{"id":540,"date":"2006-05-28T18:12:38","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T18:12:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-05-28T18:12:38","modified_gmt":"2006-05-28T18:12:38","slug":"go-sam-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/2006\/05\/28\/go-sam-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Sam!  Go!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Congratulations to Sam Hornish Jr. on his fine Indy 500 victory.  Before the start of the race, my oldest son asked who I wanted to win (he was pulling for Hornish \u2013 like father like son).  I told my boys that I was pulling for Michael Andretti and Sam, so my racing day went pretty well.  As always, my wife and my youngest son were going for the \u201cTarget car\u201d ? hard to believe that Tonya has already had that sort of impact on my youngest son.<\/p>\n<p>What an exciting finish!  I have to admit that at the end I was pulling hard for Marco, and why not, it would have been a heck of a statement.  It is sort of hard not to pull for an Andretti, and you have to like his post race statement that \u201csecond place is nothing.\u201d  Marco drove extremely smart in the end; he could have blocked, but he would have run the risk of crashing out of the race (along with crashing Hornish).  At the end of the day, second place was a great finish for a nineteen-year old rookie.<\/p>\n<p>I sort of feel bad for dishing Hornish at the very end, but after coming back to my senses, I am very happy for Sam.  He is one of the few IRL drivers that I actually follow.  Even if I do not watch a race (or only casually follow a season), I always check on Hornish.<\/p>\n<p>I have been complaining for years that the IRL just does not do enough to push\/market their drivers to the same degree that NASCAR pushes their top players.  Hopefully that will change now that Hornish has a Indy 500 victory; that is worth pushing.  But Marco has to be the story of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of bad marketing, I had no idea that Marco was even in the IRL this year, and had no idea that Michael was giving it another go.  As soon as I saw the starting grid (about 10 mins before the race), I told my boys that I *had* to pull for Michael, but if he was not going to win, then, as always, I would be cheering Hornish along.<\/p>\n<p>Long before I became a racing fan, the Indy 500 was something; so I have been told.  Now it has come to a third generation Andretti being in a race, and the IRL did nothing to push the most beloved name in American racing.  Or maybe they did, and I failed to notice?  For a racing fan, that is a big deal.  The IRL should have pushed this one to a much greater degree to try to capture the attention of fringe fans.<\/p>\n<p>The IRL should have a great marketing lineup in Danica, Marco, and Hornish ? all solid American drivers that the US racing public should be able to get behind and cheer.<\/p>\n<p>The next move belongs to the IRL marketing folks.<\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content_bottom\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_ addtoany_list a2a_target\" id=\"wpa2a_1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share', '');\" class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\nif(wpa2a)wpa2a.script_load();\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congratulations to Sam Hornish Jr. on his fine Indy 500 victory. Before the start of the race, my oldest son asked who I wanted to win (he was pulling for Hornish \u2013 like father like son). I told my boys that I was pulling for Michael Andretti and Sam, so my racing day went pretty &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/2006\/05\/28\/go-sam-go\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Go Sam!  Go!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content_bottom\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_ addtoany_list a2a_target\" id=\"wpa2a_2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share', '');\" class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}