Pruett: It's Time for Indy Car to Stop Kidding Itself

Interesting article on Racer.com

Latest Stories - PRUETT: It's time for IndyCar to stop kidding itself

BHW

 

great article.

those IMSA ratings numbers (tape delayed AND condensed!) have to be awfully embarrassing for Indycar.

 

Good article, interesting points. I still feel there is so much wrong with IndyCar that this alone wouldn't be enough. I'm surprised at those rating numbers for TUDOR, but still don't think it's going to push them over the top either.

CART in its heyday was something else. I probably underestimate the aesthetic angle (the current cars are butt-ugly compared to the stunning CART chassis of the glory days), but then realize - who is watching Miss America if all the contestants aren't pretty?

Turbo engines - good step. Cross-series promotion (e.g., Kurt Busch running IndyCar) - another great idea. Get these cars looking bad-ass is one more step in the right direction - needs to happen.

 

I don't get why they're so worried about football.

The football broadcasts are now so advertising laden, the ads seem to be endless that
it becomes boring to watch after only a few minutes.

Watch an average NFL game. More hype than any sport (including NASCAR) can ever
live up to. Run a kick-off, then five minutes of ads. Come back, three plays and out, punt,
five more minutes of ads, lather, rinse, repeat.

It is to the point where it takes 4+hours to play a 60 minute game and they're looking for
ways to make the games even longer, more time outs, longer time outs, a three minute
warning (all things that have been openly discussed at the annual NFL meetings) et.al.
They won't be happy until an average NFL game takes six hours to play where an average
Indy Car race should take no longer than two, with a 500 mile oval race taking less than
three.

I bet that if anyone sat with a stopwatch on an average NFL game that the time the ads take
up far outweigh the action on the field. But, it's the only way the networks can afford to make
these absurd multi-billion dollar contracts they've gotten themselves into with the NFL.

If racing of all types just put a better product on the track, avoided the extended full course
caution nonsense, their ratings would continue to trend upward. Unfortunately, the broadcasters
(of both football and racing) have their heads so buried in the sand now
that it seems as though nothing will change.

BHW

 

We discuss this all the time here.

Indy car was at its' heyday when?
Mid-Late 80's?

What has changed between then and now?

Cable TV.
Video games (Playstations, XBox, PS2, etc.)
Home computer (games).
The internet.
Cell phones.
You can name a dozen other things.

All of a sudden there is competition for your time and money, and it isn't just
Indy racing that is in trouble anymore, although the politicking of Tony George
and the IRL sure did a lot to speed up the demise of open wheel racing in the USA.

I don't even bat an eye at 'Indy car' racing anymore, it's a mess,
the cars are boring, the engines are boring, the drivers are boring,
the rules are too tight, it just blows.
We cannot even adopt a 'favorite driver' anymore because they come and go so
often, and switch teams too often, we cannot keep track. Gone are the days
(in ANY sport) where a guy signed with a team and then largely stayed there
until they retired. What do you do when a driver or player you like, on a team
you like, goes to a team you don't like? That also blows.

We used to say 'who do you think you are, Mario Andretti (or AJ Foyt)', and those
days are long gone. Today, if you are 30 or 40, what name do you drop when you
say 'who do you think you are .......' ? Sorry, but nobody comes to mind anymore,
not even Richard Petty...

Indy racing has lost its' identity, and it will NEVER get it back, not with the
competition with other sports and things to take our time and money.

 

What he said!

Time and again, racing (at all levels from the sanctioning bodies to the media) has failed to recognize
these things and they've done so at their own peril.

It reminds me of the time I was photographing for On Track magazine at Sebring in 1997. The On Track
editors made the trip and we gathered in the paddock the morning of the race. At the time, I had some
images run in the magazine but my work in sports cars and CART was getting a lot more play on the Internet
which may not have been as much money necessarily, some, but a lot more exposure and recognition.

The then editor of On Track spoke up and said "How's the Internet? To which every one of them laughed.
My reply was, "Just fine and you won't be laughing when the Internet runs print out of business" which
shut them up.

On Track lasted two or three more years, stumbling into obscurity when they failed to recognize the Internet
as the future, they only got their own website up and running when the ship had had already virtually sunk.

The same mentality runs throughout racing at all levels. Don't care a whit about the future
as long as we're fat now.

BHW

 

I tend to agree. it's been 20 years since IndyCar mattered, and the powers that be haven't noticed. I don't see it ever recapturing it's former glory (late 80's through mid 90's).

 

The NFL isn't about watching the game, its about parties. Longer game = longer parties.

 

I think Indycar's only hope is to pay guys like Vettel or Alonso to come over in their prime to get an International audience. Problem is those guy's salaries are 3 times what it cost to run one team for a whole year. The only guy that can pull it off is Penske but I don't ever see it happening. It worked when they brought over Mansell, it could work again. Now back in the Mansell Indycar era they had multiple chassis developers, multiple engines, cars looked different...etc. We'll get a little bit of that this year with the aero kits. Just throwing crap against the wall with this idea. I just remember going to Mid-Ohio for a test session and Mansell showed up with Newman-Haas and 10-20k people showed up just to watch him test out in the middle of farm country. That also was the year Senna tested a Penske Indycar at the Firebird circuit, how far Indy has fallen. Thanks Tony George.

 

Excellent point.

Look at all of the former F-1 drivers who'd rather do
Formula E than Indy Cars.

Barrichello came over, gave it a try and decided he'd
rather race stock cars in Brazil.

Sad state of affairs.

BHW

 

And here all this time, I thought it was about gambling.

Thanks for the correction.

BHW

 

Rubens wanted to stay but couldn't find the budget.

which is telling in itself, but it wasn't for lack of desire on his part.

the money will run out in Formula E and you'll see those drivers go elsewhere

 

whatever happened to danica patrick?

 

she took her whiny, overpaid, underperforming self to NASCAR.

 

The racers are worried about running into the NFL, and yet this writer is suggesting Saturday races. Has he never heard of college football? The schools are putting on better shows, and getting great ratings, and taking all 14 or 16 channels at once. The racers have little chance of making an impression against that.

 

Agreed!

 

Yeah, I don't know. It would seem with Rubino's name recognition and the amount of
Brazilian money and interest flowing into Indy Car, if he really wanted to he could have
found budget.

Point being, there are plenty of drivers out there with global name recognition (Heidfeld,
Senna, Alguersuari, Pic or even Button for example) which Indy Car should be pursuing in
order to bring some European attention to their ranks.

Pic is already racing for Andretti in Formula E so it may not be such a huge leap that they'd
give him a tryout in one of their Indy Cars.

The way things are set up now, if drivers can't bring budget, they get left by the wayside.
In 1999, I was working with the management of Tom Kristensen as he had some interest
to get into CART (such as it was).

Being from Denmark where there isn't much in the way of an industrial base and not being
involved with Karsten Ree (Den Bla Avis), we marketed Tom's talent which was obvious. A
couple of teams like Walker and Rahal showed interest but Walker needed $4M for Tom
to get a look-in and Rahal's then sponsor Shell wanted a driver with "Indy 500 winner" on his
CV so they chose Kenny Brack.

So, it's not so much about how much talent a driver has or a driver whom may make a team
a winner, it's about who may bring a boatload of cash to the table even if he's .5 off the pace
of a non-funded driver.

Therefore, we don't see the likes of Andretti, Foyt, etc. emerging these days.

BHW

 

yep.

and that's the type of shortsightedness that is killing professional racing.

 

So long as the Hulman-George family wields any influence (other than as a track owner), IndyCar will fail. Can't see the forest for the trees.

 

So, what happens next then?

Do Penske, Ganassi & Co. repeat history and break away from the Hulman's stranglehold
on things and start a new CART series?

Seems unlikely anyone would want to step up to this nonsense but you never know, there
may well be an ego with disposable income out there willing to do it.

BHW

 

I went to my first Indycar race since 1996 this year and even with a media credential it sucked. The drivers were nowhere to be found until they dove out of their motorhomes and scootered over to the cars and the on-track action was boring. The cars? Meh. They do nothing for me. Nothing.
I left way early and then cursed the organizers for holding the event on a holiday weekend because traffic was beyond ridiculous.
This was Pocono btw and the turnout was abysmal - so poor that they canceled the third and final year of the contract right then and there.

 

I don't know - maybe it's like pre-CART USAC days. Indy 500 is the race to run, everything else is sanctioned by a lower level organization (USAC again?)

 

I have loved racing - in particular, single seater, open wheel - all my life. As a little boy riding my Schwinn Stingray bike (banana seat, sissy bar, slick rear tire) in Los Angeles I would imagine myself at the wheel of an Indy car. I attended the first Long Beach Grand Prix, and have the program to prove it. I followed US open wheel racing until the mid 90s, when I stopped watching for good.

This thread has so much intelligent discussion of the future of US motorsports, thank you all. I can only add that I am very concerned that motorsports may not survive the coming changes in the way we view, use and interact with our street cars. Some fundamental change is needed in racing, but what? I wonder whether Formula E isn't a step in the right direction - as much as I hate to say that. The slow greening, the heavy use of gimmicks to create close competition, don't seem to be saving racing. Still, I find hope in the US karting scene, and the far greater interest in racing outside the US.

 

Similar here - right down to the Stingray bike. My first open wheel was in Trenton, I think the last race in 1979. Went to the Meadowlands races too.

The "split" was the beginning of the end. We can all deny it and take sides, but it has never been the same since. Honestly, a few years after the split, CART was clearly a superior product but it could not survive without Indy.

Reality is, Indy could probably survive without CART, but IRL / Indycar is MORE than Indy. George was short sighted, he did the wrong thing. The damage is almost beyond repair now and the whole thing is a lost cause as far as I am concerned.

 

With 20/20 hindsight, the eight or so CART teams that Tony George held positions open for
at Indy should have taken him up on it.

The CART teams would have mopped the floor with the IRL teams not only on pace but
in the pits where the IRL pit stops looked more like a Keystone Cops routine. It is a pity
there was so much bad blood then as if Penske, Ganassi, Patrick et.al. had taken up George's
invitation, they would have put the IRL to rest very quickly.

The split very definitely ruined the American open wheeled racing scene which had been
rivaling F-1 in terms of prestige and international media attention.

And, unfortunately, as is being discussed in another thread, the split in U.S. sports car racing
has eroded with similar effect.

BHW