Honor, blood and a brewing battle - The Aftermath of the Civil War by Ed Hinton

**Mark in Oshawa** · 1st June 2010, 03:09

Originally Posted by anthonyvop

Ed Hinton.

He is now bashing the losers...Champ Car and Tony George.

He bashed them then.....this isn't anything new.

**Mark in Oshawa** · 1st June 2010, 03:11

Tony was trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed. The fact is, OW racing with this type of car is much more popular in Europe than in North America, hence the number of top guys looking to Indy car if they cannot get a f1 ride.

Tony wanted to fix the problem? He should have brought back the roadster and banned the rear/mid engined winged race car as we know it....

**DBell** · 2nd June 2010, 21:13

Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa

Tony wanted to fix the problem? He should have brought back the roadster and banned the rear/mid engined winged race car as we know it....

Mark, I tend to agree with a lot of what you say, but this I don't. Bring back the roadster? Fine, but not at the expenses of making the rules more restrictive. I'm for opening the rules, not restricting them further. If someone wants to try build a better mouse trap using a roadster design, then let them. As long as a rear engine car could still be used too. Panoz tried it in sportscar racing with some success. I doubt it could be very competitive in OW, but if someone wanted to try it, then they should be able to. That's more in the spirit of what Indycar has been about until more recent times.

TG was a failure because he's a poor businessman. I think it's that simple. He was only able to do what he did because of access to the family fortune. Once that was taken away, he disappeared pretty quickly. With all TG had to work with, a good businessman would have found a way to make it work.

**Mark in Oshawa** · 2nd June 2010, 22:27

Originally Posted by DBell

Mark, I tend to agree with a lot of what you say, but this I don't. Bring back the roadster? Fine, but not at the expenses of making the rules more restrictive. I'm for opening the rules, not restricting them further. If someone wants to try build a better mouse trap using a roadster design, then let them. As long as a rear engine car could still be used too. Panoz tried it in sportscar racing with some success. I doubt it could be very competitive in OW, but if someone wanted to try it, then they should be able to. That's more in the spirit of what Indycar has been about until more recent times.

TG was a failure because he's a poor businessman. I think it's that simple. He was only able to do what he did because of access to the family fortune. Once that was taken away, he disappeared pretty quickly. With all TG had to work with, a good businessman would have found a way to make it work.

Don't misunderstand me. I would have backed Tony if HE went for the Roadster because he wanted to continue the road to Indy through Sprint and Midgets. THAT was his "Goal" ostensibly. Personally, I saw nothing wrong with the racing in 1994 that a little fiscal sanity and good marketing wouldn't have fixed. Now, where we are, the roadster is a dead conversation of course.

**Bob Riebe** · 2nd June 2010, 23:43

Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa

Tony was trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed. The fact is, OW racing with this type of car is much more popular in Europe than in North America, hence the number of top guys looking to Indy car if they cannot get a f1 ride.

Tony wanted to fix the problem? He should have brought back the roadster and banned the rear/mid engined winged race car as we know it....

He wanted to bring Detroit back, but rather than allow what D. Gurney fought CART for years about-- and lost-- allowing true production based engines enough inches to be competitive without being tunied to hand-grenade levels, George created a frankenstein farce that only was related to production engines if one had smoke too many joints.

At the same time rather than have chassis builder come as they willed, he created more sh-- for brains rules that drove them away.

Had his new formula actually allowed Chevy, Dodge and Ford to go head to head-to-head, CART would have been nothing quickly.

**Mark in Oshawa** · 3rd June 2010, 18:18

Originally Posted by Bob Riebe

He wanted to bring Detroit back, but rather than allow what D. Gurney fought CART for years about-- and lost-- allowing true production based engines enough inches to be competitive without being tunied to hand-grenade levels, George created a frankenstein farce that only was related to production engines if one had smoke too many joints.

At the same time rather than have chassis builder come as they willed, he created more sh-- for brains rules that drove them away.

Had his new formula actually allowed Chevy, Dodge and Ford to go head to head-to-head, CART would have been nothing quickly.

He had no clue Bob. If ifs and but's were candies and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas. You say he wanted to bring Detroit back? He didn't do a very good job of even trying to do that. The reality of it is he has no clue on how racing worked, how it works and how it was evolving. His only two assets were access to the family piggy bank and the Indy 500....