Bill Tybur's blog

Until I saw Senna, the 2010 documentary that beautifully paints a most intimate, insightful, inspiring and ultimately saddening masterpiece about the legendary Brazilian F1 driver, Grand Prix was my all time favorite racing movie. But now, without any loss of luster, John Frankenheimer's 1966 epic, the winner of three Academy Awards, has dropped a position.

Nashville got its miracle, now it needs a hero. Nashville Superspeedway announced it would not host any NASCAR Nationwide or Camping World Truck Series races in 2012, signaling its inevitable demise and quite imminent property sell off to developers. That one hurt.  While only 10 years old the concrete 1 1/3 mile track in Lebanon, TN had some nice history and great traditions, including the Sam Bass Gibson guitar awarded to each race winner.  We won't mention what Kyle Busch did to his when he won the Nationwide Series race in 2009. 

This has been a pretty good week for Carl Edwards. After months of speculation linking the No.

This past February Randy Bernard, CEO of the IZOD IndyCar Series announced the 2011 season would end with a return to Las Vegas Motor Speedway featuring a unique 'hook' to entice other series' drivers to compete. The hook (or lure, more appropriately) is a $5 million prize to any non-IndyCar regular who can beat Will Power, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon, Helio Castroneves, Ryan Hunter-Reay and the rest of the regular IndyCar regulars.

Last month, the Austin City Council officially endorsed the already-on-the-calendar United States Grand Prix and approved a commitment for up to $25m per year for 10 years. 

Last weekend at Chicago's Route 66 Raceway, John Force Racing's Mike Neff beat Jeff Arend to win his third Funny Car Wally of the season and extend his championship points lead in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. The win also marked the 200th NHRA Funny Car championship trophy for Ford Motor Company, most of which have come from teams running Mustang bodywork and most of those from Force or one of his team cars.

Remember when race cars were still called "specials" and always looked the same, every race, every season, according to what colors, personal obsessions and/or hand lettering styles the team owner, long time sponsor or the primary check writer's wife (or girlfriend) liked? They didn't know it at the time but those early team owners and sponsors were participating in the development of what the marketing folks now call 'Branding' -- something entirely different from the kind of branding that Rowdy Yates, Gordon Johncock and A.J. Foyt used to do to cows.

  On Saturday, May 7, 2011, three weeks before the Centennial Indy 500, history was made and a new era in racing at Indianapolis begun.  The significance of the event was not only electrifyingly (pun intended) significant but eerily silent too -- both as it occurred and as covered by the motorsports media. As part of Indianapolis Motor Speedway's inaugural Emerging Tech Day event, driver Billy Roe drove a battery powered electric open wheel race car around the famous two and half mile oval at an average speed of 106.897 miles per hour.

A few months ago the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) announced a partnership that would turn the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup sports car racing series into the FIA World Endurance Championship, beginning in 2012. This is a definite upgrade.  The FIA runs Formula 1, the World Rally Championship, the World Touring Car Championship and many other series.  It has decades upon decades of history and milestones, experience, partnerships and power. 

"Road racing is a participant's folly; oval racing is spectator's delight." Those were the words that Clint Brawner wanted me to put on a bumper sticker almost 30 years ago.  But my, oh, my how times have changed -- as evidenced by this past weekend's Le Mans, NASCAR, F1 and IndyCar races.