FUMES #434

February 27, 2008

What the IRL must do to gain back momentum.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. Now that the absorption of Champ Car into the Indy Racing League is officially a done deal, open wheel racing fans can at least abandon their annual shrug of resignation about how screwed-up open wheel racing is and actually relish something new for a change - a sliver of hope. Now, before anyone gets carried away let me be clear about one thing - open wheel will never reclaim what they once had at the peak of the old CART series. Yes, I know, "never" is a long time, but the 12 years squandered while the warring factions in open wheel racing bickered can never be recovered.

At the peak of CART, the "stick and ball" media in this country knew that two major forms of racing had to be covered: NASCAR and open wheel. Now, as we well know, the landscape has been fundamentally altered. It's all-NASCAR-all-the-time, and open wheel racing has been relegated to afterthought status except for the Indianapolis 500. To pretend otherwise is futile, so here's hoping that Tony George and his IRL brain trust can approach the daunting task of rebuilding open wheel racing with the right mindset. And that is to understand that for all intents and purposes, open wheel doesn't exist in this country - except for one preeminent race.

To that end, I have a few specific recommendations for the IRL to help open wheel racing gain back at least some momentum...

1. Acquire a presenting sponsor. A couple of issues ago, I wrote how major league open wheel racing is so far gone and so far off of corporate America's radar screens that the only way the IRL could attract a presenting sponsor for a unified series was to identify decision-maker/enthusiasts at corporations, like how it was done in the "old" days of American racing, back when sponsorship pitches were based more on blind enthusiasm than on research data. I'll take that idea one step further. I think the IRL should charge a nominal fee (like $1.00) for a corporation to become the presenting sponsor for the series, with the proviso that the company spends a minimum of $10 million annually promoting the series and its involvement (a mere drop in the bucket, admittedly, but one has to start somewhere). Any other form of traditional sponsorship program parameters just won't fly for the IRL, because they have zero deliverables to speak of other than with the Indianapolis 500. That's harsh, but it is the reality. The IRL needs a savvy presenting sponsor in order to help get open wheel racing off of the mat. It's that simple.

2. Don't blow the schedule. Last week in this column I speculated about a unified schedule and what it might - make that should - look like. The need for smart schedule-mapping by the IRL cannot be overemphasized, because it's absolutely crucial to the success of the new unified series. And the first thing the IRL has to do before anything else in figuring out a 2009 schedule is be honest about its own schedule before the absorption. That means eliminating all of their turkey races, because now that a unified series exists there's no reason whatsoever to prop-up race weekends that solely existed to simply flesh out a semi-meaningful schedule. Once the IRL makes their own schedule cuts, then they can take a long, hard look at the Champ Car race weekends and accommodate the best events. The idea being to come up with a schedule that has an actual flow to it, one that makes sense logistically and logically throughout the racing season, one that has a consistency from year-to-year, featuring events that the fans can make annual plans around. And the schedule should end no later than the end of October because the IRL - unified or no - will continue to get buried by NASCAR's season-ending marketing push for years to come.

3. Push advanced technologies and alternative propulsion. It's time for the IRL to put the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500 back at the forefront of developing advanced automotive technologies for our production automobiles. I've written about this subject often, especially over the last year in conjunction with our Hydrogen Electric Racing Federation project, but now is the time for the IRL to come up with a rules package for 2011 - the 100th Anniversary of the Indy 500 - that puts open wheel racing back in the business of pioneering future automotive technologies. Formula 1 can't or won't do it and NASCAR is incapable of doing it, so the IRL has a golden opportunity to put its stake in the ground and present a series that can capture the "stick and ball" media's fascination again. The ALMS has made a lot of hay in this regard, but there's only one Indianapolis Motor Speedway and only one Indianapolis 500 - so Tony George could and should move his series forcefully into this arena.

4. More manufacturer involvement. In reference to the above point, if the Indianapolis Motor Speedway resumes its rightful role as a show place for technological innovation and "blue sky" thinking, then more manufacturers would have a reason to compete there. Suffice to say, if Honda hadn't continued their support of the IRL in these last few years it's anyone's guess what would have happened. But that's in the past. The IRL desperately needs more manufacturer involvement at The Speedway, and a rules package that encourages advanced technological development would generate a lot of interest.

5. It's about the fans and the racing. Period. The unified IRL owes this country's open wheel racing fans, big time. And there's no amount of apologies or mea culpas that can be mustered that will make up for the last 12 years of petty B.S. that almost destroyed the sport once and for all. And there are no amount of extra driver autograph sessions that will help assuage the fans' feelings, either. Yes, promoting the various driver "personalities" will help reconnect some of the peripheral fans to the sport, but ultimately it has to be about the actual racing and the hard-core fans who have supported it through its darkest hours. Open wheel racing fans deserve to see great racing at the greatest venues on this continent, and they deserve to see it as it was meant to be, free and unfettered of the rancor that has dominated the sport for the last 12 years. And they also deserve to see "their" sport presented properly - as the polar opposite of that overly-sanitized marketing "product" known as NASCAR - so that open wheel racing can sidestep the recipe that has sapped the very life out of what was once quaintly known as "stock car" racing.

When done the right way, major league open wheel Indy car racing can be one of the most exciting forms of motorsport in the world. Tony George and the Indy Racing League literally have a blank canvas with which to work from in order to resurrect this once-proud form of motorsport. He and his organization need to put their heads down, stay focused and slowly but surely inch their way forward with this thing.

And something that we should all remember: Progress in this endeavor will be measured only in minute increments.

But after 12 years of spiraling downward, it still will count as progress nonetheless.

Publisher's Note: In our continuing series celebrating the "Golden Era" of American racing history, we thought our readers would enjoy another image from the Ford Racing Archives this week. - PMD

(Ford Racing Archives)
Dan Gurney at speed in his Lotus-Ford during testing, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1963.