Tuesday Thoughts

We are nearly one month into 2014 and the motorsport season experiences it's first lull in the schedule. After a three-week binge where the Dakar Rally, 24 Hours of Dubai, Rallye Monte-Carlo, Chili Bowl and 24 Hours of Daytona tended to the withdrawal the winter months produces for race fans, like any good addict, you itch and twitch for more.

AMA Supercross is running their third round in Anaheim this weekend, but that isn't enough to feed the need. The Bathurst 12 Hours and Rally Sweden are next week, followed by Speedweeks from Daytona leading to the Daytona 500 and into a regular weekly cycle of racing until about Thanksgiving.

With this time off, I feel it is the right time to just look at different motorsports topics and comment on them.

Formula One testing is taking place at Jerez and most of the teams on the grid have unveiled their new chassis for 2014. Due to the regulations that require lower noses, some teams have gone with unique designs and let's just say some are much better than others..

Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari did good jobs with their designs. The Mercedes is gorgeous, living up to the Silver Arrows of the past. Unfortunately, Lewis Hamilton has already put it in the tires but I guess you rather do it day one than at Silverstone or Monza.

The Red Bull is a typical Red Bull car but Adrian Newey doesn't produce duds. This is just what we have come to expect and there are no complaints. It looks good and will probably be quick.

Ferrari's design is as close as the teams can get to the stepped, platypus noses that were common over the past two seasons. It could be worse. Much, much worse.

The other teams, let's just say they look a little phallic. Toro Rosso, Force India and Sauber all produced very revealing designs. Williams can call it an "anteater" all they want, that's not the first thing that comes to mind. For the lack of a better term, Toro Rosso just whipped it out there and isn't ashamed.

Sauber isn't as bad. Their livery is still a little dull but for a team that has been strapped for cash they do their best.

The Force India chassis actually looks pretty good until you get to the front where it looks as if they just used a strap-on sex toy for a nose. The Force India livery is fantastic. The orange and black scheme is sleek and appealing to the eye. Just don't look at the front of it.

McLaren did well. More on the phallic side but not to the point of near censorship that Toro Rosso, Sauber and Force India cause.

Lotus went even more unique with a manta ray design. It's much more toward the Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari end of the scale than the Toro Rosso end and the John Player Special livery is the icing on the cake that make up for any aesthetic faults.

Kamui Kobayashi sent out this tweet of the Caterham. Maybe I need an angle with better lighting because that picture isn't assuring. And with more light, yep, it's as bad as I thought.

Marussia is the last team standing. Let's hope their designs aren't anatomical.

As for testing itself, with this being the first public shakedown of the new turbocharged V6 engines, it will be revealing which engines are working better than others and who is on pins and needles as the Australian Grand Prix approaches.

Moving on, the 24 Hours of Daytona had incredible depth in the entry list. You had past race winners, sports car champions from around the world, IndyCar champions, Indianapolis 500 winners, Le Mans winners, drivers with experience in Formula One, a DTM champion, WTCC champion, Daytona 500 winner, a lot of up-and-coming talent as well as veterans who after all these years are still on the top of their game.

There was something lacking from the entry list though and it bothered me by a little. Sixty-seven cars split 27 between the two prototype classes and 40 between the two GT classes and only three full-time NASCAR drivers were involved, two drove for Ganassi. Some of you will laugh that off and come up with remarks about the talent of NASCAR drivers but for me, it was a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, the entry list was top-notch top to bottom and there weren't many teams with open slots for a driver to get a stint in but for me, the 24 Hours of Daytona has always been a great event for bringing in drivers for one-off appearances.

A decade ago you had an all-star team of Andy Wallace, Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on the verge of winning before it all came apart in the final minutes. For a few years it wasn't uncommon to see Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, the Labonte brothers, Casey Mears, Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya and even Kyle Petty make an appearance at the 24 Hours of Daytona. This year Jamie McMurray, Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger were the only drivers with full-time Cup rides competing. And there was a brutal reminder why that was the case on Saturday.

Memo Gidley's accident (The good news is Gidley has undergone back surgery to stabilize a fracture).

How many times have we seen Johnson or Stewart listed as a third or fourth driver for a team the same way Gidley was? NASCAR team owners and sponsor invest millions into their drivers. Imagine if Johnson were in Gidley's shoes just shy of 5:00 p.m. on Saturday? What would be going through their mind? Their owner's mind? Their sponsor's?

I may have missed it but Memo Gidley's accident didn't get any air time on SportsCenter. Had it been Jimmie Johnson, SportsCenter may have been wall-to-wall NASCAR on Saturday night and Sunday morning considering the only NFL game was the Pro Bowl. A team can't afford that. The old adage "there is no such thing as bad publicity" is falsified if Gidley and Johnson had reversed roles last Saturday.

It is sad to see drivers limited to what they do. Motorsports are always going to be dangerous, the realm of death hangs over everyone every time they step into a car whether it be NASCAR at Texas, USAC at Terre Haute, Formula One at Yas Marina, IndyCar at Toronto, Moto GP at Silverstone or V8 Supercars at Bathurst.

If you've followed motorsports long enough you have heard many times drivers say I want to compete in "event X," whatever that might be. After a while it becomes tiresome when you hear a driver say that because the time comes when it put-up or shut-up and more times than none a driver should seize answering those questions because fans don't want to hear what you'd like to do, they want to see you do it. Every year for a decade saying, "oh, I'd love to race Le Mans" is much more frustrating than if you ran Le Mans once a decade. Back to another old adage, shit or get off the pot and many should pull up their pants and move on.

Apparently Kurt Busch is "70 percent" of the way on taking his metaphoric bowel movement, running in the Indianapolis 500. I'd love to see him do it but forgive me for not holding my breathe. I won't believe it until noon, May 25th when the green flag flies for the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500. When he completed rookie orientation last year, I thought it made more sense than ever for him to attempt it. He was with Furniture Row Racing, who showed a trillion times more interest than any other NASCAR team of their driver running Indianapolis. Everything was last moment and didn't pan out but the door was open to him running an IndyCar race later in 2013. That didn't happen as the ovals schedule quickly dried up by the Fourth of July and once Busch qualified for the Chase, him running the season finale at Fontana was out of the question.

But apparently he is still driving toward competing at Indianapolis this year, despite moving to a new team, despite a potential clash of engine manufactures, despite going cold turkey into what would be his first IndyCar event. Gene Haas and Tony Stewart are behind him. The possibility of driving a Honda for Andretti Autosport doesn't appear to be a deterrent and the last obstacle in his way is any changes to the Chase format that have yet to be announced by NASCAR.

In Busch's eyes, the clock is ticking down on this opportunity as he is turning 36 years old. Let's not forget Emerson Fittipaldi was 37, Nigel Mansell was 39, Nelson Piquet and Rubens Barrichello were 40 and Jean Alesi was 47 when they made their Indianapolis debuts. Granted they all came from open-wheel backgrounds. My opinion is Indianapolis isn't something you can try just once. You can't just do it and check it off your list. With the abbreviated month of May where track time is limited and the whole qualifying procedure is still subject to further change, one misstep can ruin your month. See Bryan Clauson who was quick all month in 2012, was about to qualify in the first four rows and stuffed it into the wall. On day two he qualified 31st and in the race he spun on lap fourteen and retired with a mechanical failure after forty-six laps.

Do you really think Clauson is satisfied with that? Do you think Conor Daly is satisfied with his debut last May (crashed in practice, started 31st, finished 22nd two laps down)? How about AJ Allmendinger? Do you really think Allmendinger, after starting fifth, having a loose seatbelt force him to pit and still manage a seventh place finish, is satisfied knowing how close he was? If Busch does attempt Indianapolis this year and he is mid-pack all month, do you think he wants another shot to show improvement or do you think he would be turned off enough never to do it again? I would think the former.

Anyway, these have just been a few topics on my mind. I hope it warmer wherever you are and hope you are handling the motorsports withdrawal well. The good news is we are just weeks away from the season revving up and becoming a weekly habit once again.