EXACTLY !!! Heck if anything , if I was asked I'd say open wheels are for ovals and closed bodies for sportscars !
Have been to several Indy races, but also felt a little like just enjoying my chips and cola watching the Monza GP than focusing in on the race. How are you really the pinnacle of motorsports (F1 as an open-wheel series) when you pole lap record at a premier venue was set in 2004? I feel the same about Indy 500, and it comes out again watching the highlight 'Decade of' DVD series. I get that drivers have been killed, and in a way it is good that open wheel stops and changes its path when it happens. For example I think the Isle of Man TT is a little too traditional and more straight-path in approach to a death during an event. (For those not familiar, a red-flag is waved for fire or track obstruction, flying off the track to the worst result if it does not affect the track can mean a race continues as-is) Technology changes though, a lot. We have club-car events with guys running $2k cars with HANS device helmets. The same guys with their GoPro cameras get amazing on-board shots. ...and I can buy a small car with a computer that will reverse park itself for me. One-make racing doesn't drive you to make active-suspension ground effects cars too, but it also locks out development of composite materials and incremental experimentation. If F1, NASCAR and Indy were all open sheet, race the fastest you can make - I am sure more would have filtered down to club than better helmets and cameras. It's the far side of the spectrum that we all know is impossible - but we're a long way away from the middle too. Radical engineering that improves process seems to have no place in racing now. If it does, it seems gets banned anyways.
Hence the reason nobody is watching. When innovation and creativity are replaced with parity and equality you get what you have now. I don't spend money on watching mediocrity. Most prefer excellence. When sanity returns to professional motorsports, fans will return again. We see excellence everyday with I-phones, I-pads and the latest technology that business brings forward to consumers. Should racing be any less? And the cost isn't the problem, the problem is a marketplace limited by rules that mandate what you use and not allowing more cost efficent products to compete. Competition drives costs down. It is when you have to use a specific product and only that product that drives costs upward. Look at computer prices and how they continue to decrease while performance contiues to increase. Let the markets work in Indy Car and you will get competition also. New ideas create better ways of making products more cost effective. Limiting materials usage as well as mandating what can or cannot be used also drives costs upward. Many of the expensive carbon fiber parts have alternative materials that can produce parts at significantly lower prices. That helps to control cost without concerns for safety. It can be done, but those in power prefer that this form of racing remain a private country club for only the wealthy.
