Welcome to IndyCar Sato -san !!!

**Scotty G.** · 19th February 2010, 07:30

Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa

1. Ken, he was calling Bourdais a no talent hack not 10 posts ago.

2. He also figures a one off run at Indy his only oval experience worth mentioning.

3. Well Scott I can tell you that if your hero Tony George didn't drive this mess into the ditch, maybe we wouldn't have 14 ride buyers?

1. No Mark, I was saying that guys like Bourdais and Zanardi, who are looked at as "Gods" by many of the fandom here and from the CART side of the fence, may not have been as great as some hoped/think they were. With their results (or lack thereof) in other forms of racing, being a clue. They were both bad in F1. Was in the teams or them? Probably some of both. But these boys were not Montoya or Villeneuve or Mansell. They were bottom feeders in F1. Zanardi dominated in CART, when Ganassi was clearly the best team. Bourdais dominated in CART/Champ Car when Newman-Haas was clearly the best team. Thems the facts.

2. When it was easily the best field of teams and drivers he ever faced on a oval and its clearly the biggest AOW race of them all, then I think it matters a little bit more then some 200 miler at Milwaukee in a 18 car field.

3. Yes, its ALL Tony George's fault. We get it. Its Tony George's fault that young Americans from both road and oval genre's have been IGNORED and left for NASCAR or Sports Cars, since the early 90's (BEFORE the split). Its Tony George's fault, that Jeff Gordon wanted to be a Indy Car driver and nobody in Indy Car's warped world thought he had the "talent" to make it. It was Tony George's fault that NASCAR had already left AOW in the dust in the early 90's, because of mismanagement and a failure to connect with people.

As for your ride-buyer blast, the 1995 Indy 500 had the following drivers in it, who by-and-large were only there because of the BUDGET they brought (they were ride-buyers). Here they are:

Eliseo Salazar
King Hiro
Al Zampedri
Hideshi Matsuda
Andre Ribeiro
Adrian Fernandez
Scott Sharp
Eric Bachelart (and now, a ride-buying team owner)
Lyn St. James
Carlos Guerrero

That's 30% of the field. Granted, its not the 75% of the field we will see this year. And granted the economy being in the dumper now and the engine companies funding teams back in 1995, may have had something to do with that as well.

Quit blaming TG for everything. If you want to blame anyone for the current mess, blame Toyota, Chevy and Nissan for getting out and making Honda the sole engine supplier (and cutting out team funding in the process). Teams like Rahal, Fernandez, Cheever, Panther, D&R, Kelley and Walker could survive (and hire their own drivers) when being funded that way. Take them away and they were just as dead on the vine, as anyone else, with very little REAL money that they found on their own. Most of these teams have shown, they CAN'T find money on their own and can only function now, by taking checks from the first schmoe they can find.

**Lee Roy** · 19th February 2010, 15:50

Originally Posted by Scotty G.

Quit blaming TG for everything. If you want to blame anyone for the current mess, blame Toyota, Chevy and Nissan for getting out and making Honda the sole engine supplier (and cutting out team funding in the process).

Maybe blame TG for running such a $hitty series that Toyota, Chevy and Nissan saw no benefit to staying in.

**SarahFan** · 19th February 2010, 15:55

Originally Posted by Scotty G.

If you want to blame anyone for the current mess, blame Toyota, Chevy and Nissan for getting out and making Honda the sole engine supplier (and cutting out team funding in the process). .

you have got to be F'en kidding