Column: Giving IRL series its due for oval-track, open-wheel racing

Rain and close racing exemplified both the IRL race from Texas Motor Speedway and the NASCAR Winston Cup contest at Michigan last Sunday. As regular readers of this column know, I'm not a big IRL fan, but I have to give the series its due for the best oval-track open-wheel race I've seen in some time.

Although they lost the last five laps due to transmission problems, ESPN2 did broadcast the race finish later, and what a finish it was. Due to the rainout of the original Saturday night IRL race, it was run simultaneously with the Winston Cup Michigan race. Thank goodness for "picture in picture," as I could watch both events and switch back and forth during commercials and rain delays. However, I did burn out my primary remote controller and had to finish with the backup unit.

Tony Stewart, who won his second Winston Cup race in a row at Michigan, is very superstitious. You know that Chef Boyardee commercial where teammate Bobby Labonte complains that Tony is so egotistical he has his own personal chef? Well, it's based in fact.

Tony always eats Chef Boyardee before a race, because that's what his mother fed him before races in his go-kart days, when he won a lot. Based on his recent performance, Chef Boyardee might see a run on their products in the NASCAR paddock soon.

- The 24 hours of LeMans is running this weekend, and it should be over about the time you read this. Almost the entire race will be carried on Speedvision. Mario Andretti, 60, is coming out of retirement (again) to take one more crack at the one really big race that has eluded him in his career. Andretti will be co-driving one of the front-engined Panoz LMP1 prototypes, the first front-engined competition car he has driven since he raced a USAC roadster at

Atlanta in 1965.

One change to the Panoz program this year is that they will run the in-house Elan-built Ford engines at Le Mans rather than Robert Yates Racing engines. Don Panoz explained that he felt that Yates had so much on his plate right now with his NASCAR program that he wanted to begin to bring the Panoz engine program back in-house. If there are problems at Le Mans, Panoz said, "I want no one to blame but myself."

- Speaking of Ford engines, there's a new engine builder in the Ford ranks for the Busch Grand National series. In an effort to bolster the minimal Ford efforts in Busch fields, the Cosworth Engineering folks have been engaged to build engines for the Cal Wells team and driver Anthony Lazzaro.

Thanks to my good friend Paul Haney, author of "Inside Racing Technology" and publisher of "TV Motorsports," I learned of this program recently. Cosworth has been highly successful for the past 35 years building Ford-based engines for Formula 1 and Champ Car racing, but this is their first foray into the world of big NASCAR V8s. They are having to learn about carburetion, as most of their experience has been with fuel-injected engines.

The emphasis is on building toward reliability and reducing frictional losses that prevent the engines from revving higher and producing more horsepower. There is also some design help and guidance being provided to Cosworth's Torrance, Calif., facility by the parent plant in England.

- Harking back to the days when NASCAR wasn't the biggest thing in American motorsports: More than 30 years ago, NASCAR champion David Pearson won a Trans-Am pole position at Mid-Ohio because Ford's Dan Gurney had to race a Mk IV at Le Mans. Lincoln-Mercury Division told David to forget the NASCAR Grand National (now Winston Cup) race in Birmingham and get himself to Mid-Ohio for the high-profile Trans-Am wars.

- Also on the historical side of things, this week marks my fourth anniversary of writing a motorsports column for the Nevada Appeal. My first effort ran on June 21, 1996.

I've recently been moved to Sundays, heading up the new Raceday page ... if you like this page, let sports editor Jeremy Littau know. Also, remind him I haven't had a raise since 1996.

Roger Diez is the Nevada Appeal motorsports columnist.