Motorsports: The TV race

I was talking to Sports Editor Jeremy Littau the other day about sports on TV this weekend. He was lamenting the fact that he was going to have to search to find a baseball game because of all the racing on TV.

Race fans, this shows how far our sport has come in the last 20 years. I remember when we used to get the Indy 500, a couple of the big NASCAR races, and an occasional segment on "Wide World of Sports."

Now, particularly this weekend, racing has taken its rightful place alongside the stick-and-ball sports as a true major-league TV staple. On the other hand, I'm going to spend most of a beautiful weekend indoors watching the tube ... I ought to be ashamed of myself (but I'm not).

The only thing that might put a crimp in the proceedings is that the weather in the midwest and southeast may not be quite as summerlike as we're having. Rain is something that brings most oval-track races to a halt rather quickly, and ovals are all that are on the program this weekend.

CART is running the rescheduled Nazareth oval race today, with the Indy 500 and the NASCAR World 600 on Sunday. Some drivers are doing double duty, with Team Ganassi drivers Juan Montoya and Jimmy Vasser running the Nazareth CART event Saturday and Indy on Sunday, and Robbie Gordon trying for the Indy 500/World 600 double on the same day. Gordon has John Menard's Citation jet at his disposal, and flying time from Indy to Charlotte will only be 40 minutes ... and he won't have to wait at the carousel for his luggage.

Aside from Gordon's one-off appearance at Indy last year (where he was leading when he ran short of methanol), this is the first year that CART drivers will go head-to-head with the IRL regulars at Indy. Defending CART Champ Juan Montoya, who will start in the middle of the first row tomorrow, was fastest in practice on Thursday's "carburetion day," running a race setup with full tanks at 218.153 miles per hour. Carburetion Day is another of Indy's strange traditions ... the cars have been fuel-injected for 20-plus years, and there's little need to test the engine management system's software.

Speaking of which, it's a shame that today's younger generation seems to prefer the vicarious pleasures of racing video games to the real thing. I truly believe that part of the reason for that is that it's so hard to tinker with today's engines.

Performance cars of my generation could be improved by any "shade-tree" mechanic, whether it be by changing carburetor settings, installing a hot cam, manifolds, etc. These days, you need a computer engineering degree to reprogram the engine management systems to extract more performance from your car.

In fact, engine builders for CART engine suppliers (Honda, Ford, Mercedes, and Toyota) all pretty much agree that they get more enthusiastic response from a driver on engine performance by re-mapping the control module than by changing mechanical components in the engine.

Something needs to be done to get young people more interested in real racing vs. virtual racing, or we'll all be watching the "Playstation Virtual Indy 500" in a few years.

- Turning to the local racing scene, Carson City drivers dominated Street Stock competition at Reno-Fernley Raceway last Saturday night, with Matt Ramthun taking the Main Event win ahead of Dean Chicovicz and Allen Boles. Boles and Chicovicz won the heat races and Boles took the trophy dash.

Carson City driver Bonnie Garnett, in only her second season of competition, took third in the Hobby Stock Main. If you're a fan of Demolition Derbies and Tuff Truck

competition, you might want to head out to Reno-Fernley tonight to watch people destroy a few automobiles.

- The quote of the week award goes to1996 world champion Damon Hill, describing his old adversary Michael Schumacher on a BBC talk show: "The thing you have to remember about Michael is that behind that cold, hard, professional, Germanic exterior beats a heart of stone."

Roger Diez is the Nevada Appeal motorsports columnist.