Blaming Penske, like some of you do, is laughable at best. His team had only ran 12 races up to the end of the 1970 season and wouldn't be full time until around 1972. I would love to hear how he strong armed USAC into this decision.
https://speedsport.com/racing-histor...r-1970-season/
USAC wasn't the only one to remove dirt at the top level during this time period, it would be gone in NASCAR by 1972. Evil Penske at work again? I guess he summoned the dark forces to bring those evil rear engines and put wings on them as well.....
There are paths to full time series if drivers want to take it, either Road to Indy or go to Europe where you can hone your road racing skills and, in the case of Europe, get your name out to a wider audience. All of the current American drivers, part and full time, did one of the two or both.
BTW, one of your own didn't even go to Eldora to find a dirt slinger to run Indy this year. They put a female Brit in the car.......but yep, the toxic twins of Ganassi and Penske.
I'll add, in many cases, USAC seems to have been it's own worst enemy. There's a reason Gurney and those guys did what they did and the case was outlined in black and white in his White Paper. When USAC got a second chance during TG's failed experiment they screwed up royally and got punted. One can make a very good argument that the second split made it tougher, not easier, for those guys to get to Indy. Yep, you got da King and Hewitt layin' it all out on da line at Indy in a dumbed down version of an IndyCar, but at a great cost as it pertains to the future. That was a real smooth move in creating a situation that ran off big teams and drivers and resulted in a twelve year war that financially weakened this type of racing resulting in more than a few cases in teams shutting down.