[tubemaster]

Originally Posted by Jack Dupp My final thoughts; The cleaning bill from the stadium owners is going to be astronomical. The venue is used to sweeping up some trash after a basketball game. I doubt they are prepared to remove the thick layer of dust that covered every nook and cranny of the stadium. Dirt may rain down from the rafters into basket ball fans beers for months. I hope round ball fans learn to appreciate dirt seasoned beer as much as us dirt track fans.

The cleaning bills is what my friends and I were talking about during the races, all the pricey basketball seats down low had a nice layer of dust on them. We looked up at all the former players banners which are white or maybe brown at this point. I can't possibly see the management of Bankers Life having this event back. We stayed until the bitter end which was shortly before 2AM. The positive thing was traffic was easy to navigate at that hour. At least the effort was put in and I got my racing fix in the winter, so all is not lost.

[trannyman]

Originally Posted by BrentTFunk When you live in a society run by insurance companies you will have that. Can you imagine the lawsuits if someone died or was injured?

Thank you.FINALLY someone that sees and mentions the real problem.air quality.We all can figure out ways to make track better,spin rules ,etc.but no-one makes a difference if you've got crappy air for the fans and drivers to breathe.

[trannyman]

Originally Posted by DAD Some other neat things about the Indy Invitational 1. Kevin Swindell was there in attendance and was named Honorary Starter. 2. They couldn't talk his dad into racing thus giving the win to someone else. 3. A D2 Midget made the race driven by Chett Gehrke outrunning several super class Midgets thus proving that small tracks take away the Mega Horsepower advantage, (maybe a little extreme example of that theory) 4. The track surface held up actually really good. 5. The racers hopefully took home a lot more money than they did at the Kemper Race. 6. My buddy AJ Felker managed to get two cars in the show with Brady Bacon and Anton Hernandez. Antone won his heat and was running 2nd in the main until a berm caught him. This 16 year old has the makings of an excellent driver. Honest Dad himself

Yep,congrats to a.j.,what a showing!"caught by a berm"? I hate it when berms and such jump into paths of race cars :-)

[cleatziff]

I want to preface this by saying. I will go again next year if they have it. However, last night was not a good race. I am disappointed they had to stop the race to improve air quality. But, I am glad they did. I dont want to suffer the effects of breathing bad air. I believe the air quality issue would have been helped tremendously by reducing the amount of cautions. If you reduce the cautions the cars spend less time on the track filling the air with CO. I hope they learn from this, make it better and have a race again next year.

[kellenhomburg]

I've read many of the posts and I can't say I disagree with many of them. I was there last night, and yes it was fairly rough to watch. But I'am sure they did give it all they had to put on a good show, both drivers and track officials. It just didn't work out, as many have said. But I'm not going to say that yesterday was a complete waste. I got to spend the day with my Dad which was pretty awesome. And to see all the race fans in downtown indy I thought was pretty cool also. I commend everybody's effort to put the race on, it wasn't a success but it gave me a good excuse to go watch some racing in December. I'm ready for summer already.

[trannyman]

Originally Posted by Nate Something to ponder for those who said last night was "good for racing". As I posted earlier, I am thankful that we have people willing to try to put on a good show in Decemeber and I know people worked their tails off. Got to see friends from all over the state and talk to some drivers I don't get to a normal basis. The bottom line was last night was a disappointment. The thing is, the majority of us here aren't going to stop attending races because of it, most people that post on IOW are dedicated fans to all forms of open wheel racing. The problem is the folks who aren't hardcore fans who showed up last night. For instance, there was a couple with two younger children sitting in front of us (probably 5 & 7 or around there). I talked to the dad, it was their first time ever coming to a race, besides the Indy 500, from Columbus, IN. So sitting there with us that would have been $140 in tickets. Mom and dad both had a few beers plus a few pops later on, of course the kids wanted nachos or popcorn plus a pop or two so there's probably another $50-75 bucks considering a beer was $7.50 alone. When someone says that's good for racing, how do you think those folks felt? Do you think an event like that is going to make them want to go to another race? Paying $200+ not factoring in their time and gas money. My first thought would be no, and why should they? The product was not good. Standing in line waiting for a beer during one of the many delays a gentleman asked me if DuQuion or Tulsa was this bad. I responded not even close and they are both races he should attend at least once, he wouldn't be disappointed. Going forward he explained he'd never been to an indoor race and this one had left a sour enough taste in his mouth he wouldn't be back for another even though I pointed out those events were the complete opposites of last night's fiasco. Like I said, most here that I know are huge fans. Met plenty of you at tracks all over from Kokomo to Lawrenceburg. The bad part about all of this is the people that were first timers got robbed and because of that I know for sure there are a lot of those types that won't ever return to a track because of it. So I'm not sure how it's good for the sport. Yes, it may have helped "grow the sport" for the night but I cannot see how it helps in the long run when the majority of the attendees are disgruntled. Just something I thought about waking up this morning and reading more thoughts and comments about last night.

I agree with the thoughts on first timers experience.only concern is both had a few beers and two children.who drove them home?the 7 year old?

[Nate]

Originally Posted by trannyman I agree with the thoughts on first timers experience.only concern is both had a few beers and two children.who drove them home?the 7 year old?

A few beers (2) over the entire time we were there which they stayed longer than us and we left after the dashes. I drove home and had 3. But good looking out. Should have specified lol.

[JDK222]

I was so excited for this event and I promoted it to others whenever possible. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I couldn't believe when I saw the track, I knew in my heart this could not work but hoped I was wrong. Some have said that at least they got to see racing in December? The only thing this event had in common with racing is that there were race cars with drivers there, but not racing. Others have been complimenting the promoters for their effort? I know they put a lot of effort in the social media campaign, and that worked. I was sold on the event and all in but I am not sure the same went into the feasibility of the event. I never saw the dimensions of the layout prior to the event if I had I would have done the math and learned rather quick it wouldn't work. As for the stoppages for air quality, my only complaint about that is that they need to inform people what's going on and the reason for the stoppage. A lot of drivers, teams, and sponsors are being politically correct on social media I believe their honest opinions would be dramatically different. I have been attending open wheel races for 30+ years and have never left before the "A"s in my life until last night. It was that bad. I don't consider myself a "hater". This term is being thrown around if you state the facts about last night. I find it insulting that others are trying to convince you to "Drink the Koolaid" and say this was a positive thing for racing, it wasn't. I even saw a drivers wife post (paraphrasing)( I don't know what your complaining about 95% of you had nothing better to do). That's great insult fans, not sure that helps racing either. Whether my time is valuable or I had something better to do is debatable, I will give her that, but the 200+ dollars I spent is not.

[TheCushion]

It's a real shame the race wasn't able to be run as envisioned. It takes a monumental effort to put something like this together and made even harder that they only had hours, not days to put the track together. It was a very difficult task to pull off, no time to build a track to its best potential (banking) and not enough square footage to get it to the size needed for good racing for Midgets. We give a ton of credit to the promoters to try and give Indy this type of race at the best time of the year for it, PRI. Not many would step up and take this on, so they should be commended for that. Very high risk, high reward event and unfortunately it didn't work as planned. If it did, this group would be getting massive accolades for bringing indoor Midget racing to its home in Indiana.

We spoke with the promoters a ways back because we were interested in providing the Live Video for the event and they had every good intention for starting, building and growing this event. Our good friends and client of our T2 Digital company, Bob Dillner and Speed 51 got the PPV deal and we give those guys credit also for what was a very long night of broadcasting in tough conditions (equipment caked with dirt particles). Rough night for all involved, especially the great fans who supported this event in droves. Great to see the hunger everyone has for Winter, Indoor racing.

We hope as many as possible make the trip to DuQuoin this coming Saturday, Dec 19th, for USAC's return to Indoor racing with the Junior Knepper 55. Much bigger facility lends itself to more side-by-side Midget racing and passing. The DuQuoin track seems to always put on great Midget races, looking forward to it. It is also our return to indoor race coverage as we did a Midget + 600 race at DuQuoin 5+ years ago. We hope all support this USAC DuQuoin race and promoters Nick Knepper and Derek LeMaster on this unique 55 lap event in honor of Junior Knepper. If you cannot make it there, thecushion.com will have LIVE Video of every lap.... Hot Laps to Victory Lane. It's the last tune up before Chili Bowl, should be fun.

[jim goerge]

If they have this again next year I will go back, cuz I believe they learned somethings. I think they saw they need to move the berms out bout another 20 25 feet,and in place of berms add concrete barriers , also they need to use the 2 time spin rule, in place of their 8 time spin rule, which was mostly by the same drivers over and over in both the carts and midgets. The CO the first stoppage didn't bother me, and if they would have said what it was for most people wouldn't have minded it. Before they stopped for second CO my eyes had already been burning for bout ten minutes. We left during the second stoppage and were home (Evansville ) before they got the features run. I hope they can bring this back again but with the problems this board has pointed out I am not sure it will be back. So lets head on to DeQuion for more racing
Also Jen we are going racing are for ice cream? Either way we'll meet you guys there