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Attention fellow Indy Racing League freaks: Thanks to my friend, Lou Ann Baker, PR Czarina for Dreyer and Reinbold Racing, pressdog went “behind the pit wall” during the IRL race at Chicagoland Sept. 10 and 11 and tackled the key issues:

What’s the scene like back there? Give us some “color.”

The garage area is like a big, concrete, extremely clean RV park minus the dead grass and swimming pool of questionable cleanliness. All the “haulers” are parked next to each other in a couple of rows. The DRR hauler was sandwiched between the Ethanol/Hemelgarn Racing hauler and the Vision Racing hauler.

You get the feeling that these people all know each other, kind of like retirees who park their RVs in the same spot and next to the same people every summer. “Hey, how ya doing, Marge? Good to see you. How’re the kids? Still having that gout trouble?” That kind of stuff. Very cordial. Very familial. They don’t hang out and drink beer and grill brats though, because there’s work to be done. But they do exchange the occasional pleasantries and help each other out when they can.

What about the garages? Cool?

Oh yeah. They’re cool. The car, of course, is the star of the garage show. It’s quarter-mee-yun-dollar pinnacle of vehicular impracticality with very tight seating for one, no air conditioning, no power steering, no reverse gear, no cup holders and no starter. Indy cars are very modular and come apart in about four places. Cars are often sitting in pieces in the garage. The car is designed to be very strong and very light, yet break apart in an accident. By busting up, the car - rather than the driver - absorbs and dissipates the energy of a 200-mph crash rather.

The wings, especially, are cool. For the non-IRL freaks out there, the car’s wings work like airplane wings only in reverse. Rather than lifting the craft (like they do on an airplane) the air flowing over the wings pushes the car down. Balancing engine power with wing angle and track banking (and about 192 other factors) allows the car to go 215 mph around a corner. Too much wing (and therefore too much downforce) and your car is too slow to win. Not enough wing (and not enough downforce) and you risk going end-over-end down the track. Fine line. The drivers are awesome, but some of the biggest stars of the IRL are the engineers who balance all these factors.

One thing you’re not going to find in an IRL garage is visible grease and oil. A big reason for that is that most teams aren’t allowed to open the engine. They get it from Toyota, Chevrolet or Honda and bolt it in. If it breaks, they get a whole new engine and bolt it in. Keep yer wrenches off the engine block!

My father was an auto mechanic, so I’ve been around auto garages. Lots of oil. Grease. Dust. Eruptions of swearing. Random oily, dead pistons laying on work benches. Not in an IRL garage. You could eat off the floor in the Chicagoland garage. It looks a lot like a tool sales area at Menards.

What’s the deal with the IRL drivers, really?

They’re small! I’m not making fun of them, because at 5′-8″ I tower over virtually nobody. But the average IRL driver is probably about 5′-5″ and 150 pounds. Sam Hornish, Jr. is one of the bigger guys and he’s maybe 165. Maybe. All very slim and trim. You’re used to professional athletes (and drivers are athletes for sure) being huge. But not Indy car drivers. You gotta be to wedge into that little Indy Car. Plus, the heavier the car, the slower you go, so there’s big incentive to stay svelte.

Drivers appear to be like anyone else - a range of personalities and styles. My DRR homey Roger Yasukawa is really quiet and low key. The Andretti-Green Four Amigos were often screwing around with each other. I almost got darted by Tony Kanaan on a motor scooter on race day. Then I turned around and there was Dan Wheldon coming on his scooter, followed by Brian Herta. I think they were turning laps with them around the haulers. Many of the drivers have little scooters to get around. So, of course, if you give race drivers scooters what do the do? Race them. Give them golf carts and pretty soon they’re trading paint.

Are these drivers, in fact, insane?

Oh hell yes. Especially when the helmet goes on and the motors start. Freaks. I had a chance to ride shotgun around the track with my homey Robbie “Invinci” Buhl (former driver, current co-owner of DRR racing) in a Chevy Impala. So, we’re going 126 miles per hour in an Impala and Robbie is talking over his shoulder to the guys in the back seat about what the car is doing, what would be going through a driver’s head if we were in a race. All very educational, but I’m a little preoccupied by the APPROACHING WALL. Dude, seriously, no joking around, that wall looks really solid.

But, Robbie has it well in hand and gets us down into the turn. He’s saying something about “giving the car its head” or something but I can’t make it out because I’m mashed against the front, passenger side door and praying really hard that said door won’t bust open. I was pretty sure the doors had been re-enforced. Next thing I know we’re out of the turn, Robbie says something about “the start finish line” while pointing at it and we’re back into another turn and I’m pressed comic book like against the door again. Driving the laps offered all the challenge of driving to the 7-11 for Robbie. And that was at 128 mph. Add 90 more mph and you’re making a lap every 24-25 seconds on the 1.5-mile track. Now add 22 other cars going just as fast. Conclusion: you gotta be demented to do this for a living.

But, yeah, it was a rush. Even at a paltry 128. I can see how you’d get addicted.

Besides being insane, drivers are real people like everyone else. Back when I used to brush up against them as a reporter, I learned that famous people are people who happen to be famous. They still put their pants on one leg at a time, go to the can, and get into pissy moods now and then like everyone else. So if you met them and didn’t know they were famous, you’d be all like, “You’re actually a human like me.” I think when you see a celebrity in person it helps you understand that they’re not just an image on a TV or a movie screen, but a real person. And, sometimes, who you think they are based on watching them on TV isn’t who they really are, and that can be disappointing.

Yeah, yeah, but what’s Danica REALLY like?

Well, she’s no Sarah Fisher. Kidding. I kid, because I’m a huge Sarah fan and I’m having trouble letting it go. Anyway, Danica and I sat down and talked for an hour over some margaritas … No. Sorry. Made that up. I saw Danica twice. Once was at an autograph session where, thanks to my connectedness, I stood in the middle of a 20-foot-square rectangle of drivers who were signing (so their backs were too me). I was THREE FEET from Danica Patrick for 50 minutes. I could have reached out and touched her - and been immediately tackled and beaten by the 10 security guys and police officer surrounding her.

Danica is like Elvis and Mia Hamm combined. OK, not quite as big as that, but that’s the vibe she gets from fans. She did a great job at the autograph session. I gotta give her a shout out. She smiled at everyone. Seemed happy to be there, signed everything put in front of her, posed for pictures with rabid fans, kept the line moving without seeming in a hurry. Signed “Danica” about 400 times. Luckily she has a first name distinctive enough to allow her to just go with “Danica” which removes about 50% of the work of signing “Danica Patrick.” I was impressed how she handled the crush of fans.

The second time I saw Danica was as she came back from a driver’s meeting on Sunday morning. I saw her darting through the hauler area entrance with a clot of fans around her. She has to walk fast because if she stops, she’ll be engulfed. The woman can’t go anywhere without having stuff stuck in her face to sign. Again, she kept moving and signed as much as she could as she walked.

So, I give Danica major props for putting up with it, attracting attention to the league, dealing with the fans in a great way (from what I could see) and doing all the dog-and-pony stuff the IRL asks of her with a smile.

Didn’t some guy just about get run over by Danica while coming out of a Spot-a-Pot?

It was technically a car in which Danica was riding. (I could tell Danica wasn’t driving because ABC wasn’t covering it LIVE.) The three Rahal Letterman drivers (Buddy Rice, Danica Patrick, Vitor Miera) were in the back of a car, driven by persons unknown, leaving the autograph session to go back over to the hauler area. The driver of the car cut it a bit close to a row of Spot-a-Pots just as some guy came out. HELLO, he about had a face full of Honda Accord. Luckily he just went in the Spot-A-Pot or he would have went in his pants.

If the guy did get hit, I bet he would have asked Danica to sign something while waiting for the ambulance. I was with Lou Ann and Roger in a golf cart behind the RL car and saw the whole thing, officer. Luckily it wasn’t THAT close.

Moments later Lou Ann got passed on the outside by a cart carrying Scott Sharp (Sir Blocksalot) and Kosuke Matsuura. (Note: Kosuke was the hippest-dressing driver I saw.) Lou Ann, seriously, getting passed on the high side? She claimed the Sharp cart was cheating, going around speed bumps, yada yada, probably had an illegal engine as well. We thought about calling race rules chief Brian Barnhart to file a protest but then let it go.

In what other way were you wired?

I was the official scorer for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing! Sat way up in the tower and represented. Sat right next to an AGR scorer and didn’t get into a brawl! But more on that next time. For now, when you think of steel coating, think of DRR sponsor Roll Coater (www.rollcoater.com).

©2005 Bill Zahren

As I gazed out from my position on the Westridge Elementary playground on August 22 I saw something that struck fear into the very center of my soul.

I saw men, coaching football.

I immediately began to pray for God to prevent these men from making fools of themselves while bankrupting their families.

Allowing fathers to coach youth football is the slipperiest of slopes. It’s like going for it on fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line - risky, ballsy even. Because, unless these men are of very stout moral and spiritual fiber, they will quickly turn into 10-year-old boys with size 42 waists and multiple major credit cards.

You don’t have to be a youth football coach’s wife to understand the incredible fiscal peril created by that combination. Because here’s the deal, Sparky: You just can’t have any random coaching equipment when you’re coaching football. You cannot have some ancient blocking dummy and some garage-sale practice cones. You can’t have old, worn balls (careful) and last year’s receiver gloves. Because what kind of message does that send to the team? That second-rate is good enough? That “used” is all their worth? I don’t think so.

Enter the credit card. In the hands of men, coaching football, and combined with access to the Internet or sporting goods megastores, a credit card is the most family-budget hostile threat on the planet.

My former neighbor’s husband, for example, is coaching football. Next thing she knows she’s the proud part owner of an NFL-grade blocking dummy and a carton of new cones. The old ones weren’t the right kind of cones, so you can see that the coach was obligated out of a sense of loyalty to his players to get the right kinds of cones. I mean, how can someone learn how to cover in the flat or the intricacies of a center screen with the wrong frigging’ kind of practice cones? Well ya can’t. Denzel Washington had the right kind of cones when he coached the Titans and, by the ghost of Bear Bryant, you will too.

Or, in the words of my beloved high school football coach, Jim “Flood” Boyd, when confronted with some unacceptable on-field atrocity: “Judas priest. What is THAT?”

My former neighbor says there’s been wild talk about taking a mower over to the Westridge playground under the cover of night to mow lines in the grass to greater facilitate the young gridders’ learning. I would not be shocked to hear that the coaches are pricing out artificial Field Turf.

Right about here my wife (Mrs. Pressdog) gives me the eye roll, because during my eight years as a youth soccer coach I committed my share of spending indiscretions. All I can say is that I really did NEED that dry-erase soccer field clipboard, OK? And those goalkeeper gloves and jersey? Well, of course I had to buy that stuff. I’m not going to scar the kids by forcing them to take the field with an uncool-looking, naked-handed goalkeeper. As if.

It’s even easier for youth football coaches to get out of hand, however. First, there is just more equipment to buy than in other sports. But mostly, the football coaching zeal grows from the fact that most of the coaches are former players. And, as a former grid warrior for the Harris-Lake Park (Iowa) Fighting Wolves, I can understand wanting desperately to have a new generation experience the feeling that comes on you when you administer The Hit.

Let me just say, if I can complete this sentence without starting to froth at the mouth, that hitting another human being hard enough to lift him off his feet and put him squarely on his but or back is almost sexual. In fact, the resulting feeling originates just south of your belly button (if you get my first-and-ten drift) and radiates out until it hits your brain and causes you to howl like the most butt-kicking alpha male of the wolf pack.

Let’s ask the right defensive tackle for the Everly Cattlefeeders who I hit so hard he became airborne while blocking for a trap play in October 1981. I swear a second after he hit the ground and our running back (Todd Ahrenstorff!) blew through the resulting hole I turned to the far end zone and howled like a dog at the top of my lungs.

That’s the feeling you get when you administer The Hit, and that’s the feeling these men are driven to pass on, even if it means spending hundreds of their personal dollars and acting in a very mentally unstable fashion.

My only advice to these men who coach football is passed on from my high school coach, Jim Boyd. What Coach Boyd hated most of all were “stupid mental errors.” As an offensive lineman, the very worst thing that could happen would be for Coach Boyd to ask you “who ya blockin’ ” and you not know. That is a stupid mental error.

If you knew what you were supposed to do, tried to do it and failed (which is a physical error), well, Coach Boyd didn’t get frothed up about it. There’s always someone bigger or faster or sometimes you just screw up and whiff a guy. It happens. But, not knowing what you’re supposed to attempt to do - no excuse. As Coach Boyd said and I now fully believe, all sports are about 85% mental.

I loved every second of the four years I played for Coach Boyd, who is still coaching today for the very fortunate Bulldogs of Le Mars, Iowa. I also loved every second I played in junior high for John Nelson, who I think is about to retire from beloved H-LP. Coach Nelson had the difficult task of taking hormonal, grab-asstic, uncoordinated 7th and 8th graders, teaching them the wishbone offense (a properly executed triple option still makes me leap to my feet and scream “HE COULD BE GONE”) and send them on to Coach Boyd. God I loved it. God help me, I did love it so.

So these youth football coaches, like all coaches, have the potential to be huge positive role models for their players. Let’s hope they’re up to it. Let’s hope they are more concerned about mental errors than physical ones. And God love them for giving it a shot. I think they can do it, provided they have the proper equipment, including the latest in digital video tape recording devices to record and analyze all practices and games, of course.

Come on honey, it’s for the kids.

© 2005 Bill Zahren

At age 41, I’ve decided to change careers.

I’m transitioning to a career that is sort of related to writing, kind of, so it’s not an entirely radical shift. And I’m going to do something that lets me connect and bond with a whole new generation.

I’ve decided to become a gangster rapper.

Think Vanilla Ice with brown hair plus 20 years and 50 pounds. Ice-ice baby. Oh, I’ll take you to the candy shop. And, you know what? I’ll let you lick the lollipop.

So, obviously, job one in my transformation into a g-rap is to become extremely familiar with all the many nuances of my main topic - my penis.

I’ve known Mr. Johnson on some level for 41 years, of course. We share the same birthday. He had a very functional side and, you know, a wild side. But do I really know him well enough to “sing,” convincingly, about him being the “Magic Stick?” Can I confidently refer to him as “the lollipop” whose mere presence is enough to get chicks “sprung?” That’s a whole new level of confidence for a small town Iowa boy, I don’t mind telling you.

What I know of the male gangstah rap songs (which is limited, admittedly) is a solid 85% of them feature some mention of the performer’s penis. (If you consider mention of genitals in general, it’s 98%.) That, homey, is a lot of attention for Mr. Happy, knowwhatimsaying? Gotta get to know Mr. Phallus (P-unit) much better. Maybe spend long nights talking to him about his hopes and dreams. Maybe mention him when I’m freestylin’ on the cul-de-sac.

Next, I gotta do some time. All the great g-rappers do time. So I better get out there and sell me some drugs so I can get busted by the man and do time and then rap about how harsh it is on the inside and make millions from white suburban kids. Otherwise, what street cred will I have, G? None. I’d be nothin’ but a poser.

Unless, of course, I can manage to get shot (and survive, of course). Many of the gangstahs have been shot. I think Fiddy (50 Cent) raps a lot about getting shot. Likes to pose for photos in his Kevlar bulletproof vest. Oh, he’s ‘hood.

So, maybe next time I’m shopping at the suburban Super Target, the one across from the gated community, I can only hope and pray to get winged in the calf when someone pulls out heat during a dispute in the in-store Starbuck’s line. It’s another couple million for my career.

Then, naturally, I have to come to terms with, an enjoy using, the word “bitch.” I’m going to have to overcome my dislike of the word to the point where I can comfortably scream it into microphones while pointing at random women.

The female rap audience seems to enjoy it. They don’t seem to be insulted at all. In fact, screaming the b-word at teenage females seems to make them buy your CD. Ka-ching, bitch. Or as Fiddy says, “We’re going to be at bidness b*tch all night long!”

I think you can probably back me up here, Gs, that nothing gets a woman more in the mood to be “at bidness” than screaming “bitch!” in her face. Try it next time at the bar and let me know how well it goes.

You might think that calling a woman a bitch and then giving her free access to your genitals could spell the end of sexual enjoyment for the rest of your life, but that’s probably because you don’t have the Magic Stick. When women are dying for you to take them to the candy shop they don’t even care if you call them demeaning and insulting names.

So, let’s recap: focus on the penis, do time or get shot (or both!), call women bitches. Does that about cover it? Oh, sure, there are rappers who don’t do any of this, they rap about positive stuff, but they haven’t reached the pinnacle of respect and cash. They won’t have their rides and cribs dominating MTV. They don’t have entourages the size of NFL special teams units.

Fortunately enough, the words “bitch” and “ass” no longer require bleeping out on the public airwaves. That way the 10-year-olds can greatly enjoy my talent while riding in their minivans.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about. True dat. Word to your posse.

Peace out.

Z-unit.

© 2005 Bill Zahren