rec.autos.simulators

Firstly, CART are PROHIBETED from racing on anything other than a
"oval" (i.e. a circuit consisting only of left hand corners) outside
of North America by the FIA, the only exception is Surfers Paradise as
this event was admitted via a loop hole which has since closed.  As
the FIA "sanctions" all events in Europe and Asia it has enormous
power and no-oneis willing to challenge this issue for fear of
repercussions (i.e. lose any other sanctioned events).  FIA is
concerned that a competitive open wheel series with events in Europe
would be a significant threat and devalue F1.  Regardless of whether
you agree the CART would harm F1 or not it is incredible this type of
cronies can exist today..

Secondly, Montegi is of key importance to CART, two of the four parent
companies that keep the series alive are based in Japan (Honda,
Toyota) and an increasing amount of sponsorship dollars from high tech
industries come from this region.

Don't let you frustration over a rain delay cloud your perspective.
F1 has had races rained out or shorted by rain on several occasions,
primarily at street circuits.  Does this mean that street circuit
should be removed from the schedule?  Of course not, sometimes things
beyond our control mean we miss a race or have to wait a bit longer
but you don't bite the hand that feeds you.  Races are postponed for
safety reasons, our entertainment should always be secondary to driver
safety - we really don't need to go there do we?

F1 and CART have different strengths and weaknesses, personally I find
races decided in the pits a little tedious and would much prefer to
watch a race at Road America than Fontana but the beauty of the sport
is the element of the unexpected.  You never know when you might see a
race like last weekend with Hakkinen and Schumacher separated by
meters for 15 laps, great racing under pressure!  There have been some
great oval races in the past as well.  Taking oval races out of the
CART schedule would alienate a large proportion of it's supporters and
spectators, I think the current balance is pretty good, if NEW races
are added to the schedule to incorporate England or Germany I don't
see this issue, if Portland or Laguna Seca are dropped it is a
different matter.  We don't know the full story for Detroit yet so we
will have to wait and see.

Regards,
Anthony Bulloch

X posted to rec.autos.sport.cart

The writing did seem to be on the wall there.  Doubt it will happen
again.  As with Silverstone in April!

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Statements such as this do nothing
for the memory of these racers.  Corrective action has been taken, it
is too late and we all wish it wasn't.  Tragedy is not limited to CART
any organizer of a dangerous event runs a very real and unpalatable
risk.

You just shot yourself in the foot.   A safety issue was identified
and action taken, this ruined the spectacle for you now you don't like
it.  

"too many dead drivers", incredible, what is an acceptable number?
Have a GOOD think about what you just wrote.

Do you think any organization finds even a minor, avoidable injury
acceptable?  Of course not.

Some people in the US do support open wheel racing, last lime I
checked you didn't speak for 274,943,494 people.  You may not like
open wheel racing, that's fine it's a big world, you have other
choices but don't assume you speak for everyone.

A highlight reel of "wreaks" is hardly what I would call good sensible
marketing but you are right, NASCAR does get good attendance and
ratings.  The car crash mentality draws and amazing group of people,
it would be sad if the only enjoyment you got out of racing was seeing
wrecks wouldn't it?  I watch NASCAR and can appreciate the skill shown
racing so close but I do not derive please from seeing 20 cars
involved in a "wreck" at 200 mph.  Again each to there own.

Regards,

Anthony Bulloch

"Getting hit by a meteorite is an accident...
  everything else is driver-error."

Well I live in Australia so live international open wheel motor sport
only come three times a year!  F1 Melbourne and Suzuka and CART at
Surfers.  

Empty stands are a direct result of the explosion in seating capacity
for NASCAR, agreed it looks bad on TV but does not inherently indicate
support for CART is diminishing.

Regards,
Anthony Bulloch

Regards,
Anthony Bulloch

Anyone know what's happening with the '00 GPL carset?

CART is NOT allowed to run road courses outside North America (except
Surfers Paradise) because of the 1991 Concorde Agreement.

Hey-

Toronto? Last time I went, no jumbotrons, nor pole, across the longest
grandstand on the circuit...we didn't even know the race ended....

Montreal's F1 race is a much better experience.

Let's not forget the genius that scheduled Nazareth in April- two
years back, rained like a mother...the next morning the team owners
were complaining about needing to use block heaters to warm the
engines enough to start them- 36F at the start of the race. So what do
they do about it the next year?? NOTHING.

Two years later, race postponed again- why this time? SNOWED OUT.

Let's see, Brazil, California....better do northeast PA in April.
Idiots. Any sanctioning body stupid enough to do this is clearly too
stupid to run a formula. Look at the pointless deaths in the sport-
that (&^*( run-off that killed Moore....talk about a worthless
death....and that poor rookie at Laguna...why? Two rows of tires and a
concrete wall? Amazing.

Is it a suprise that nobody goes to these races anymore? Nazareth in
98, I think it was....200 lap race, averaged a yellow flag EVERY TEN
LAPS...some geek drops a wheel on the infield for 5 yards, no loss of
control...they go full-course for twelve laps...I needed to pack a
ski-jacket that year...ya think they'd have learned...so the next
year, they put those idiotic wings on the cars...150MPH lap averages,
the year before the qualifying laps AVERAGED faster than the peak
speeds on a lap during the race. It was like watching F3, only slower.
Yawn. I want to watch something that slow, I'll watch the slack-jawed
yokelry run at exciting tracks like Martinsville.

CART is run so ineptly, and so dangerously, that it gets exactly what
it deserves. Too many dead drivers, too many tape-delayed races, too
too little too late. Nobody in the US gives a shit about open-wheel
racing anymore....F_ck CART. And yeah, let's face it, NASCAR is
pro-wrestling w/all too frequent yellow flags, but at least they're
marketing it sensibly...

Jeff

(snipped)

The USGP has sold out over 200,000 reserved seats this year with almost no
domestic advertising.  There must be SOME interest in open-wheel racing here
(unless the Canadians are coming down in droves :).  Or is it just due to
the novelty factor of a new event at a famous track?

Yup, same as Silverstone...at least CART's not punishing the
organizers for the bad weather...

Corrective action too late is not acceptable. Ever. What corrective
actions were taken between Moore and the rookie's death? Sure didn't
look like any changes on the track.

You can't be safe and run fast? While no sport is totally safe, just
consider F1 v. CART here....forget drivers and death-tallys here. How
many F1 fans have been killed in recent (say 10 years) memory? It's
not a matter of addressing the issues after the thing happens- an
ounce of prevention, a pound of cure.  All of CART's fixative measures
were after-the-fact. You run a company that way in the US, you get
shut down very quickly by OSHA. Modifying the wings alone, to slow the
cars, is hardly a fixative measure. Did Laguna put in styrofoam
crash-walls? How about a gravel run-off? I remember that the
rookie-guy was on grass, I could be wrong. The track that Moore got
killed at, well, I won't even start on that idiocy. Why not put big
steel knives in the walls? Sadly, the end result's still the same....

Nice of you, BTW, to not make light of my 'yellow-flag defines the
race' comment. Explain the point of running 300 miles when the race is
determined exclusively by yellows? Just watch it at the end of the
last yellow. You think Villeneuve could have won the Indy 500 (505 in
his case) w/out some yellows to buy back those laps (yeah, I know he
got helped at the end but he made up at least one of those laps on
yellows). The ovals suck, and yeah, CART's really caught out on that
Concorde agreement, but that don't change a single thing inside the
USA. Trading road-courses for ovals will just alienate more fans.
Maybe CART could give the phrase 'local-yellow' a try as well, but I
seriously doubt they'll be anything but the exception on road courses,
never the rule.

Forgive my syntax. Again, compare F1 to CART. That's my point. If CART
were not run ineptly, by your point, what's your explanation for the
declining attendence? The lack of live TV coverage- IN THE USA.
Certainly looks inept to me. Isn't it ironic that ESPN showed the
'Celebrity GP at Long Beach' more frequently than they did the CART
race itself?

Your numbers are absurd. Let the TV and attendance numbers speak for
themselves. How many empty grandstands this year? When did you last
see a live CART race on TV? They're getting as rare as live F1 races.

As for my not liking open-wheel, no, I've been to Montreal every year
since '95 (must be my love for pace cars), Nazareth three times,
Toronto twice. And I infrequently race karts at Watkins Glen. In fact,
I am debating on going to a racing school- the F1 school's waaaaay too
expensive, in all honesty I want to do the CART school in Vegas- it's
certainly not the car, it's the organizers....

I am not looking to hammer you or anything- in fact, I wish CART was
indeed run better- I loved going to those races, but with the idiotic
yellow flags and the yawn slow slow speeds we were subject to at
Nazareth, I will probably never go again. The series just ain't what
it used to be.

Jeff

% F1 and CART have different strengths and weaknesses, personally I find
% races decided in the pits a little tedious and would much prefer to
% watch a race at Road America than Fontana but the beauty of the sport
% is the element of the unexpected.  You never know when you might see a
% race like last weekend with Hakkinen and Schumacher separated by
% meters for 15 laps, great racing under pressure!  There have been some
% great oval races in the past as well.  Taking oval races out of the
% CART schedule would alienate a large proportion of it's supporters and
% spectators, I think the current balance is pretty good, if NEW races
% are added to the schedule to incorporate England or Germany I don't
% see this issue, if Portland or Laguna Seca are dropped it is a
% different matter.  We don't know the full story for Detroit yet so we
% will have to wait and see.

One of the benefits I see with CART is that a driver must be talented in
both oval and street/road circuit racing.  As to current day F1, I don't
understand the "racing" appeal.  I used to be a great F1 fan, but that
was in the days when they raced.... Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Berger, Senna,
Mansell, Fittipaldi, Jones, Hunt, Rosberg, Alberto, etc....  They don't
race anymore and it is getting worse, not better. :(  At least in CART
they are still racing.....

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

. How

Well do F1 cars regularly see 230+ mph or even 220mph on circuits.  I am
condoning what happened,  a similar event happened at an IRL event after
the CART event so really no one is immune.  The fact remains it happened at
a CART event first and then FIA was the first to take action seeing it as a
potenial problem after what happened at Michigan.

also a lot of companys operate in the same manner and OSHA may fine them
they do not shut them down.

Dave

Shaun Robinson wrote in rec.autos.simulators:

They must be hurting for workers at Toronto if they are hiring folks who
know so very little about these basic issues.

No, Formula One doesn't have "yellow flags". BUT they do have "the
safety car" that has been used with some regularity the past few years.
They are equivalent.

Second, Formula One is in a powerful enough position to force race
tracks to implement the very latest and favored ideas in track safety -
pretty much regardless of what it costs the track to do so. An F1 car
can leave most any F1 course at most any speed and just get swallowed up
by the "kitty litter", the tire walls, etc.  CART, on the other hand, is
not in nearly so powerful a position that they can dictate so much to
the track owners. So they have to deal with safety as best they can. So,
when something occurs that has a fair chance of causing injury to the
track workers, the fans, or the drivers, they have to deal with it. The
solution is to slow the cars down to a level that makes it relatively
safe for the workers to fetch broken/trapped cars and/or drivers, clean
up spilled oil, etc.  No amount of "continuous green flag racing" is
worth someone's life.

Third, the cars in the two series are quite different even though they
may appear the same. F1 cars are much lighter and, as a result, are less
likely to withstand direct impacts. This fact also plays a part in the
need to have errant cars restrained before hitting anything solid (see
Senna, Ratzenburger, etc.).  The CART cars are heavier. They are
required to protect the driver in some serious collisions with the walls
on the oval tracks.  The fact that the CART cars evolved with that as a
primary consideration (and the F1 cars did not) is what differentiates
the two series more than anything else (that and the ludicrous amounts
of money tossed around in F1.)

Ovals are not run in the rain for very obvious safety reasons. NASCAR
doesn't race on ovals in the rain, either. Think for a minute and you'll
realize how truly insipid and dangerous an oval rain in the race would
be.

Because Andrew Craig is doing what his bosses want?  Craig is the
manager. He's not the guy who decides things on his own. He represents
the CART board of directors. THEY decide what actions CART takes.

CART has made it very clear that they are, and want to remain, first and
foremost, an American racing series with American racing roots. And that
means oval racing as part of the mix. If you want an all road course
series, there are quite a few of them around. Follow those. You may
find, however, that if you aren't a fan of pit stop timing exercises
and/or really into nationalism in your auto racing, F1 can be pretty
boring and predictable.

Just out of curiosity, what does an earthquake have to do with your
argument?  One might suppose that the Motegi road course was also
"modified by an earthquake". No?

First, they have told the Detroit people that they will be happy to stay
in Detroit. They just are not going to race at Belle Isle. The teams and
drivers truly dislike Belle Isle. The fans are not far behind. There is
no place to pass on the track and the transporters have to park in mud
lots. See above re: F1's demands on racing venues.

Second, you make no mention of the fact that the new race in Mexico will
be a road race.

Third, _NEWLY_BUILT_ oval tracks in England *AND* Germany are competing
for a CART race. They *want* them there.

FYI, Forsythe is a partner in the British track.

To which Anthony Bulloch responded...

I agree with what you said, Anthony. Well put. A couple of things,
though...

First, CART is not "prohibited" from it at all. CART has a "gentleman's
agreement" with the FIA not to do so. There is nothing at all legally
binding that prevents CART form having road races anywhere on earth.
Second, Surfer's was allowed to remain in place as part of said
agreement as it was already in place (and, IIRC, was the very race that
raised the issue in the first place.)

The FIA is also worried that their "rule by fiat" bit would be seriously
undermined if the issue ever came before a court of law. They *know*
they are a monopoly and they want to keep it that way (as most
monopolies do - see Bill Gates, et al). On the other hand, as you point
out, the cost of going after the FIA to give Craig and crew CART blanche
(grin) would be immense and neither the tracks owners, nor CART, wants
to mess with it. Besides, CART has no desire to try and compete
head-to-head with F1 (and vice versa - F1 has gone to some lengths to
avoid any direct, on track comparisons.) They want to export their own
brand of racing. Folks in North American can see professional level oval
racing and road racing. Folks in the rest of the world see only road
racing (at the high end of things) and CART sees this as an opportunity
to sell the mix while making their international supporters happy.

Brian

Hey!  The brothers Schumacher put on a fun show last weekend. Now, if
only F1 could have that type of passing take place more often than once
every decade :-/

Brian