Indycar is dead. Long live the Indy 500.

[Blancvino]

Hmmmmm, I beg to differ.

A confirmed 25 entries this year and 19 race events on schedule, all on TV. Maybe you have the most awesome burnt toast in the land, but this is far from over.

We can discuss further after the current TV deal is done, as that story has yet to be told.

There are a lot of good stories going into 2013:

-Changes at Andretti Autosport

-Sato and Foyt

-SDS and TK

-Schmidt's new two car assault

-Penske WP trying not to be a brides maid again

-Penske and AJ?

-Dragon racing steps up

But you can't please everyone....we'll see the true fans at St. Pete!

True fans? They got singed in 1995 and were smoked out of existence over the next 10 years of the split. What's left is a marginalized Indy 500 and the rest of the races are a poor attempt at window dressing.

Regardless, I truly hope your optimistic view comes to pass. For the sake of Indianapolis (my home town), I hope the IMS is prosperous.

I though, tossed the burnt toast in the back yard for the birds to eat.

[Rollo]

We are in an unprecedented era of a technological advancement while the world searches for a replacement for the internal combustion engine and/or petroleum based fuels. As an automotive enthusiast (and a libertarian), I'd much rather have the best engineers in the world invent, test and prove their emerging technologies for the public to see on Memorial Day than have some well intentioned but misguided government agency force a less than perfect system on us. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Andy Granatelli played with turbines in the late 60s. How would you feel about a Jet-Electric car, running on canola oil or something? Jaguar's CX-75 project seems to have gone nowhere, but I still think that this could be one of the ways of the future, it just needs the fire of competition to hone it.

[EagleEye]

True fans? They got singed in 1995 and were smoked out of existence over the next 10 years of the split. What's left is a marginalized Indy 500 and the rest of the races are a poor attempt at window dressing.

Regardless, I truly hope your optimistic view comes to pass. For the sake of Indianapolis (my home town), I hope the IMS is prosperous.

I though, tossed the burnt toast in the back yard for the birds to eat.

No doubt the split was a horrible thing, that ruined a very good thing and led us to where we are now. No doubt, the dumbest thing in hisotry of the sport, was creating the IRL and the split that followed. And I agree fans were smoked out. There were at least five groups; one followed CART, one followed the IRL, one watched both, one watched just the 500, and one group (the biggest) went away.


I miss having new chassis each and every season, and four engines, chassis to choose from. No doubt, sad, and still makes my blood boil.

But, we do have every race on TV, something they did not even have in the early days of CART. That will continue until the end of the current agreement (2017/2018?). The crowd at the 500, has grown the last three years....heck, we even have a bigger crowd than the BY400 now (which was not always the case, despite what they say at 16th and G). The crowds were good at most races, not named Fontana, Texas or Edmonton.

And, the racing was fantastic last year! I'm sorry but eight different winners, and the potential to have more, was much better than the "window dressing" you describe.

If only we can get better TV ratings (which would lead to more money for the series and teams) we could continue to build on what we once had. They say for every year an major league is on strike, it takes 3 years for the numbers to recover. The fact we were in a split for ten years, means we still have a LOT of work to do.


The burnt toast will bear fruit once the series is no longer on TV.....and we are not at that point and time now.