Few people watch Indy racing, the tv ratings suck, so no manufacturer has a real reason to get into it. I know I wouldn't. And I used to LOVE Indy racing. Sorry, I just cannot get into 'cars' that all look identical to me, these just don't look like open wheel cars, but then gain, I also understand I am not in the demographic group they need to appease... Ask anyone under 30 who AJ Foyt or Mario Andretti is and they don't really know. They might know they were racing drivers, but that would be about it. You ask someone that is 30 in the year 2030 who the best Indy car drivers were (today) and I doubt you get an answer.
In time sir. One can not reveal what might be a rather large "game changer" at this time. Just remember that while some may see things as they are, others see things as they hope them to be. I will leave it at that for now but I will leave you with this quote..... "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Steve Jobs
While this all sounds perfectly swell, I'm of the mind that Indy Car can't wait four years for a revolutionary change to shake things up. Why 2019? Why not 2015? Aero kits aside, Indy Car has some obvious (and maybe not so obvious) issues. How allowing more manufactures in is a bad thing I'm not quite sure. The more manufactures and chassis makers that are in, the better. CART thrived with multiple engine (Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Ford, Toyota) and chassis (Reynard, Lola, Penske, et.al) manufacturers. This along with excellent media events such as "Spring Training" at Homestead and extensive off-season testing programs got the interest going and they're just not doing that any longer. The manufacturers attract sponsors and thus the media attention that goes along with it. The way Indy Car is perceived now is that things have been funneled down to the lowest common denominator which was in order for Indy Car to start rebuilding itself into a top flight series to challenge F-1 again. It's time to move past the rebuilding phase and into a series that matters again right now and not in four or five years. As an aside, I was speaking with a friend about this very issue over the weekend. I asked my friend "Who won the Indy Car championship last year?". Long silence, and this is from someone FROM Indianapolis with long-standing ties to IMS. After about two minutes of searching the memory banks, I had to tell my friend Will Power won the championship. Hate to use terms like "make or break" for this year but it's almost to this point for Indy Car in 2015. Just look at the explosion of interest across the Internet just from the introduction of the new Nissan GT-R WEC car from one little ad over the weekend. Someone in Indy better be taking notes. BHW
IndyCar was doing "spring training" at Barber the last few years...why did they stop? granted, it didn't do much to pique the interest of the media or casual fan...but then again, when nobody pays attention to your competition, why would they pay attention to your practices there are many lessons to be learned from WEC for all forms of motorsport...F1, Indy, IMSA, NASCAR. one of those lessons is that people still care about relevant technology and innovation.
Or historic racing... Follow the money. The sport is SO commercialized (and has been inexorable in the march towards it's current state) that it is simply not possible to put the genie back into the bottle. Indy would not exist without manufacturer involvement, much less a series that supports that event. Intrigued, but not hopeful...
Barber Motorsports Park square in the middle of the media mecca of Central Alabama. Unless there are guys on the track chasing a football around, they're barely going to be a blip on the map there. A nice facility maybe but to do a proper "Spring Training", Homestead would serve their purposes so much better. The pop that CART got from running their "Spring Training" at Homestead was huge. It got a buzz going about the upcoming season. All the major magazines and relevant news outlets were there because who doesn't want to be in SoFla during January or February when most of the north is in sub-zero temperatures? The sports car season has gotten off to a start with the 24 Hours of Daytona. NASCAR is about to kick off two weeks of non-stop coverage from Daytonner. What are Indy Car teams doing besides sitting on their hands? Indy Car's problem seems to be the "paralysis of analysis", afraid to pop out from under their brick while being overtaken by their motor sport competition and deathly afraid of infringing on the NFL season. I just don't get it. BHW
A little food for thought from someone who has a different perspective of the sport.....Indycar Racing News | Racer.com - IndyCar 2018 by ex-CEO Randy Bernard
there have been a bunch of these Indycar 2018 articles, most have been fun to read...I'm wondering what you found compelling about Randy's article.
Like I said......food for thought. Listening to others helps to clarify the problems. Randy has named a few as has Gordon Kirby and several others. Just makes the conversation a little more interesting. ( I enjoy all of the comments here, even if I do not agree.)
you mean Gordon Kimball? (Gordon Kirby is a well known journo of course; Kimball is Charlie's dad, and a great engineer with F1 and Indy wins on his resume). I think Kimball hits the nail on the head on most issues. Indycar Racing News | Racer.com - IndyCar 2018 by Gordon Kimball
Having read through a couple of these 2018 theories, it occurs that turning the clock back is exactly what Tony George and GrandAm attempted to do with disastrous results. When George started the IRL, it was his vision that the series become an All-American affair again stocked with drivers plucked from the mid-west sprint car series as evidently, they'd had enough of those orange juice drinking Brazilians at IMS stealing the show. As short sighted as George was, GrandAm took things to new lows in producing the DP which were designed to be nothing more than dumbed down, tube frame sports cars in order to be slower than Cup cars. In both instances, fans and media responded by staying away by the droves. So, turning the clock back isn't in anyone's interest if their plan is to be a major player on the world motorsport stage. Many will be observing the progress of the new Nissan prototype for WEC and if front engine technology still has a place in modern racing. If it is successful, then others will follow and perhaps there may be implications for open wheeled racing again. But, boy, is that one giant leap. Indy Car would have to loosen their rules to separate from the spec formula which is one of the things that is slowly killing them and then allow in a format of car which hasn't run at the Speedway since (what?) the 60's. Instead of concentrating on 2018, why isn't anyone talking about 2015? Again, I don't get it. BHW
This is a great post. We seem to have collective amnesia - the problem was (and always will be) Tony George and the Hulman / George family. They want(ed) to protect the "500", and their vision was to do it with Sprint Car guys. Buddying up to NASCAR was all part of their grandiose plan, not realizing that the France's killed off what threat Indy / CART had coming out of the 80's. Placing all their eggs in one basket (ovals) is first problem. I know, you'll say they still have street circuits and road courses, but it was an after thought. The cars were NOT designed for those types of courses, they are predominantly ovals. As someone that absolutely LOVED CART, the ovals were the least favorite for me (although I did enjoy them, I prefer the road courses like Laguna Seca, Road America, PIR, etc). I do believe that @TurboPanzer is on to something - it's not the money thing though. It's (as others have noted) the innovation. It's gone. It's so over regulated and spec that there's nothing to enjoy. Need to return to a day when the rulebook could be "interpreted", and guys like Gurney / AAR showed up with crazy stuff. IndyCar is NOT NASCAR. Don't try to be something you aren't.
Well said. One of the things that brought down CART was their obsession with NASCAR and what NASCAR was doing every minute. This was from the CEO through the team owners. They chose to be distracted by NASCAR and no matter how they tired to package themselves, they'd never be NASCAR so why try? BHW
No...I did mean Gordon Kirby. You might wish to review his comments. Kimball has made his comments and are duly noted. Here....Gordon Kirby - Auto Racing - The Way It Is: Archive List
The infield at Daytona was never sold out until the DP era. I'm not sure how you can say the fans have stayed away. DPs were created to keep costs down. Anyway, I like seeing the LMP cars compete with the DPs as long as their close in overall performance.
Well I recently bought tickets to the Alabama GP and hope they don't run into financial problems and cancel the race. :/
NASCAR created those DPs, those ugly ****boxes, for one reason and one reason only... To present NASCAR Cup cars as the dominant racing cars in the country and to reduce sports car racing to being their the red headed step children and a laughing stock, in an attempt to gain control of sports car racing, which they've have done. Were DPs ever put on the track side by side with LMP-1 cars, they would have their lunch handed to them. Getting back to Indy Cars a moment, the mention that the series needs more American drivers is interesting. They have American drivers such as Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti, to name two, and what do they do with them? Hunter-Reay, a marketers dream, has won the series championship and the Indy 500 and we hardly hear about the guy. Marco has one of the most prestigious racing names in American racing history, doesn't seem to resonate. Here we are in February, and not a single word about any sort of Indy Car testing going on, nothing to put Indy Car racing in the news, online or in print and they wonder why there is no interest in the series? BHW
ah, OK, I've read Kirby's stuff over there. I thought you meant he did one of those Indycar 2018 articles for Racer.
Point to all of this is most know how we got here....we knew what worked , what didn't and the bottom line simply is that unless things change and change radically, this party is just about done.....for good!