The Paddock Pulse - Dec. 30 Edition

Welcome to The Paddock Pulse, a recurring feature at Pop Off Valve that grabs and summarizes some of the newsworthy events, stories and blogs from around the IndyCar world.

Today's edition is more fluff than meat - blame the holiday, vacations and the fact that not a whole lot is going on during the offseason - but there's still some good reading to be had.

• Our favorite pit reporter, Lindy Thackston (@lindythackston on Twitter) is in the running for Ms. Twitter December at Faxo.com. Thanks to a late rally by IRL fans in "the cloud," Lindy is on the cusp of breaking the top 10. Two days remain - it is your solemn duty as an IRL fan to ensure that the friendly and highly photogenic Ms. Thackston makes it into the ranks of the elite (she's already well past Marie Osmond, thank heaven). [Faxo.com]
  
• Bubbly twinkletoes Helio Castroneves became a daddy this week and the news was momentous enough to be featured in Us Magazine. The downside is that he's credited as "Dancing With The Stars champ" instead of "IndyCar driver" or even "race car driver" (although they did work in the fact that he won the 500 three times), and that the story is split by non-contextual links such as "See shirtless photos of sexy star dads" and "Guess the celebrity baby bump!" The price of fame, indeed. Congratulations to Helio and Adriana. [Us Magazine]
• Stephanie Wallcraft over at Planet-IRL wrote an interesting piece about how the business of racing's expression in the media has become a pejorative for racing fans. While that Pandora's Box probably can't be closed, it's hard not to agree that racing was more entertaining when racers were seen as brave heroes instead of good businessmen. [Planet-IRL]
• Two of our fellow bloggers jump on the end-of-year summary bandwagon - cataloging the top 10 drivers of the decade (strangely, Sebastien Bourdais is nowhere on the list) and expressing some New Year's resolutions for drivers and teams. [Oilpressure and 16th And Georgetown]

We'll see you all on the other side of the New Year! Stay safe.