"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
I'm starting this blog with one of my favorite quotes from Hunter S. Thompson (okay, it's the only one I know) because it seem very fitting for what I hope will be the major theme of this blog. I'm going to spend a lot of time discussing IndyCar, my passion for it, where it's been, where it's at, and where I hope it's going.
I started watching IndyCar in 1985. I was 8 years old, but seeing Danny Sullivan spin his car in the south short chute, not wreck, and then go on to win the race got me hooked. Now, at 33 years of age, I look back at IndyCar during my youth and realize how it was "riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." It was the greatest racing on the planet. Free from hype or gimmicks, it was the sport of auto racing in it's purist form. But, over the years, we've lost our way due to the egos of just a few.
In what is called his "Wave Speech," Hunter says, "You can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." After the death of Dan Wheldon, Las Vegas may end up being a water mark for IndyCar. Not the high-water mark in Hunter's speech, but the low-water mark. Maybe, Vegas will be the point were IndyCar finally sheds itself of all the things that went wrong during the split. I like to think that IndyCar can just get back to what it does best:
Pure, unadulterated, no gimmicks, no BS, straight up racing.
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