I’ve been going to the Long Beach Grand Prix regularly for at least 10 years now. I love open wheel racing, and pretty much any sports car or automobile racing where there’s more than an oval involved.  As much as I love sports car racing, I’m not that fired up about going to the Long Beach Grand Prix again. 

 

The sounds of 800 turbocharged horsepower  and the sickly sweet smell of burnt rubber,  methanol, and warm churros are always worth my admission…but there’s no racing.

 

In 2007 17 cars started from just 9 teams (some teams have more than one car). 3 different drivers led laps. 14 finished.

 

So, 17 cars on a two mile track.   

 

I dunno, maybe I had a bad time ‘cause we didn’t have a jumbo TV screen where we were at or because we had crappy seats this year (grandstand 21), but the real reason is that there were only 17 drivers and I only recognized half of them.  The series even switched from a lap limit to a timed limit, probably because they’re having a hard time getting media air time.

 

That’s pretty sad to have one of the most popular events in the series field only 17 drivers.  200,000 people attended over the weekend and 100,000 attending the main event, but I had more fun watching the drifting competition at the end of the race.

 

I do have to mention the Tecate Girls. Holly C$R%p!  

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I’ve never seen pants so tight in my life. It’s almost worth the $9, 12 oz. beer just to have them there. If anything is keeping CHAMP car alive, it’s the Tecate Girls.

 

The separation between the IRL series and CHAMP car series is going to kill them both. IRL is doing better because they’ve retained more marketable personalities, tapped into the NASCAR audience, and race with cheaper vehicles, but I don’t think either will survive to 2009 unless they merge back together.

 

So sad.

 

I say to survive, CHAMP and IRL need to compromise. Get back together. Have cheaper cars and race on a mixture of tracks. They better do something or they’ll be dead before the end of the decade and another sports car series will bite the dust.

 

Long Beach Grand Prix