Richard Antinucci (photo credit: RichardAntinucci.net)I try to watch IndyCar races when I can, er, when I remember to, but I’ve made it a point to watch the Camping World Grand Prix at The Glen tomorrow for one reason, and one reason only.

His name is Richard Antinucci and he’s a serious hottie.

I mentioned him in one of my posts about the Firestone Indy Lights drivers at Infineon last year. I know that liking a guy just because he’s ridiculously good looking is not what you’re supposed to do but you can’t deny that it catches your attention.

Besides, tomorrow is Richard’s debut in the IndyCar series with Team 3G and I really like the idea of getting to know a driver as he’s starting out in a new league. Get in on the ground floor, I say.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s 28 (same age as me, at least for next couple of months), was born in Italy, lives in San Diego and takes pictures like the one above.

Richard won the Watkins Glen race last year in the Indy Lights series, and finished the year second in the Championship. I’d say he has a good chance of posting a great finish tomorrow, even if he’s starting at the back of the field.

In regards to his qualifying attempt, Richard had this to say: “We definitely enjoyed this morning to be right there next to some of IndyCar marquee names, but sadly we were not able to confirm that kind of performance in qualifying. We’ve thought we could improve our free practice pace and therefore we went in a direction that, obviously, proved flat wrong as we wound up among those who barely improved their performance. Now we’re set to move a step back to what we know was working, possibly tomorrow we’ll dial in the car a little bit in the warm up session, and we’ll try our best to be ready for the race. I waited a lot of time for this opportunity to join the league and now I feel I have to start giving back something to the people who have put me in this position.”

So I’m jazzed about tomorrow’s IndyCar race, airing on ABC. Go Richard! hehe. 🙂

(photo credit: RichardAntinucci.net)