Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

The key for IndyCar is to take the momentum from the 500 and push it to the remainder of the series. The reason they can't do it is because they don't get full fields for the remainder of the races and they have too many boring road course events. If every event on the schedule was as good as Indy, open wheel racing would be in great shape because that race was 100x better than Nascar is these days.

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

Exactly! Thank you.
Only an idiot would schedule Belle Isle (Detroit) the week after the 500. They need to be at an oval track the week after the 500. The Milwaukee Mile wasn't a Week-After-The-500 tradition for no reason. :14:

The excitement of these "death-defying" Indy heroes just doesn't translate to a street race.

(Oh goody! I hear there's a new season finale set for '16! A street race in Boston! The drama is building already! :3:)

Appreciate the sentiment and I long for the old days as well. However they tried hard to keep this tradition going and it was not well attended. The street races seem to be popular with more casual fans and create "downtown" events which they like to attend.

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

If they black it (or anything for that matter) out, just go online and find one of the live streams. You can watch them anywhere.

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

Milwaukee is probably not the answer at this point, but Detroit certainly isn't either.

Bigger issue than any of that though is the lack of cars. One of Nascars true advantages over Indy outside of American drivers has been having full fields. If every IndyCar race had 33 cars, now you're talking. As it is, it's a watered down version of itself outside the month of May and everyone knows it.

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

The only place that 33 is a "full field" is at Indy. Just for grins I went out to champcarstats.com a picked a year at random out of the so-called "glory days" of CART, 1988, and the average car count was around 24-26. Even the other two 500-mile races (at MIS and Pocono) only had 28 and 26 cars respectively. Nazareth only drew 20.
Nobody in their right mind would put 33 Indy Cars on the track at Milwaukee (there were 22 starters in '88, by the way; Roberto Guerrero was entered but crashed in practice).

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

There is a designated formula for the number of cars allowed on a particular size track, but I don't remember the particulars and I couldn't find it. That is how they arrived at the figure of 33 cars at Indy.

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

I'm not sure they use the formula any more Ron, but it works out to one car for every 400 feet. Back at champcarstats, checking another era that people get misty-eyed over (1955), there were only 11 races on the schedule. And one of them was the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. 100-milers on dirt only started 18 cars, yet somehow "Big Car" racing was healthier then. Another thing, other than at Indy everybody ran upright Kurtis or Kuzma Offys and everyone gets nostalgic for those days, but today it would be sneered at as "spec racing".

Re: Indy 500 Ratings
 

The glory days of IndyCars was not the late 80s, despite popular opinion, Nascar and open wheel were not equal in 1996. Far from it.

If you look at the days of past glories, 33 cars were started at places like Pocono Michigan and Ontario in the 1970s/early 80s. Milwaukee hovered around 26, but as has been said before, I don't think their future is there anyway.

I think we can all agree 20-22 is not going to get it done on a 2-2.5 mile track.

So based upon some of the discussion in this topic, most fans here will agree that the IndyCar series schedule needs an overhaul. What tracks does the series need to go to? When should they race at each of them? What tracks or races should be dropped, and what tracks need to be added? What should be the balance of ovals, road courses, and street races?

This site surely has the answers.