Full Throttle

Think not?

Then check out the first couple of exchanges in an interview conducted between Smoke, the director of public relations at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the media center in Daytona.

Welcome everyone, my name is Ron Green. I’m the director of public relations here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

TONY STEWART: Which means he only works about two months out of the year.

GREEN: For the Indianapolis media, especially, we want to thank you for your attendance. We know this is a busy week with the Colts heading into their first playoff game, and we do appreciate your attendance today. We have media covering this event in Daytona at the media center there. We appreciate your participation, as well.

As a courtesy to Tony and the other working media, let’s please turn off any cell phones or digital devices that may go off during the press conference. Thank you.

2005 was a great, great year for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Dan and Danica duel in the month of May capped off one of the most competitive Indianapolis 500s ever. We did have a third event, as you know the event in June, was memorable for other reasons. We’ll skip past that one and head to August.

STEWART: Oh, yeah, great. Let’s cover the June, I like that one.

Nice to see Tony hasn’t lost his sense of humor under the pressure of wearing his second Cup Crown.

For those of the “NASCAR-centric” variety the reference is to the unmitigated disaster foisted on the world’s auto racing public (Called the “FIAsco” here at Full Throttle) and a couple hundred thousand fans in attendance at the June U.S. Grand Prix. Between the governing body FIA, Bernie’s Boys with great assistance from Max and Michelin only 6 Bridgestone shod cars took the green flag while 14 Michelin runners took a 2 hour hiatus.

The interview is an interesting read that covers the current status of the Indy winning #20, the Rolex 24 hour event (With a challenge to the media types in attendance), his Christmas Eve and Christmas Day activities, driving with tears in his eyes and a not to be missed question from some ditz of the Washington Post. (Bet she refers to the only other Cup driver she knows)

UPDATE: Liz Clarke’s question got me wondering about her background. Turns out she won the prestigious Miller Lite/Russ Catlin Motorsports Award of Excellence in 2004. She is no rookie on the motorsposts scene. But I stand by my assessment, it was an ignorant question given the event and setting.

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