From the Indianapolis Star: A year of sports business accomplishments landed Tony George in a different winner's circle this evening. George, chief executive of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was named 2008 Business Leader of the Year by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce before a crowd of 1,200 at the Indiana Convention Center. George was credited for his role in landing Indianapolis' first MotoGP and for leading efforts to unify open-wheel racing under the IndyCar Series, with the Indy 500 still the most prominent race in the series.
I can't forgive him for destroying open wheel racing in the US. All you have to do is look at the shrikage in TV ratings, sponors, and technology for Indy cars and incredible growth of Nascar since Mr. George decided to break up Cart and you'll see just how much we have lost.
I realized how big Champ Car was in the 90's when I attended a test session at Mid-Ohio when Nigel Mansell was driving for Newman-Haas, there were probably 15,000 people there in the middle of farm land country waving british flags to watch a lowly test session. His influence was gigantic on gaining a worldwide audience all flushed down the toilet by Mr. George. I've seen IRL races on tv that looked like they had 15,000 people there.
Motorsport jerk of the year...any year, every year. What a joke. the yokels in Indy give homage to a hometown boy who won the sperm bank lottery and inherited the Indianapolis speedway. BFD
I was there that day at Mid-Ohio. Nigel was at Petite LeMans with his boys running Atlantics this year. TG did not unify open wheel. He bled $ from his family fortune until it died and substituted this pig of a spec car in the process. That's the good news. The bad news is Bernie is following his routine.
There are a lot of perspectives on the IRL/Cart fiasco. One is that CART was basically running a benefit series for a few top teams, and all of the second tier teams were left with the crumbs, much like it is in F1 today. Newman Haas and Penske were fat and the rest of the grid was never gonna get close. The track owners were going broke and the fields were weak except for a few teams. Tony wanted to even it out more, and the big guys in CART wouldn't have any of that. They actually all bailed out when CART went public and got something out of the dying series. Open wheel racing was severely damaged by the split, but Tony isn't totally to blame, the CART guys were equally stubborn and it was a case, much like we see with a union and a company where they both lose in the long run, the company goes belly up and the jobs are all lost in the end.
Yes, you are correct. There are many perspectives to the business end of the fiasco that we could go on and on about. I owned 100 shares of Cart stock. But from the perspective of a fan to a racing car and the drivers. Oh well, water over the dam. I went back to Indy this year for the first time since 95. 230 plus into T1. I missed the place. Did you know they even have girls now? Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The odd thing with economic conditions as they are, I think manufacturers might find IRL more bang for you buck than F1 in the near future. Maybe not from a advertising standpoint due to low IRL ratings, but whats it cost to run a IRL team a year, maybe $15 million vs. $500 million for F1. I wouldn't be surprised if F1 rips off some of IRL's future ideas, they ripped a few from ChampCar.
