Mark-

You're absolutely right. It rained in the AM. Jet dryers dried the track. Everyone wanted them to jump right into the CART race. I guess because it was the last Indy Light race ever (the series is discontinued), they wanted to run it. They should have shortened it, at least. Then they dragged out the driver intros, parade laps, etc, and the CART race started one hour late. It wasn't called so much on account of darkness so much as hazy, poor visibility combined with getting darker. They should have figured this out earlier, announced that the race would only go 220 laps with 30 or so laps to go and let the drivers go flat out rather than conserving fuel for a 250 lap race. Poor race management. Plus, we took the train out. Rather than hold the trains over, they announced that the trains would leave at 4:35 as scheduled, so we had to miss the finish. Screw the fans.

 

Dude,

You got screwed by CART. No wonder that racing series is going down. I'm guessing the 4:45 train was the last one out.

Just FYI, ESPN had to cut out at the end and switch the finish of the race to ESPN2. Luckily, I get both channels and was able to watch the end of the race. For those unfortunate not to get both channels, they got screwed like you did.

 

All the trains in both directions for all destinations left at 4:45. These are Metrolink commuter trains that don't have anything else to do on Sunday. Plus, our train really left 15 minutes later because it was waiting for an Oxnard train ahead of it to depart -- whatever that means. We could have easily seen the end of the race.

 

The Rapper, man after all that you missed the finish - bummer!

I'm been to hundreds of races and fans in the stands are almost always the last to know what the heck going on when changes are made, etc. It's like, we got you there - so just spend money. The TV did keep us posted on all the changes, as they happened.

The TV visibility wasn't good for the Indy lights due to the haze, etc. Otherwise maybe they would have flipped the races and done Lights after CART. Which in hindsight they should have both for TV fans and standium fans. As was mentioned, if you didnt' have ESPN2 they did see the finish either.

Its such a shame to have a good product and have management blow it.

 

I believe the CART race was run after the Indy Lights race because CART had to give teams time to finish getting the cars ready for a 500 mile race after the delayed warmup was run. You can't just go straight from the warmup to the longest race of the year. I don't think they finished the warmup until an hour or so before the Lights race. Is that right? I know it was delayed from the original morning time because of rain.

Given the situation if was a great idea to run the Lights race and for ESPN to show it instead of clips from a prior race or something else until the CART race could begin.

Mark

 

They went right from a very short CART warmup to the Indy Lights Race. The CART race was supposed to start at 12:30. After the rain delay, they announced something like CART warmup 12:45, Indy Lights race 12:55, CART race 1:15. The CART race actually started at 1:30.