IndyCar is making efforts to reverse its fortunes. The ruling Hulman-George family has brought in a lot of new management, with fresh ideas, and is trying its best to end the fifteen-year split that nearly killed the sport.
And now, just when it looks like there might possibly be some tiny cause for hope … some “fans” of the series are saying that what it needs is another split.
What follows is a very brief, very superficial, and somewhat biased view of the situation.
Yes, I confess to being biased. I am in that camp of IndyCar fans that wants IndyCar to survive. If my allegiance to the sport bothers you, read no further. Otherwise … here it goes.
CART: The Start of the Modern Age
In 1978, IndyCar left the auspices of USAC and reformed under CART, as suggested (sort of) by Dan Gurney, because under USAC, IndyCar was getting phenomenally expensive, but the rewards were shrinking, and teams could no longer afford to race.
On top of that, USAC officials were living in pre-TV days promotion-wise. They had no idea how to attract people to their series, and thus failed to attract the sponsors’ money which could keep the series alive.
CART had its strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. Some owners became too powerful and started operating the series for their own benefit, eventually. But for the first fifteen years, CART took IndyCar racing to a national and international prominence it had never seen before (and hasn’t even begun to approach since.)
Tony George, the Indy 500, and the Split
In 1996, Tony George, inheritor of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Hulman-George fortune, came on the scene and demanded that he be given more power in CART. CART management offered him the same power any other board member wielded, but Tony George wanted to be King.
When he was not given a crown (he had never worked for a living, never run a business, never managed a racing series … all he had done was reach the age when his trust fund deed said he became the president of IMS) he took his toys and left, starting the Indianapolis Racing League with a bunch of no-name drivers and outmoded cars bought from CART owners, who no longer had use for them.
What the IRL had, was the Indianapolis 500, by far the biggest race in America and one of the three biggest in the world. And using that as leverage, plus using the enormous Hulman-George fortune, Tiny George managed to keep his league running (though ultimately it lost huge amounts of money every year it operated, eventually costing the Hulman-George family half a Billion—with a B—dollars.)
CART, not sure how to compete, made Roger Penske the de facto CART dictator, and that didn’t work out too well. Penske ran the league for his own team, and when the money stopped flowing, he defected to IRL (lured by the promise of Hulman-George dollars.)
When Penske left, other big teams followed. CART was sunk. After years of Pyrrhic battles which left both series crippled, in 2008 Tony George spent even more millions giving cars and cash to the remaining CART (now called CCWS) teams, “reuniting” IndyCar under the IRL banner.
Goodbye, Tony G.; Even Your Family Is Fed Up
In 2009, Hulman-George family, after watching Tony George spend half-a-billion or more to create a racing league which still lost $22 million a year, fired him. They removed him as president of IMS and in a huff, he quit the IRL, having almost killed American Open-Wheel Racing.
Meanwhile, NASCAR, which had been a mainly regional racing series trapped in the Deep South, decided to go national, and they did it in a Very Big Way. NASCAR is now the biggest, most profitable racing series in North America by a huge margin. If you go to any hardware store in America and ask about last weekend’s race, the guys (and a lot of the girls) there will tell you about the latest NASCAR event.
While IndyCar struggles along with .1 TV ratings, NASCAR regularly pulls 3.5. The biggest, most successful team in IndyCar, (Penske Racing) is struggling to find sponsors, while the biggest, most successful companies in America (M&M/Mars to General Mills to DuPont to Home Depot) gladly spend enormous sums on NASCAR teams.
NASCAR is aired on the biggest broadcast and cable networks, while IndyCar appears on one of the smallest cable-only networks.
Basically, the split almost killed IndyCar, and created a situation where NASCAR could almost lock out any other national racing series.
IndyCar, though crippled by the split, was not killed. It still has a diehard fanbase, and many people, including the Hulman-George family, believe it can again be viable, profitable, popular.
Unfortunately, the split did so much damage, there is very little left to work with. The series is broke, the teams are broke. Sponsors aren’t interested because the viewing audience is so small. Manufacturers like Ford, Chevy and Toyota, which race in NASCAR, aren’t at all interested in IndyCar, because there is so little return on the investment.
IndyCar needs magical bootstraps and someone magical to pull them.
And possibly, IndyCar has found something of a magic man.
Randy Bernard: From Bull-Riding to Auto-Racing
Randy Bernard came from nowhere to start Professional Bull Riders, Inc. Bernard saw bull-riding, which had been a minor sport in professional rodeos—itself an extremely niche sport—as a tremendously exciting and dangerous sport which a lot of people would love to see, if they only had the chance.
Starting with ten riders and a card table, in ten years Randy Bernard built the sport into a major money-making venture, with 800 competitors filling stadiums across the U.S. and South America.
The Hulman-George family, needing someone to do the same with IndyCar, called on Randy Bernard to work his magic with their crippled series. Bernard had never seen an IndyCar race, but he had just cashed out his PBR stock and was looking for a new challenge. Well, he got one.
Bernard came into a sport worse off than bull-riding, because bull-riding as a stand-alone had no history, while IndyCar had a history of a bitter civil war which really hadn’t ended. IndyCar fans are deeply and it appears permanently divided between Tony George and the IRL (all-ovals, All-American) and CART (oval tracks and road tracks, the best drivers in the world.)
Tony George thought he could attract the huge mass of regional oval-racing fans watching sprints, midgets, late-models, and super-modifieds. CART thought they could attract Formula 1 fans and drivers (which they did) and eventually compete with F1 across the globe (which they were starting to do, before the split.)
CART fans point out that not many people are watching the oval races; IRL supporters point out that not many people are watching the road races either. CART fans point out that the CART formula took IndyCar to its greatest heights in history; IRL fans point out that right now, IndyCar is at its deepest depths.
IRL fans point out that there is a huge, untapped mass of oval-racing fans, tens of thousands of which watch oval racing at of tracks all across the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and South. CART supporters point out that most of those fans hate IndyCar and will never become IndyCar fans.
This divide is one of the biggest problems facing Randy Bernard. The die-hard fans, the only ones keeping the series alive while it tries to remake itself to seek out new fans, spend more energy fighting than watching the racing.
Many refuse to watch oval races; many of the rest refuse to watch road races. Worst of all, whenever a new fan does happen to turn up, he or she is immediately assaulted with the corrosive rancor spewed by the extremists on either wing.
While there is a large contingent that wants the existing series, with its mix of ovals and road courses, to keep growing and keep trying to attract new fans, these moderates tend not to be so loud or so motivated, and they certainly can’t protect the newcomers from hearing about how lousy the series is, how wrong it went years ago, how it will surely fail because it won’t follow the CART or the IRL model.
The IndyCar ‘Community;’ Pick a Losing Side, Please
One thing that made NASCAR so popular, was that it offered a community experience; people could feel they were part of something All-American, honest, and friendly, where along with racing, beer and barbecues and good conversation transcended all other differences and brought people together.
By contrast, joining the IndyCar community is like walking between two opposing political rallies. If you step one inch towards either side of the street, the one side will attack you while the other will try to recruit you and brainwash you, and if you stay in the middle both sides will hate you.
It is not hard to understand why this glorious sense of community isn’t appealing to more fans. Who would not want to join this crowd?
‘No Win’ or ‘No Surrender’?
If not, why bother trying? Scrap the series, make the Indy 500 a once-year stand-alone event, and if no one shows up … well, at least the IRL won’t be losing $20-30 million per year any more.
But if there is a way forward … it has to lie on the other side of the deep split between the fans. And sealing that split will take perseverance and cash, only one of which Randy Bernard has at his disposal.
For Randy Bernard, “No Surrender” is the only course. He has committed to IndyCar, and he has to ride it until it runs or dies.
And the fans? For both extremes, “No Surrender” is the default position, even if it means “No Win.”
A New Split? The Last One Worked Out So Well …
Moderate fans say, “We need to put the split behind us. Fifteen years of Civil War nearly killed this sport; another five years of warfare will finish the job.” But some of the moderates also say, “We need to remember the split, because we need to remember why we can Never let the sport split again. We need to remember history so we don’t repeat it.”
This is pertinent right now, because a contingent has surfaced in the IndyCar community calling for a new split.
This new group believes IndyCar should be split into an all-oval series and an all-road series, with different drivers and teams in each. This group believes that the current schedule should be cut in half so each half-series gets nine races, and that they could come together once a year to fight it out together at the Indy 500.
This contingent believes IndyCar is turning its back on hundreds of thousands of oval-racing fans, who will never support a series that is half road races.
This contingent believes that since the World of Outlaws, USAC sprints, and thousands of stock, modified and super-modified cars run at so many tracks around the country, Only oval racing can attract the fanbase the series needs.
These supporters of a new split are kind enough to allow some road racing, but they firmly believe that only by splitting IndyCar again, will the series attract enough fans to be viable, and those potential fans are all oval-track fans.
Well … some people believe that the diehards will never forget the split, but also that because they remember it in terms so far removed from reality, they also will never learn from it. Some people have such a distorted view of the split, it seems logical to call for another split.
Facts? Sure, but With Analysis
Some points must be acknowledged. There is a huge audience for local oval-track racing, particularly in the South and Midwest, and especially in the Midwest, there are some very profitable regional series operating.
Supporters of the new split say, if these drivers can be lured to IndyCar, they will bring along their fanbase, thus making IndyCar profitable again (at which time, I guess, those worthless road tracks can be shelved.)
There are some rather questionable assumptions at play here.
First off … those drivers are making good money, and are famous in their regions, and have no reason to move to IndyCar, where they will make No money (seriously; most IndyCar drivers have to raise personal sponsorship funds and buy their seats in IndyCars. Very few IndyCar drivers get paid; most pay to race.)
It would seem kind of hard to “lure” a driver away from a profitable seat into a paid seat, some might think.
If those drivers want to go anywhere it is to NASCAR, where they can trade decent money and regional fame, for huge money and national fame. IndyCar looks like a huge step down, to these drivers.
Second … those fans by and large dislike everything that has happened in IndyCar in the past fifty years.
The same people proposing the split, talk about the main sticking points keeping these regional fans from supporting IndyCar today.
They say that those fans hate the modern, mid-engine ”formula-style” car, (by “modern,” they mean “post-1961.”) The new split-proposers say that the regional oval fans hate all forms of road-racing. And the split-supporters claim that the regional oval fans hate all the foreign drivers and drivers whose names they have never heard.
These claims really cannot be disputed. They are made by those very fans, and by journalists who write for magazines catering to those fans. These reasons why the regional oval-track drivers and fans don’t support IndyCar can pretty much be taken as fact.
But … what do these facts mean?
Bascially, they mean that no matter what IndyCar does … it will never win over these fans or drivers.
Technology
Think about it. If these fans will not accept modern cars, IndyCar would have to give up relevance to modern technology. That would not only make the series seem backwards to a huge number of people, it would also make the series unattractive to manufacturers.
Manufacturers want to showcase their latest technology so they can prove how advanced they are—more advanced than their rivals.
Manufacturers already have NASCAR as a showcase for 1950’s-era technology. They have no reason to invest in another series which uses engines and chassis which have nothing to do with what they sell today. So turning IndyCar into a clone of World of Outlaws would not appeal to the factories, or their dollars, which IndyCar seeks.
In fact, the factories have made it clear that rather than supporting huge V8 engines, which none of them sell much, the factories are interested in series using small V6 and four-cylinder engines, which is what they sell a lot. For Ford and Fiat, racing is a promotion scheme, and they want to promote what they sell, not what they sold in the middle of the last century.
The cars that are popular with all those regional oval-track series are basically unchanged from what was raced right after World War II. Modern IndyCars have more technology in their steering wheels than sprint cars have in the whole vehicle.
Onboard computers, crumple zones to absorb the energy from crashes, lightweight composites … and Randy Bernard wants to go even further in the future, as money allows. Those regional series want to … continue to never change.
There is a reason none of the major auto manufacturers sponsor those regional series.
If It Works, Don’t Fight It
It is true, that those regional series have hundreds of thousands of fans—in aggregate. If all those fans followed one series, that series would get a big boost. Fact is … they follow a bunch of local and regional series, most of which cannot get on TV because when they race, the whole fanbase is at the track.
It is also true, that some of the biggest series do get TV time (though only WoO gets on a major cable network in prime time.)
It is true these series are successful. And that is the issue. If these series are already successful … making IndyCar over into these series would not attract those fans away.
Essentially, the people championing a second split want IndyCar to compete with the grassroots, entrenched series, on those series terms and turf. That is equivalent to starting a new professional league to compete with the NFL. Those folks have what they want, they make good money doing it and they have good fun watching it. There is no room for competition and nothing to be gained by trying.
Copying those series would offer those fans and drivers a copy, when they already have the original. Fighting against the original would most likely make the fans and drivers more loyal to the original.
The idea is to create a successful product to attract new customers, not to copy a successful product to polarize customers. Proponents of the new split can’t seem to see that.
A Unique IndyCar Feature: Track Types
IndyCar has long run on ovals (paved and dirt, for quite a while) and road courses. Even in the USAC days, IndyCar raced on road courses as well as ovals (a fact generally ignored by the “second-splitters.” (A quick visit to http://www.champcarstats.com/tracks.htm might cause a few to rethink their positions.))
In fact, IndyCar is the only top-tier open-wheel series in the world to race on a variety of track types. Ovals are not popular in Europe, the home of Formula 1, and almost all other open-wheel series emulate F1. Only in America, where ovals are widespread and widely loved, do open-wheel cars race in circles.
USAC, Like CART, recognized that fans liked both, and included both in their schedules. Tony George, wanting to attract the Midwest regional fans, made IRL an all-ovals series, but he failed to attract the fans, and he failed to make money with only ovals.
The proponents of a second split somehow seem to forget that it was tried and it failed. In fact, oval tracks attract the fewest fans and the fewest viewers out of the track types (road, street, and oval) on the current IndyCar schedule.
Quite possibly that is because so many of the current ovals are “cookie-cutter” 1.5-mile high-banked ovals, which reward only courage, not skill.
Recognizing this, Randy Bernard is bringing back the flat Milwaukee Mile and the low-banked New Hampshire Speedway, tracks where driver skill is of utmost importance.
Better ovals may bring better ratings. Only ovals has brought only disaster, historically.
Splitting the Sport Leaves Broken Pieces
Everyone who is honest admits that splitting IndyCar into two series, split everything associated with the series into pieces too small to survive.
Splitting the IndyCar sponsor pool, talent pool, fanbase and TV market failed utterly. TV didn't want to play either/or when they knew either way they would alienate half the market. Sponsors didn't want to play either/or for the same reason.
No one wants to invest in a company that is split into warring factions and is putting all its energy into trying to trash itself. It doesn't take a business genius to see that.
After the split, all the sponsors, ad execs, TV execs, looked around for a growing business with a long history of stability and a strong leadership which would not permit a split, and Lo! There was NASCAR.
NASCAR
One reason NASCAR took off? Because of the huge influx of money that came when people who were willing to invest in racing, wanted a unified series to invest in.
In the 90’s NASCAR was a regional series, popular mostly in the Deep South, but looking to expand nationally. While IndyCar spent its energy eating itself, NASCAR decided to use cable TV, modern marketing, and major money to essentially take over the North American racing world.
Through International Speedway Corporation, NASCAR owned almost all the tracks (thank you Roger Penske—pass me a few more coffin nails to seal CART's fate, please …) so there was no chance of a Tony George/Indy 500 rebellion. The Daytona 500 wouldn’t ever be leaving the fold to anchor a new series.
All the money was in one place with NASCAR. The France family didn't permit any wayward scions to go on half-billion-dollar-losing larks for the sake of ego. Basically, NASCAR had zero internal or external threats, and zero chance of going off the rails and attacking itself, as IndyCar was doing.
Potential investors saw in NASCAR a stable series that was seriously interested in massive nationwide promotion, and which wanted to make money for everyone involved. In IndyCar, they saw a pair of fractured, crippled remnants which were more interested in fighting each other than making money for anyone.
With all that money, all those sponsors, with TV networks looking for an alternative to the failed IndyCar fragments, and with the France family understanding contemporary mass-market, high-volume promotion methods … NASCAR had all the cash, all the media attention, all the network outlets it needed to blitz the American public.
Does anyone really think all those NASCAR fans came from IndyCar? Some, for sure. But a lot of them were never race fans before, not of any series or any type.
NASCAR knew how to make itself look good to all different classes of people, of both sexes. NASCAR was smart enough to appeal to people with more than just racing.
NASCAR sold drama, action, danger, crashes, conflicts, rivalries, handsome, manly drivers of the All-American, non-urban variety … NASCAR sold human as well as mechanical drama, and pretty much guaranteed catharsis at the end of every race.
NASCAR took the pulse, not of the American racing audience, but of the American TV audience, and crafted and offered a great TV product.
With all the sponsors, investors, and networks fleeing the wreckage of open-wheel, NASCAR had the routes and resources to sell its product. And they did a great job.
But if IndyCar hadn't split … NASCAR would have had to fight for every commercial spot, every network weekend timeslot, every sponsor dollar.
The split didn't make NASCAR popular. NASCAR did that, with really smart promo. The split gave NASCAR a chance to fill a vacuum, instead of fighting for air.
Since It Worked so Well Last Time …
Every aspect of the split is controversial except one: the split nearly killed American Open-Wheel Racing.
And another split … will do almost the same thing. Only difference being, this time IndyCar has almost nothing to lose, because it has never regained any of what it threw away with the last split.
But there is a difference between "almost nothing' and "nothing." IndyCar can still hurt itself, can in fact end itself. And the way to do that … is another split.
If those hundreds of thousands of dirt-track oval fans don't want to come to IndyCar until it drops road courses and runs front-engined cars … they will never come to IndyCar because that is Not what IndyCar is. There is no point in chasing them.
Those fans already have exactly what they want and are not looking for anything new, even if it is a carbon copy of what they already have.
IndyCar does not need another split. IndyCar does not need to chase fans who hate what it is and what it stands for. IndyCar needs to continue to promote itself, to offer a variety of track types, to listen to the people who actually watch the sport and not those who refuse to watch, ever.
IndyCar needs to proceed on its current path towards more manufacturer involvement, greater diversity in chassis and powerplants, and better promotion.
IndyCar needs to look ten years ahead, not fifty years back, to determine its course forward from here.
Fire Is Hot
Most of all … IndyCar needs to NOT do what almost killed it in the past.
IndyCar needs to offer what it has offered since the USAC day: Ovals and Road courses, the most modern cars, high speeds, precise driving, great racing. It has worked in the past, and could work again.
Maybe the current market is too fragmented by the plethora of alternatives, maybe not. No one knows. But further fragmentation is the last thing IndyCar needs.
Me, I do something that really hurts, I don’t do that again. Some “IndyCar fans” seem not yet to have figured out that basic “Fire is Hot!” lesson.
The opinions expressed above are solely those of James Fish, and in no way reflect the position of The Epoch Times. Please feel free to comment or rebut at james.fish@epochtimes.com. Respondents wishing their letters to be considered for publication should include a name and region (city/state or city/nation.)
