Random Observations -

Am I the only one is still finds it amazing that the leadership of a major sanctioning body posts on a public site like this? If nothing else, compared to previous leaderships it's refreshing to see Mr. Miller stand there with his hands on his hips letting everyone kick him in the ding-ding.

All you have to do is read these posts to know that fixing this problem won't come painlessly. Whatever direction is taken, multiple people will be pissed. The current leadership had the balls to tell the SC owners that they now owned $100k turds so I don't think that making the right decision at the expense of pissing people off will be an issue.

USAC and ********/influence. The problems with the pavement series came about much more recently than there have been USAC ********/influence. Removing the ******** would be harder than solving the pavement issue. Spend your energies wisely and just go around the ********.

Outside of European football/soccer fans, I can't think of a group more passionate about their sport than racing people. Perhaps there is something that can be learned from that.

While I don't like seeing fast timers diddle around in heat races knowing they just need to transfer out of the B to get their time back, tinkering with the race format isn't gonna do diddly squat in this current problem. For that matter, dragging out the good old days or mistakes of the past will do less than diddly squat.

Speaking of the past, TV is a pipe dream. WoO almost (and perhaps still might) ran themselves out of money doing time-buys. What exactly would we do differently to turn that around? At best, it's an extremely expensive long term investment to make it something. Looking though these posts I can see that we're obviously very patient people so perhaps taking years to build a TV base is the way to go. Pay-per-view events like the Chili Bowl are the only ones I see having any success in the short term. How do you do that x 30 or so events? Internet TV looks good but is a long ways away. However I this is an area that we should be invested in.

I've always been intrigued by the stadium motocross series. I worked for Yamaha motocross years ago and was part of that circus. I've always wondered why some of the same principles couldn't be applied to some open wheel special events. If you note, they always run monster trucks or something the week before/after the supercross races. They do that because it lowers the cost of converting the stadium. Why not piggyback on that? I acknowledge it would be a hella big risk but you possibly could hit a 11 run home run as well. How many of you can honestly say you've heard of the AMA until Supercross?

One of the problems with the stadium racing idea is manufacturers. We don't have any and they do. The big 3 motorcycle companies poured millions into supercross racing. Interesting thing about the bikes was that the rules are written such that the bikes are not all that much removed from stock. Chassis geometries, materials, etc can't be modified from stock. Yes, the motors and shocks are modified but are based upon stock items. I was surprised that even as they poured millions into the sport, they weren't trying to sneak exotic materials into the bikes. Even if nothing comes of it, studying the supercross series for ideas couldn't hurt.

I agree with the single car for dirt/pavement concept. If you get it right, you still will have room for people to innovate. Crazy thought - You could also consider "penalizing" fast cars with weight like they do in sports car racing to equalize the BMWs vs the Acuras. I'm sure a few people might get a kick out of seeing Bob East turn colors like a chameleon when he's told that the Beasts need to carry 50lbs extra.

I also agree that the car builders shouldn't have too much influence on drawing up the rules. Or you might as well let the prisoners build the prison walls. But you do need people with technical expertise to get it right.

I also agree that USAC rule application has been spotty and/or ill-directed at times. If you go the single car route, you've got to fix the rule application part or it won't work.

While it's really not part of the discussion here, Indiana Sprint Week is one of the most amazing events of any type in this county. Don't f it up.