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Stalled Indy 500 Tries to Restart Engine
May 30, 2004
By DAVE CALDWELL
INDIANAPOLIS, May 29 - Eight floors beneath Tony George's
perch in a concrete-and-steel pagoda at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, a big crowd lingered at a sun-splashed rock
concert Thursday. It was a festival, a happy scene.
George, 44, the racetrack's president, would seem to be on
the winning side of the bitter 10-year feud between
open-wheel racing series. But there has been a cost.
By almost every measure, the Indianapolis 500, once the
greatest auto race in the world, has been scrubbed of much
of its prestige as a result of the divide between George's
Indy Racing League and the rival Championship Auto Racing
Teams.
George, the grandson of Tony Hulman, who bought the
two-and-a-half-mile Indianapolis oval from Eddie
Rickenbacker in 1945 and restored its glory, despises the
term "civil war," and he is not exactly sure what he has
won, or even if the battle is over.
"You ask people who won the Civil War in America," he said
in an interview in the pagoda, "and no one did."
Almost every major owner and driver who stayed with CART
when George formed the I.R.L. has returned to the
Indianapolis 500, which will be run Sunday for the 88th
time.
Included is the pre-eminent open-wheel car owner, Roger
Penske, whose drivers have won 13 Indy 500's. Penske has
become an advocate of one open-wheel racing series and
sounds as if he has become a big fan of George's.
"Tony George is on the ground," Penske said. "He's not
running things from his office."
Buddy Rice, who won the pole for Sunday's race, drives a
car co-owned by the talk-show host David Letterman and
Bobby Rahal, who won the Indy 500 in 1986 and was one of
George's fiercest critics when he started the I.R.L.
"We just have to make this series the strongest series,"
Rahal said of the I.R.L., "and let the Darwinian effect
take its course."
CART declared bankruptcy late last year, and its remnants,
now called the Champ Car World Series, has few recognizable
drivers and no major television contract. The I.R.L.
announced a contract extension Thursday with ABC and ESPN
through 2009.
"What we really want is to grow the Indy 500," said Loren
Matthews, the senior vice president for programming at ABC
Sports.
One Man Drives the Show
But there is plenty of room. Many people in the sport
believe that the only way for the Indy 500 to reclaim some
of its prominence is for the two series to be united, and
that only one person really has the power to make that
happen.
"Tony's the key," said Michael Andretti, a former driver
who owns four cars that will participate in Sunday's race.
"Tony's the guy with the power. Tony's the guy who could
initiate making it happen, and happen sooner than later."
The downside for George, the Indy 500 and the I.R.L. - and
it appears to be formidable - is that open-wheel racing has
only recently regained traction. The sport has been lapped
by Nascar, the stock car series that is a marketing
phenomenon.
Viewership of the Indy 500 has fallen drastically, from 12
million in 1995 - before the I.R.L. split from CART - to
6.7 million last year, which was slightly below 40 percent
of the 16.8 million who watched the 2003 Daytona 500.
"The whole television landscape has changed over the last
10 years," George said.
One of the many traditions of the Indianapolis 500 is that
the race starts at 11 a.m. local time (noon Eastern).
Speedway and network officials have acknowledged that
television ratings would improve if the race were run later
in the day, or even at night.
Daytona International Speedway, a two-and-a-half-mile oval
that has a slightly rounder configuration than Indy's, has
lights. Lighting the Brickyard would be a considerable and
expensive task, speedway and I.R.L. officials said.
"There's a huge logistical hurdle to overcome," said Ken
Ungar, the I.R.L.'s senior vice president for business
affairs. "The issue has been floated at various times, but
I'm not sure what momentum it has at this point."
For the second year in a row, there was a question of
whether the traditional 33-car Indy 500 starting grid would
be filled. It was, but barely. No car was bumped from the
field during qualifying sessions, robbing the race of some
drama.
"Doesn't mean the quality's not there, or the competition,"
George said.
But the Indy 500 is not perceived to be a hot ticket. The
speedway will not release attendance figures or even its
capacity. A reporter from The Indianapolis Star walked
through the enormous grandstands and counted 257,325 seats.
It is almost certain that Sunday's race will not be sold
out. A visitor to the Indy 500 Web site on Friday could buy
$80 grandstand seats between Turns 3 and 4, with blocks of
50, 5 consecutive rows of 10, available.
A block of 50 $75 tickets in the same grandstand was also
available for the Brickyard 400, an annual Nascar race at
the speedway that began in August 1994. But the seats were
18 rows lower, a much worse vantage point.
Not the Only Game in Town
George, who also started the
United States Grand Prix for Formula One cars in 2000, said
the Indy 500's importance had been diluted.
"We're not just a one-horse town anymore," George said.
"We've got a whole stable of animals to feed and take care
of."
Moreover, Indianapolis is not a professional sports
backwater. The Indiana Pacers are in the N.B.A. Eastern
Conference finals and, judging by the attention they get in
the newspapers and on television, are a bigger story than
the Indy 500.
The Indianapolis Colts, led by quarterback Peyton Manning,
lost to the New England Patriots in the American Football
Conference championship game last season.
The Indy 500 competes for attention inside and outside the
racetrack.
"I was watching a TV show about the Indy 500 in the early
60's," said Rick Mears, the four-time Indy 500 champion,
who works for Penske. "And if you closed your eyes, you
would have thought they were talking about today - not
enough cars, not enough drivers. It was not a lot
different.
"But it's gaining momentum, which is what we need. It takes
time for stuff to happen. It's not going to happen
overnight."
When George made the Indy 500 the centerpiece of the I.R.L.
in 1996, most of the top open-wheel drivers did not follow.
That race was won by Buddy Lazier, who had not qualified
higher than 23rd and had not finished higher than 14th in
three previous Indy 500's.
But the race regained momentum when Penske returned in
2001, then fielded two full-time I.R.L. teams in 2002 and
2003. Toyota and Honda, the rival Japanese auto
manufacturers, jumped from CART to the I.R.L. before the
2003 season.
Prominent drivers also found their way back, including
Michael Andretti, a son of Mario, who retired after the
2003 season. His four cars are considered to have good
chances to win Sunday's race.
Rahal's three cars are also top contenders. He said
Thursday that he considered the 33-car field to be every
bit as deep as the 1995 field. Rahal finished third in that
race, his last Indy 500.
"This," Rice, the pole winner, said, "is the World Series
for us."
But it still is only one race, and two open-wheel series
still exist. Four months ago, George lost a bid to acquire
the assets of CART in bankruptcy court. He offered more
than $13 million, or $10 million more than the group headed
by Paul Gentilozzi. But Gentilozzi's group promised to
honor the contracts and keep the series alive.
"I like Tony, and I consider him as a friend, but
sometimes, with friends, you have to show some tough love,"
said Gentilozzi, 54, who controls Champ Car with two
others. "It's almost as if their financial arrogance is not
making them see the right path."
Two Circuits, Two Visions
The I.R.L. and Champ Car have
radically different philosophies. George intended the
I.R.L. to be a series of races on ovals in the United
States. Many Champ Car races are on road courses, like the
one in Long Beach, Calif.
George formed the I.R.L. to be affordable and accessible
for car owners, but Gentilozzi said it was neither and
would be at risk without the backing of Honda and Toyota.
What George has, Gentilozzi said, is a factory-based
series, like Nascar.
"They are completely and totally reliant on factory money,"
Gentilozzi said.
George ostensibly formed the I.R.L. as a way to develop
American drivers. One of the I.R.L.'s early stars was Tony
Stewart, a confident young driver from Rushville, Ind. He
left the I.R.L. after the 1998 season to join Nascar, where
he is a star today.
A United States-born driver has not won the Indy 500 since
Eddie Cheever Jr. in 1998. Gentilozzi considers that to be
a problem. He said the I.R.L. - or open-wheel racing in
general - would not be the same until it developed more
American drivers.
"Hlio Castroneves is a great driver," Gentilozzi said,
referring to the Brazilian driver who won the Indy 500 in
2001 and 2002 for Penske. "But he's never going to be A. J.
Foyt or Mario Andretti in the American consumer's mind."
Champ Car has only two standout drivers, Jimmy Vasser and
Paul Tracy. Its races are broadcast on Spike TV, formerly
TNN, which is aimed at men 18 to 34.
Gentilozzi said that Champ Car was determined to stay in
business but that there could be a truce. The I.R.L. would
benefit, he said, from the addition of some of Champ Car's
races.
George said: "All we're trying to do is to do what we're
doing, and that is to build the best series we can and let
the chips fall where they may. I really want Indy-car
racing to be where it deserves to be: the premier form of
motor sports."
George said he had learned a lot since March 11, 1994, when
he announced plans for the I.R.L., which held its first
race in 1996. He said he had made a lot of mistakes and
realized he was unpopular even among some Indy-car fans.
His family has been involved in racing for nearly 60 years, ...
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