After Dario Franchitti's bad start which most thought was going to set the trend for the Hondas all day on Sunday's season opener at Miami, Dan Wheldon came out on top.
The top five was as follows:
1. Dan Wheldon (Honda)
2. Sam Hornish Jr. (Toyota)
3. Tony Kanaan (Honda)
4. Vitor Meira (Honda)
5. Helio Castroneves (Toyota)
Three Hondas in the top five isn't bad. Maybe Honda will be to the IRL like Ferrari was to F1 last season.

 

Honda already is to IRL what Ferrari is to F1. Look at last season, only 2 losses in the whole season.

 

axemansean, this is kind of unrelated to this particular thread but it does have to do with IRL. I was wondering why Marlboro Team Penske still has a tobacco company as their sponsor while Forsythe had to give up their Players sponsor and Ferrari F1 had to remove their Marlboro decals for last years USGP? Nobody that I have asked has been able to give me an answer about that. My brother worked at Team Rahal here in Ohio and he could not even answer it.

I also have another question. I think the fact that IRL is now going to be road racing the demise of CART or ChampCar (whatever they are calling themselves today) will soon follow. I give it two seasons at most before CART is gone for good. I used to be a big fan of CART but when they got bought out by OWRS and some of the bigger name teams started dropping out and moving to IRL I lost interest. I honestly hope that once CART finally goes down for good Tony George will buy the contracts for the CART tracks (I miss the Mid-Ohio race!) and the old CART teams will all move over to IRL and there will once again be one unified American Open Wheel Series. Hopefully if that does happen they will keep the same manufacturers and switch to Turbo V8's kind of like CART now just not only Ford Cosworth. I would be interested to hear your feelings on this.

 

You answered your own question in a way regarding the tobacco sponsorship. Rules state you can have a tobacco manufacturer sponsoring one event in a year in an event location. Marlboro did team Penske at the Indy 500 so they had to make Ferrari remove the Marlboro logos.

Personally I'd like to see the return of Champ cars and IRL as one unit. Road courses, street courses, ovals, etc. Honda and Toyota are becoming big names in IRL and I'd like to see them unify everything. But Tony George is an asshat and I'll probably never see that dream happen. Atleast they are racing in St Petersberg and Sears Point this year with the IRL cars which outta be cool as hell.

 

Thanks for answering my question and I think Tony George will buy CART out sooner or later and there will be on unified series.