Another Long Beach in the books

At 21, it's not often you can say you've been to something and it stretches onto a second hand. But for me, that's the case for going to the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. The just concluded weekend in 2011 marked my sixth appearance at the April weekend in sunny SoCal, and it never disappoints.

Some brief thoughts:

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The economic crisis has affected everyone in some way, from those left out of work, to those searching. It felt like every time I turned my head around there was another ex-CART/Champ Car, Indy Lights or Atlantic driver in street clothes actively pounding the pavement. Names like Patrick Carpentier (pictured), John Edwards, James Davison, Dillon Battistini, Dan Clarke, Arie Luyendyk Jr., Katherine Legge, Jaques Lazier and the list goes on, I'm sure. I doubt many of those are household names but they all have talent and don't want to give up on their dreams just yet. There is a tendency to critique and be overly cynical about motorsports, but given the number of people who love it and aren't involved at the moment, it does make you really stop, think and appreciate when you do have an opportunity.

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ALMS weathered its miserable combined P1/P2 prototype count for this weekend and still turned in a more than respectable race - a far better showing than IndyCar, in my opinion. The GT battle was scintillating and gut-wrenching at the same time. BMW has been both fast and smart this year en route to two wins. Both the Corvette at Sebring and Lizard Porsche at Long Beach were in with a sniff of the win but lost out due to making mistakes. We're now into the "81 days of darkness" before Lime Rock the second weekend of July ...

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Much like Monaco for F1, Long Beach is a historic and great event for IndyCar, but not a great race. Strung-out, straggly starts have been mostly the norm at Long Beach but it seems this year's was even more spread out. The double-file restarts were nonexistent. The penalties called (or not called) raised eyebrows for a fairly obvious lack of consistency. And it's not off-the-mark to suggest Helio Castroneves has lost a step or two, and is overdriving and missing his braking points by substantial margins to make up for it. Helio's incomprehensible punting of teammate Will Power may have done the Aussie irreparable damage to his championship charge. Yes, Helio has won three Indy 500s for "The Captain," but his leash is shorter now than it probably ever has been in 12 years in the team.

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In another perfect piece of symmetry, Mike Conway can now say he's won at both Monaco and Long Beach. Conway won a GP2 event in Monaco and completed a comeback both from an earlier slow pit stop and his devastating accident at last year's Indianapolis 500 to score a popular first win - even if he was more modest and humble than a piece of pie. While Versus' coverage and its announcers have been solid this year, we didn't even know Conway was in the picture until restarts from about 20 laps to go.

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The end of this weekend leads into the great unknown. In a little over a month's time, I'll have graduated from Marquette. There are a couple very exciting opportunities in the days and weeks to follow after that point, but after that is still wide open. I know I'll be at Indianapolis for the centennial of the '500,' and I hope to share more details soon. As for now, I'm out. Cheers.