OT: Racing 2026 (spoiler alert)

[GB_Simo]

BOOGITY BOOGITY that's quite enough of that.

Thought we'd have the annual thread, with IndyCar getting underway this weekend and F1 joining in the week after.

While we wait to see who sits where in the pecking order, and contemplate a future in which Alex Palou, freed of those legal burdens, finds a way of finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd at every race this season, I thought I'd share a quiz I saw the other day. 71 drivers won in either CART or IRL during the years of the split - you've got 20 minutes to name them all. I couldn't, but I bet someone can:

https://www.sporcle.com/games/swrcsky/w ... -irl-split

[Lancer]

I saw last week Michael Jordan won Daytona.

[DChaps]

RIP Alex Zanardi

From our own Paul Kelly:
https://www.indycar.com/news/2026/05/05-02-zanardi-obit

Two-time INDYCAR SERIES champion Alex Zanardi, who inspired millions globally with his courage and perseverance after a life-changing accident, died May 1 in his native Italy, his family announced. He was 59.....

.....After his first foray in Formula One ended in 1994, Zanardi came to North America and tested with Chip Ganassi Racing, signing in late 1995 to drive for the team in 1996. He became a rookie sensation in 1996, winning three races and six poles, finishing third in the standings behind teammates Jimmy Vasser and Michael Andretti.

That rookie season also featured the classic move of his INDYCAR SERIES career and one of the most iconic passes in motorsports history when Zanardi used a risky maneuver in the dirt to pass race leader Bryan Herta in “The Corkscrew” turn at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Fans still refer to the maneuver simply as “The Pass.”

Zanardi ruled the series in 1997, winning five of 17 starts en route to his first title. He was even more dominant in 1998, capturing another championship with seven victories and 15 podium finishes in 19 races.

His famous practice of spinning his car in tight, doughnut-shaped circles after victories became instantly popular with fans and was emulated by drivers around the world.

Alex Zanardi’s Most Iconic INDYCAR Moments
https://youtu.be/XMKo5cdzYgs?si=0Td7cM2hLzL0uQFz

Remembering Alex Zanardi
https://youtu.be/9gNc9EXKhYc?si=gzgrc06cgpHeLyZH

Alex Zanardi on David Letterman Show
https://youtu.be/QyoY7hVwLU0?si=xD5q6SuZpocPWwV9

[GB_Simo]

Wading into my X feed the other day, fortified by the suit of armour I wear on such occasions, I saw a thread in which The Pass was being roundly derided by a group of people who wouldn't know excellence if it introduced itself to them. "He was off the track." "Track limits?" "Couldn't keep it on the road, could he?"

Having not at that stage been aware of Alex's passing, I sat and reflected on the wrong kind of loss. I couldn't fathom why, even in these over-regulated, 'I was ahead at the apex so I can drive you off the road now' times, you'd look at that move and see anything other than genius. Zanardi made up about half a lap in a single braking zone, didn't smoke a single tyre, got the car turned in through what looks to this day like sheer force of will and somehow, I'll never know how, kept it all together without knocking a wheel off his vehicle or so much as a flake of paint off Bryan Herta's. A man driven to win, at the very limit of what was permissible but never unfairly so, recognising the opportunity afforded to him and seizing every last bit of it.

Reflecting later, that all seemed rather more appropriate. Whether those few seconds at Laguna Seca stand as Alex Zanardi's epitaph is up for debate, given the astonishing feats that became so commonplace in his later life, but they're a glorious encapsulation of what he was. Drive, grit, determination, refusal to be broken no matter the circumstances, and that inter-linked ability to see positivity, to find success, where so many of us would have regarded ourselves as beaten. How incredible he was in applying those gifts, how fortunate we were to bear witness to it, and what a remarkable human we have lost.