Q: What are your predictions for 2010? ICS Champion, 500 winner, most impressive and disappointing drivers and what race do you think will be the best all year?

Ray Hando

RM: Will Power will win the title, Briscoe wins Indy, Sato is most impressive and Milka struggles to regain her championship form from sports cars. Best race will be Indy.

Q: "We need more American drivers", "The costs have to come down", "We need to promote the series more"... Say, wasn't this the Way It Was with IndyCar racing back in the late 90s? How is doing this all over again going to help? Regarding last week's question from the gentleman in Australia, did you notice that he was referring to a domestic series? Does IndyCar want to be international - or not?

Steve, Indianapolis

RM: Not sure what IndyCar wants to be now because it always claimed it was a North American series. But I guess that was another regime. We still had plenty of Americans in the late '90s in both series and now there are as many full-time drivers from Japan as from the USA.

Q: You know Robin I just got thinking on how to solve all of open wheel's problems. Take all of the old footage of old CART races, add in new announcing, pretend like it is 2010, don't tell anyone the difference and Bam-O, you got a good racing series. I am sure you would keep your mouth shut if they hired you to announce...Don't laugh, ESPN did this with wrestling years ago, introduced 10 year old Texas wrestling as a new federation...

Troy Hotten

RM: I like your idea but it wouldn't fool anybody because they'd immediately realize it wasn't current because of all the American drivers.

Q: I have obtained some copies of Indycar races from '78 and '79, particularly Trenton, Mario wins after the 78 F-1 title, Brands Hatch, Twin 125 Races at Atlanta, where Lee Kunzman gave Lonestar JR fits, Ontario, and Pocono. The fields weren't very full, only 18 to 20 cars, and there was hardly any sponsorship either. Like now, Penske won the races, but Danny Ongais put up a good fight, but always blew up. The races even mention the USAC/CART battle, and certain cars locked out of Indy. My question. If Indycar looked like this in the 70's and it took till the 90's for consistently full fields with many different sponsors, is today’s state of Indycar racing kind of the same? Is this just history repeating itself, or is it too late?

Chris Branch

RM: You have to remember that from 1979-81 there were two circuits (USAC and CART) so there would have been almost 32 fulltimers had there not been a war. But your point is well taken because Indy car fields have fluctuated for the past 50 years and there was a time in the late '90s when CART had 25-28 cars at every race and so did the IRL. The problem, of course, is that history has repeated itself. Indy car had no leadership in the '70s, '80s, '90s or the past decade.

Q: It is 2:00 a.m. Saturday night in Texas and I am watching the Chili Bowl, you know, that unique race with real race cars, with open wheels and drivers with guts. Nearly every single commercial has been NASCAR, NASCAR, NASCAR, AD NAUSEUM…………….!!!!!! Why doesn’t SPEED just rename the network NASCARTV with an occasional race with something other than taxi-cabs? As a die hard open wheel fan, if there was no open wheel, Rolex, F1, or other series, my racing days would be over. If all I had to watch was NASCAR, I just as well go ahead and die.

Paul, Burkburnett, Texas

RM: FOX owns SPEED and NASCAR is one of our top properties and, obviously, largest draws. People want NASCAR shows (as evidenced by our ratings) but we have F1, GRAND-AM, ALMS, Australian V8s, The Continental Tire touring car series, motorcycles, the IHRA, WoO sprints, SPEED REPORT and WIND TUNNEL to cover all forms of motorsports. Please do not die.

Q: Fire Milka Duno or some other foreign schmuck back marker and put Graham Rahal in his or her seat! Doesn't any owner have the cajones for this? PBR boy needs to stand up and return the Indy Car series back to the innovators! A set of basic specs and let the imagination begin! Remember stock block Chevy power plants? How about the NOVI and four-wheel drive entries at the brickyard? With all the technology, someone would likely bring out an all wheel drive to try and qualify next year.

Turn this series back to the racers, not the legislators! And finally, what the hell is up with SPEED and not showing the Chili Bowl? Just because the red-neck racing association's truck series got rained out, it pre-empts the Chili Bowl and follows the truck race up with, count'em, three back-to-back showings of the "Race to Daytona" / Joe Gibbs racing docu-drama! BFD....!!!!!! The Chili Bowl was advertised in Sprint Car and Midget Racing magazine as being shown on SPEED.....and here it is MARCH and it has yet to air....the magazine has already exposed it's article on the event.....I don't want to see a race run on January 10th or so shown in JUNE!

JP

RM: CITGO pays for Milka to run so it doesn't want anybody else. Bernard understands the next set of rules could be the most crucial ones in a long time. SPEED showed the Chili Bowl in its entirety on Feb. 14 and aired at least one other non-stop replay so I'm sorry you missed those. We have to run it tape delayed because the promoter doesn't want it shown live.

Q: A Gil de Ferran interview got me thinking about testing and two teams winning most of the races. The NFL does a great job of creating parity, partially by having the last place team draft first, down to the first place team drafting last. Doesn't it make sense that IndyCar start something similar with allotted testing time? Maybe Penske & Ganassi get only three days of testing but Conquest & Fisher get 8 days if they so choose. Does Randy Bernard have a suggestion box?
Mark, Discovery Bay, Calif.

RM: Like the suggestion each team must have an American driver or get fined, this makes sense emotionally but I suppose it's not all that practical because Firestone wants the top teams testing tires. And, in theory, it sounds fair and just to give Sarah five more test days than Penske but could she afford it? I believe Randy will have one on the IndyCar website soon.

Q: I went to the Vegas Nascrash race, no, not to see Danica, because I live close and Vegas is plain fun. I see they announced it was a sold out event. I can't say that is bull crap but I was at the top of turn three and I even have photos, the grandstands were maybe 2/3 full for the CUP event, a little more than showed up to see Danica Saturday. Is it possible 50,000 just decided not to come? Good thing they didn't because the traffic problem at LVMS is ridiculous. Good thing I had fun downtown, cause my NASCAR experience didn't provide it. About Danica, I went Saturday to see what was up with her. Her sales hauler was almost put in front of the SPEED TV setup, hmm, randomly? No because 1/2 the spectators walking through the gate Saturday wore that lime green GO DADDIE colors. That’s so cute, grown old men carrying on like she loves them because they are wearing her colors. These same old men stood up in the grandstand every time she drove by waving at her like she was waving at them. Then she took out McDowell and 50 % of the spectators got up and left. If that ain’t a sad state in NASCAR land I don't know what is. Oh, by the way how were Danica’s testing times in Indy car compared to other teams remotely funded as good as her?

Bob Naylor

RM: I just ran this because it was damn entertaining.

Q: I was glad to hear Joe Leonard is recovering well In San Jose. He was my all time favorite driver. Do you have any Pelican Joe stories?

Doug Burress

RM: None I can print here but he's a helluva man and A.J., Vuky and Rutherford have all called to see how he's feeling and that should tell you what his competition thinks of him.

Q: I know that it seems like a lot of the talk in this mailbag is negative, but the truth hurts. Indycar is too expensive because it has no sponsors or fans to suck up the costs. AOWR should be just that, American Open Wheel Racing. If we don’t have any Americans in the sport, just add more cars (and the Indycar drivers) to F1 and call it a day. I don’t know Barnhart personally, but from some of the antics he has played in the offseason, RM may be right, and Barnhart may belong on “Tool Academy”. Graham not getting a ride is like Junior not being able to get a ride in NASCAR—any CEO who can’t fix that kind of situation shouldn’t be around long, I don’t give a flying wheel hub if he’s new or not. The Indycar Series has seen red for so long, both in the pocket book and in Victory Lane, that yes, it makes me cry. At least since Penske colors are now mostly black, maybe we’ll see more black, in both, this year. God, I really hope so. Wait, no primary sponsorship (to the tune of $20M) for Penske, the best and most successful owner in the sport this year? Ouch. But hey, we still have IZOD and Versus. Oops, you got me. IZOD sponsorship—the savior. Dollars, yes. Connection, no. Preppy clothing worn by people who have no idea what the terms ‘fuel setting’ and ‘downforce’ mean. Somebody in Marketing at IZOD will end up losing their job over this one. I’d like to see those ROI numbers in that PowerPoint presentation. Another positive? Oops, you got me again. Indycar does have an energetic new boss, but though my name is also Randy, I’m glad MY last name isn’t Bernard in the past two weeks….By the way, if you listen closely, the attention Danica is bringing is attention TO NASCAR, not TO Indycar--‘hating to leave’, rather than ‘come watch me over in Indycar’. Fox announcers even say “former Indycar driver Danica Patrick” from time to time. Positive? I can’t WAIT—Indycar is finally going to out-rate NASCAR now that we have Danica! Oops, check that. We’ve had Danica for 4+ years now, and look where THAT has got us—if it wasn’t for her, this Weekly Mailbag on AOWR would have been defunct by now—she’s been simply the life support system of a comatose patient the last two years. Let’s see who Dale Coyne puts in that Boy Scout car—there’s a chance it could be a Brazilian female (no offense to Brazilians or females, though). Here’s some positive thinking for you: I had a poster in college showing a goat looking into the camera, on the side of a mountain all by himself, with the caption “I’m so far behind, I think I’m first.” Maybe we should re-create that poster but have either Milka or the Indycar logo above that caption. Then, at Indy, we can all turn our caps around to “rally” mode, like in baseball, and ride this baby to unrelenting profitability and sold out seasons from here on out. Right.

Randy Mizelle, North Carolina

RM: The rant of the week. I love hate and sarcasm when mixed together.

~Robin

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Robin Miller became an Indy-car junkie in late 1950s and stooged for his hero, Jim Hurtubise, at the 1968 Indy 500. He went on to work as a vent man and board man on Indy pit crews from 1971-77. Miller bought a Formula Ford from Andy Granatelli in 1972 and raced it in SCCA until 1974 when he purchased a midget from Gary Bettenhausen, competing in the USAC midget series from 1975-82.

Robin flunked out of Ball State College in 1968 and began working at The Indianapolis Star sports department in 1969, covered motorsports there from 1969-2000.

In addition to his broadcast work. Miller's also covered IndyCar racing for Autoweek, Autosport, Car & Driver and On Track magazines over the past 35 years.