Can't We All Just Get Along??

[JMFVET]

You can view the page at http://www.trackforum.com/forums/con...as-street-race

Excellent article! I agree with all of it. I hope we can put this crap to bed. I also hope I win the Lottery, that peace erupts in the Middle East, that Economy improves, and that our (Both Parties) weren't as dysfunctional as those who perpetuate CART/ChampCar vs IRL and Twisty Drivers vs Oval drivers.

[jonovision_man]

The only problem I have with the "follow the money" approach is that it lacks "vision" (for lack of a better word).

What is this series supposed to be about? People loved the diversity of CART, but if street races are the only ones willing to pay, do you dump it? The product in its totality has to be considered here, I personally would have a lot less interest in the series without a mix of circuits.

jono

[Turn13]

I guess it's like triage - yes, the vision of having a nice steak and a cigar makes for a wonderful evening, but it does not necessarily supplant the need for direct pressure on the severed artery while the patient is on the gurney

We need both - a vision, and to stop the bleeding.

[doitagain]

We received this response via an email:

I’m in the Indycar media centers a lot, so I get to have lots of conversations like the ones discussed in this article.

First, great work. Wonderful work, in fact. Better than I hear from some of the old-time “CART” journalists, in fact (you know their names) when it comes to this subject.

Some of my thoughts:

1. “The Split” happened in December, 1978. What followed was a horrible attempt by Indy/USAC to kill CART. Without Tony Hulman (recently deceased at that point) and the USAC leadership (killed in a plane crash right before this point) it was impossible to do. I wish that people would use the term “split” in this manner instead of referring to the formation of the IRL.

2. What followed, from 1980 or so until the IRL was founded, was something akin to a truce. It wasn’t a business model. CART needed Indy to survive (the proved that later one) and Indy needed those CART names and sponsors (which they also proved later on).

3. As this article pointed out, CART was a sick organization about the time that TG formed the IRL. What covered up the mess was momentum and the big-bucks F1 drivers. There were many in Indycar land – specifically those who were more Indy 500 fans than CART fans – who agreed with TG, and to this day assert that those problems cited were very real. By 1996, most of the old-line drivers were retired or close to it (ie, Mario, Rick Mears, AJ, etc) and the new guys were all F1 old-timers or F1 rejects. When the F1 guys retired, the problems became painfully obvious (anyone else remember “Chris Pook will save us”?)

4. “CART could survive without Indy, but TG killed CART”. By the time I went to the last CART race at Michigan, no one knew any CART drivers that hadn’t run at Indy. Even in the paddock guys like Tony K and Dario and Helio were walking around with fans ignoring them, while Mario and Paul Tracy got all of the attention. Indy alone was half of the sponsorship budget of CART even during CART’s heyday. Indy was the reason why F1 drivers wanted to run CART (okay, that big money helped). By the time CART died, Indy 500 alone was bigger in almost every way than the sum total of CART’s entire season.

5. “The Split allowed NASCAR to eat our lunch.” Kinda sorta true, but not exactly. NASCAR circa 1995 had a very cheap series, where sponsors could get lots of visibility for their bucks. As I recall, Bill Elliot / Melling Racing ran about a $2 million/year budget when they dominated, a fraction of what the top CART teams were spending. In addition, they had the marketing genius of the Winston Tobacco Company doing their promotion, something PPG (and later, FedEx) couldn’t match. They also had American drivers who had been successfully marketed by ESPN’s “Thunder” broadcasts, who later became NASCAR’s biggest stars. So, even without the formation of the IRL, given the problems of Indy and CART in 1995, NASCAR still would’ve eaten their lunches.

6. “In the old days CART had 4 engines and 5 chassis and that’s what would make Indycar great again.” If multiple engines and multiple chassis would make the series great then we’d all be watching USAC Silver Crown cars. If high HP and low downforce were the keys, we’d all be watching USAC Silver Crown cars (Silver Crown “Champ” cars run about 800 hp with no wings). If “American Drivers” was the key... USAC.

7. “In the old days, CART would sell out (name your venue).” Yup. Michigan International Speedway had about 80,000 seats when they sold out the first US 500 – and even then thousands of those were corporate seats. Beyond that, paid attendance was around 50,000 for an Indycar event at Michigan until those fans were killed in the stands. Before downsizing, MIS had 153,000 seats, which made the 50,000 or so who showed up for that last Indycar even look pretty lost in those stands. My point is that NASCAR’s crowds pushed tracks to build stands that accommodated a turnout that never was seen by most CART events (although I do believe that they used to get 100,000 at Milwaukee), and to see those empty seats at Indycar events doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve always got a smaller crowd.