CactusWeasle posted:

That sounds awesome, except the part about Max Chilton

gret posted:

Chilton has a better racing resume than half the field in IndyCars.

Spaced God posted:

I'd have a good record with a car too if I drove it at a safe speed miles away from everyone else

gret posted:

Chilton has a better racing resume than half the field in IndyCars.

be nice wicka posted:

chilton literally never crashed, you could do much worse

Spaced God posted:

2014 Canada and I think in Spa or another race

gret posted:

Chilton has a better racing resume than half the field in IndyCars.

Dudley posted:

I think they looked at it in the intake that eventually gave us Good Lotus, The Karun and Bruno show and From Russia with Love but decided that would be suicide.

I think they've been proven right there.

Human Grand Prix posted:

I wasn't enthusiastic when Honda used Wirth's company to design their aerokits.

FuzzySkinner posted:

Also I recall reading that "Euro MotorSport" is allegedly interesting in jumping into lights. (Yes, the old CART team).

harperdc posted:

It was originally Wirth's Magical Computer Team brought to you by Richard Branson, but yeah. I'd imagine Indy is a slightly better option, but the real beneficiary are sports cars.

Human Grand Prix posted:

Also;

Human Grand Prix posted:

BMB5150 posted:

Best outing by Andrea Moda though it's Euromotorsport but that's not saying much for a poo poo team in CART in the early 90s anyway.

e: Also this wasn't run by Danner, it was started by Antonio Ferrari. Are you thinking of poo poo CART driver Eric Bachelart since he started and still has Conquest Racing?

FuzzySkinner posted:

Is Antonio Ferrari indeed related to Ferrari?

BMB5150 posted:

Best outing by Andrea Moda though it's Euromotorsport but that's not saying much for a poo poo team in CART in the early 90s anyway.

e: Also this wasn't run by Danner, it was started by Antonio Ferrari. Are you thinking of poo poo CART driver Eric Bachelart since he started and still has Conquest Racing?

quote:

There were a lot of IndyCar drivers on hand for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, which was won Sunday by Chip Ganassi Racing with Scott Dixon in the saddle at the finish.
In addition to Dixon, James Hinchcliffe, Tony Kanaan, Sebastien Bourdais, Charlie Kimball, Graham Rahal, Simon Pagenaud, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Jack Hawksworth, Sage Karam and Townsend Bell were all in cars and I hope they enjoyed their experience because I don't know how much longer the Verizon IndyCar Series is going to exist.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, they might have to find other employment.
A friend send me an email Sunday afternoon that contained this information: "I recently read that at least one major IndyCar sponsor isn't with the series this year and two are on their last year and won't renew because of the short season. If that isn't a wake-up call, then what the hell is Miles waiting for?"
"Miles" of course, is Mark Miles, the CEO of Hulman and Co. The IndyCar series is one of that corporation's businesses. There are others he oversees, like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a firm that manufactures most of the baking powder used in the United States. He has a big job. The real question, of course, is whether he and the board of directors no longer dominated by the heirs of Tony Hulman really care all that much about the series and races in places other than Indianapolis, like Toronto.
This is nothing new, by the way. Hulman bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the end of World War II in order to keep one race going: the Indianapolis 500. Of course, to have the Indianapolis 500 you had to have Indy cars, so he had an interest (and was instrumental in the establishment of the U.S. Auto Club in 1956 after the AAA stopped sanctioning racing).
But his interest was mainly to ensure there would be enough cars around to race at his track every May. It was just business. Maybe the times and the business have changed.
When Miles was hired, he took a very businesslike approach. He discovered there was a small number of Indy car fans who did an awful lot of talking. They made a lot of noise. When it came to showing up at the races, though, not many did. And they weren't watching on television either. The U.S. ratings were abysmal.
So he commissioned a study to find out how he could change this around. One of the suggestions was that the series stop racing as of Labour Day weekend each year because the NFL, college football and the NASCAR Chase for the Championship were too much competition for it in the fall.
The series has stopped racing as of Labour Day weekend for two years now and people still aren't going to the races and the TV numbers are so small they’re embarrassing. The chattering class, though, is convinced that this ”short season” was a huge mistake - and they might be right. What I can't understand, though, is their expectation that people who won't go to a race in August will suddenly go to one in October. They didn't before - which is one of the reasons the consultants concluded the competition was too stiff and that it was better to try a different approach. They are now probably out of suggestions.
As a result, it appears that the end might not be that far off. You can’t keep kicking a dead horse. The 100th year of the Indianapolis 500 will be 2016. I think it will be shortly after that when things will start to happen.
There have been suggestions recently that, if adopted, could pretty much put IndyCar out of its misery but still protect the one race and one race track that people still seem to care about. (Do you really think people still care about the Honda Indy? This is a metropolitan region of between 4 and 5 million people and how many of them show up for that race these days? Twenty thousand? The worst part is that the rest don’t appear to even know it’s on. But I digress.)
The idea would be to have big money paid out on the basis of qualifying positions and the results of two races at Indianapolis every May. The race on the road course in mid-May would be followed two weeks later by the Indianapolis 500. The Speedway would pull out all the stops to attract sufficient sponsorship/prize money to make entering worthwhile. Besides the one-off entries, sports car teams - maybe even NASCAR teams - could run satellite operations to make it happen. I think it’s worth looking into.
Trying to attract sponsorship to run a car in the IndyCar series these days is like pulling teeth. Guys like Calgary’s Ric Peterson are paying out of their own pocket to support a team (okay, it comes from his trucking company but it's the same thing). How many wealthy people like him are around?
And face it, friends: if it wasn't for Roger Penske, whose first love is Indy car racing, and Chip Ganassi and Michael Andretti, who raced Indy cars and are loyal, there would not be any IndyCar anyway.
Those are cold, hard facts. I adore Indy car racing but there’s a time for every purpose and time passes. There is little or no value in Indy car racing any more - other than at Indianapolis. So maybe a "season" built solely around Indy in May would not be such a bad idea.

Cygni posted:

My friend sent me an email about a sponsor not renewing, here's a huge trackforum post wrapped in faux concern.

Jesus Christ, does that guy get paid to write? That seriously might be the worst racing article I've read since the split.

E: lol every indycar article he writes is just him pouting about something and using someone else's quotes to try to spin a CATASTROPHE story. He's an idiot with a newspaper blog and bad ideas.

Alain Post posted:

in all honesty I expect to see the death of "major" motorsport in my lifetime.

Bhester posted:

I don't think IndyCar is going to die any time soon since it's a vanity project, and those tend to last well beyond their expiration dates, but I don't see anything that tells me it's poised for any significant growth any time soon. It's got a solid niche, and it should be sustainable barring any stupid decisions.

EDIT - just to clarify I don't mean "vanity project" as an insult

be nice wicka posted:

at some point in our lives they will have to stop using internal combustion engines, the series that survive will be the ones that don't make a huge fuss and just get on with it

Alain Post posted:

it's not that, it's more the whole "people don't give a poo poo about cars anymore" thing. NASCAR's audience is getting older and older and they clearly have no freaking clue how to lure young fans other than maybe having Tony run more people over

George Zimmer posted:

Honestly, I see a huge downturn of motorsports within the next 10 years, so it would just be going with the trend.