Chicagoland Speedway thriller shows best, worst of IndyCar

Early yesterday morning I was thinking that I don’t know if I would be able to remain and IndyCar fan if things remained stagnant. It is past time for these sleds to go. They’re not the only problem, but I’ve got to believe that a new car could improve the racing on both ovals and road courses.

It was boring for the most part. The announcers annoying. I hit record and later on skipped through to the last 20 minutes or so.

Lots of passing or side by side racing is boring when it doesn’t really mean anything. If one minute you’re third and next your tenth, it doesn’t matter too much until the end of the race.

colganc,

“As long as the car is the same for everyone and IRL stays a spec series it will end up like it is: boring.”

Yeah, because there is one thing that F1 never is and that’s boring. Genius statement.

Cars and engines have absolutely nothing to deal with how entertaining a race is. There would be no more people at the race Saturday night if you had a Lola and a Nissan on the grid. Why do people insist on believing this fiction?

Here’s the key point: what draws people to a racetrack? In NASCAR, which is far and away the greatest racing series in this country when it comes to drawing fans – Indycar, sportscars, F1, etc. – cannot compare, it’s the drivers. There’s one driver in the Indycar series that draws mainstream interest and all the Indycar fans ridicule her while the casual racefan has given up largely on her ever being successful. So because of that, there’s less racefans attending at the racetrack than there could potentially be. But then you look at the successful drivers in the series: Franchitti, Dixon, Power, Briscoe, realistically, how large are their fanbases in this country that will watch a race and cheer for said driver? Has anyone ever met a Dixon fan? A person that will go to a race and cheer for him with his T-shirt? I sure as hell haven’t, and he’s only one of the best drivers in the series in one of the best cars. That’s like the Tampa Bay Rays having the best team in baseball and they can only draw 5000 fans every night. (don’t quote me on that, it’s probably a little more, but it’s a valid comparison)

People can complain about NASCAR and they by all means are allowed because it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s the most successful racing series by far in this country. If anyone can provide me a different example that would work that has been proven to work on a national level in this country, I’m all ears. People point to F1, but the money does not exist in this country for such a series, and even F1 in recent years had to scale back. People can say “how things were”, but there were long stretches in USAC and CART where there were single engines that dominated and won every race. Even the people that point out “more road courses”, road courses are a relatively new phenomenon in the history of Indycar racing, they had one-offs here and there, but it wasn’t until the 1990s began that it became road racing-first, ironically that coincided with NASCAR beginning to become the #1 series in this country.

Back when Indycar was #1 in this country, it far more resembled NASCAR today than Indycar today. I’ve always had the belief that Indycar being top dog died for a large part of its audience when Jeff Gordon won the Brickyard 400, because his success and how he got it showed everything right with NASCAR and everything wrong with Indycar. Indycar racing was #1 off the back of being the home of the Midwestern racefan, and those people have gone to NASCAR. The Midwest though still today is Indycar’s strongest market. And before people point out Long Beach, a response to an email Robin Miller gave a long time ago and still holds true “everyone will come to the circus when it’s in town but they don’t care where it came from or where it will go”. Is there any evidence Long Beach watches Chicagoland or Mid-Ohio? NASCAR is tops in this country because people care where that circus goes to. So they’re doing something right that Indycar is not and they’re the model to look at. The definition of insanity I think is the concept of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

“That can be a double-edged sword, though. So long as they have bankable stars they’re in good shape, but we saw what can happen when they lose a charismatic star like Dale Earnhardt and don’t have anyone to replace them.”

Completely disagree here, they did have people to replace them. The obvious they had his son Dale Earnhardt Jr. (NASCAR was incredibly lucky he was racing at the time as he inherited his father’s fanbase and in some ways expanded upon it.) Tony Stewart as far as mannerisms was a lot like Earnhardt and he’s the favorite for the stereotypical Midwestern racing fan. Jeff Gordon was still chugging strong as the #2 driver for the fan before Earnhardt’s death and continued afterward. Not to mention that was before guys like Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson made it big to the NASCAR fanbase.

Not to mention, this happens in other racing too. I read an article that for the opening race of the F1 season this year, the ratings to watch in Germany doubled from last year solely because Michael Schumacher was racing.

“I promise you right now that NASCAR worships the Kyle Busch idol in their secret closet because Kyle brought some life back to a garage filled with one-dimensional corporate robots.”

I’ll agree with that. But Matt Kenseth shows more personality than Scott Dixon.

“At any rate, your point that the Midwest is still IndyCar’s biggest fan center is valid – I have the demographic information to back it up. BUT – and this is important – the series is not going to thrive so long as they attempt to pretend that IndyCar has anything to do with provincial Midwesternism. Because outside of the Midwest, very few people care about USAC sprinters and midget drivers and the "oval heritage" that is so embraced by the hard-cores.[/quote]

I think that’s a little beside the point. When Indycar turned the knife in their traditional fanbase’s back in the late ‘80s and early ’90s, they lost their core audience and that core audience went and watched something else. Growing is perfectly fine and is what everyone should do, but at some point you become the NHL trying to sell ice hockey to Hispanics in Phoenix. Don’t forget the people that brought you where you are. If NASCAR ever did what Indycar did in the early ‘90s (and they’re repeating some of the manuevers), their core Southern and Midwestern audience would turn off the TV just as well.

“What people are looking for in general is something compelling, something that will hold their attention. Whether that compelling factor is a driver personality or a technology or whatever else, there has to be a hook for people to get invested in the product.”

Well what else in the series do they care about? People at Long Beach don’t care about the technology of the cars. Do you honestly think your typical fan there cares about there only being one chassis or engine?

People want a hero to cheer for. That is the one proven “hook” in American auto racing.
Whatever that hook was, NASCAR found it beginning in the early ’90s.

“The challenge for IndyCar is to fix Indy first – make it compelling to the nation (and the world) – and then figure out a way to tie the rest of the series (and, for that matter, the ladder system) into that story. The Road to Indy needs to start at the grassroots level – karting – and promising young drivers need to get their stories told as they move up the ladder, the same way Kyle Busch’s story got told from his earliest days in the Southwest Tour to now. I believe people will not care about whether the story is told on Midwestern dirt ovals in USAC cars or on road courses in Star Mazda racers, so long as the story is compelling.”

That exists now. But it’s irrelevant if people have to ride buy in order to get into the top series. Racing in this country is different from racing in Europe. Racing in Europe has always largely been a white-collar endeavor. In this country, it’s a blue-collar endeavor. Part of the “Indycar to NASCAR” change for the Midwest was they wanted to watch racecar drivers that got to where they were because they won races, not because Dad had a lot of money. Jeff Gordon was the most popular driver in this country of the past generation of racers. He was not able to get in Indycar in the early ‘90s and he still would not be to now if he were coming up, and he’d’ve been one of the greats whatever car he drove. Likewise Stewart.

And to drive this point home, the new up-and-coming American hopeful is Conor Daly, Derek Daly’s son that just won the Star Mazda championship. I know people that race against Daly, they don’t respect him because they’re better than him. Daly’s gotten to where he is because his dad has bought him the best equipment wherever he can, and yet he still loses to these guys, but these guys aren’t going anywhere in their career because they can’t afford to go any higher and no one will give them a ride. I saw the Star Mazda race at the Night Before the 500, it was 13 people that were racing there because they came from money. If that’s the future of racing, racing in this country is f*cked and will cease to exist. People can say “well, that’s how it’s going to be”. No, it doesn’t.

And you can say “no one cares about USAC outside the Midwest”, well Gordon and Stewart have a wide-ranging popularity currently that eclipses every other racecar driver in this country not named Junior, maybe Danica, and in Stewart’s case maybe Jimmie Johnson (Johnson by the way growing up wanted to go into Indycars).

“It’s not a place that has a built-in audience like, say, Winnipeg or Southern Ontario (yet, anyway – considering that the team has sucked for most of its time in Phoenix) but it CAN WORK given the proper circumstances.”

How much money did the Coyotes lose last year? (last five years, last ten years…)

“And yet virtually nobody showed up at the track. I don’t buy that the reason for this is that IndyCar turned its back on its "traditional fanbase."

Then you and I will always disagree on this. The Indycar fanbase of the 1980s by and large went to NASCAR, I don’t know how anyone can look at the numbers and support of the two series over time and dispute this. And to me the signal of that change was the 1994 Brickyard 400. NASCAR in the Midwest largely didn’t exist until the early ‘90s. Now it’s their 2nd-strongest market after the South.

“As for ride buyers, don’t fool yourself into thinking that the "Conor Daly effect" is limited to IndyCar. For all of the vaunted grassroots appeal of NASCAR and USAC and other "heartland" racing series, it is painfully obvious that the guys who make it up the ladder are the ones with the money.”

Then racing in this country will die. The history of racing in this country shows strongly enough that the people that support racing are the blue-collar people, the city audience by and large can really care less.

“The fact is, the whole "blue collar racer" myth hasn’t been true for more than 20 years in NASCAR. That it still survives is due to marketing. But the idea that NASCAR is a meritocracy is inaccurate and has been for a while now (ask Regan Smith and Aric Almirola).”

Almirola’s a bad example as I don’t think he has much talent but NASCAR likes him because he’s a Cuban.

Compare the rookies from the past few Indianapolis 500s and the past few Daytona 500s and see which group is more blue-collar. For every Paul Menard in NASCAR, there’s a David Reutimann or Brad Keselowski.

And look at Daly. He can’t win go-kart races, but we’re going to get him promoted to Indycar and he is somehow going to win there? Tony Kanaan is a great racecar driver because he had no money and had to win in order to continue on. Tony Stewart is a great racecar driver because on road trips going to events he had to sleep in the back of vans. Take that away and give them comfort, they wouldn’t be as driven to succeed and win. What’s going to produce the better basketball team, the rich white suburban school or the poor black downtown school if all the players are physically the same as far as height and weight? The players more driven to succeed and work hard at it, which is normally the black school. Why does anyone think auto racing is any different?

What you are arguing is that if Ayrton Senna came around today, he would never get a sniff of a Formula One car because he didn’t have any money, and you think this is perfectly allright in spite of the great talent he became in the history of the sport.

“You’ve got Dale Coyne putting a legitimate hazard out on the track every race because she writes big checks.”

Because Graham Rahal refused a paying ride. And you cannot argue on one hand “money will always play a role in racing” and on the other for example ridicule Milka Duno because then you’re playing both sides. She’s on the track for the exact same reason E.J. Viso is.

“And you’ve got owners who threaten to take over the series every so often if they don’t get their way. And it’s been like this for DECADES.”

And that’s part of the reason why NASCAR is #1. People can say the Frances are a dictatorship all they want, but compared to the alternative…and notice Penske and Ganassi never pull this sh*t in NASCAR.

“Again, I’m not going into this in detail here, but suffice to say that the money losses weren’t because the Coyotes won’t work in Arizona, but because of terrible business decisions and completely inept leadership.”

Of course, absolutely everything there was the owner’s fault.

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?p=27556720#post27556720

“That’s completely untrue.”

They only had 2 races in all of the Midwest, and they were at Michigan to cater to the Detroit automakers. ESPN broadcasting NASCAR races nationally did not start til the mid-80s. The only other NASCAR races you had in the Midwest was the Busch series racing at Milwaukee and IRP.

“Don’t put arguments into my mouth that I’m not making.”

Then don’t defend it. Senna is one of the legends of this sport and under the current economic model that you’re defending he would’ve never reached F1. Are you going to argue the sport of auto racing would not be worse off if there were no Senna? Maybe that’s why interest in racing is declining is because it’s not a meritocracy, ever considered that? You say it’s not true for NASCAR any longer, well, its ratings have gone down the past couple years.

“Those are two separate arguments.”

If there was no E.J. Viso in Indycars, there would be no Milka Duno in Indycars. Once you make a car on the track dependent on ride buyers, you can’t make a minimum performance standard because than you’re telling teams “no, you can’t take the money in this case” while telling others “go ahead and take his or her money”, which is obviously going to create charges of favoritism. Case in point, look at sportscars, which has always been a gentleman drivers’ club of millionaires that get their rocks off driving a Porsche around a race track 7 seconds off the pace. If you remove that gentleman culture from the sport, the sportscar racing genre would’ve died long ago because they’ve been dependent on that welfare for so long that the teams once you get beneath the very top don’t know how else to do things.

The best way to get rid of the ride buying culture is to have what happened at Indianapolis this year happen at other races on the schedule. Milka Duno was not fast enough to make the field – and unlike Howard and Tracy – it was just because she was not fast enough instead of making a wrong decision. So we need more cars, but the cost of entry has to go down, which Indycar has done beginning in 2012. Whether that works or not, time will tell.

Tony,

I came up with the perfect solution for the Coyotes’ situation since it’s been reported they lost $25 million last year under central NHL leadership.

What they’ll do is the players at the end of the beach that will play can buy their spot on the hockey team. Think about it if you were this guy, you’re 32 years old, a rec-league hockey player at best, but you’ve since made a few million in your business, but you’ve always love hockey and wanted to play. So you pay the Coyotes a lump sum and get to be a 4th-line defenseman on their squad. Sure, it’s going to bump a guy more deserving of a spot that is better into the AHL, but the finances of the team are bad and they have to make everything pay somehow. And back to you now, you’re a season ticket holder paying to watch Coyote games and you get to see this 4th-line defenseman let up goals as your team will lose more games because of it.

Hey, I as a race fan am supposed to accept this in Indycar for the past 20-25 years. Why is this situation I outlined fine in Indycar but not ice hockey?