Tony George ousted from IMS

Some good points there, Jag, though I hardly think if the mom and sisters ran TG out of IMS, it's not as if they'd refuse the teams entry into the I500. After all, they need a open wheel series to race there to keep tradition. They don't want to carry on on just the Brickyard 400 alone, do they?

With the ouster iminent of Our Good Friend Tony George, we now have to think of the future of the series. What's gonna happen? If we are to believe the conventional wisdom that TG won the war, in winning did he lose the larger point?

Wouldn't it be funny if mom & sisters said take off altogether to Tony, placed Humpy Wheeler or even Chris Pook in charge of the IRL, and they said, "OK, the new car in 2010 is the recent Panoz designed Champ Car, It's already here, it's battle tested already, let's go with this to save some money. Plus, it just looks better than the eyesore we're currently running. Let's keep a fairly even stack of ovals and roadcourses, and let's get back to Cleveland, Michigan, Fontana, and Australia, to say the least, and let's find a damned title sponsor to take some of this burden off our backs. No, I don't think we qualify for a stimulus package. We have to do this ourselves. The current business model is not working."

Wouldn't that be funny?

Some more good points. But tell me the truth, Indy wouldn't be quite the same without open wheel race cars zooming around it, right?

But since you now have a roadcourse built into the place, you certainly can have other events there in addition to the two major oval events; problem here is if it isn't F1, you probably won't fill the place up, which would lead to a question as to whether having events such as ALMS or Grand Am, even with support events, is worth the expense of putting it on. Bringing in NASCAR with the Brickyard 400 was a calculated gamble that worked well, given NASCAR's rapid gowth at the time. Bringing in anything that lacking in tradition besides really big events is probably a crapshoot.

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Originally Posted by Chaparral66

Some good points there, Jag, though I hardly think if the mom and sisters ran TG out of IMS, it's not as if they'd refuse the teams entry into the I500. After all, they need a open wheel series to race there to keep tradition. They don't want to carry on on just the Brickyard 400 alone, do they?

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No, I don't think they'd refuse them entry into the Indy 500. What I mean is, the financial support from IMS, that has kept the IRL afloat, could be reduced or cut altogether without Tony being in charge. That is why I think these teams are lining up behind Tony George.

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Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior

No, I don't think they'd refuse them entry into the Indy 500. What I mean is, the financial support from IMS, that has kept the IRL afloat, could be reduced or cut altogether without Tony being in charge. That is why I think these teams are lining up behind Tony George.

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Makes sense. I'm thinking it wouldn't be cut altogether since there needs to be some support, but reduced, even substantially, yeah, that could definitely happen.

Starter: I understand what you're saying about that casual fan, but even the casual fan can tell the difference betwen an open wheel car and stock car, even if they can't talk about it knowledgeably. If they were to watch the Indy 500 with cars other than open wheel, I bet they pick up on something strange and say "This doesn't look right."

I hear ya, Chap. No matter how uninformed the general public is about the Indy 500 and Indy Car, there is still a general understanding that "Indy 500" means fast, dangerous, open-wheel racing. That's not to say that America couldn't live without the Indy 500, just that any other kinds of cars competing in the race wouldn't be right.

http://www.versus.com/nw/article/vie...uce_martin.tpl

My Question ...

... Is the grandson going to survive this? My thoughts are only a W.A.G.

Sure, he'll survive. If I can paraphrase, I think the family is saying that the IMS bank is closed for the most part. IMS will always support the IRL at some level, but not in an unlimited way as before. TG will run the IRL since it is his brainchild. The only question he has to answer now is, "Who's your daddy?", financially speaking, that is.

Perhaps I should have said, "Hoosier daddy?" :)

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Originally Posted by Starter

Booo! :D

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Oh, c'mon, now! Like you wouldn't have said that, LOL!

IMO, Ken's link in post #158 to Bruce Martin's piece seems the most logical. The family seemingly has not been shy about shoveling dollars where they're needed, be it a new grandstand or pagoda at the Speedway, the IRL, Vision Racing or whatever. The company hasn't hesitated to bring people in and try them to reach goals they need. If some type of reorganization is planned at the family level, or structure level, guess I'll watch what happens and draw an opinion from that.