The Paddock Pulse: Jan. 13 Edition

Greetings, Pulsers, and welcome to our irregularly scheduled Paddock Pulse for this Wednesday. Our avalanche o'links over the weekend means that this issue is a little light, but still some good stuff to wrap your eyeballs around.

• MILLER: Don't Fear 2012 [SPEEDtv.com]
  It's rare that Robin Miller is the voice that attempts to calm turbulent waters, but since there was a blue moon a couple of weeks ago I suppose anything can happen. Miller here speaks out to people who are... well, there's no way to sugarcoat it...freaking out about the proposed "Delta Wing" chassis being developed by a handful of team owners. But fear not, intrepid Millerites - spoiler alert, he does get in a nice jab at Brian Barnhart at the end.

• Why It Pays to Have Useless Knowledge [Drive Hard, Turn Left]
  Winner of a Twitter trivia contest, Drive Hard, Turn Left got a shot to attend Helio Castroneves' unveiling on the Borg Warner Trophy at the IMS Museum. Read all about it here, and remember - social networking isn't just for expressing egotism anymore.

• Honda RIPS THE %&^@#@* KNOB OUT! [pressdog.com]
  Can a dog cry manly tears? He can... if he's a Pressdog! Bill Zahren, the undisputed leader of the "RIP OUT THE KNOB!" mob, does his Snoopy happy dance over the recent news that the fuel mixture knobs will only have a "normal" and "yellow" setting from now on.

• Winter Testing In The Sunny South [Oilpressure]
  Apparently, just because a track is located in the "south" doesn't guarantee good conditions for winter testing - at least according to the Oilpressure blog. Second-guessing is a great sport in the blogosphere but I think George has a point when he worries that the IndyCar guys will be freezing their royal Rastafarian neh-nehs off at Barber in February.

Other notes:

• Sarah Fisher is still determined to bring Ellen DeGeneres to the Indianapolis 500 this year, notwithstanding Twitter shutting down her @Ellen2Indy500 account. But as we all know, Sarah Fisher does not give up easily. She has just switched to hashtagging - and so can you! Remember to add your own #ellen2indy500 hashtag to your #indycar Tweets and help Sarah achieve her goal.
• Until I get as much money as Bill Gates and can absorb other blogs and bloggers like a ruthless IndyCar Borg king - or until I can find a good writer who likes karting and junior open wheel formulae as much as he loves working for my salary, which is to say next to nothing - Pop Off Valve's Road to Indy coverage is going to suffer. So it is with that in mind that I highly recommend that you bookmark JuniorOpenWheelTalent.com and follow @JOWT on Twitter. It's a terrific and comprehensive site about the steps on the Road to Indy and unless I can bribe him to join my staff it's worth navigating away from here to read.