"The Bronze Badge Chronicles" is about my experience with the infamous "Bronze Badge" garage pass. IndyCar fans can purchase one and can be given access to Gasoline Alley for the Month of May. Last year was my first year with the badge. This year, the 2012 Indianapolis 500, is my second year with the badge.

DAY THREE: May 17th, 2012

You know that awkward feeling that you know today isn't that important as the next day? It was the day before Fast Friday, so we didn't stay too long. I snapped a few pictures, stayed for a bit, and headed home.

...but not before some interesting pictures, and confirming Dragon Racing actually LIVES.

(Photos after the jump)

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"The Bronze Badge Chronicles" is about my experience with the infamous "Bronze Badge" garage pass. IndyCar fans can purchase and can be given access to Gasoline Alley for the Month of May. Last year was my first year with the badge. This year, the 2012 Indianapolis 500, is my second year with the badge.

DAY TWO: May 16th, 2012

Of course I knew today wasn't going to be as good as yesterday. Getting Simona to sign my helmet was really the primary objective of the entire month. Nothing can top that.

NOTHING.

Unless it involves motorcycle theft?

On to the photos...

(Photos after the jump)

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"The Bronze Badge Chronicles" is about my experience with the infamous "Bronze Badge" garage pass. IndyCar fans can purchase and can be given access to Gasoline Alley for the Month of May. Last year was my first year with the badge. This year, the 2012 Indianapolis 500, is my second year with the badge.

DAY ONE: May 15, 2012

Yep, here I go again.

Many different things about this year. Of course the new cars, engines, etc. are among the many different things, but this year I won't be alone in Gasoline Alley. My brother also has a Bronze Badge for himself this year. So now I get a partner in crime.

...and boy did we score. On day one.

Enough BS-ing, on with the show...

(Photos after the jump)

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"A year's waiting is about to come to an end. The 2 1/2 miles beckon."

Absolutely, Paul Page.

A lot has happened in a year, let alone the last time IndyCar held a race weeks ago. The Turbo Saga (ah, the good-ole days of engine wars have indeed returned), The messy Lotus divorces, Inspector Clouseau getting an IndyCar ride, Jay Howard getting a ride...then not...then so...then not, certain former IndyCar drivers forgetting to act like IndyCar drivers...and it's only the first week of May.

Well, where to begin for this year's Indy 500? I know...blog about DEGENERATE GAMBLING!!!! It's how this country was built and continues to operate, by people getting down and DERPing away coin! Wait, blogging about gambling? ESPN GIG HERE I COME!!!

It appears Sportsbook.ag says that Team Penske, despite their DERPtastic performance last year, are the odds on favorites for the Indy 500. Apparently they think their dominance on the road courses translates to an upcoming oval beat-em-down; obviously they know nothing about Honda's turbo upgrades or the ability of Will Power's pit crew to flush oval races down the drain. Place bets on the Ganasshats if you like placing bets on front-runners and want to receive COIN the easy way.

As for the long shots, Rahal at 30/1? CASH. He was right behind the Wheldon/JR finish last year (and wait a minute...he's a Ganasshat, too! Sportsbook, FIX YO BOOKIES). Oriol Servia at 50/1? CASH. Now that he has a Chevy and is teamed up with Panther Racing expect him to be a legit threat. Tagliani at 60/1? CASH. Last year's pole winning driver paired up with last year's race winning team now with the hot Honda engine? Gimmie THAT.

Simona de Silvestro at 100/1? What, did they run out of zeros? Heh, heh...heh, heh...heh...

[cries uncontrollably]

Why must fate forsaken her AGAIN, now being the lone full-time Lotus car? All the Lotus teams get new and shiny (and WORKING) NON-LOTUS engines and she doesn't? I'm beginning to think that either in a past life she executed millions of innocent puppies, or there might actually be a Lotus pentagram displayed somewhere in her apartment and she wants nothing but the absolute destruction of Colin Chapman's legacy. THESE ARE VERY LOGICAL EXPLANATIONS, PROBABLY.

Speaking of someone who's hot, who's hottest in this week's Power Rankings entering the hot (hopefully not wet) month of May?

Like last year the winner of the 500 will get honorary P1 placement and accolades for the next Power Rankings, even if they are only a part-timer and/or a back-marker.

(This week's Power Rankings after the jump)

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Jean Alesi is 47 years old. He is an ex-Formula 1 driver who is notable more for his bad luck than his career results. He is also an official ambassador for Lotus Cars.

Today, in the first phase of Rookie Orientation Practice (ROP) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Alesi - for the first time in over ten years - stepped into an open-wheel car and took his first-ever laps on an oval track in a Lotus-powered Dallara fielded by Fan Force United, a team which until recently was a competitor in the Firestone Indy Lights Series.

Alesi's best lap behind the wheel of the Fan Force Lotus/Dallara was 186.367 miles per hour, 30mph slower than the next-slowest rookie. It was a speed that would have been the third-slowest qualifying speed for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega the previous weekend.

For his first laps in an IndyCar - especially one powered by the lowly Lotus/Judd engine - they weren't all that bad. But because Alesi's ride was bought and paid for by Lotus almost as a lark, Alesi's doubters in the fan ranks exploded onto social media, eager to give his seat away to someone else (never mind that the seat wouldn't exist without Lotus or Alesi).

"This guy doesn't belong in an IndyCar at the Indianapolis 500." That was the prevailing sentiment... and one that has been repeated about other drivers over time as well. But it is a sentiment that could not be more wrong.

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Coming into the Month of May, it seems as though that we have a bit of division about whether or not this year's Indy 500 will be as "classic" as it has been in years past. To that end, there's been a bit of infighting amongst the fans about whether the glass is half full or filled with liquid despair and decroded feces.

With this in mind, I believe that the best way to inaugurate the festivities at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year is a paraphrase of that great American philosopher (and, tragically, Chicago Blackhawks fan) Clark W. Griswold, to wit:

I think you're all f***ed in the head! We're a couple of weeks from the green flag and you want to bail out. Well, I'll tell you something, this is no longer a MOTOR RACE, it's a quest. It's a quest for fun! I'm gonna have fun and you're gonna have fun, we're all gonna have so much f***ing fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our g******n smiles! You'll be whistling "Back Home Again" out of your a**holes! I gotta be crazy; I'm on a pilgrimage to see a milk bottle! Praise Gomer Pyle! Oh, sh*t!

Remember that the next time you lose your marbles and click around to see what the Legions of the Miserable (© George Phillips, all rights reserved) are saying lately.

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The month of May is just over a week old, but already the battle lines are drawn.

In one corner are the loyalists, the die-hards, the true believers for whom the grand dame at 16^th and Georgetown is Mecca.

In another corner are loyalists of another stripe - fans who were reluctantly "unified" after years of conflict, fans who spent years doggedly whittling down the importance of the Greatest Spectacle in their minds to satisfy their chosen series' politics.

Then there is a third group, the great (and, some say, largely theoretical) mass of "event fans," composed of the same people who tune in every year for the Kentucky Derby, the U.S. Open, the Super Bowl, and other "keystone" events but largely ignore the sport in question the rest of the time.

The challenge before INDYCAR is to figure out a way to satisfy all three of those groups. In fact, it is arguably INDYCAR's biggest challenge if it hopes to survive in the future.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the dangers of gloom-and-doom pessimism and the penchant for IndyCar fans to overindulge themselves in it. I still stand by that assessment.

But there is a flip side to that equation that is just as dangerous as wallowing in a morass of Chicken Little philosophy.

Like all businesses, INDYCAR and its assorted partners need to have a positive self-image in order to keep revenues flowing in and maintain their customer base. So with the outlets they possess, they will pursue, shall we say, an aggressively optimistic public stance. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, either.

The problem comes when an aggressively optimistic public stance mutates beyond that yardstick and becomes a fantasy construct, wherein the expectation for the consumer is not simply to have a positive mental attitude about the business, but is in fact encouraged to willfully minimize or even ignore the product's shortcomings out of a sense of loyalty -worse, a loyalty that the business intimates is violated by any hint of second-guessing.

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