Cost and durability. Carbon is light but brittle if loaded incorrectly. Steel will bend in a lot of cases and that saves the wheel departing the car.

Ralf got himself out. I forgot who showed up first. Would have to look at my picks. We happen to be sitting in the upper deck of the stands at the exit of turn 13 when he hit. We must have been close to each other.

We visited the ship last summer. It is almost cliche to say you are impressed by our countries service people, but the crew of that ship were fantastic. I spoke to a couple who were excited to be part of the refit. They were really interested in the technical aspects. May have to get back up some time to see how it is…

So, this

Those of us Jalopnik readers are thinking, “Hey, there is a big lizard with that new Merc.”

Yeah, I can see the Joker going to the DMV once. Second visit would end up like this.

Hood would take out Portland and Rainier would take out Seattle, but I know what you mean.

I remember seeing it go up from our front yard when I was little. We lived in the outskirt (sticks) to the east of Seattle. One of those images that stays with you. You could see the huge cloud as it anviled off. We had just a little bit of ash while eastern Washington got hammered.

You can get Paul Page via the Verizon Indycar app. You can also listen to him and the crew, including IMS historian Donald Davidson, on www.1070thefan.com/listen.

ESPN News is showing it as well.

Sounds like everyone is being forced to the race package.

I wonder if the Chevy teams can run the Dallara speedway aero package from last year.

IMS’ chicken tenderloin is pretty good too.

Odds are they did in one form or another, but how do you model it climbing the wall?

Well, it appears the camera mount is steal and not titanium by the color of the sparks.

Bentley heard about DP from some folks and it sounded exotic and exciting. Sure, it is a bit taboo, rough and tumble and you need to be very comfortable with your mates. It’s all about endurance, getting safely through tight spots and getting through the event without too many embarrassing marks. They should be fine…

The system can’t be retrofitted with any kind of ascent crew escape system. The NASA capsules all had abort propulsion systems for getting the crew away during a launch incident. The lack of such a system on the Shuttle was a main issue that was noted in the Challenger investigation. I’m pretty sure NASA had stated…

So much win. In, literally, so,much win.

The majority of it is going to be aluminum, carbon fiber, Kevlar and maybe a bit of titanium. Probably not worth it.

My guess was that they thought they sounded cool.