Quote Originally Posted by anthonyvop

1. One of the problems of Indy Car is they can't make up their minds which demo are they going after.

2. All of the other Oval events have dismal attendance and TV Numbers.

1. That's because they are ignorant. I guess they feel there all of these rabid formula car/road racing fans out there in America. The truth is they aren't out there. Never have been and never will be. America is a oval racing country. By a HUGE margin. Road racing is a European model of racing, that Americans don't watch, don't understand and don't give a damn about. Its like selling soccer in America. Never going to work. It works in other parts of the world. But not here. Just like road racing.

Since all of the owners are road racing/sports car bred, they want to make the series into something they grew up with. Ganassi and Penske both go along with what goes on in NASCAR, because they have no choice. They are outsiders there and understand they wield no power in NASCAR with the powers there. Plus if they want to play in America's #1 racing series, they have to go along with spec cars and almost all ovals. NASCAR understands America's preference for oval racing and understands there are far more fans out there that follow that genre. That's why they are successful and will continue to be successful.

Indy Car has the Indy 500 as their premier race. The rest of their schedule is a mis-match of bad street races, road races and ovals. Using road racing cars with international road racing drivers. They don't know what they want to be or who they could appeal to. Do we appeal to oval racing fans? With euro-centric cars and foreign drivers? Not happening. Do we appeal to road racing fans? With as many street races, that becomes harder to do too. So what do we do? We coin the generic phrase "diversity" and say that is what Indy Car is about. A "diverse" championship. That appeals to nobody in particular (fans and sponsors) and fewer and fewer American drivers give a crap about.

2. Texas gets more folks to show up then any other road/street festival does. Iowa's crowd on Sunday will be more then either Brazil or St. Pete. The truth is, these street parties aren't that well attended. They can flat out lie about their attendance, because its hard to tell where people are. But as Talkin Terry Angstadt so stupidly said, "We'd rather race in front of 20,000 folks in some city then race in front of 50,000 in a 100,000 seat stadium". That is the kind of ass-backward logic our leadership has. Plus its all about "atmosphere" and "scenery" at street races. As long as that is good and we can get our announcers to carry on for 2 hours about how "cool" the weekend has been and how "beautiful" and "festive" things are, then that will take people's minds off the fact that the racing (which is the business we are in) is lame and the majority of folks attending not likely to watch another one of your races the rest of the year.