Saturday, December 13, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Obi-wan wisdom
(crapwagon.com 12-6-08)
(regarding Honda's future involvement with the IRL)
Obi-Wan
Supposedly, Honda has already made its decision to withdraw from the IRL. Remember HPD’s Robert Clarke saying that if the league didn’t come up with a rival manufacturer by 2009 that the Japanese automaker was out? Do you see any rival carmakers in the ICS?
Also, look for the domino effect in Honda’s motorsports projects. HPD is on record as saying that the reason that the auto manufacturer is in the American Le Mans Series (as Acura) is because of the opportunity to compete against rival manufacturers. Well, don’t look now, but Audi just pulled the plug on its ALMS program, leaving Acura essentially racing alone in the LMP1 category.
The main reason for Honda’s decision to compete in the ALMS was the costly blunder that its former director (Clarke) made in the IRL. He lobbied Honda in Japan for a hundred-million dollar plus expansion of HPD and virtually autonomous status in regards North American motorsports projects. Clarke got his wishes and he stupidly devoted almost all his new HPD resources towards designing, manufacturing, and developing a new Toyota-killer engine for the IndyCar series. This engine had just reached dyno testing when Toyota withdrew from the IRL in favor of NASCAR participation; leaving Clarke and HPD holding the bag alone in the league. Without a competing auto maker in IndyCar, there was not enough money available to justify deployment of HPD’s new engine; which is the main reason HoMoCo decided to badge it as an Acura and enter the ALMS in opposition to Audi and Porsche.
Well, those rival sports car programs are now pretty much toast and other manufacturers who were thinking about entering the ALMS (e.g. Peugeot) will probably now rethink their involvement. Where the ICS is concerned, it still doesn’t have a rival manufacturer interested in going against Honda.
Isn’t it interesting that Robin Miller’s “source in Germany,” who reportedly swore to him that Audi was coming to IndyCar, failed to give him a heads up about Audi withdrawing from the ALMS? According to the tenderloin scribe, the same source “thought Porsche [was coming] as well a few weeks ago but that's quieted down.” No kidding.
FRM is still trying to justify his IRL hard card and buffet pass by spinning the Alfa or BMW to the IRL fantasy, but is now admitting that “things have been kept pretty hush-hush;” which is Miller-speak for “not a chance in Hell.”
Last I heard the blogger who claims to know about the financial arrangements of Honda’s engine lease program in the ICS is talking out of his southern orifice. Ilmor designed, manufactured, and developed the engines being used in the IndyCar Series and were responsible for rebuilding them as well under contract from HPD. HPD is the source of the similar engines being used in the ALMS (under the Acura badge). HPD MAY have taken over the rebuilding of the Ilmor Indy engines but there is little chance that it is manufacturing them. Really, what would be the purpose? HPD’s “Indy” engine was designed as a replacement for the Ilmor engine; in other words it is supposed to be better. Why would HPD now undertake the manufacture of an inferior engine design when Ilmor already has an assembly line set up for the purpose? There aren’t any cost savings to be had that way.
If Honda pulls the plug on its ICS program, as seems likely, Roger Penske’s Ilmor is the most logical choice to replace the Japanese manufacturer as a source of engines. Unlike Honda, however, Ilmor has no reason to want rival engine builders stealing its business; so all the IRL’s talk about new “manufacturers” like John Judd’s race shop joining the league is probably just that, talk.
Assuming FTG sells his soul to The Captain in return for engines, what’s that going to bode for the league? Basically, I’d say that it means that the financial quicksand that the Idiot Grandson is standing in will sink lower. Right now, Tony is essentially picking up the tab for every Honda-Ilmor engine lease in his series. If Honda bows out, then expect Pimpski to peel off the Honda badges on his engines and carry on business as usual (just as soon as George drops the requirement for auto manufacturers to badge the league engines). However, there’s no reason for Roger to cut Tony a break on engine lease cost – which will probably remain the same – and whatever money that Tony was able to pry out of the Japanese for incidentals is probably headed back to whatever bank American Honda is using. Any way that onion is sliced, Tony is going to be hitting his mother and sisters up for more of their dwindling resources.
Remember the saying, “When America [‘s economy] catches cold, the world catches pneumonia?” What does one suppose will happen to the IRL when Formula One and NASCAR get walking pneumonia?
(regarding Honda's future involvement with the IRL)
Obi-Wan
Supposedly, Honda has already made its decision to withdraw from the IRL. Remember HPD’s Robert Clarke saying that if the league didn’t come up with a rival manufacturer by 2009 that the Japanese automaker was out? Do you see any rival carmakers in the ICS?
Also, look for the domino effect in Honda’s motorsports projects. HPD is on record as saying that the reason that the auto manufacturer is in the American Le Mans Series (as Acura) is because of the opportunity to compete against rival manufacturers. Well, don’t look now, but Audi just pulled the plug on its ALMS program, leaving Acura essentially racing alone in the LMP1 category.
The main reason for Honda’s decision to compete in the ALMS was the costly blunder that its former director (Clarke) made in the IRL. He lobbied Honda in Japan for a hundred-million dollar plus expansion of HPD and virtually autonomous status in regards North American motorsports projects. Clarke got his wishes and he stupidly devoted almost all his new HPD resources towards designing, manufacturing, and developing a new Toyota-killer engine for the IndyCar series. This engine had just reached dyno testing when Toyota withdrew from the IRL in favor of NASCAR participation; leaving Clarke and HPD holding the bag alone in the league. Without a competing auto maker in IndyCar, there was not enough money available to justify deployment of HPD’s new engine; which is the main reason HoMoCo decided to badge it as an Acura and enter the ALMS in opposition to Audi and Porsche.
Well, those rival sports car programs are now pretty much toast and other manufacturers who were thinking about entering the ALMS (e.g. Peugeot) will probably now rethink their involvement. Where the ICS is concerned, it still doesn’t have a rival manufacturer interested in going against Honda.
Isn’t it interesting that Robin Miller’s “source in Germany,” who reportedly swore to him that Audi was coming to IndyCar, failed to give him a heads up about Audi withdrawing from the ALMS? According to the tenderloin scribe, the same source “thought Porsche [was coming] as well a few weeks ago but that's quieted down.” No kidding.
FRM is still trying to justify his IRL hard card and buffet pass by spinning the Alfa or BMW to the IRL fantasy, but is now admitting that “things have been kept pretty hush-hush;” which is Miller-speak for “not a chance in Hell.”
Last I heard the blogger who claims to know about the financial arrangements of Honda’s engine lease program in the ICS is talking out of his southern orifice. Ilmor designed, manufactured, and developed the engines being used in the IndyCar Series and were responsible for rebuilding them as well under contract from HPD. HPD is the source of the similar engines being used in the ALMS (under the Acura badge). HPD MAY have taken over the rebuilding of the Ilmor Indy engines but there is little chance that it is manufacturing them. Really, what would be the purpose? HPD’s “Indy” engine was designed as a replacement for the Ilmor engine; in other words it is supposed to be better. Why would HPD now undertake the manufacture of an inferior engine design when Ilmor already has an assembly line set up for the purpose? There aren’t any cost savings to be had that way.
If Honda pulls the plug on its ICS program, as seems likely, Roger Penske’s Ilmor is the most logical choice to replace the Japanese manufacturer as a source of engines. Unlike Honda, however, Ilmor has no reason to want rival engine builders stealing its business; so all the IRL’s talk about new “manufacturers” like John Judd’s race shop joining the league is probably just that, talk.
Assuming FTG sells his soul to The Captain in return for engines, what’s that going to bode for the league? Basically, I’d say that it means that the financial quicksand that the Idiot Grandson is standing in will sink lower. Right now, Tony is essentially picking up the tab for every Honda-Ilmor engine lease in his series. If Honda bows out, then expect Pimpski to peel off the Honda badges on his engines and carry on business as usual (just as soon as George drops the requirement for auto manufacturers to badge the league engines). However, there’s no reason for Roger to cut Tony a break on engine lease cost – which will probably remain the same – and whatever money that Tony was able to pry out of the Japanese for incidentals is probably headed back to whatever bank American Honda is using. Any way that onion is sliced, Tony is going to be hitting his mother and sisters up for more of their dwindling resources.
Remember the saying, “When America [‘s economy] catches cold, the world catches pneumonia?” What does one suppose will happen to the IRL when Formula One and NASCAR get walking pneumonia?
CART vs IRL: who won the war?
In the struggle for dominance of open-wheel racing, it looks like everyone lost.
(by Bob Zeller in Car and Driver's March 2004 magazine)
One of the notable lowlights of the long, bloody war in Indy-car racing occurred earlier this year when more spectators attended the 29th running of the Long Beach Grand Prix than watched it on television.
Open-wheel-racing enthusiasts already knew the bottom had fallen out of Indy-car TV ratings, whether you chose not to watch the Indy Racing League, or avoided the Champ Car World Series staged by Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). But this news was stunning. Estimated Long Beach race-day attendance: 95,000. Estimated nationwide television audience on Speed: 69,000 households.
It was just the latest indignity in a never-ending debacle. Or then again, maybe it is ending. As this story went to press, CART was still hanging on, but just barely. A takeover bid by Open Wheel Racing Series LLC—headed by car owners Paul Gentilozzi, Gerald Forsythe, Kevin Kalkhoven, and others who offered to buy up CART's stock at 56 cents a share—was still pending. CART stock had been as high as $35.63 in 1999.
Not that Tony George's Indy Racing League had much to gloat about. Its 2003 ratings on national television were consistently less than a point (usually 0.7 or 0.8 on ABC, or about 700,000 to 800,000 viewers). With the defection of CART teams to the IRL, and with most of the original IRL teams gone, the league was looking more like CART than CART. And it faced serious safety issues, both on the track and in the grandstands, in the wake of horrific late-season crashes that killed Tony Renna at Indianapolis and severely injured Kenny Brack at Texas.
This racing war has always been about power and control. Forty years ago, when Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George was just a little tyke, his grandfather, Tony Hulman, controlled the speedway, the Indy 500, and the sport. Hulman died in 1977, and by 1979, Indy-car owners had wrested control of the sport from the speedway. On March 11, 1994, when he announced the creation of the Indy Racing League, George embarked on his campaign to take it back. It's been almost 10 years now, so we asked some notable participants: Who won the war?
Tony George, 43
President and CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Founder of the Indy Racing League.
When we started to form the Indy Racing League, we really weren't thinking in terms of firing the first shot to begin a war in open-wheel racing. We tried to influence some change—positive change in my opinion—in CART and the way it was managing the sport. This was not well received, and really, I felt we were left with no other choice but to go out and start the league.
The distractions that we both faced in responding to questions about the divisiveness of a split—who has the best drivers, who has the best sponsors, who has the best teams—all of that really prevented us from focusing on growing our respective businesses to the extent that we would like. I'm sure all this talk for the past eight years about there being a civil war and a split in open-wheel racing and all that stuff has contributed to some degree to the drop in television ratings, but I also attribute that to more competition and more choice. And I attribute it to not being able to get any traction in broadening our fan base and to not being good marketers. As much as I'd like to see open-wheel racing all together under one series with common goals and business objectives, I believe in fair competition and the opportunity to build a better mousetrap.
Chris Pook, 62
Founder of the Long Beach Grand Prix. President and CEO of CART—the third CEO since the split (he will become a consultant under the proposed new ownership).
I don't think there is a war. We are doing what we've always done here at CART, and that's run on ovals, road courses, and street courses, and we're running on more street courses. We're back on the rails where we were originally when we were the top open-wheel series in North America. And I respectfully suggest that we continue to be the top open-wheel series in North America, drawing 400,000 plus to our race in Mexico and more than 430,000 in Australia.
On top of all that, when you look at the growth right now of the Hispanic/Latino communities across the country, we control that area of the marketplace. Now, the area where I suppose there's some criticism is that we don't have enough Americans. But how are those guys doing for American drivers? If you really want to get into it, you've got to dig back to why [the IRL] was formed and what it was going to do, and then you have to ask the question: "Has it done what it set out to do, or did it just reach across and steal some stuff from us?"
Everyone is saying we're going out of business, which we find extremely offensive. We've turned it around. Our teams are already lining up for next year, and we clearly see our 18 cars again and we see them [being committed] much earlier this year than we saw them last year. And we see them without the need to subsidize them, with the sponsorship increases and everything else that is going on.
Andrew Craig, 54
President and CEO of CART from 1994 to 2000. Owns the Craig Company, an international sports consulting firm that assisted Vancouver, B.C., in its successful bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics and is working with London on its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
I don't see any winners. I don't think either side can regard itself as a winner. What I see is that the division of the sport has led to its decline. It has disenchanted fans, it has confused fans, and perhaps most important of all, it has caused energy that could and should have been devoted to building the sport to be wasted just trying to survive. For example, the suit filed by the speedway in 1997—which started out as a trademark issue and became an anti-trust action—was just very debilitating. We seemed to spend our entire life in court. We won, but what did we get out of it? Virtually nothing. And the fact is, it diverted attention away from our core mission for at least two-thirds of a year.
When the split occurred, the popular wisdom was that CART couldn't possibly survive without the speedway. And the fact is, the teams did stay onboard while I was there. But in doing that, to keep everyone inside the tent, I had to make substantial compromises on many issues. I think the view on the speedway's side was that by effectively removing the Indy 500 from CART, it would result in there being no teams, no sponsors, and no racetracks for CART. And in fact, the opposite occurred. During that period [1994-2000], CART had more teams, more sponsors, and more racetracks than at any other time in its history. And also a lot more money.
Roger Penske, 66
Owner of Penske Racing and several other businesses. CART loyalist until 2001. Switched from CART to IRL in 2002.
I'm not an advocate of a war, number one. I'm an advocate of one series. And I've said that. And that's not to put down CART. I think there can be a combination, potentially, where everybody survives. A lot of people are talking that you could have [in the IRL] some combination in some of the major markets of ovals and road races. To us, obviously having come from a road racing heritage, we would certainly like that. But I think that's up to Tony George.
In any business, people go in different directions. I think we've experienced that over the past four or five years. The unfortunate thing is we've probably lost some of the media, we've lost some of the fans, and we've lost some of the sponsors. Obviously, there's been some damage, but we're a resilient group of people in this sport.
Mario Andretti, 64
One of CART's most outspoken defenders. Formula 1 world champion in 1967; winner of the Indy 500 in 1969. Only began returning to IMS when his son, Michael, returned in 2001.
Nobody's winning. Nobody is winning anything. Right now, in my opinion, we should all be together. We should all be pulling in the same direction. I keep saying this, and I maintain it: Going in two different directions like this, neither organization is winning. Fans are losing, competitors are losing, and so it would be time to sort of create a win-win situation for everyone. That's wishful thinking on my part, but I'll never stop wishing [for a reconciliation], because right now, any way you look at it, in a perfect world, each side is only going to have 50 percent of everything. Just think for a minute if Formula 1 would split up and try to go with two parallel series, or even NASCAR. Who would benefit? No one.
A.J. Foyt, 69
Four-time winner of the Indy 500. IRL team owner from the start. Has seen his cars struggle in recent years, posting only two victories since 1999.
Well, you know who won it before it ever started—the IRL. The IRL is an oval-racing circuit. CART does some ovals, but it's mainly a road-course circuit. So why would you not want to run Indianapolis?. That made A.J. Foyt. That made Roger Penske. And that made Mario Andretti. It's like the Kentucky Derby. If you don't want to run that race, you're kinda sick in the head.
It's probably as strong as it has ever been in the IRL. The future of CART? It's really hard to say. But most of the top teams that were very successful and very good and that had any names are over here in the IRL. So I think it's a matter of time.
CART is just a road-racing circuit. You've never seen road racing really go over big in the United States. CART has a bunch of good road races, but still it's never been as successful as the open wheel.
Bobby Rahal, 51
Winner of the 1986 Indy 500. Now has teams in both CART and the IRL.
I think open wheel lost the war for the hearts and minds of the people, and NASCAR has won that. I think open wheel can regain a lot of that because NASCAR will—it's like anything. There are cycles, there are ups and down, you're in a trough or you're at the apogee. It's schizophrenic, but it's been that way the past 10 years. Right now, one of the strongest elements CART has in its favor is diversity. That's really the American story.
The only weakness CART has is its TV. And I even say that about the IRL to an extent. Just about every CART race you go to, particularly the city tracks, it's packed. But advertisers or companies, they all want to look at the rating. The ratings are sacred. I think open-wheel racing as a group, the IRL or CART, has suffered from not having particularly—I'll get in a lot of trouble for this—but ABC and ESPN, I don't think they care. NASCAR has had networks that care. They market and merchandise and promote. And I think all of open-wheel racing has suffered from a lack of that.
John Menard, 64
An IRL team owner from the inception. Owns the 184-store chain of Menards home improvement stores, with $5.5 billion in annual sales.
I mean it's like the Civil War. Who won it? The North won it, but it didn't do the country a lot of good, did it? There were a lot of people dead and a lot wounded. So I think we hurt ourselves. I think we're continuing to hurt ourselves. It's just that the IRL is stronger than CART, whereas last year, and in years past, maybe CART was stronger than the IRL.
We're still a bunch of people trying to hurt another bunch of people, and until we figure out how to get some sort of unification or revive interest in open-wheel racing, we're going to continue to lose ground to NASCAR. When all is said and done, NASCAR is the 900-pound gorilla that everybody is fighting right now.
Not that there's anything wrong with NASCAR. God bless 'em, they're very successful. But for open-wheel racing to make a comeback, we're going to have to take some market share from somebody. The thing is, CART has zero market share and the IRL has a bit more, but when you combine the two, we still don't have any market share. So the problem is, it kind of doesn't matter. That's the tragedy. Combine the two and what have you got? A pigmy compared with NASCAR.
Robin Miller, 54
Motorsports journalist now working for ESPN. Covered open-wheel racing for the Indianapolis Star for more than 30 years.
There's no winner. Open-wheel racing lost. It's a joke. Both series are in the toilet. When the IRL and CART go head-to-head on national television, they both get a 0.8. As much as Tony George should be reviled for screwing up the Indy 500 and open-wheel racing, the CART owners should be lined up and executed right along with him. They did just as many stupid things. Roger Penske helped make CART and then jumped ship. Chip Ganassi wins four championships in a row, and he couldn't bail quick enough.
Tony George used to call me three or four times a week. And I still have my notebook from 1990, when he told me, "The last thing I need to do is run a racing series. We've got enough to do." Well, what changed his mind between 1990 and 1994? Bill France. France is one of the few guys George thought told him the truth, and France told him, "You've got to take the bull by the horns. You've got to be the man and take over open-wheel racing." And the bottom line is, who was helped most by the open-wheel war? NASCAR. Of course, Bill France got real mad when I suggested that to him. I said, "You gotta be loving these two sides going at it." He was not happy with that suggestion. But it's the truth. The people who used to watch Indy-car racing either got pissed off and quit watching and quit going, or they became NASCAR fans. It's like the baseball strike. They pissed some people off so bad they never came back.
Bobby Unser, 70
Three-time winner of the Indy 500.
Who won the war? I don't think either one necessarily won. I think open-wheel racing lost. That's the bottom line of the whole thing. The best thing to happen now is for CART to go out of business. If open-wheel racing is to survive, it must survive as one organization, so CART must go out of business. CART lost, and it should go home. And that was the car owners' fault. They all became too piggish—looking out for their own world and not enough for the sport. So they need to go out of business, and Tony George needs to have the responsibility of getting open-wheel racing back to where it used to be. That being said, it's obvious open-wheel racing is still going to be hurting, because we won't have road-racing circuits and street circuits like Long Beach, which are extremely successful. Tony George says he's going to expand into road racing, but will he do it, and when will he do it? The IRL's future should be good, but it can't be the grass-roots series Tony George envisioned. That was a wet dream. That was to get car owners to get started, and I'm sure they all had a dang good time.
Pat Patrick, 74
Co-founder of CART and Indy-car team owner for 32 years.
Well, it's sad the way the thing has played out. It's very sad because I like the sport so much. The bottom line is, I think both series are in the Mexican standoff right now. And I think it's an untenable situation. It's difficult to get sponsors. Fans are leaving us. They're leaving the IRL. They're leaving open-wheel racing. I feel extremely strongly that the two series should be put back together. This business of us against them—I don't believe in that. I think CART offers the best open-wheel racing series in the world for diversity—the type of racing and the race cars and drivers themselves. And I think the IRL has a tremendous amount to offer because they put on great shows. But both series are suffering from insufficient sponsors, insufficient owners, and insufficient teams. Everybody criticized the CART owners when they were running it for conflict of interest. But look what we had. Look what we built. We had the greatest racing series in the world before we started hiring these so-called professional managers to run it.
Arie Luyendyk, 50
Two-time winner of the Indy 500.
I was always convinced the IRL would succeed because it had the Indy 500 in the schedule. I already had that answer in my head before it went about deciding who came out on top. I've always maintained that, and I've always stood behind Tony George in creating the series because of that fact. Maybe I look at it different. Coming from Europe, the only thing I heard about was the Indy 500. If you ask me about the future of CART, I would say it's not very good. But I've always felt bad that either one had to suffer. It's still basically the same group of guys.
Open-wheel racing is basically very hard to make mainstream, and that's really what it comes down to. Most people walk around in jeans. Not everybody walks around in Hugo Boss. And it's a matter of taste. Most people are drawn to NASCAR because it's easier than an Indy car, it seems to be more familiar, more household.
(by Bob Zeller in Car and Driver's March 2004 magazine)
One of the notable lowlights of the long, bloody war in Indy-car racing occurred earlier this year when more spectators attended the 29th running of the Long Beach Grand Prix than watched it on television.
Open-wheel-racing enthusiasts already knew the bottom had fallen out of Indy-car TV ratings, whether you chose not to watch the Indy Racing League, or avoided the Champ Car World Series staged by Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). But this news was stunning. Estimated Long Beach race-day attendance: 95,000. Estimated nationwide television audience on Speed: 69,000 households.
It was just the latest indignity in a never-ending debacle. Or then again, maybe it is ending. As this story went to press, CART was still hanging on, but just barely. A takeover bid by Open Wheel Racing Series LLC—headed by car owners Paul Gentilozzi, Gerald Forsythe, Kevin Kalkhoven, and others who offered to buy up CART's stock at 56 cents a share—was still pending. CART stock had been as high as $35.63 in 1999.
Not that Tony George's Indy Racing League had much to gloat about. Its 2003 ratings on national television were consistently less than a point (usually 0.7 or 0.8 on ABC, or about 700,000 to 800,000 viewers). With the defection of CART teams to the IRL, and with most of the original IRL teams gone, the league was looking more like CART than CART. And it faced serious safety issues, both on the track and in the grandstands, in the wake of horrific late-season crashes that killed Tony Renna at Indianapolis and severely injured Kenny Brack at Texas.
This racing war has always been about power and control. Forty years ago, when Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George was just a little tyke, his grandfather, Tony Hulman, controlled the speedway, the Indy 500, and the sport. Hulman died in 1977, and by 1979, Indy-car owners had wrested control of the sport from the speedway. On March 11, 1994, when he announced the creation of the Indy Racing League, George embarked on his campaign to take it back. It's been almost 10 years now, so we asked some notable participants: Who won the war?
Tony George, 43
President and CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Founder of the Indy Racing League.
When we started to form the Indy Racing League, we really weren't thinking in terms of firing the first shot to begin a war in open-wheel racing. We tried to influence some change—positive change in my opinion—in CART and the way it was managing the sport. This was not well received, and really, I felt we were left with no other choice but to go out and start the league.
The distractions that we both faced in responding to questions about the divisiveness of a split—who has the best drivers, who has the best sponsors, who has the best teams—all of that really prevented us from focusing on growing our respective businesses to the extent that we would like. I'm sure all this talk for the past eight years about there being a civil war and a split in open-wheel racing and all that stuff has contributed to some degree to the drop in television ratings, but I also attribute that to more competition and more choice. And I attribute it to not being able to get any traction in broadening our fan base and to not being good marketers. As much as I'd like to see open-wheel racing all together under one series with common goals and business objectives, I believe in fair competition and the opportunity to build a better mousetrap.
Chris Pook, 62
Founder of the Long Beach Grand Prix. President and CEO of CART—the third CEO since the split (he will become a consultant under the proposed new ownership).
I don't think there is a war. We are doing what we've always done here at CART, and that's run on ovals, road courses, and street courses, and we're running on more street courses. We're back on the rails where we were originally when we were the top open-wheel series in North America. And I respectfully suggest that we continue to be the top open-wheel series in North America, drawing 400,000 plus to our race in Mexico and more than 430,000 in Australia.
On top of all that, when you look at the growth right now of the Hispanic/Latino communities across the country, we control that area of the marketplace. Now, the area where I suppose there's some criticism is that we don't have enough Americans. But how are those guys doing for American drivers? If you really want to get into it, you've got to dig back to why [the IRL] was formed and what it was going to do, and then you have to ask the question: "Has it done what it set out to do, or did it just reach across and steal some stuff from us?"
Everyone is saying we're going out of business, which we find extremely offensive. We've turned it around. Our teams are already lining up for next year, and we clearly see our 18 cars again and we see them [being committed] much earlier this year than we saw them last year. And we see them without the need to subsidize them, with the sponsorship increases and everything else that is going on.
Andrew Craig, 54
President and CEO of CART from 1994 to 2000. Owns the Craig Company, an international sports consulting firm that assisted Vancouver, B.C., in its successful bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics and is working with London on its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
I don't see any winners. I don't think either side can regard itself as a winner. What I see is that the division of the sport has led to its decline. It has disenchanted fans, it has confused fans, and perhaps most important of all, it has caused energy that could and should have been devoted to building the sport to be wasted just trying to survive. For example, the suit filed by the speedway in 1997—which started out as a trademark issue and became an anti-trust action—was just very debilitating. We seemed to spend our entire life in court. We won, but what did we get out of it? Virtually nothing. And the fact is, it diverted attention away from our core mission for at least two-thirds of a year.
When the split occurred, the popular wisdom was that CART couldn't possibly survive without the speedway. And the fact is, the teams did stay onboard while I was there. But in doing that, to keep everyone inside the tent, I had to make substantial compromises on many issues. I think the view on the speedway's side was that by effectively removing the Indy 500 from CART, it would result in there being no teams, no sponsors, and no racetracks for CART. And in fact, the opposite occurred. During that period [1994-2000], CART had more teams, more sponsors, and more racetracks than at any other time in its history. And also a lot more money.
Roger Penske, 66
Owner of Penske Racing and several other businesses. CART loyalist until 2001. Switched from CART to IRL in 2002.
I'm not an advocate of a war, number one. I'm an advocate of one series. And I've said that. And that's not to put down CART. I think there can be a combination, potentially, where everybody survives. A lot of people are talking that you could have [in the IRL] some combination in some of the major markets of ovals and road races. To us, obviously having come from a road racing heritage, we would certainly like that. But I think that's up to Tony George.
In any business, people go in different directions. I think we've experienced that over the past four or five years. The unfortunate thing is we've probably lost some of the media, we've lost some of the fans, and we've lost some of the sponsors. Obviously, there's been some damage, but we're a resilient group of people in this sport.
Mario Andretti, 64
One of CART's most outspoken defenders. Formula 1 world champion in 1967; winner of the Indy 500 in 1969. Only began returning to IMS when his son, Michael, returned in 2001.
Nobody's winning. Nobody is winning anything. Right now, in my opinion, we should all be together. We should all be pulling in the same direction. I keep saying this, and I maintain it: Going in two different directions like this, neither organization is winning. Fans are losing, competitors are losing, and so it would be time to sort of create a win-win situation for everyone. That's wishful thinking on my part, but I'll never stop wishing [for a reconciliation], because right now, any way you look at it, in a perfect world, each side is only going to have 50 percent of everything. Just think for a minute if Formula 1 would split up and try to go with two parallel series, or even NASCAR. Who would benefit? No one.
A.J. Foyt, 69
Four-time winner of the Indy 500. IRL team owner from the start. Has seen his cars struggle in recent years, posting only two victories since 1999.
Well, you know who won it before it ever started—the IRL. The IRL is an oval-racing circuit. CART does some ovals, but it's mainly a road-course circuit. So why would you not want to run Indianapolis?. That made A.J. Foyt. That made Roger Penske. And that made Mario Andretti. It's like the Kentucky Derby. If you don't want to run that race, you're kinda sick in the head.
It's probably as strong as it has ever been in the IRL. The future of CART? It's really hard to say. But most of the top teams that were very successful and very good and that had any names are over here in the IRL. So I think it's a matter of time.
CART is just a road-racing circuit. You've never seen road racing really go over big in the United States. CART has a bunch of good road races, but still it's never been as successful as the open wheel.
Bobby Rahal, 51
Winner of the 1986 Indy 500. Now has teams in both CART and the IRL.
I think open wheel lost the war for the hearts and minds of the people, and NASCAR has won that. I think open wheel can regain a lot of that because NASCAR will—it's like anything. There are cycles, there are ups and down, you're in a trough or you're at the apogee. It's schizophrenic, but it's been that way the past 10 years. Right now, one of the strongest elements CART has in its favor is diversity. That's really the American story.
The only weakness CART has is its TV. And I even say that about the IRL to an extent. Just about every CART race you go to, particularly the city tracks, it's packed. But advertisers or companies, they all want to look at the rating. The ratings are sacred. I think open-wheel racing as a group, the IRL or CART, has suffered from not having particularly—I'll get in a lot of trouble for this—but ABC and ESPN, I don't think they care. NASCAR has had networks that care. They market and merchandise and promote. And I think all of open-wheel racing has suffered from a lack of that.
John Menard, 64
An IRL team owner from the inception. Owns the 184-store chain of Menards home improvement stores, with $5.5 billion in annual sales.
I mean it's like the Civil War. Who won it? The North won it, but it didn't do the country a lot of good, did it? There were a lot of people dead and a lot wounded. So I think we hurt ourselves. I think we're continuing to hurt ourselves. It's just that the IRL is stronger than CART, whereas last year, and in years past, maybe CART was stronger than the IRL.
We're still a bunch of people trying to hurt another bunch of people, and until we figure out how to get some sort of unification or revive interest in open-wheel racing, we're going to continue to lose ground to NASCAR. When all is said and done, NASCAR is the 900-pound gorilla that everybody is fighting right now.
Not that there's anything wrong with NASCAR. God bless 'em, they're very successful. But for open-wheel racing to make a comeback, we're going to have to take some market share from somebody. The thing is, CART has zero market share and the IRL has a bit more, but when you combine the two, we still don't have any market share. So the problem is, it kind of doesn't matter. That's the tragedy. Combine the two and what have you got? A pigmy compared with NASCAR.
Robin Miller, 54
Motorsports journalist now working for ESPN. Covered open-wheel racing for the Indianapolis Star for more than 30 years.
There's no winner. Open-wheel racing lost. It's a joke. Both series are in the toilet. When the IRL and CART go head-to-head on national television, they both get a 0.8. As much as Tony George should be reviled for screwing up the Indy 500 and open-wheel racing, the CART owners should be lined up and executed right along with him. They did just as many stupid things. Roger Penske helped make CART and then jumped ship. Chip Ganassi wins four championships in a row, and he couldn't bail quick enough.
Tony George used to call me three or four times a week. And I still have my notebook from 1990, when he told me, "The last thing I need to do is run a racing series. We've got enough to do." Well, what changed his mind between 1990 and 1994? Bill France. France is one of the few guys George thought told him the truth, and France told him, "You've got to take the bull by the horns. You've got to be the man and take over open-wheel racing." And the bottom line is, who was helped most by the open-wheel war? NASCAR. Of course, Bill France got real mad when I suggested that to him. I said, "You gotta be loving these two sides going at it." He was not happy with that suggestion. But it's the truth. The people who used to watch Indy-car racing either got pissed off and quit watching and quit going, or they became NASCAR fans. It's like the baseball strike. They pissed some people off so bad they never came back.
Bobby Unser, 70
Three-time winner of the Indy 500.
Who won the war? I don't think either one necessarily won. I think open-wheel racing lost. That's the bottom line of the whole thing. The best thing to happen now is for CART to go out of business. If open-wheel racing is to survive, it must survive as one organization, so CART must go out of business. CART lost, and it should go home. And that was the car owners' fault. They all became too piggish—looking out for their own world and not enough for the sport. So they need to go out of business, and Tony George needs to have the responsibility of getting open-wheel racing back to where it used to be. That being said, it's obvious open-wheel racing is still going to be hurting, because we won't have road-racing circuits and street circuits like Long Beach, which are extremely successful. Tony George says he's going to expand into road racing, but will he do it, and when will he do it? The IRL's future should be good, but it can't be the grass-roots series Tony George envisioned. That was a wet dream. That was to get car owners to get started, and I'm sure they all had a dang good time.
Pat Patrick, 74
Co-founder of CART and Indy-car team owner for 32 years.
Well, it's sad the way the thing has played out. It's very sad because I like the sport so much. The bottom line is, I think both series are in the Mexican standoff right now. And I think it's an untenable situation. It's difficult to get sponsors. Fans are leaving us. They're leaving the IRL. They're leaving open-wheel racing. I feel extremely strongly that the two series should be put back together. This business of us against them—I don't believe in that. I think CART offers the best open-wheel racing series in the world for diversity—the type of racing and the race cars and drivers themselves. And I think the IRL has a tremendous amount to offer because they put on great shows. But both series are suffering from insufficient sponsors, insufficient owners, and insufficient teams. Everybody criticized the CART owners when they were running it for conflict of interest. But look what we had. Look what we built. We had the greatest racing series in the world before we started hiring these so-called professional managers to run it.
Arie Luyendyk, 50
Two-time winner of the Indy 500.
I was always convinced the IRL would succeed because it had the Indy 500 in the schedule. I already had that answer in my head before it went about deciding who came out on top. I've always maintained that, and I've always stood behind Tony George in creating the series because of that fact. Maybe I look at it different. Coming from Europe, the only thing I heard about was the Indy 500. If you ask me about the future of CART, I would say it's not very good. But I've always felt bad that either one had to suffer. It's still basically the same group of guys.
Open-wheel racing is basically very hard to make mainstream, and that's really what it comes down to. Most people walk around in jeans. Not everybody walks around in Hugo Boss. And it's a matter of taste. Most people are drawn to NASCAR because it's easier than an Indy car, it seems to be more familiar, more household.
CART vs IRL: a timeline of the war
(continuation of above article)
November 1945: Tony Hulman buys Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) for a reported $750,000, resumes famed race in 1946.
June 1955: Sanctioning body AAA drops racing after 80 spectators killed at Le Mans. Hulman helps start United States Auto Club.
Late 1950s: USAC thrives with front-engine Indy cars, sprints, midgets.
1971: USAC National Championship Indy-car series goes all pavement.
Mid-1970s: Indy-car owners begin grumbling about USAC management.
October 1977: Tony Hulman, 76, dies.
Early 1978: Dan Gurney proposes uniting car owners into "Championship Auto Racing Teams" (CART).
April 1978: Plane crash kills eight USAC officials returning from race at Trenton.
November 1978: Car owners create CART after USAC rejects their proposal for new, balanced board to govern Indy-car racing.
March 1979: CART holds first race, sanctioned by SCCA, at Phoenix.
April 1979: IMS rejects CART entries to 500. Court orders IMS to accept them.
November 1979: CART lands PPG sponsorship, starts PPG Indy Car World Series.
1979-81: Track owners jump from USAC to CART.
April 1980: USAC and CART compromise, form Championship Racing League (CRL).
July 1980: IMS dissatisfied with CRL; USAC pulls out, CART continues.
1982: Indy 500 becomes the only USAC-sanctioned Indy-car race.
Mid-1980s: CART grows, adds street races, including Long Beach.
January 1990: Just 30, Tony George, grandson of Tony Hulman, becomes IMS president.
November 1991: George proposes new board structure for Indy-car racing. CART rejects it.
Mid-1992: Tony George granted nonvoting seat on CART board.
Late 1993: George criticizes lack of track-owner input at CART.
January 1994: CART hires British sports marketer Andrew Craig as president to expand series. George resigns seat on CART board.
March 1994: George announces early plans for Indy Racing League (IRL).
July 1995: IRL unveils 25/8 rule: 25 spots in 1996 Indy 500 are reserved for IRL drivers.
Late 1995: CART announces 500-mile race at Michigan International Speedway to compete with Indy 500.
January 1996: IRL, sanctioned by USAC, holds its first race in Orlando, Florida.
May 26, 1996: Indy 500 and U.S. 500.
August 1996: IRL unveils its new cars for 1997, with 4.0-liter naturally aspirated engines. IRL and CART cars are now incompatible.
July 1997: IRL boots USAC as sanctioning body after timing and scoring errors at Texas.
October 1997: Former USAC sprint-car champion Tony Stewart becomes first IRL champion.
December 1997: FedEx becomes CART's main sponsor, and cars are renamed Champ Cars.
March 1998: CART stock goes public on New York Stock Exchange at $16 per share.
May 2000: Target Chip Ganassi Racing is first major CART team to enter Indy 500 in five years. Driver Juan Montoya wins.
June 2000: CART in turmoil, Craig resigns.
December 2000: Joe Heitzler, former TV sports executive, is named CART president.
April 2001: Toyota announces it is leaving CART, Honda follows in May 2002.
May 2001: More CART regulars participate in Indy 500, take top six spots.
Summer 2001: CART missteps include canceled races and officiating errors.
December 2001: Heitzler removed. Long Beach GP founder Chris Pook named CART president.
Summer 2002: IRL's oval races become consistently competitive, but attendance lags. CART's oval races lag, but road and street races thrive. October 2002: FedEx bails out as CART sponsor.
2003: CART spends millions subsidizing teams. Pays CBS for air time and production costs. Oddly, gives broadcasts free to Speed Channel.
2003: IRL is now dominated by former CART teams. Original teams falling by wayside.
September 2003: Newcomers Paul Gentilozzi, et al., propose CART takeover, offer 56 cents for stock worth 55. Hang on.
October 2003: CART's MotoRock rock-and-racing combo flops at first event.
November 1945: Tony Hulman buys Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) for a reported $750,000, resumes famed race in 1946.
June 1955: Sanctioning body AAA drops racing after 80 spectators killed at Le Mans. Hulman helps start United States Auto Club.
Late 1950s: USAC thrives with front-engine Indy cars, sprints, midgets.
1971: USAC National Championship Indy-car series goes all pavement.
Mid-1970s: Indy-car owners begin grumbling about USAC management.
October 1977: Tony Hulman, 76, dies.
Early 1978: Dan Gurney proposes uniting car owners into "Championship Auto Racing Teams" (CART).
April 1978: Plane crash kills eight USAC officials returning from race at Trenton.
November 1978: Car owners create CART after USAC rejects their proposal for new, balanced board to govern Indy-car racing.
March 1979: CART holds first race, sanctioned by SCCA, at Phoenix.
April 1979: IMS rejects CART entries to 500. Court orders IMS to accept them.
November 1979: CART lands PPG sponsorship, starts PPG Indy Car World Series.
1979-81: Track owners jump from USAC to CART.
April 1980: USAC and CART compromise, form Championship Racing League (CRL).
July 1980: IMS dissatisfied with CRL; USAC pulls out, CART continues.
1982: Indy 500 becomes the only USAC-sanctioned Indy-car race.
Mid-1980s: CART grows, adds street races, including Long Beach.
January 1990: Just 30, Tony George, grandson of Tony Hulman, becomes IMS president.
November 1991: George proposes new board structure for Indy-car racing. CART rejects it.
Mid-1992: Tony George granted nonvoting seat on CART board.
Late 1993: George criticizes lack of track-owner input at CART.
January 1994: CART hires British sports marketer Andrew Craig as president to expand series. George resigns seat on CART board.
March 1994: George announces early plans for Indy Racing League (IRL).
July 1995: IRL unveils 25/8 rule: 25 spots in 1996 Indy 500 are reserved for IRL drivers.
Late 1995: CART announces 500-mile race at Michigan International Speedway to compete with Indy 500.
January 1996: IRL, sanctioned by USAC, holds its first race in Orlando, Florida.
May 26, 1996: Indy 500 and U.S. 500.
August 1996: IRL unveils its new cars for 1997, with 4.0-liter naturally aspirated engines. IRL and CART cars are now incompatible.
July 1997: IRL boots USAC as sanctioning body after timing and scoring errors at Texas.
October 1997: Former USAC sprint-car champion Tony Stewart becomes first IRL champion.
December 1997: FedEx becomes CART's main sponsor, and cars are renamed Champ Cars.
March 1998: CART stock goes public on New York Stock Exchange at $16 per share.
May 2000: Target Chip Ganassi Racing is first major CART team to enter Indy 500 in five years. Driver Juan Montoya wins.
June 2000: CART in turmoil, Craig resigns.
December 2000: Joe Heitzler, former TV sports executive, is named CART president.
April 2001: Toyota announces it is leaving CART, Honda follows in May 2002.
May 2001: More CART regulars participate in Indy 500, take top six spots.
Summer 2001: CART missteps include canceled races and officiating errors.
December 2001: Heitzler removed. Long Beach GP founder Chris Pook named CART president.
Summer 2002: IRL's oval races become consistently competitive, but attendance lags. CART's oval races lag, but road and street races thrive. October 2002: FedEx bails out as CART sponsor.
2003: CART spends millions subsidizing teams. Pays CBS for air time and production costs. Oddly, gives broadcasts free to Speed Channel.
2003: IRL is now dominated by former CART teams. Original teams falling by wayside.
September 2003: Newcomers Paul Gentilozzi, et al., propose CART takeover, offer 56 cents for stock worth 55. Hang on.
October 2003: CART's MotoRock rock-and-racing combo flops at first event.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Pat on Danica's back? Let's not race to be condescending.
(by Gregg Doyle on CBSsports.com 4-22-08)
Why do we set the bar so low for women in sports?
The world's top female tennis player, Billie Jean King, beats a 55-year-old male has-been named Bobby Riggs in 1973, and it's a huge day for women's rights? I get the timing of the whole thing. It was different in the early 1970s. Men were men and women were somewhere in the background baking us cookies.
We were sexist pigs back then, and nobody played the sexist pig better than Riggs. But King was at the top of her game. Riggs was an old man. Beating him wasn't the most she could do. It was the least.
Decades have passed, but we're still condescending when it comes to women in sports. A high school senior named Candace Parker enters the (boys) slam dunk competition at the 2004 McDonald's All-American Game, gently pushes the ball through the rim, and wins the event. J.R. Smith practically sat on the basket for a few of his dunks, but Parker won because, well, she won because she was a girl. And don't tell me I'm being sexist, because I'm not. The judges were being sexist for symbolically patting Parker on her pretty little head and telling her, my, what a sweet thing she is.
At least Danica Patrick competed with men on a level playing field when she won the Indy Japan 300 on Sunday in Motegi, Japan. Patrick played the exact same sport as everyone else, was held to the same standards, and won. What she did was more impressive, from a sports standpoint, than King's tennis win over a washed-up Riggs or Parker's condescending dunk "victory."
But this was not all that impressive. Not if you look with the jaded eyes of neutrality, which very few of you undoubtedly possess. Then again, maybe I don't possess those eyes either. Not on Danica Patrick. She has rubbed me the wrong way for years, including her ridiculous marketing choices, like when she stares seductively into the camera to hawk antifreeze or pretends to peel down her racing suit and makes beaver jokes -- I'm not making that up -- for GoDaddy.com.
Patrick has bugged me for a while, and I'll tell you exactly when it started: It started in July 2006 when she said she was considering a move to NASCAR. No problem there. But then she smugly wondered how high those TV ratings would be. Big problem there. At the time, Patrick was 10th on the Indy Racing League -- 10th out of the 15 drivers who raced every week. She was a non-factor on her B-list racing circuit. And she's wondering about the ratings for her NASCAR debut? Hey, sweetheart, try qualifying for a NASCAR event. Then we'll talk ratings.
If you're wondering why I'm wrapping a wet blanket around what Mike Freeman is foolishly calling a warm and snuggly story, that's the biggest reason: the IRL is not real racing. Not real good racing, anyway. It's not the best car circuit in this country -- that would be NASCAR -- and it's not even the best open-wheel series in the world. That would be Formula One.
So what is the IRL? It's a training ground for decent drivers who hope to be good enough to race somewhere important some day. Sam Hornish Jr. won the IRL season championship in 2001, '02 and '06. Dario Franchitti won the IRL title in 2007. That's the best the IRL has to offer -- or had to offer. Both left the IRL for NASCAR, where they are overmatched. In 17 career NASCAR starts, neither has finished in the top 10. Hornish has broken into the top 20 once in 10 tries. Franchitti? Never. Patrick Carpentier, another dominant open-wheel racer in this country, can't break into the top 10 of a NACAR race, either.
The IRL is the junior varsity of racing, is what I'm saying. Danica Patrick finally won herself a JV race, and that's good for her, and it's a neat story. The first woman to do anything -- the first man to do anything, too -- is always cool. But let's not take this too far, OK?
Winning in the IRL isn't a matter of talent. It's a matter of time. Race 50 times, as Patrick has done in the IRL, and you're bound to win eventually, especially when you have the best car and support team money can buy, as Patrick does.
A typical NASCAR weekend will have nearly 50 drivers trying just to get into the field. In the IRL, the field is less than half that large -- and, as I've already explained, significantly less skilled. To win the Indy Japan 300 on Sunday, Patrick had to finish ahead of 17 other drivers. That's it. She beat 17 cars. Do that at Talladega, and you finish 26th.
Those are details nobody wants to hear, and I don't understand why. Maybe you think I'm sexist for pointing those details out. Maybe I think you're sexist for not wanting to know, for wanting instead to feel good about the pioneering done by Patrick and therefore to feel good about your socially uplifted self rather than holding women, and men, to the same standards.
Drag-racer Shirley Muldowney won the NHRA's elite Top Fuel season championship three times. Jockey Julie Krone won more than 3,700 career horse races, including the 1993 Belmont. After the Professional Women's Bowling Association went under in 2003, three PBWA bowlers -- Liz Johnson, Kelly Kulick and Cathy Dorin-Lizzi -- joined the men's tour and earned their way into fields.
Those are all remarkable stories of women vs. men, but if you ask me, the most impressive story involves Michelle Wie. Before unraveling at the hands of her pushy parents and marketing reps, Wie nearly made the cut at the 2004 Sony Open on the PGA Tour. She shot an even-par 140. She finished ahead of nearly 70 male professionals and missed the cut by just one stroke. She was 14 years old.
That beats the hell out of anything Patrick did this weekend, or next weekend, or any weekend, on the IRL.
Why do we set the bar so low for women in sports?
The world's top female tennis player, Billie Jean King, beats a 55-year-old male has-been named Bobby Riggs in 1973, and it's a huge day for women's rights? I get the timing of the whole thing. It was different in the early 1970s. Men were men and women were somewhere in the background baking us cookies.
We were sexist pigs back then, and nobody played the sexist pig better than Riggs. But King was at the top of her game. Riggs was an old man. Beating him wasn't the most she could do. It was the least.
Decades have passed, but we're still condescending when it comes to women in sports. A high school senior named Candace Parker enters the (boys) slam dunk competition at the 2004 McDonald's All-American Game, gently pushes the ball through the rim, and wins the event. J.R. Smith practically sat on the basket for a few of his dunks, but Parker won because, well, she won because she was a girl. And don't tell me I'm being sexist, because I'm not. The judges were being sexist for symbolically patting Parker on her pretty little head and telling her, my, what a sweet thing she is.
At least Danica Patrick competed with men on a level playing field when she won the Indy Japan 300 on Sunday in Motegi, Japan. Patrick played the exact same sport as everyone else, was held to the same standards, and won. What she did was more impressive, from a sports standpoint, than King's tennis win over a washed-up Riggs or Parker's condescending dunk "victory."
But this was not all that impressive. Not if you look with the jaded eyes of neutrality, which very few of you undoubtedly possess. Then again, maybe I don't possess those eyes either. Not on Danica Patrick. She has rubbed me the wrong way for years, including her ridiculous marketing choices, like when she stares seductively into the camera to hawk antifreeze or pretends to peel down her racing suit and makes beaver jokes -- I'm not making that up -- for GoDaddy.com.
Patrick has bugged me for a while, and I'll tell you exactly when it started: It started in July 2006 when she said she was considering a move to NASCAR. No problem there. But then she smugly wondered how high those TV ratings would be. Big problem there. At the time, Patrick was 10th on the Indy Racing League -- 10th out of the 15 drivers who raced every week. She was a non-factor on her B-list racing circuit. And she's wondering about the ratings for her NASCAR debut? Hey, sweetheart, try qualifying for a NASCAR event. Then we'll talk ratings.
If you're wondering why I'm wrapping a wet blanket around what Mike Freeman is foolishly calling a warm and snuggly story, that's the biggest reason: the IRL is not real racing. Not real good racing, anyway. It's not the best car circuit in this country -- that would be NASCAR -- and it's not even the best open-wheel series in the world. That would be Formula One.
So what is the IRL? It's a training ground for decent drivers who hope to be good enough to race somewhere important some day. Sam Hornish Jr. won the IRL season championship in 2001, '02 and '06. Dario Franchitti won the IRL title in 2007. That's the best the IRL has to offer -- or had to offer. Both left the IRL for NASCAR, where they are overmatched. In 17 career NASCAR starts, neither has finished in the top 10. Hornish has broken into the top 20 once in 10 tries. Franchitti? Never. Patrick Carpentier, another dominant open-wheel racer in this country, can't break into the top 10 of a NACAR race, either.
The IRL is the junior varsity of racing, is what I'm saying. Danica Patrick finally won herself a JV race, and that's good for her, and it's a neat story. The first woman to do anything -- the first man to do anything, too -- is always cool. But let's not take this too far, OK?
Winning in the IRL isn't a matter of talent. It's a matter of time. Race 50 times, as Patrick has done in the IRL, and you're bound to win eventually, especially when you have the best car and support team money can buy, as Patrick does.
A typical NASCAR weekend will have nearly 50 drivers trying just to get into the field. In the IRL, the field is less than half that large -- and, as I've already explained, significantly less skilled. To win the Indy Japan 300 on Sunday, Patrick had to finish ahead of 17 other drivers. That's it. She beat 17 cars. Do that at Talladega, and you finish 26th.
Those are details nobody wants to hear, and I don't understand why. Maybe you think I'm sexist for pointing those details out. Maybe I think you're sexist for not wanting to know, for wanting instead to feel good about the pioneering done by Patrick and therefore to feel good about your socially uplifted self rather than holding women, and men, to the same standards.
Drag-racer Shirley Muldowney won the NHRA's elite Top Fuel season championship three times. Jockey Julie Krone won more than 3,700 career horse races, including the 1993 Belmont. After the Professional Women's Bowling Association went under in 2003, three PBWA bowlers -- Liz Johnson, Kelly Kulick and Cathy Dorin-Lizzi -- joined the men's tour and earned their way into fields.
Those are all remarkable stories of women vs. men, but if you ask me, the most impressive story involves Michelle Wie. Before unraveling at the hands of her pushy parents and marketing reps, Wie nearly made the cut at the 2004 Sony Open on the PGA Tour. She shot an even-par 140. She finished ahead of nearly 70 male professionals and missed the cut by just one stroke. She was 14 years old.
That beats the hell out of anything Patrick did this weekend, or next weekend, or any weekend, on the IRL.
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