Promoters deal with low attendance in '11??

[Enjun Pullr]

It will only go somewhere fast with regulations changed to place a greater emphasis on car control, and the arrival of more diversity in the equipment.

That enables better competition, and the stars emerge as a result: driver recognition is the effect of popular racing, not the cause of it.

Jag's quote:

"Once the IRL gets off its haunches and determines who the current fans are and who the prospective fans are (and what they want/need/expect), they can then begin a plan to develop those deliverables... those metrics and "drivers" that will/should lead to increased viewership and attendance = greater sponsorships (as the sponsor exposure value will thereby be increased)."

I gotta tell you Jag, that sounds like something straight out of the mouth of departed Vice President in charge of Marketing John Lewis. Not sure of the reason for his departure, but it's pretty clear to see how effective that sort of market analysis salad proved to be for the past six years.

Maybe he retired to pick low hanging fruit.

[Jag_Warrior]

It will only go somewhere fast with regulations changed to place a greater emphasis on car control, and the arrival of more diversity in the equipment.

And that's fine. Sounds like a change that I would welcome. But who will pay for the new chassis and engines that result from these regulations? Not the series... the teams, right? And unless they can pay for the cars, I'd say they'll still have as hard a time as they do now attracting (and paying) drivers who are capable of using that new equipment to its fullest. Give me Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya for one season and my new team could put on a spectacle that the fans of North American open wheel formula car racing haven't seen in years. Let me put Kamui Kobayashi in a 4th car and the fans better take heart pills before the race. And we could amaze the fans with the same Dallara-Hondas that are out there right now. But take any slick, sexy chassis with a 1000 hp balls-to-the-wall engine and a quick shifting gearbox... if it's still going to be driven by The Danica, Takuma Sato, Rufie Matos and the other members of the Ride-buyer X Clown Squad, I don't quite understand how that (again, by itself) is going to improve much. But sure, I'm all for having a new car(s), new engines and new whatever. But (there's always a "but", eh?), what then??? Where do we go from there?

So if we're still going to require (non-post dated) checks before a driver can get a seat fitting, where are the new drivers going to come from to go with all the other new stuff? The same pool of racing washouts that are writing checks now... that nobody cares about and few can name? And it follows, how does that relate to the new fans that we want/need? But like I said, I'm for getting all that new stuff... especially the new fans. As long as I don't get a bill in the mail, I'll sign off on anything new that you can think of.

That enables better competition, and the stars emerge as a result: driver recognition is the effect of popular racing, not the cause of it.

But you understand that "better" is just another subjective term that means different things to different people. I'm not opposed to what you're saying. And I'm not interested in a chicken or the egg debate. But again, why would a company write a fat check to cover the cost of sponsoring a car if the series has never shown any ability to market itself? Why would they do that? My former company pumped millions into CART and Indy 500 efforts. And although there was a love for this sport at the very top, we didn't just do it for love! We also made a few ducats through B2B relationships and associations. Now, that company and any of the companies we were associated with, if they are in racing sponsorships at all, are exclusively in NASCAR. Why? Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: that's where the money is!

Jag's quote:

"Once the IRL gets off its haunches and determines who the current fans are and who the prospective fans are (and what they want/need/expect), they can then begin a plan to develop those deliverables... those metrics and "drivers" that will/should lead to increased viewership and attendance = greater sponsorships (as the sponsor exposure value will thereby be increased)."

I gotta tell you Jag, that sounds like something straight out of the mouth of departed Vice President in charge of Marketing John Lewis. Not sure of the reason for his departure, but it's pretty clear to see how effective that sort of market analysis salad proved to be for the past six years.

Maybe he retired to pick low hanging fruit.

Maybe I shared a classroom with him at some point. To be honest, I don't know anything about that gentleman. But if his message to the IMS powers-that-be was that they must know their customers and what they must have vs. what they desire to have vs. what they don't care about one way or another... then clearly they made an error in letting him leave the building - especially since they've been sliding straight downhill in those six years that you spoke of. Are those events related? Again, I dunno. I just rattled off a few basic, fundamental principles that any business would/should know to follow.

However you want to put it, whatever words or terminology you want to use, the basics of business don't change whether you're selling tickets to a race or rotor blades for helicopters. The product may be different, but you HAVE to meet customer demands and expectations. It's just that in racing, you rely on ticket buyers as well as sponsors.

[Enjun Pullr]

Just blew up my post, and I am not happy about it. You could have asked me for answers to capital gains tax rate changes and teenage bulemia in the same post though. Might as well touch all the bases.

[Jag_Warrior]

Just blew up my post, and I am not happy about it. You could have asked me for answers to capital gains tax rate changes and teenage bulemia in the same post though. Might as well touch all the bases.

No reason to be unhappy about that. To know me is to love me. Just ask anybody. Well, none of my ex-girlfriends or some of the people that got laid off when their company took my advice to downsize the labor force. And that old lady who used to live across the street from me. Definitely don't ask her - I think she's dead anyway though. But most anybody else... they'll tell ya what a sweetheart I am! As for my posting style, in Ancient Greek my name means "he who is long-winded and cures insomnia".

Just take it that I likely want the same end result for this series that you do. There may be some things that attract me to racing that don't attract you, and vice versa. But before I die or stop caring (either one of which is subject to happen with no prior notice at any time), I'd like to go to at least one more NA open wheel formula car race where there are loads of happy, smiling people, cars that make my heart beat faster and that hard to describe buzz in the air that I remember from years ago. However we get there is cool with me. I'm under no illusion that any suggestion that I make here or anything that I say makes any difference at all.

We're all just "swinging Richards" who come here to shoot the bull, Monday morning quarterback and bench race. It's all good, Enjun Pullr.

[Enjun Pullr]

Thank you for the wisdom, it all serves to justify some brevity. Not easy for me either.

"Who will pay": Immediate improvements would not be expensive.

1) Reduce downforce generated by tunnels, expand selective range of wing angles and wickers. The intent is to require deceleration for high speed cornering, and promote variation in selective drag levels to create speed differential. Car control and aero grip compromises required.

2) Drop base horsepower to 600 to permit overtake assist range of 35 HP. Increase frequency of applications to 25% of race laps. Ex: 20 sec. boost, 10 sec. recharge, 50 applications at a 1.5 mi. track. The intent is to provide speed differential to break up pack racing, enable a charge from the back if desired, and increase a variable in fuel consumption rates.

3) Expand grip level variation between tire compounds for road courses. This was a good idea, even before it was proven at Infineon. The intent is to increase cornering speed differential and alter pit sequences.

4) Eliminate chassis sensors for data acquisition. This reduces the benefits off-track testing R&D, decreases staffing and team budgets. Data collection should consist of tire temperatures and driver feedback, not angular rate sensor and gyro telemetry.

This ends track data maps for precise shaker rig simulation, and driver coaching by monitoring steering wheel and brake pedal position data. Set up the car, gear the car, drive the car. Then we'll talk some more.

That's it for the cheap tricks, the supply of one alternate engine is required to change the balance further. Combining that addition to existing equipment and the single proposed new chassis and engine could create a maximum of five alternate equipment packages in 2012.

"We could amaze the fans": not with top shelf F1 drivers. An unknown, taking calculated risks in a competitive car, can do the same for a lot less. He just can't do it against identically prepared cars unless he has a small but insurmountable performance advantage. Maybe De Silvestro is every bit as talented as Power, and could compete if her engineers have a fighting chance to find their own advantage.

"determines who are current fans": That's easy to count, and the few left aren't leaving. Market analysis is a wasted effort: the demographic is 5 to 95, male and female, within 100 miles of a scheduled event and with enough money to buy a cheap ticket.

You are a marketer, right? What's the average response rate to bulk mail coupons or cold telemarketing calls, 2%? Maybe 1%?

That adds up when a variety of cost-effective promotions are directed at a local market, with incentives designed for a variety of interest groups. This is not a suggestion to massively increase advertising expenditures, but to reallocate existing resources.

Example: $250,000 for a spread in Vanity Fair instead buys 250,000 promotional DVD's to distribute on the retail packaging of a participating sponsor. "Hey kids, let's watch this. And look, there's a coupon...."

The requirement is to plant a seed for new audiences and insure that improved competition keeps their interest.The "low-hanging fruit" won't come back to watch a bad race, even if it's free.

National campaigns to attract local customers is backwards thinking. Demonstrate to potential sponsors, race track promoters and TV viewers that you can fill the stands at one event, rinse and repeat. Get them to the show, give them a better one, establish local audiences who watch subsequent broadcasts.

" 'better' is just a subjective term": This is not as ambiguous a concept as you think. When people are leaving before the end of a processional race at Richmond, and the winning driver apologizes to them afterward, that is a "bad" race.

When narrow road courses with no safe passing zones result in an absence of lead changes on track, that is a race which needs to be made "better". Iowa was a "good" race, Sao Paulo was a "better" race.

That's it for now, the naked lightbulb hanging in my basement just went out again. Some demographic, huh?

[Otto-Matic]

Did someone say teenage bulemia !!!

Jag/Enjun, I must say it's been very compelling reading your posts back and forth. i'd love to watch a round table discussion with you two, Starter, EagleEye and a couple others. You guys make great points and I think just reading this thread has made me to open up my mind and really think about the current state of the series, the regs, and the future. Cheers to both of you!

as for the question of "Who will Pay?" it's not uncommon for a particular series to help fund some of the new equipment costs of the team. If (and a very big "if") the Sisters were willing to open the checkbook even a little, an investment of maybe 10-15%, or 15-20% of the new engine/chassis costs to each team would go a long way to helping them. it's an annuity you would make in your own series towards building it's future. this happens in other business' all the time, albiet different circumstances.
also, what about what Grand-Am did, working with a bank like a SunTrust who did loans at very low interest rates for teams to afford the new packages. I dont know much about this but i recall reading a Marshall Pruett article saying this was very positive in the GA paddock.
of course this is all hypothetical...

[Enjun Pullr]

Thanks and dittoes for your contributions. Where you are now is where I started about 18 months ago. Getting feedback/ arguments/ education from others all serves to revise and refine talking points. If it's a waste of time, that's my fault.

I am keen on hearing from EE as well, my impression is that he and Hoop have more facts to refine theories.

Not a teenager, but I puke quite often over what I read. That doesn't include a lot of history, so I think the funding suggestions you raise are slippery slopes that have been tested before. Others could provide more facts than me.

Bernard has stated that the priority is generating revenues, not initiating drastic cost controls. That's the ticket. Improving product and promotion sells it.

[garyshell]

I think the key here is the reduction of downforce that Enjun has called for and some of have been saving for years. On ovals we need to see a large differential between speeds on the straights and speeds on the turns. I want to see braking in every corner. No more flat out all the way round crap. Then on road courses a reduction of downforce to the point that there is a significant amount of VISIBLE oversteer on virtually every corner.

Of course this also dictates a difference in tire design. But these are CHEAP things that can be done to the existing chassis.

As has been said here in this thread and before, exciting racing (defined by me as seeing the drivers actually drive the cars, aka braking on ovals and oversteer on road courses) creates stars. Stars create interest and Bob's your uncle.

Gary

[Enjun Pullr]

Sad to say Gary, but it is a debate we will lose. The choice has been made to increase ground effect downforce with bigger tunnels on the new chassis. The intent is to reduce downforce required from front wings to lessen the effect of turbulence on the trailing car.

I assume this means the addition of spec tunnel blockers or other modifiers to reduce undertray downforce for oval tracks. If this detail of the 2012 formula has been publicly discussed yet, it hasn't hit the radar.

Maybe brighter minds will limit downforce to the point that full throttle lapping is not the preferred style. Dunno.

Ashmore was a big proponent of reducing downforce a few years ago, and reversed his position. Mario used to complain about the lack of challenge to the drivers. But there doesn't seem to be much support for "unsticking" the cars. The Formula 1 philosophy is the same, more ground effects to maintain consistant downforce.

The Big Question is, what would Uncle Bob do?

[Enjun Pullr]

'Scuse me, Anthony?

I never did hear back on all the Miami promotions you were talking about. Bernard said in an interview tonight that only one or two of the drivers who are Miami residents heard any advertisements at all. And said the cab drivers knew nada.

He also said "the crowd was pathetic at Homestead". So I'd like to know if you are reporting accurately, or just throwing bombs. If there was not a significant level of promotion for the race, I blame the Series and the title sponsor. Bernard blames ISC. What's the real story?