Race Car Tech

2006-08-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

“The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”

That is, IMO, absolute nonsense.

It was once, but that label is nothing but an echo of times long gone.

The “faithful”, still use it, as if being able to get 250,000+ warm heinys through the gates of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway makes the race a spectacle.

"Spectacle" operates in two contexts simultaneously. ‘Source: Wikopedia’.

In one context, “spectacle” is an expression of something of great historical significance; an event or object of superior content, the epicenter of a gathering of the very best.

In the opposite context, “spectacle” is often used for the utterances of fools, the uncovering of a lie, a failed enterprise, or the corruption of something that had merit, but no longer has merit.

The Indianapolis 500 had that secured, superior position for nearly eighty years of its operation. There was no other racing event that could be compared to it; as well known and respected as “The Kentucky Derby”, “The Masters Tournament” and other American icons of sport.

It was the “gathering place” for the very best in racing and the spawning ground of many advanced automotive ideas, teams and especially, drivers; the best there were would mark the zenith of their careers as winners of the Indy 500. It provided a sort of canonization to racing sainthood for its winners.

There are some of us, who still manage to breathe, go back far enough to gauge the changes that have taken place during the evolution of “The Speedway”.

There have been periods that caused controversy, and often rules changes were not accepted too willingly, but overall, the Indy 500 kept its well earned position as “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”

To me, there were several epochs that defined the Indy 500. The last of course is the pre-IRL period, where competition was fierce, the racing unimpeded, and most of the near present day top level drivers plied their talents.

Mario Andretti, Rick Mears, Jim Clark, Gordon Johncock, Dan Gurney, A. J. Foyt, the Unser’s, and I know I’m missing too many, were all representative of the quality of the drivers of that era. Other than Mario Andretti and Jim Clark, who won the Formula One World Championship and Dan Gurney who was a championship level Formula One and road racing icon, while most of the other drivers were mainly established by their win or performances at the Indy 500.

The Indianapolis 500 was then, the greatest spectacle in racing, without a doubt.

The rest of the world of motorsports deferred to the Indy 500, and it wasn’t just because it had the largest single day attendance of any sporting event, which is after all, just numbers; numbers do not qualify any event as “great”. It can be argued that the annual Baja 1000 has more people in attendance than Indy ever had, or will ever have.

The “great” part was provided by the drivers, the teams, the history of the IMS, and the remembrances of fallen hero’s that died doing what they loved to do.

Tony Hulman, who is almost wholly responsible for the continued stewardship of what most open wheel fans considered the center of American racing, regardless of type.

One of the endearing properties and part of “The Speedway’s” panache was the creation and sustaining of ‘traditions”, events and people who defined what the Speedway and its race was, and gave direction on how it should be revered.

As sometimes happens, as generations pass, and stewardship is passed along, the hard earned legacy sometimes goes awry.

This is the case for roughly the last decade, with the installation of Anton (Tony) George, who is the Grandson of Tony Hulman, as President and CEO of the Indianapolis Speedway Corporation that administers the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In the mid-nineteen nineties, CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) made up the majority of participants in the Indy 500. There were always one-offs, that would race one race only; the 500.

CART split away from USAC, which was the series sanctioning body, and which was initially formed by Tony Hulman, when the owners felt that they were not getting enough of “the pie”, and that almost all of the series attention was garnered by the IMS, and other venues were relegated to not just a inferior role, but were almost forgotten and irrelevant.

For reasons known only to him, Tony George began to feel that CART had become too powerful, and in my opinion, became critically paranoid as to perhaps loosing control over his family’s investment; the Indianapolis 500 race, and could, as his paranoia grew, hold the Indy 500 “hostage”.

On the other hand, CART was destined to self-destruct. An organization managed by a cabal of team owners, although initiated with the best of intentions, became a ticking time bomb. Although it’s not difficult, even charitable, to look from Tony George’s perspective of handling and relying on an organization that was becoming as difficult as herding cats, CART did have the correct formula of racing.

The convergence of racing on road courses, temporary street courses and short and long ovals was unique in the world of motorsports. All of this was with the Indy 500 at its heart.

Petulantly, the speedway continued to have the hoary, old USAC organization sanction it, that was until Tony George went ballistic after USAC proved it was well beyond their capability to sanction a top tier race, and turned the sanctioning over to his racing series; the IRL.

Up until George initiated “the split”, Champ Car was doing reasonably well in growth and in fan acceptance, in fact, many fans and journalists considered CART racing superior to F1, at least in its variation of venues and racing type..

Since that time, open wheel racing has done nothing but drop through the floor.

A type of racing that held its own even when NASCAR was in its ascendancy, has now been relegated to ratings less than the Food Channel or old Cowboy movies on TV, and at the track, the TV coverage has to purposely point their cameras away from the stands so that the embarrassment will not be broadcast nationally.

NASCAR alone is the top level of racing in America. NASCAR had an explosive expansion in popularity, not necessarily fueled by “the split”, but by appealing to the great middle ground of fans; extraordinary public relations, with making the drivers, and their personalities, create the core of their business model. It’s a formula that works, and surprisingly, not copied very well by other racing series.

There’s a lot of “grey” that surrounds the reasons why George and CART came to blows, and there’s nothing that I can add to the reasons why, or could shed any significant additional perspective on the issue. I’m just addressing the “stewardship” of what had become, a “National Treasure”; the Indy 500.

It is my opinion that Tony George is the single most destructive force that racing, in general, has seen in this century. He’s an “inheritor” of what was a national treasure, and he blew it.

Your opinions may vary.

ulman

2006-04-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Race Car Tech

2005-10-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

Race Car Tech

ChampCars and IndyCars: