Notes from the CCWS Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach 2006

Notes taken during the NBC broadcast of the ChampCar World Series' Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, 4/9/06.

The first-ever notes from a ChampCar broadcast for me. Be gentle. Before we get to the race, let's kick this season off with a ChampCar season preview on SPEED TV. The star of this show is Kevin Kalkhoven's $47 million airplane. Much air time for the plane. Jetting from city to city for a "Turbo Tour" in that bad boy has to be rugged. Security? Whatever.

I seriously think Katherine "Show Some" Legge glammed down for the Turbo Tour. Went out of her way to not look glamorous. I think one little girl said something like, "You're not Danica Patrick."

After an arena football overtime game, welcome to Long Beach for the 2006 Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford. (BPCCWSPF). Ties the record for longest series name in the history of motor sports. Since 1975, Long Beach has featured some of the biggest names in racing. Today -- not so much.

Today's show is all about Sebastien Bourdais, the Frenchman, who strikes a boxing pose in his intro. Um, no. Super Fly Weight. The Fighting Frenchy. The look is not working for him.

It's a couple minutes into the show before the NBC posse mentions Katherine Legge. Admirable restraint. Over in the IRL, they were busting into double-figures on the number of mentions of Danica by minute two of her first race. They came right out of the chute with a montage of DanicaFHM shots, all of it. Here we get Legge in her race suit. Rick Benjamin declares it a new season and says "everyone is a favorite." Yeah. Right. I see Andrew Ranger running down Sebastien sometime soon.

Let's go over to Derek Daly for some unintelligible words. Derek started on the front row with Mario "No Last Name Needed" in 1984 according to Rick. Derek covers the fact that Sebastian and Paul "No Relation to Dick" Tracy don't like each other. Much mutual punting. Derek says there's a "turd star team about to emerge." A turd about to emerge? Oh, a THIRD team. Oh, OK. Well, that makes sense.

It's AJ "The Lone (full-time) American" Allmendinger and Justin Wilson for RuSPORT. These boys might cause Boudais to lead somewhat less than 95 percent of all the laps of ChampCar this year. Mechanical failures are good for two percent, but RuSport could actually lead Bourdais for five or six laps this year. We swear.

Starting lineup -- Bourdais, Justin Wilson, Bruno Junqueira, AJ Humdinger, Mario Dominguez, Tracy, Alex Tagliani, Oriol "goes great with milk" Servia, Will Power (will power? Nice parents) Christiano "What's" da Matta, Antonio Pizzonia, Jimmy Vasser, Dan Clarke, Jan Heylen, Nelson Philippe, Andrew "Lone" Ranger, Legge, Charles Zwolsman.

Early question: If Katherine wins, will she get her picture taken with the ChampCar Grid Girls?

Michelle Beisner is in the house. She's deployed with the viewing-enhancing job of showing you all the super-fun and exciting non-racing stuff that goes on during the weekend in Long Beach. Michelle is all about the low cut and sleeveless tops, better to show off her impressive guns.

Jan Beekhuis in the pit. Talks about Bourdais doing 6 laps in qualifying and then parking it. Maybe he sat in his car and talked on the cell phone about how he was going to be on the pole, again. Nobody managed to knock him off the pole, so Bourdais now has fresher tires than the rest of the field. Oh great. Bourdais with fresher tires. Video of Paul Tracy banking it off the wall during practice.

Let's light this candle. Green-green. Cue the circus music as they head into turn 1.

Woeeeeeee nelly. We got cars everywhere. At first Derek blames Tracy for being too aggressive (That never happens! We swear.) but then the 42 replays (including Chopper Cam) show that Mario got into the ass end of Tracy, who banked off the wall and took out the Lone American. Junqueira got collected as well. Sucks to be AJ. Minding his own business and suddenly he's got a car in his side.

Video of AJ walking back to his pit. In ChampCar, I think the drivers get out and walk back to the pit rather than wait for five minutes for the safety crew to get there. We got pedestrian drivers everywhere.

Breaking News: Legge is up to 13th after lap 1. We're going down to "hook up" with Michelle, right on national TV. Michelle enhances our viewing by showing us scenes from a car show. Some motorcyclists jumping over stuff.

Bruno into the pit. Furious taping of the side pod. Back wing replacement. NBC shows Bruno's X-rays after he got shown the wall at Indy last year. Indy Motor Speedway is hellish on backs. Bruno's back looks like a set of hooks you'd mount in your garage to put tools on. Two 11-inch rods and 10 lag screws. Yow.

Crew sees an oil leak at the back of Bruno's car. He's done for the day.

Lap 5 -- Bruno is with Jan. Bruno said he felt someone hit him from behind. Then it was over. Insightful interview Jan! Bruno felt someone hit him in the rear.

Cameron Steele with Tacy. His teammate drilled him. No comment from Mario's pit. He's still running.

Replay number 432. Derek: "Dominguez just drop-kicked him."

Oriol in the pit. Felt Paul "landing on my left front." Oriol says it's pretty standard stuff for turn 1 of race 1 of a season.

AJ is identified as the "top-qualifying American," a title he has locked up forever, since he's also the only American. I bet Dominguez is going to always be the "top-qualifying Mexican" as well. (An alert reader points out that Jimmy Vasser, also an American, is in this race. I stand corrected. We go two Americans out of 18. But Jimmy is not a full-time driver, so we'll let AJ remain the Lone [full time] American.)

We're back to green. Bourdais is posting the fastest laps of the race. I think he may actually be talking to his pit on the radio asking them to name a time and he'll see how close he can get to it. I also thought I saw a cup holder in his car.

NBC interrupts this race for a SportsCenter-like sports update? What the? There's Al Troutrig on my TV telling me one NBA team blew another out by 25.

We're back to the race just in time to see a full-course caution for the Cedric the Entertainer car driven by Dan Clarke in the tires. Not sure why. No video that I saw. Dan has no rear wing, but once pushed out of the tires he's still driving about 176 around the course to get back to the pit. Rear wing? We don't need no stinkin' rear wing. Derek is impressed with Clarke's ability to go fast without a rear wing.

Rick says Bourdais is in for fuel only. Nobody told the tire changers, however, because the changed the tires right there on TV. Rick may have been looking at the car show that Michelle alerted us to earlier. Later Rick corrects himself and says Bourdais did, in fact, get tires.

Lap 15. NBC advertises Race Control on ChampCar's Web where you can get telemetry from cars, in-car radio, etc. Way cool. I actually signed up after the race. Advertising works! Note to the IRL -- you gotta get cha some off that on your site.

Lap 17, Legge is 12th and Plucky.

Lap 19. Legge segment. Had three victories in Atlantics. Moved up to ChampCar this year. Jan chatted with her pre-race. Katherine. Kathy. Kath, baby. Seriously, I missed about your first nine words. No idea what you said. Very Daly-ish. An English or Irish accent speaking as fast as possible is tough for us Yanks to catch. When I finally figured out what she was saying, she was talking about her goal being to finish. As a rookie, she'd like to be in the top 10 and on the lead lap. Katherine won in Atlantics last year at Long Beach "Believe you me it's a bit of a different car" this year, Legge says.

Lap 23. Bourdais in front by 5.8 seconds. NBC never shows in-car video from Bourdais because you could clearly see him talking on a cell phone as he drives or maybe checking his wristwatch. Daly says Bourdais is still pissed that F1 has snubbed him. Taking it out on the ChampCar field, apparently.

Bourdais' fastest lap is half a second faster than any other fast lap.

Legge up to 10th! Legge came in for fuel under the yellow. Off sequence pit strategy. Very Danica Patrick-esque. Replay number 781 of the turn 1 wreck.

Over to Michelle who has a segment that features her in a go-kart. She's miked and makes some screeching sounds as she turns laps. Then calls out Katherine Legge.

Derek says Will Power (the name kills me) "is not going to try some ban-zie move" on teammate Alex Tagliani. Wait a second, Power is off his line. Blocked a driver behind him and then was way wide and had to lock them up, go off to a run-off and do a half donut and come back on. BAN-ZAAAAAIIII!

Legge spins! Legge spins! Legge Cam (camera on the dash that shows Legge's head and torso) Derek says this, I swear: "LOOK AT HER CHEST. LOOK AT HER CHEST." Dude, seriously. Right on TV? Oh, he's talking about her chest going up and own from exertion. Sorry. My bad. Derek's point is it's a lot of work to drive a ChampCar. I get it. I'll always LOOK AT HER CHEST whenever I can, I guess.

Safety crews take about an hour to get to Legge's car, which is stalled. She didn't hit anything.

Commercial. OK, the Mobile Clean 5000 oil ad is seriously dumb, OK? A series of "tough guys" coming up to admire some oil a guy is putting into his car. Besides being lame, most every oil lasts for 5,000 miles just fine under normal, non street course driving conditions. Simmer down.

Lap 39. Replay number 987 of the turn-1 crash.

Legge back to 12th and a lap down after she spun and we looked at her chest. Bourdais is lapping the field. Throwing out wrappers from the Big Mac Value Meal he's eating while driving. (He's loving it!)

Rick says Justin Wilson is saving fuel. Darek declares it a "cat and mouse game." Supposedly Wilson is going to try and stay out when Bourdais pits, then stretch out in front of him and try and pit an not lose a position. Right after that he'll look for the quarter the tooth fairy left him under his helmet.

Wilson pits ahead of Bourdais. So much for that strategy. Pit reporter says starting this year you can't adjust fuel economy in the car. No fuel settings in a Champ Car? Nobody got the booth guys the memo, apparently.

Nelson Felipe is done. Was he in the race to begin with?

Dominguez bounces off the wall. Pizzonia locks them up in the front straight.

Let's go to Michelle for another tour of the venue! She shows us places we can watch the race from. That would be handy about now since I can't watch the race from where I am sitting in my living room since we keep going to Michelle and her tan guns.

Legge is TENTH and a lap down.

Rick talks about Legge's quick rise. (KK swears it has nothing to do with Danica Patrick. Swears.) Daly: "She is relentless." Legge pits. Flash back to last year. Video of KK jumping up and down in the pit as Katherine wins. You can almost hear "ka-ching" each time he lands.

Turn-1 crash replay number 1,092.

Will Power gets sideways. Not so good. Katherine Legge is now back on the lead lap. Huh? How did that happen? She passed Bourdais? ??? When he pitted or something? None of my business since the announcing team doesn't explain it.

Restart: Let's go to the pits with Rocketsports Paul Gentilozzi. He's pissed because one-lap-down Pizzonia got told to move over on the restart and let the leaders through. Gentilozzi says Pizzonia wanted to unlap himself "I guess we're not supposed to pass and that upsets me." Pizzonia was going to pass Bourdais and unlap himself? Ah. Riiiiiight.

More NBC SportsCenter here.

We're back. Legge is EIGHTH on Lap 61. Relatively little freaking out over this.

Video of Clarke coming around to his pit with a tire that's flat and flapping off the rim. First he loses his rear wing, now he's driving on three tires. Wildman.

Rick starts calling Legge "Lady Katherine Legge." Nice. Is that a British thing? Lord and Lady? Or is he calling our attention to her gender, as if we're not clear that "Katherine" is a female. (Derek: LOOK AT HER CHEST. LOOK AT HER CHEST.")

Lap 64. The clock is up on the screen. We're doing a timed deal here. There's a limit to the amount of time we can watch Bourdais lead by 10 seconds. Too much carnage and too small of a TV window, I'm thinking. Bourdais is about a day a head. Already waving to the crowd.

Again with the "Lady Katherine" thing. What's that about? Please stop.

Bourdais now leads by 12.5 seconds. If Pizzonia hadn't been FORCED to let people pass, he'd be right off Bourdais rear end right now. Bourdais is going to win this thing with the least camera time of any winner in the history of racing. NBC has shown him maybe five minutes of the whole race. They may know focusing on Bourdais will cause rampant napping among the dwindling audience.

Shot of Bourdais' pit crew. They have all the excitement and anticipation of the win of someone waiting in line at Starbucks. Bourdais wins and does donuts. Legge is 8th, last car on the lead lap.

Top 10 -- Bourdais, Wilson, Tagliani, Dominguez, da Matta, Ranger, Heylen, Legge, Lady Katherine, Power, Pizzonia.

NBC is outta there as soon as the race is over. Tick-tock. Must be an infomercial they need to run.