What Happens Next?

[Chaparral66]

Chap, "traditional value?"

CART moved Road America all over its schedule from July to October for years. Its fans tired of it and started coming in less numbers in the late '90s and early 2000s. It eventually became a track rental situation with CART and a lawsuit between Pook and RA that Mario fixed. CC dropped it. Then picked it up as a track rental. Then lost money.

This was a track, like Phoenix and Laguna, that circumstances and management of either both promoter and sanctioning body or one or the other, effectively just screwed up. "Traditional value" to us. Headache for the principals.

Same with Cleveland, which has had SEVEN different promoters play hot potato with it, literally, in some cases, giving it away. As much as I think Cleveland is the BEST road course around because a fan can see it all from the stands, that view isn't shared in its accounting office, whoever the promoter is.

Laguna was a wonderful place with "traditional value," but that was long ago, before Pook screwed it up by moving its traditional October date to June. After that destabilized the race completely, there was a try to move it back to September but the damage was done to "traditional value." Then CC abandoned it for San Jose because it just couldn't pay any more. It'd take a lot for the management there to put itself in that horrible position of almost going bankrupt again because of an Indy car race.

OK, I can't disagree with you on how Pook and the Amigos damaged the gate at these venues. But just because that happened hasn't changed the traditional and historical value of these great racetracks, has it, IC? These tracks were certainly mismanaged as far as how they were treated on CART/CC's schedule after the split happened, but under the new banner, we now have an opportunity to repair that damage. This will take time, of course. But I'm willing to wait it out. I promised you I'd keep an open mind about the new series, didn't I, IC? Now how about you? As a fan, I want this new series to find a way to return to those venues. I might not get all of them, but some, certainly. TG has the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of Pook and the Amigos, now here it is. I would love to see OWR return to Michigan, Fontana, Road America, Laguna Seca, right along side Milwuakee, Watkins Glen, Texas, and Indy. What could be wrong with that?

[indycool]

Nothing wrong with that, Chap.....I was just dealing in reality....gosh, CART was crapping on Road America BEFORE the split......when you say it will take time, I agree that it will, probably a number of years because the water is so poisoned in some places. The IRL let things die down a few years before they approached Mid-Ohio, which wasn't going to trust ANYBODY after what Pook did to 'em. I 'spect it'll be the same with some of these.

[ezhop7]

Why would anyone want Portland back on the schedule. The place has not keep up with the times . The concession area is not up to par, the city has put very little investment into the place. If I was TG I would try to get a oval/road /drag course track like Bristol but a 1 mile oval with a short road course and drag stripe maybe a areana for Basketball/hockey too built either in the Olympia or Seattle, or Tacoma area.
I know it is wishful thinking ain't happening to many tree huggers up there!

[Pat Wiatrowski]

I doubt if there are many fans in Wisconsin that want the .irl to race at Road America and George has been made aware of that by many of us.

[indycool]

Then why do several forums contain multiple wishes for a race at Road America?

IMO, but I think you may be speaking for fewer people than you're attempting to lead us to believe.

[nigelred5]

Cutting off the nose to spite the face. I'd rather see a long term deal signed to race at RA now and then take the chance seeing what Indycars actually evolved into than simply say Eff-it all and be without any quality open wheel racing for a long long time. Don't want to watch it, fine, don't go, don't turn on the TV. To those of us that DO want to see Indycars race on road courses in the US and have wanted to, Road America is a must.

So what happens when Indycar decides to run a Panoz Dp02 with 2.65l honda and cosworth turbos against Dallaras with the same power plants, with 30 car fields with a diverse field of drivers. PErsonally at this point, I wouldn't care if GW took over Indycar. Grow up, get over it or go wallow in the drool over at CCF. That place is a real joy right now. I love watching the implosion over there since all the cheerleaders over there are finally out in the open as paid shills just like I always suspected they were. If RA and Indycar want each other, they will sign a deal, just like all the other former CCWS venues.

Road America, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Miller, Barber. Gilles Villenueve and Hermanos Rodriguez. I want to see real Road courses just as much as real ovals. Viable street/ temporary course events will survive but they will never and never should have been the answer to survival as we have seen.

[ChaimWitz]

Twenty four hours from now the split will be but a sad footnote to the long history of American open wheel racing (although I am sure Mark C and the hater site will continue to wish it was still 2004 and spring time for Paper and the Amigos again). The timing of both Danica's and Graham's wins could not have been better as the sport heads into a new era on the eve of its second century. With any luck today's race and the winner at Long Beach will put an exclamation point on fact that our sport is beginning the slow steady climb back to the summit of American motorsports. Think back to the bluster and Amigo ego spew of the past four years at Long Beach and then take a sobering walk through the final ChampCar paddock. I did so and it was clear that it was all a lie laced gambit doomed to failure. So what happens next now that the lies, cancellations and delusion have finally stopped? It looks like fertile ground for progress and growth to me so I'll hope for the best for a change. So, goodbye ChampCar. Hello future.

[Chaparral66]

Now we know what happens next. Lady Danica has won her first race, a milestone in American Motorsports. Gee, just in time in the aftermath of the merger. This should get the IRL some real publicity. Let's see if she makes the cover of Sports Illustrated, and makes the rounds on Letterman, Leno, Oprah, and the morning talks shows.

[ChaimWitz]

We aren't the only ones asking "what happens next":

From AOL.com's home page:

NASCAR Worried?
Danica's Win Could Spell Trouble
See Why Her Timing Is Perfect

STORY:

Patrick Might Heat Up Circuits' Rivalry

BY MONTE DUTTON, AOL
Posted: 2008-04-23 22:11:07
Filed Under: NASCAR
Sports Commentary

While several of NASCAR's best and brightest were strutting their stuff in Mexico, where Kyle Busch won yet again in the Nationwide Series, stock car racing was being upstaged, for once, by the Indy cars.

It's been awhile since that happened.

The embattled, but finally unified, Indy Racing League got a long awaited boost when Danica Patrick won for the first time. The first female Indy-car winner broke through in her 50th attempt.

NASCAR greatly benefited from the open-wheel split that lasted more than a decade. When it happened, in 1996, Indy cars were a potent, if already troubled, force in American motorsports. By the time the split finally ended this year, the long term decline in attendance and television ratings had relegated IRL and ChampCar alike into a once great, but trivialized, outpost of the sport.

So what happens next? Does Patrick's victory spur a long term restoration or just a short term boost? How does it affect NASCAR? Does a rise in open-wheel interest create a fall for NASCAR? Or is the health of motorsports overall beneficial for all parties?

There is no Danica Patrick on the NASCAR horizon. Women have occasionally competed but without notable success. NASCAR diversity efforts have been focused on ethnicity, not gender, in part because the modest success stories have mostly involved men.

This week, Patrick will enjoy the kind of acclaim normally reserved for a Daytona 500 or Indy 500 victor. Her victory occurs at almost a perfect time, leading into the tradition-filled month of May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Patrick was featured in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue pictorial earlier this year. She is attractive, articulate and vitally concerned with her image. There won't be any reluctance on her part to capitalize on the attention.

If there is to be some torrid battle for attention, NASCAR also brings considerable firepower to the front lines. The next five weeks feature races likely to create excitement: perilous Talladega, roughhousing Richmond, tradition-rich Darlington, and then the two contrasting races, the rock-'em, sock-'em Sprint All-Star Race and the prolonged Coca-Cola 600, at Lowe's Motor Speedway. NASCAR's longest race falls on the same day as the IRL's most important, the Indianapolis 500. In recent years, television viewers have often preferred "the 600" to "the 500."

Tony Stewart is a two-time Cup champion, but he won the IRL title in 1997 and has twice competed in both Memorial Day weekend races on the same day. While Stewart's commitment to NASCAR has grown over the years, his concern for the plight of Indy cars remains. If the IRL hadn't declined, Stewart might have never left.

"I'm afraid, in all reality, it's hard to get sponsorship over there, and I think that's a big issue," Stewart said recently. "I don't think drivers are going to necessarily have the opportunities that they had when the IRL first started. It kind of weaned itself away from that, anyway, and it got to where just the financial side was too difficult. For (IRL) owners to get sponsors, too often they need a driver to come along and bring sponsorship dollars that give them an opportunity to get a ride.

"What the IRL was designed for in the first place was to get away from that and give opportunities to guys who didn't have multimillion-dollar partners and sponsors to help out. I don't know if it's ever going to get to that stage again. That's what the IRL was intended to do from the get-go, and it worked for a little while, but it still goes back to car owners having to rely on that sponsorship money to make it work."

How does Patrick's breakthrough affect the image of the IRL in the marketplace? It helps, but how much?

What makes this situation even testier is the fact that the economy is down a cylinder and struggling to find more horsepower. The economic engine drives race cars as much as the drivers. NASCAR attendance is down. Even a fan watching on TV can see it despite all the efforts by Fox and ESPN to shoot the action in a way that hides empty seats.

But, to borrow the lingo of journalists, only time will tell whether the Danica story "has legs." The 26-year-old female driver is going to be "the rage." What isn't known yet is whether she is going to be a savior.

[Chaparral66]

Lady Danica can't be the savior, that's too much pressure for anyone. What she can do is be a catalyst to spur interest in the combined series. But it's Our Good Friend Tony George and the IRL that need to use this historic moment as part of a much larger and more broad marketing strategy. That Danica won right before Indy (which tends to get the cynics launching NASCARiszation rumors of the Motegi win) should be a good boost for the Month Of May, so hopefully media interest will be higher than the last few years. But to make Danica the savior is unfair. We going to need more, and that comes in rivalries that will hopefully develop between Danica, Graham Rahal, Marco Andretti, Tony Kannan, et al.