Indycar is dead. Long live the Indy 500.
"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
I was searching for a racing quote today and stumbled across this article by Gordon Kirby. It filled in some of the historical context that I was missing, and it got me to thinking (dangerous).
What was new to me in this article, was the loss of AMERICAS long and storied cottage industry brought on by the (misguided) rules to keep costs down. This loss is ironic for a series that was drenched in jingoistic rhetoric at it's very inception.
The people in this industry were the people who not only built the sport, but they carried it for decades when there was no money. This casualty of the civil war is probably our greatest loss, not just to our sport, but to our nation. We have essentially outsourced American Open Wheeled racing and we lost American jobs in the process. We also lost the people who in the past helped us weather the storms during lean years.
Every time we speak of how to fix the series, well meaning people start with the question "where is the money?" But that is the wrong question to begin our conversation. Obama is giving away money to any green company that has a half baked plan like he prints it himself. So there is money.
But there is no money in Indycar, because there is no value. So the question we need to start asking is, where is the value to potential sponsors? Or more to the point, how do we bring value back to the sport?
First, take Indycar off of life support and let it die. This sport was not built around any series. The series sprang up around the Indy 500. Make it about the Indy 500 again. It started as an endurance race to prove the durability of emerging technologies. Bring it back to it's roots. Once it's a healthy race attracting the brightest engineers in the world, a series will arise around it.
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.
I'm not an engineer, I don't play one on TV and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. So I can only speak in generalities (sorry Gary) when addressing the rules that would be needed to make the Indy 500 relevant again. But in my mind, first and foremost on my list would be an end to a spec chassis. Burn it, bury it and never look back.
In it's place I would mandate a spec tub. Safety cannot be a second thought or be sacrificed for an advantage on the track. I'd go as far as to supply the tub to ensure teams do not cheat. Then I'd stipulate a min/max weight, wheel base, fr/rr track width and the overall length. Big wings, small wings, no wings. Do whatever you want with the body in search for speed and fuel economy.
My ultimate engine formula would take much more technological knowledge than I possess. I'd hand it over to the SAE so they could develop an equivalency formula for all the divergent power train technologies out there. As a transition to an open engine formula, I'd create a spec block and allow for independent development upon it. I could even live with the spec block as an engine formula. NASCAR doesn't run Ford, Chevy and Toyota engines. They run Hendricks, Yates and Roush engines. It's time that Indycar go back to those roots as well.
Unfortunately, the damage might already be too severe to even save the Indy 500. The patient is in intensive care, but all it's getting right now is aspirin. It took 20 years of mismanagement to destroy it. So to think that it can be fixed in a fraction of that time is unrealistic. Nothing will turn it around overnight. But doing nothing will only ensure it's death.
