I'm a relative newbie to openwheel racing, my background before racecars was a long career in motocross racing(16 years). My background and historical knowledge on USAC and it's "hayday" is limited at best. However, I have the great luxury of being friends with many people who have seen USAC at it's best and the stories I've heard have been pretty damn neat. To me what USAC is today is ok, mainly because I simply don't know what it used to be. Ignorant, I think that's the definition for what I am in terms of USAC's past. It's hard for stories to impact or be invisioned without seeing it first hand. Today we live in a world of communication, connections, and media so it's no special event to see live updates or video clips ect. ect. ect, however, back then it just didnt happen too often so the visual record of past evens is very very hard to find. We are only left with "stories" in most cases.
Is there a point to me wasting your time? Yes. It ironically starts by me wasting my time and surfing around on youtube. I stumbled upon this clip and it put to life most of the stories I've heard or at least gave them context with me. I love racing and the fact of the matter is that we don't always do so well, but love the hell out of it just because I get the privalige to do it anyways.
This 9 minute video encapsles everything that works, in-car driver interviews on the grid, starting lineups row by row, interviews from cars deep in the field as well as the polesitter, and an educational piece on the car itself. Totally a badass video that has more personality in it's 9 minutes that quite frankly you get at a whole nights show. After watching it, all i could think of was that I'm glad as hell to do it now, but man it would have been kick ass to do it back then.

Kevin Studley


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n78Hx9JNPKA