Drop the green

Time now for the Blob's annual spit into a hurricane, when it tries to convince an unappreciative America that the best sort of auto racing (if you're into that sort of thing) is not the auto racing Jeff Gordon and Darrell Waltrip 'n' them are hawking these days, or that ESPN pretty much insists is the only racing that matters.

After all, it has an exclusive link to NASCAR on its home page. But it doesn't have one to what starts up again this weekend down in St. Petersburg, Fla.

That would be IndyCar, a vastly superior if mostly ignored product, and if there's a clue to its lack of stature in these United States, it is this: Those of us who fell in love with it years ago, and who still revere it as the best form of American racing, always breathe a little sigh of relief when it does start up again.

This is because aside from the Indianapolis 500 -- still the biggest one-day sporting event in the world, and still the single most significant motorsports event in the world -- IndyCar is the Amelia Earhart of sports entities, disappearing from the national radar for most of the rest of the summer. While NASCAR relentlessly pushes its personalities and its product, IndyCar never quite has gotten the hang of it, even though it has numerous personalities to sell (Paging Graham Rahal! Paging James Hinchcliffe! Paging Josef Newgarden!) and its product is better.

Yet every year, post-Indy, three teams -- Penske, Ganassi and Andretti Autosport -- provide an unhealthy chunk of the starting fields, with the consequence that it's a scramble to send out much more than 20 cars most weekends. The number of teams, and drivers, who run Indy-only deals is disquietingly long. Even the series title sponsor (Verizon) is bailing after this season.

And yet we are hardy lot, we IndyCar fans. And so when the curtain rises every year at St. Pete, we're as optimistic as the fans of every sad-sack baseball team in the majors on opening day.

Here's the good news about that, this time around: There's actually foundation for our optimism.

Start with Newgarden, the defending series champion. IndyCar couldn't have produced a more saleable face for its product if it cooked him up in a test tube: He's outgoing, he's photogenic, he's young and he's an American, a definite plus given the provincial nature of American racing fans.  If IndyCar can't sell Newgarden to America, it couldn't sell space heaters to a stranded polar expedition.

Of course, there's still Hinchcliffe and Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay and a host of others for IndyCar to sell. And in the case of Rahal -- another engaging, photogenic talent, carrying one of the great American racing names -- it won't be just him against the world for Rahal Letterman Lanigan this year.

Joining him as a second driver will be last year's Indy 500 winner, Takuma Sato, a huge get for RLL. Without a second driver to bounce ideas and data off of, Rahal finished sixth in the points last season, with two wins and six top fives. Now he has Sato, one of the savviest and most accomplished veterans on the circuit. It's fair to say the expectations are high.

And while Penske has scaled back his full-season effort to three drivers (Newgarden, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud), and Ganassi is down to two (Scott Dixon and Ed Jones), two new full-time teams and two new part-time teams will be joining the series this year. That's a huge get, too.

So, to sum up: new teams, a shiny new champion, plus a sexier new aero package. An infusion of fresh young talent that includes nine rookies from five countries -- including Pietro Fittipaldi, grandson of racing legend Emerson Fittipaldi. And, of course, the return, one last time, of Danica Patrick, whose auld lang syne racing moment will come in May at Indianapolis, when she'll try to put one of Ed Carpenter's entries in the 500 before hanging up the helmet for good.

Conclusion: It's gonna be a good year.

Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see.