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John, a belated happy birthday.

The only reason I watched this race was out of curiousity when Mike Joy kept talking about it on Fox. The only guy who seemed happy was the 3rd place finisher, Schmacher and Barricello (my spelling is off) seemed embarrassed by the whole thing.

Don't give up on open wheel racing. There still is a series that has events such as "the Biggest Race in the History of Spring". The next race is at the Waterford Speedbowl, doesn't have a flashy name.

By the way who won the CART race in Portland today?

CART? Who cares.

(Okay, I looked it up: Cristiano de Matta won. Points leader Sebastien Bourdais came home second. You know CART has managed to run only four races so far this year, don't you?)

And Mark, I should have qualified the above. Modifieds, the short track stepchild of what most people think of as open-wheel racing, does rock. The Whelen Southern tour will be back in action in a couple of weeks, btw. Modifieds can stay. The rest of those jokers should just push their cars in the ocean and be done with it.

John, now I understand what happened yesterday.

Did you see where the Pope came down from his balcony yesterday to bless the new Ferrari? No, joke it was on CNN this morning. He gave a Papal blessing as 2 or 3 new models drove by.

No wonder 14 cars dropped out of the field at the start of the race. Plus with a German Pope, was there ever a doubt that a German would win in an Italian car?

I'm leaning toward writing off F1. And I'm a guy who got digital cable only for the reason that I wanted F1 on SPEED TV. The word angry doesn't begin to describe how I feel about this.

For me, other than the days that Ayrton Senna and Dale Earnhardt died, this was the darkest day in my lifelong love of motorsports.

Here's what should happen:

-- Tony George, the speedway owner, should sue the FIA sanctioning body and cancel any further F1 races at his track.

-- FIA should sue the seven teams that boycotted the race.

-- The teams should sue Michelin

-- As for the fans? You know who gets the shaft.

Dick, my darkest day in racing was the day Mark Donahue was killed in Austria. He was my boyhood idol; followed closely by Richie Evans and Charlie Jarzombek at Martinsville.

This was the one major remaining form of racing that I have not seen in-person atleast once. The chance to see it at Indy would have killed 2 birds with 1 stone. The only way I'll get to Indy now is to see the Brickyard 400.