Long Beach, Calif., April 18 — It's been 10 years now that Jeff Davidson and I have been coming to Long Beach, not as spectators, but to provide our readers with live coverage of America’s ultimate street race. It's usually a lot of fun for us – Long Beach is our home race – but it is 72 hours of hard work and little sleep, not that either of us are complaining. So, I thought it might be fun to remember some of my favorite moments during our first decade.

2007 – Our usual team of Jeff, Julie, and Lisa grows when Russell and Angelo join us for Long Beach and Las Vegas on the preceding weekend. Our tag line of the weekend is "we're doomed" which makes all of us laugh. Gotta love that gallows humor. It's the first time all the Deep Throttle staff has met, and it's an awesome couple of weeks.
• 2008 – Last Tango in Long Beach was awesome in retrospect but a tough one to live through. We saw Will Power begin to emerge as a major factor in American Open Wheel Racing. While it was sad to see Champ Car go, it was awesome to have the chance to say good bye.
• 2005 – This year was just about perfect as a race weekend can get. Katherine Legge was a surprise winner in Atlantics, our friend Justin Sofio won the C1 class in that series. Sebastien Bourdais took the Champ Car win after starting fourth, and the race was exciting.
• 2002 – American Michael Andretti takes the win in the first Long Beach race since 9/11. Very special weekend after all the craziness in 2001. Our friend Alex Gurney (who looks just like his dad) comes close to winning the Atlantics race but settles for second.

I'm not supposed to talk about the races today, so I'll settle for some random comments:

• Why is England's Alex Lloyd competing in a US based series with Boy Scouts of America sponsorship? Don't we have a few Americans who would do?
• Why is Milka Duno still in the series? She started today after non qualifying, turned a couple of laps and then "retired." It's time for her to "retire" permanently. She is an embarrassment to herself, her team, Venezuela, and women racers. G’bye
• Americans also did well today. An American came in second place in a development series race that took place this morning. An American won the feature race in the afternoon, which seemed to greatly please the American crowd.
• Congratulations to American J.R. Hildebrand who scored a third place in his Long Beach ALMS debut driving with teammate Tom Sutherland.
• Congratulations to Ryan Hunter-Reay and Beccy Gordon on their engagement. Yes, I know it was last year. But, they met at Long Beach, got engaged at Long Beach one year ago, and today, the best racing thing that could happen to him did, but I am not supposed to talk about it. (wink)
• Danica Patrick seemed genuinely pleased when her teammate won the race (oops) but spent most of her day trying to beat the other girl (Simona) which she unfortunately did.
• Am I the only person tired of the spoiled little princelings of racing? Prince Marco tried to run over Jeff and I on a narrow bridge near the Hyatt yesterday and did not have the grace to apologize, but seemed reasonably well behaved on track. On the other hand, Prince Graham is always gracious and polite in person (thanks to Bobby and Debbie) but was a jerk on the track, not allowing 2nd place Justin Wilson to pass even though he was not in contention. Boo!!!

So, you should look for Jeff's galleries next week and we'll be offering our live coverage at Laguna Seca next month. See ya!

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