December 27, 2021
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Let's hope that the coming new year is a good one.
On May 31-June 2, 2002, the Milwaukee Mile hosted the Miller Lite 250 for the CART Indy Car series. This was at the time when Tony George was trying to take over the series and started the Indy Racing League (IRL). We are still trying to recover from that mess!
The field of cars was down to 19 for this race thanks to the IRL taking a lot of teams over to their side of the fence.
The race was still a good one with Adrian Fernandez on pole position and Paul Tacy winning. Adrian Fernandez finished second and Max Papis third.
This was also the first year of the new grandstands at the Milwaukee Mile.
Today, the grandstands are still there but they actually have tried selling them through the years! Thankfully, that never happened but motor racing has really declined at the Milwaukee Mile. It's the oldest race track in the country. Traditionally, the race at the Milwaukee Mile was the first weekend after the Indy 500.
Take a peak at the old days of 2002. Those were some great racing cars. There's nothing like the smell of methanol fuel!
Talk to you next year and be safe.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
November 4, 2020
I'm writing this blog on Halloween, October 31st because it's the 20 year anniversary of the passing of Greg Moore. Can not believe it's been 20 years already that he's gone.
Greg would have won many more races, championships, a couple Indy 500's and may have moved on to Formula 1 and NASCAR racing. He was thinking about F1 and had a meeting with Mercedes.
The "Merry Pranksters" of CART racing consisted of Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, Max Papis and Greg Moore. They played a lot of tricks and pranks on each other all the time.
I got to know Greg a little bit during 1998 and 1999 at the Milwaukee Mile because I was photographing him one day with a fishing shirt on. We talked about fishing a bunch and I learned that he loved to fish too.
We had a plan of trying to go Musky fishing together on the Thursday before the 2000 year Milwaukee Mile CART race weekend. Never got to happen unfortunately. Always thought that would have been tough to get him on the water knowing how busy these drivers are but he was serious.
Someday I hope to fish with him upstairs. Miss you Greg Moore a lot.
Enjoy some of my photos from 1996 through 1999 at the Milwaukee Mile and Road America here in Wisconsin. Always loved Greg's helmet design, his red gloves and the beautiful livery of the Players car.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
June 13, 2016
It is Sunday June 12 as I write this and the tragedy in Orlando is all over the news. Terrible, sad, and what a crazy world we live in these days...
So, let's look at some good days in 2001 at Road America again. I have so many images from that weekend and I am sharing today some of my favorite photos of a young Helio Castoneves and more, of course.
Bryan Herta, Max Papis and Alex Zanardi were racing with Helio and a lot of other good racers!
Looking at the high technology steering wheel with the map of the track on it is interesting.
Enjoy a look back and next week I will share some more pictures from that weekend as we get ready for the Indy cars coming soon to Road America.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
June 6, 2016
The Indy cars are coming to Elkhart Lake's Road America in a few weeks. So I thought it would be good to look at some of the great days at Road America in 2001.
Here are photos of the CART days back then with some of the drivers of the day. Gil DeFerran and Helio CastroNeves were with Penske Racing at that time. The pictures of
Alex Zanardi were before he was with Target and Chip Ganassi Racing. You will also see here pictures of Michael Andretti, Max Papis, Kenny Brack, Bruno Janquiera, Christiano DeMatta, Memo Gidley, Alex Tagliani and more.
The last photo is of Christian Fittipaldi and his front brake rotors on fire! That was a result from hard braking in turn five.
Enjoy a look at these and I'll have some more next week.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
