Sat Jun 12th
06/14/2004
IRL and ROMCO on Saturday Night at Texas Motor Speedway.
Saturday evening I watched the ROMCO race, it was a 70 lap timed race. I was listening to Gil De Faren on the ESPN channel calling the first part of the race. It was funny as hell, I wish someone could get a hold of the tape for the ROMCO folks. He stopped calling the race after a bit, it was time for his dinner break. The race got shortened due to a huge crash involving 4 cars. The # 13, Wade Welch was leading for most of the race, he began getting up to lap traffic, when all hell broke loose. The lead cars Wade Welch and the # 33 Robert Richardson tried to go 3 wide in turn 4, big mistake. Cars went flying into the safer barrier, across the infield and a hood went up into the grand stands. It was a good thing that the crowd was light, no one got injured in the stands, the drivers all got out of there cars and the officials shortened the race by 10 laps. When the checkered flag was show, Michael Crofford in the # 51 was the winner. The ROMCO cars will be at Thunder Hill twice this season, can’t wait to see them on the short track.
I enjoyed the IRL race on Saturday night, it was a quick race, it started at 7:30 and was over by 9:30, it was a quick 200 laps. I was rooting for 2 drivers, Buddy Rice and Helio Castroneves. Buddy was coming off the Indy 500 win and I just like Helio, he has a great report with the fans, he likes NASCAR and it is fun to root for him. Well Buddy got knocked out at lap 181 due to an accident, it was heart breaking, he lost the drive shaft as a result. Helio decided not to pit on the last caution of the race and ran out of fuel. Bad call by someone in his crew. I don’t know if it was a driver or crew decision. Tony Kanaan won the race followed by Dario Franchitti. Both drivers had Honda powered engines. Honda has dominated the IRL so far this year.
