
Check out Robert's blog to see a pic of him being a total fraud.
