TONY George via Visionracing.com

[SarahFan]

http://www.visionracing.com/news/index.cfm?cid=23194


huh?

[Wilf]

http://www.visionracing.com/news/index.cfm?cid=23194

huh?

Haven't you ever seen a prominent family self destruct before?

[SarahFan]

Haven't you ever seen a prominent family self destruct before?


is that what's happening?

I read it and no friggin idea what heck he was talking/writing about

[Chris R]

I don't know - seems pretty coherent for TG... I thought it was interesting that he acknowledges the team support in the past...
Seems like a tale of economic and family woes that has yet to fully play out.....

[SarahFan]

how long do folks think it will be before Tony rallies the other team owners to form a coup to wrestle ownership of the IRL away from the Hulman co.?

I mean after all.... clearly the team owners have much more on the line and are doing the heavy lifting.... right?

[EagleEye]

http://www.visionracing.com/news/index.cfm?cid=23194


huh?

One needs to look no further than the decisions made at Vision Racing to see how sour things can go. Vision Racing has some very good talent on the team and looked ready to up their game this season with the addition of RHR. The second place at St. Pete showed that the potential was there.

But in a move that would ultimately create more issues behind the scenes for Mr. George, he opted to keep his stepson, Ed Carpenter in the seat instead of RHR. This was a move that was not in the best interests of the IRL or Vision Racing. It was exactly this type of decision making that added to the rift between him and his sisters.

There is no doubt that Ed is one of the most pleasant, nice, and genuine guys in the paddock. I can not think of anyone who has said anything bad about him as a person. He could drive the wheels off the Silver Crown cars, Sprinters, Midgets and would probably still do well if he were to go back. But he is not a top flight Indycar driver. One can argue this to some extent, but one only has to look at his record and compare it to others in the series.

Even AJ Foyt had the courage to remove his grand son from his cars in order to try and find a better driver. What will be interesting is if TG really does want to make Vision Racing a winner, by going after top level talent, and not raiding the gene pool. Last season, TG had a choice of RHR, Justin Wilson, Dan Wheldon, Will Power, Oriel Servia, Bruno, and more who could have delivered good results for Vision. If the team's performance improved, it would become a more viable sponsorhip opportunity.

As is, we will have to wait and see if Mr. George really wants to grow his team into a top level team, or continue to operate it as a family hobby. The potential is there for the team to do great things if only the driver side of the equation matched the level of talent they compete against. Will future decisions be based on overall performance and goals, or remain in the best interests of his immediate family? Time will tell.

[nigelred5]

I can't wait to see what happens when he has to show up at Indy next year as just another team owner.

[FIAT1]

Idiota

[Jag_Warrior]

http://www.visionracing.com/news/index.cfm?cid=23194


huh?

Mark me down for a "huh?" too.

Nowhere in corporate America would someone have been allowed to remain in as a CEO or Chairman for 15 years without showing some positive results or a profit. That's just a fact.

And before anyone says, "well the sport was split"... yeah, that means there was competition. That's generally what "real" businesses face every day of the week.

What a strange, strange man. :rolleyes:

[Chaparral66]

OK, it's obvious that the weight of history is beginning to have an impact on Tony George and his place in it. Interesting that he now in no uncertain terms personally admits to being dismissed by the board, something that right after Robin Miller's column he was downplaying, and the Miller naysayers were denying. At some point, I await a future appearence by TG on SPEED's Wind Tunnel and a detailed questioning by Dave Despain.

[PA Rick]

Huh?

[Easy Drifter]

TG's blathering strikes me as someone who just realized the light he saw at the end of the tunnel was a 150 car freight train bearing down on him.

[grungex]

Needs more ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Mark in Oshawa]

Well he never will cut it as a writer. I think Blah Blah Blah is the first thought I had in my mind.

What saddens me is most of his detractors, guys like me said that he was spending the Hulman family money like crazy to win a war with what was not a good product and I like a few others were dumped on. Then when the merger happened, I was very willing to bury the hatchet to move forward, and it is my instinct, but I cant help but feeling if the average race fan knew how naive this guy was in 1995, no one would have followed his IRL and stayed away.

I have said it before, he is a nice guy who was clueless about the business of racing. His steadfast desire to keep Carpenter in the car is living proof of that.

[Gluaistean]

Someone stole his toy so now he is bitchin.

Next question. How long will Lilly, Menards, John's Mansville and Peak stay around. Back marker team with a crybaby owner that destroyed one seies and is on the way to destroying a second.

Vision? Blindness.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Gluastean, never underestimate the ability of the man to hold sponsors. The man doesn't always understand racing, but he survived 14 years as the head of the IRL and schmoozing people. You and I know he is out to lunch but never underestimate this man with corporate America. They it seems don't always understand racing either...and they kept backing this guy.

[SarahFan]

http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/nascar..._ed&id=4359015

Quote:
ESPN.com: Sprint Cup

Monday, July 27, 2009
Dear Anton: Miss you (sort of)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ed Hinton
ESPN.com


Mr. Anton H. George
Team owner
Vision Racing
c/o City Centre Airport race course
Edmonton, Alberta



Dear Tony,


You didn't miss much here on Sunday in Indianapolis, at the track you used to rule. But we sure missed you.


A race without much action is bad enough, let alone one on a track without a face -- without someone for everyone to blame.


The 16th Allstate 400 at the Brickyard was a dog. I know, I know: What's new?


But a faceless Indianapolis Motor Speedway, operating on an eerie sort of autopilot without you, made it even more forgettable.


For better or worse, we had grown accustomed to your smirks and scowls with the ups and downs of this place these past 20 years when you had reigned, before your mother and three dear sisters threw you off the throne and under the bus last month.


Can't say I blame you for getting as far from here as you could this past weekend, way up there in northwestern Canada, running your IndyCar team. Nice move, by the way, to assuage any suspicion that you might be pouting.


You would have left here frowning again. NASCAR would have embarrassed you again. I know, I know: What's new?


FYI, in case you care: Jimmie Johnson won again, ho-hum, his second straight here and third in the past four, after some semblance of a late duel with Mark Martin.


Before that, the snoring of the crowd might have drowned out the engine noise, except that these magnificent, once-proud grandstands were half full -- and that's being kind.


Maybe 150,000 showed up, the humblest gathering I've ever seen for an oval-track race here -- smaller even than the Formula One crowds the first year or two on the road-oval course. Your grandfather used to draw bigger crowds than this for Indy 500 time trials.


Snoring notwithstanding, it might have been better if Juan Pablo Montoya had been allowed to go ahead and run away with this race, more dominantly even than when he won the Indy 500 in 2000. Remember how he led 83 percent of the laps that year? He was well on his way to leading 90-odd percent of the laps Sunday.


At least the fans would have seen one for the record books, and your old pals in the media would have had something substantive, memorable to chronicle.


But no, hell no. NASCAR had to act like cops at a small-town speed trap, snuffing anything remotely fascinating about this race by busting Montoya for his hyperhaste down pit road with 35 laps to go.


This pit road speeding thing has gotten out of hand, with NASCAR computers nitpicking to the brink of ruin for the whole Cup series, everywhere NASCAR goes. Now they pull this stunt at the last place on Earth where electronics should determine the outcome.


Remember how outraged and embarrassed you were last year when NASCAR let Goodyear bring such inadequate tires that drivers had to pit every 10 laps or so or risk crashing? And then they blamed the debacle on the diamond-ground surface of your track?



The action at the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard couldn't have been any worse if Juan Pablo Montoya had dominated wire to wire.

Well, the opposite scenario stunk up the show this time. After extensive testing here -- duh -- Goodyear came up with a more-than-adequate tire. Almost too good. There were only three cautions to bunch up the strung-out (as usual) field, and only two passes for the lead under the green flag all day.


And one of those was artificially induced: Johnson's pass of Martin on the final double-file restart.


Personal question here: I'm hearing that your sisters might have overthrown you for more than just spending a cool half-billion of the family fortune propping up your beloved spawn, the Indy Racing League, and getting your pocket picked for another hundred mil or so by Formula One.


I'm getting vibes of serious sibling quibbling -- issues such as who got the big family jet on which weekends, and why your stepson has been fully funded to race while some of your nephews haven't.


You don't have to answer me now, not any more than you ever did. Families deserve their privacy, even the very rich ones who control the fate of American institutions such as Indy.


Hey, this joint would have been a shopping mall decades ago if your late grandfather, Tony Hulman, hadn't saved it at the end of World War II. That's why your IRL believers said the Indy 500 was yours to do with as you pleased, even though I countered that, no, the American people owned the Indy 500. They made it.


I'm sure you've left Edmonton by now, but I'm hoping the track will forward this letter to you, wherever you might be. You've been hard to catch this summer. Hell, I had better access to you while you were trying to ban me from the Indy 500 in 1999. (We had a lot of laughs that year, didn't we?)


I really did miss you this past weekend. Regardless of the business of motor racing and how you conducted it, and how I criticized you for it, I've always liked you as a person. Through our roller-coaster years, you would always stop to talk and shake hands, no matter how adversarial our relationship might be at a given time.


And I'll give you this: You had guts. You were and are a racer at heart. You were a gambler -- more so, by far, than your fellow third generation of racing royalty, NASCAR's ruling France family.


The only thing is, you lost. Terribly.


And now you're sort of like Steve McQueen in the old movie "The Cincinnati Kid," after the no-limit stud poker game, walking the streets of New Orleans with a stoic face and a quarter in his pocket.


You have a lot more than a quarter left in your pocket, maybe even a quarter of a billion -- yeah, with a B -- but you still lost horrifically. And you took the American public on the ride with you, so that the late actor/racer Paul Newman once opined to me grimly that it was "damn near criminal what he's done," dividing and devastating Indy car racing.


Oh, on a brighter note, I almost forgot! We see that you're blogging now, on your racing team's Web site, Visionracing.com. Your latest installment was a big hit around the media center Sunday morning.


We were all reading it, interested that you, in your words, "have decided to use the Vision Racing website [sic], in a therapeutic way, to help clear my mind …"


Seems you might be opening up the family feud to the public soon, writing that, "I continue to be perplexed by the board's [your sisters' and mother's] decision to relieve me from my responsibility as CEO of the enterprise."


But you say, "I understand that maybe they don't feel that they owe me an explanation."


At long last, you've written that "contrary to popular belief, our family does not have an endless supply of cash …"


A lot of us have always realized that. Some just wondered at times whether you did.


Assuming your family really hasn't explained what happened to you, I'll offer my best educated guess, just for old times' sake.


Ultimately, nothing within the Hulman-George family did you in. You stepped onto the slippery slope the minute you let a France -- or as I understand it, one of the family's intermediaries -- whisper in your ear the notion of stampeding NASCAR cars down the hallways of your family estate.


It didn't work Sunday, any more than it has since 1994 on this narrow, flat, rectangular track built in 1909. And now, after 15 years of chronically boring racing, the "hallowed ground" rationale for NASCAR stumbling around this lovely old place has worn thin.


But the huge crowds and profits of those early Brickyard 400s emboldened you, filling your coffers for 13 years of all-out war with CART (and its carcass, Champ Car), until finally you reigned over little more than the scorched earth of American open-wheel racing.


Remember how you told me yourself -- a few years back, at Joliet, Ill. -- that the big NASCAR bucks had replenished your war chest?


Did NASCAR intend to devastate Indy car racing?


I don't know.


But Bill France Jr., who made the original deal with you, did say on the phone to me, with a chuckle, during the open-wheel civil war you wrought, "It hasn't hurt us any, has it?"


Lore is that his father, NASCAR founder Big Bill France, while being ejected from your grandfather's track in the 1950s, before you were born, shouted over his shoulder, "I'll own this place someday!"


His heirs don't need to.


Olympus has been razed, the Indy 500 toppled from the pinnacle, 100-year-old Indianapolis Motor Speedway humbled.


NASCAR handed you so much cash that you were a little like the Vegas crapshooter who figures, What the heck, I'm playing with house money, until he finally walks away with far less than he brought.


And now NASCAR, its own fading appeal addled further by the clunky Car of Tomorrow, can hardly half-fill the place where the Indiana State Police used to estimate crowds at 400,000 for that singular race of each year, in all the world, the Indianapolis 500.


Don't blame your own family, nor the currently tempestuous economy, for your downfall.


Indy survived two world wars and the Great Depression, standing staunch for a century. But now I can't help wondering whether it will survive NASCAR and the deal you made that looked so brilliant at the time.


Regards,


Ed Hinton



Ed Hinton is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at [email:3ojmeauo]edward.t.hinton@espn3.com[/email:3ojmeauo].

[Chris R]

Hinton's "letter" is brilliant.....

[garyshell]

Hinton's "letter" is brilliant.....


Maybe so, but it is nothing more than a regurgitation of what we all have known all along. So freakin' what? Does Hinton feel better now that he got to do the proverbial "naaah, naaah, na, na, naaah" at King George? Gee, Ed where the hell have YOU been for the past 15 years? I seem to remember you being one of those who thought the Brickyard 400 was on par with the second coming. Now all of the sudden you are the all seeing, all knowing pundit. Pardon me while I yawn.

Gary

[NickFalzone]

I agree Gary, I stopped reading ESPN awhile ago for IRL news, because half the time they're reposting AP stories, and the rest of the time they've got their half ass reporters editorializing on news that's already been chewed up and spit out weeks or months ago. It's a 2nd rate effort always, and this article is no different. A couple good points in there, but mostly garbage.

[DBell]

What was written by Ed Hinton, it was well said, but, as Gary stated, it might have meant something if it was written a long time ago. Pretty safe to write that when the man who was in power is no longer in power.


As for what TG wrote as his therapy session, I have my doubts that he wrote it himself. It's almost Max Mosley like. Though Gungex has a good point. Put the commas in the right places and it looks like the work of a long time forum poster.

Poor Tony, if he just had another 15 years he knows he could've turned a profit.

[nigelred5]

Gluastean, never underestimate the ability of the man to hold sponsors. The man doesn't always understand racing, but he survived 14 years as the head of the IRL and schmoozing people. You and I know he is out to lunch but never underestimate this man with corporate America. They it seems don't always understand racing either...and they kept backing this guy.

Yeah, but that's fairly easy to do when you own the yard and the ball. What happens now that he's trying to get sponsorship for a lower tier team with a mediocre driver?

[garyshell]

Needs more ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


Cowbell??? :s mokin:

Gary

[Jag_Warrior]

Poor Tony, if he just had another 15 years he knows he could've turned a profit.

Ouch! :rotflmao:

Yeah, what's that the broken clock said? "Just give me more time and I'll prove that I'm right!"

[Chris R]

Maybe so, but it is nothing more than a regurgitation of what we all have known all along. So freakin' what? Does Hinton feel better now that he got to do the proverbial "naaah, naaah, na, na, naaah" at King George? Gee, Ed where the hell have YOU been for the past 15 years? I seem to remember you being one of those who thought the Brickyard 400 was on par with the second coming. Now all of the sudden you are the all seeing, all knowing pundit. Pardon me while I yawn.

Gary

all true - the guy's a NASCAR guy anyway right?? however, the piece is reasonably accurate and a "mainstream" autoracing writer is echoing many of our sentiments.....

[Gluaistean]

Maybe so, but it is nothing more than a regurgitation of what we all have known all along. So freakin' what? Does Hinton feel better now that he got to do the proverbial "naaah, naaah, na, na, naaah" at King George? Gee, Ed where the hell have YOU been for the past 15 years? I seem to remember you being one of those who thought the Brickyard 400 was on par with the second coming. Now all of the sudden you are the all seeing, all knowing pundit. Pardon me while I yawn.

Gary

Agreed. When ChampCar came to Chicago to race at Sportmans Park it was not uncommon to see all the derogatory satements from Hinton about CART/CHAMPCAR and how great the IRL was in the Chicago Tribune.

He lambasted everyone in CC in the Trib when he could but could only find plaudits for the IRL.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Hinton's "letter" is brilliant.....

No it isn't. Hinton has made some good points, but kicking Tony when he is down is farcical when everyone knows Ed dumped all over CART and supported the IRL at times.

His telling of NASCAR's role in fueling the OW war and the France's reaction to it is dead on the money tho. No one wants to believe it, but I have a feeling Bill Jr. knew EXACTLY what TG would do with the money and was very happy to seem start a war that would only leave NASCAR as a winner.

The fact Ed is bored by the Brickyard 400 and hates the COT is just more of his abilty to always find fault with things rather than understand where THAT sport was going when the COT was thought of.


Ed I like as a writer, but unlike Robin Miller, I do think his grasp of the realities of the sport isn't what it should be.

[Lousada]

Funny, the IRL supporters think Hinton only dumped on the IRL. Like when he reported about Charlotte '99 and TG tried to ban him from the 500.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Funny, the IRL supporters think Hinton only dumped on the IRL. Like when he reported about Charlotte '99 and TG tried to ban him from the 500.

Hinton dumps on everything, which is partially his greatest fault and yet it is one of this great attractions. You know he isn't beholden to anyone but his arguments are all over the map to suit his current moods...

I want intelligent views on the IRL and racing in general, I would go to Miller or Gordon Kirby first.

[Chaparral66]

Hinton dumps on everything, which is partially his greatest fault and yet it is one of this great attractions. You know he isn't beholden to anyone but his arguments are all over the map to suit his current moods...

I want intelligent views on the IRL and racing in general, I would go to Miller or Gordon Kirby first.

Agreed. Hinton would like to put out the impression that NASCAR's lower crowd at Indy for the Brickyard 400 was as a result of boring races and last year's farce in particular, but the economy does have a lot to do with it. And yes, it's easy to kick the ship as it takes on water, he should have been saying this years ago like Miller and Kirby were.

Hinton is only the tip of the iceberg, as the mob mentality will begin to take shape soon if not already. Everyone in the media will be looking to be the one with the deifinitive word on the fall of Indy Racing. Now if they could only use that creative energy to come up with ideas to save it.