Soggy Warm-Up; Welcome to Race Day
You will notice the treaded Firestone rain tires on Dan Wheldon's #10 Dallara Honda. This area of Ohio was hit with a classic "frog strangler" of a thunderstorm this morning...so jet driers prowled the pit road trying to dry the pavement, so the pit crews could have reasonably dry footing. We say reasonably...because the National Weather Service calls for a high probability of rain showers for the race. The Lincoln MKS we're driving has a radar weather option so a driver can get a radar map from 5 to 500 miles out--we knew this morning that a relatively strong storm was passing through Fort Wayne, IN in our direction here outside Lexington, OH...so the race will likely be a wet race...meaning that all the cars will wear the rain version of the racing Firestone Firehawks.
We spent some time interviewing the executive director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, Toni Neurenberg, about some topics we've broached in past posts. The ethanol that is used to power IndyCars is made from corn, but not all the grain is used for fuel. Toni says that the company who supplies the 100 % fuel grade ethanol--LifeLine Foods of St. Joseph, MO--uses the part that is left over after processing the corn for food, to make the ethanol. This means that this use of corn is more efficient, and the by-product powers a major American auto racing series. Fuel grade ethanol has 2 percent gasoline so it can be seen if it should burn. This means that of the 5,000 gallons of fuel that powers the IndyCars in practice, qualifying and racing for a typical event, only 100 gallons of that 5,000--two percent--are gasoline.
Snapshots of the IndyCar winner and comments to follow.
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