As to the TV aspect, I don’t watch enough to justify the (high) cost of cable or satelite, so there are only a few races I can watch, unless I go in person & having moved to the South many years ago, the races are just too far away to attend in person. I’m certainly not going to pay to watch a spec series on TV – I did watch the IROC Series when it started & was a fun series, but they ruined it by cutting races back to a few ovals where NASCAR drivers had the clear advantage.

Face it IRL, racing is expensive & trying to limit costs by making everybody run the same chassis & leased engines just makes most races follow-the-leader boring. If you want to spark interest again, you’ll have to let different manufacturers come in with different designs & put all the races on broadcast TV so anyone can watch & people (including myself) will be interested in which team is trying what for the next race.

I will try not to break my record of longest post, but this is a topic near & dear to my heart. First, I grew up within earshot of THE Speedway. My friends & I would ride our bikes over after to school to catch Happy Hour. Then, I started working in the sport on the IndyCar side of the world. For a kid that hung on the fence to catch a glimpse of Al/Bobby Unser, Foyt & Mario; standing on the grid for “Back Home Again” is really special. I still get goose bumps when I drive through the tunnel.

Much like Neon (and similar to a lot of NASCAR fans), I liked the racing pre-spec series much better. The days of Granatelli’s turbine, V6’s with massive turbos, Wildcat & Eagle chassis, etc…. ahhh those were the days.

Now, I do not want to turn this into a controversial topic, but I will disagree with folks that TG “ruined” the sport or allowed NASCAR to become the dominant motorsport.

There were some pretty deep issues going back into the 1970/1980’s. Remember, CART was formed because Patrick, Penske & Haas did not like the way USAC was handling the sport in the late 1970’s. A time when many would say the sport & the 500 were doing quite well.

Patrick, Penske & the gang wanted control of the sport. So CART was run by committee. A committee that had power struggles for 20 years. There was the fiasco in the late 80’s where they fired Frasco & Caponigro for favoring certain “more powerful teams.” Then they hired Stokkan and Craig as CEO’s but would not let them actually make the changes CART needed. As Journo pointed out in another post, the dictatorship of the France family provides stability to NASCAR. While I think NASCAR takes the dictatorship too far, management by committee is worse.

While there were Cosworth engines and Chevy/Ilmor engines, when the Ilmor was THE engine to have, not any/all teams could get on the Chevy program. Haas decided when you got your Lola chassis delivered to you. If it was late in the offseason, you had little chance to test and learn before the season began. Then Haas/Ganassi has such close relationships with Lola/Reynard, if your team found an advantage and shared it with your Lola/Reynard engineer, it was certain Haas/Ganassi teams were going to know about it.

Another issue with CART (and a primary place NASCAR did so well) was that many of the sponsors were B2B deals. You had PPG, Amax Coal, Alumax, LCI, Oracle & MacKenzie. PPG really did not care about the consumer. PPG wanted owners of body shops, car dealers, etc… to buy PPG paint. Same with the other groups. They were there to entertain VIPs of the customers. Kmart/Target did nothing to promote its involvement in the series. They could care less. Their involvement was/is paid for by the vendors. About the only folks that were concerned with consumers was Marlboro, Bud & Miller. In NASCAR, you had Winston, Busch, Bud, Tide, Folgers, Miller, Texaco, Kellogg’s, Wrangler, etc..

The importance of that is; 1) exposure of the sport to the consumer and 2) longevity of the sponsorship.

As far as exposure, when you have team and series sponsor spending lots of $$ to put a picture/standup/display in the grocery store of their driver, that helps promote the sport. I know people that the first time they had heard of Ricky Rudd was from hi standup in the detergent aisle. How many people have heard of Ludwig Heimroth, Jr because of his MacKenzie sponsor?

As far as longevity, when the objective of the sponsorship is to entertain VIP’s you now have lots of competition for places to entertain VIPs. Once you have a sale/marketing executive that likes golf, sailing, whatever instead of racing; they will decide to entertain their customers via golf, sailing, etc… When you can prove consumers are buying lots of your product because you sponsor/promote through racing, it is difficult to do something else. Also, with more and more companies having very serious purchasing rules, you could not entertain much anyway. So, that model of sponsorship died/was substantially hurt and would have dried up for CART.

So, while on the outside IRL looks very similar to CART in the mid-90’s, there are some big differences.

I am actually sorry to see Tony go. He was the only family member that was involved on a regular basis at IMS (and IRL). He is the only family member that was passionate about racing and the track. The others are passionate about their dividend/distribution checks. I have not seen the actual numbers (I doubt many have) spent by TG over the last 15-16 years, but I have heard $500-$600MM. But I have heard that those numbers include capital expenditures at IMS, not just IRL. Some of that would include much needed improvements to the media center and race control. Some of it would have been to build the pit road suites that are revenue producing. So what the real draw on cash flow…who knows?

Yes, I am sure TG would go back and change some decisions if he could, but wouldn’t we all?

Remember, he was the guy that pushed hard to bring NASCAR to IMS. He brought F1 back to the US. He cannot be faulted for that vision.

I am also sad to see Joie go. As you said Journo, he is very talented. He was also very passionate about racing. ISC scored big there. Now IMS/IRL are led by bean-counters and attorneys.

I have heard lots of people begging for IMS/IRL to hire Humpy. Humpy is too much of a carnival promoter. He can sell tickets and blow up things during pre-race, but that is not what we need. We need great races, cool cars and innovation…very similar to NASCAR…not pre-race shows, concerts and family ticket deals for the chicken bone seats.

While CART in its heyday had many chassis, engine and tire combos, IRL ultimately (& later CART as well) moved to single spec series. Pure racing enthusiasts get bored w/ that and tune out leaving only the casual viewer as a waning fan base. To see a early 90’s CART shootout in the hands of Nigel Mansell, Unsers, Andretti, Emmo , Montoya, Zanardi, Tracey, etc, etc sent shivers down your spine and truly rivaled F1. And trust me here that many of the current IRL drivers could not handle the fire breathing cars of that era. Ask Robby Gordon or Montoya and I would have loved to see Stewart wheel a Lola or March w/ turbo Cosworth power.

Typically, F1, Indy and sport car fans relate and latch onto the team even more so that the actual driver. While NASCAR fans, typically, follow the driver wherever he/she goes the Frances should be mindful that a spec series can breed boredom. I will admit that the spec COT is helping to pull NASCAR through these tough economic times, but Brian shouldn’t hedge the future on flat-line formula.

I want a car that, quite frankly, some drivers are just too scared to drive!

Oh yea Tony was the subject. I’ve always liked the Indy 500 and what it stood for, but honestly, being involved w/ that hallowed race and track doesn’t really automatically qualify Tony or anyone else to run a successful series.