Drivers reject TMS boss' oval push

[!!WALDO!!]

Why? No interest.

On your part but the crowd at TMS made little Eddie about $2,500,000. When did a Road Course race do that for CCWS or CART before that?

[Rex Monaco]

TG won because he spent more money?

Well it certainly wasn't because of great management skills or being the most popular series in the market place.

CART was "insanely successful?"

Then why did TG want a part of it?

CART had an IPO that brought in $100 million and it still went bankrupt. That's successful?

How else would you explain the ability of CART to raise $100 million in an IPO? People saw the value in the series.

And CC was a good idea? Get real.

And IRL was a good idea? Get real.

[Rex Monaco]

On your part but the crowd at TMS made little Eddie about $2,500,000. When did a Road Course race do that for CCWS or CART before that?

The Long Beach Grand Prix is largely responsible for reviving an entire city. That cost much more than 2.5 million dollars.

[AntiSpeed]

Really, even after a successful IPO that raised loads of money. They never had the 500, so how could the lose something they never had. The 500 and IMS never paid CART a dime.

The Indy 500 was a CART race. It was part of the CART schedule, hence they had the Indy 500. They didn't make any profits from the event itself, but it was an important sponsorship draw and losing it hurt CART significantly.

Two series worked well from 1996-2003 when Pook shot his wad of money. 2004-2007 when it became apparent the losses would continue.

Really? Isn't that when attendance dropped, sponsors fled, ratings fell? It took some time, sure, but you can't argue that CART circa 1996-2003 was nearly as strong as CART circa 1990-1995.

The war is over and that is it. Making excuses for what happen are a waste of time.

Hey, you brought it up.

[indycool]

Anti- , judging from your breakdown of my post, we're a lot closer to agreement than I thought. A few things:

1. CART, as a sanctioning body, was as Waldo says, NEVER had the "500." Its teams were always invited. Even in the year of the split, 1996, two predominantly CART teams (Walker and Galles) still ran Indy. The rest declined until Ganassi and Penske did one-offs, then moved, and Newman-Haas did a one-off, then stayed with CAT.

2. After 40 years of it, I've never really enjoyed road racing people condescendingly talking down to oval racing people telling them their form of the sport required more talent, was better, was a truer test of this and that, etc. The arguments have been worse than snobbery and I have hated them because I feel they're FOS and they'd be FOS the other direction, too.

3. If you were in middle school at the time, you might not have known that CART's TV numbers were a bit larger but NOT overpowering, its attendance announced was inflated and about what it is now at most places, its drivers at the time of the split were possibly just a bit better known than showed up for IRL and there's no trophy for competing with F1 for world supremacy theories.

4. The street races did NOT have the attendance some attribute to it in rewriting history. Cleveland's a big race, right? They never built more than 25,000 seats at Cleveland with NO GAs. The most I've heard of for a temporary circuit was 44,000 seats at Long Beach during its heyday. Most were 20-25,000. Really, no more than any other race.

5. CART went public after the split and some would say they did selling a bill of goods. Through operations, CART made very little money through the years. Some of it was creative, like the one accounting trick that came out that Rio stiffed CART and CART's books showed it as a receivable, meaning an asset, rather than getting stiffed.

6. Yes, before the split, the PPG Indy Car World Series was growing in popularity. How much of that was PPG, how much was CART and how much was the Indianapolis 500 and how much of that can be attributed to something else, I'm sure we can have an absolutely wild argument about.

[xtlm]

50 - 50

going past this may be bad in my view

[!!WALDO!!]

The Indy 500 was a CART race. It was part of the CART schedule, hence they had the Indy 500. They didn't make any profits from the event itself, but it was an important sponsorship draw and losing it hurt CART significantly.

For years it wasn't on the CART Schedule. No money, no sanction and when given the chance to sanction it in December of 1991, they elected not to bring it to a vote. Thus they didn't care enough for the 500 to get paid a sanction fee! There is the start of the IRL.

Really? Isn't that when attendance dropped, sponsors fled, ratings fell? It took some time, sure, but you can't argue that CART circa 1996-2003 was nearly as strong as CART circa 1990-1995.

They were stronger from 1996-2003. History proves that but the shows started getting too expensive for a $515,000 purse.

Hey, you brought it up.

You want to rewrite the actual history, not I.

[!!WALDO!!]

The Long Beach Grand Prix is largely responsible for reviving an entire city. That cost much more than 2.5 million dollars.

For the Promoter not for a city, county or state. So the question remains.

[indycool]

Rex, the IRL didn't need heart surgery to survive. CC was already dead. KK had quit throwing money down a dry hole. Basically, TG's offer saved some race teams. That's about it.

TG wanted no part of CART. He was offered it in a buyout in August of 2003 by Bear, Stearns, which was engaged by CART to sell it, and he turned it down.

People saw value in the series in the IPO? After the split? Guess people saw value in Enron, too, and they all lost their cabooses.

Unless an extraordinary financial package is together and sound for the long term, those paved roads leading to the fairgrounds should be used for regular traffic.

[Rex Monaco]

For the Promoter not for a city, county or state. So the question remains.

The question was answered. You didn't like that the answer didn't support your initial position, so now you have more narrowly defined your question.

That said, 2.5 million over a 12 year period doesn't really sound that astonishing to me. Are you sure there are no road racing/street tracks that bring 210,000 per year?

I'd like to see the link for this before we move forward.