> > If you would do a little investigating you would find that the greed and
> > desire for power were from cart and that is what prompted TG to form the
> IRL
> Yes Tony wanted as much say as a franchise holder( at the time a owner) of
> CART. He had no owership in CART he was a track owner. He got upset that he
> did not get that so he formed his own league. Then pulled the 25/8 rule so
> his newly formed league would not get its ass stomped by CART teams in its
> first year where they ran the same equipment. He has driven TV ratings
> consistantly down since the split for his race. He does not release
> attendance figures, but the people are staying away in droves from
> everything but race day. And Race day attendance cannot be confirmed to be
> what it was in the Pre IRL days. This years ratings was the worst, even
> after a bump when the CART teams started showing back up two years ago.
> Additionally the oval only aspect of the league just leaves me out. Finally
> some of the aspects of the IRL that were embraced, American Drivers, Parity
> on Engines since you can own them, and affordable racing is going out the
> window. Toyota and Honda will have factory support for only their blessed
> teams and they will raise the bar to a point where if you are not running
> the favored powerplant you will not be in the hunt.
> Michigans race had a great last 30 laps. To get there we saw great driving
> from Tomas who was dominating the race. other then that is was daft passes
> for second and back. Too bad Infiniti will not be back next year. They
> realize the dollars needed to spent keeping up with Honda and Toyota Factory
> teams will just cost too much.
> Dave
Can I get a HELL-YES on that?
I refuse to watch IRL races on TV, mostly because I'm so sick of all the
sponser name dropping the announcers do. The other networks are bad, but
ABC is the worst! Case in point, I believe it was at the Nazareth race
earlier this year, and it started to rain. ABC sent one of their
trackside announcers to the "Marlboro Team Penske" pit to talk to Mr.
Penske. The announcer opened his spot by noting that "Roger Penske is
wearing his Hugo Boss Raingear", or words to that effect. There was a
reference made to Hugo Boss, that I remember. WTF is that all about?
Bottom line...I do like to watch the close racing in IRL, but you know
what? I'm sick of ovals! NASCAR already has that covered. I want to see
those cars on street courses and road courses also. Oh wait, CART still
does that!
I love CART, to me the best open wheel racing series in existance. I
don't have Speed Channel, so I don't get to see all the races, but the
ones that are televised on CBS, I watch. I hope CART survives this and
comes out on top, but I think both CART and IRL are destined for
failure. Like I said, NASCAR already has the oval racing thing covered.
What made the old pre-IRL/CART split special, was the mix of tracks...
IMHO. Oh, my interest in either form of openwheel racing has NOTHING to
do with driver nationality. (Go Paul Tracy!!!)
I'm jumping off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.
Gary