They are tremendously worse. I think Phoenix got like 20 to 25K last year. The last race at Kentucky was freaking horrible. IndyCar does a fairly poor job of promoting itself outside of 16th and Jonestown and part of that is brought on by Tony George's TV deal which is why NBC cannot place races on their main network, ABC stipulated that they are the only ones that can show OTA.

From a fan standpoint you can much bigger bang for you buck at a road/street course as well. Often they are paired with sports cars and/or all three MRTI programs, so there is constant on track action and not to mention you can get up and walk around rather than being confined to a seat in the hot sun.


But at the end of the day, regardless of what Tony promised you all, it was never about preserving the "oval heritage", which if you know anything of the history of series, well, to put it lightly is a line of ********. It was 100% about preserving the perceived slighting of the cash cow at 16th and the roundabout and who was going to control the series. So I don't think anyone should be in the least surprised as to the direction of the series after the vision of total world domination was completed with the merger in 2008.