I'd love to see guys like Darland and Hines get a shot at Indy, and this isn't going to down well on this forum, but don't kid yourself, the sporting world was a million times more interested in Ruebens Barrichello's first Indy 500 than Bryan Clauson's.

Actually, hyperbole asside, based on Tweets, we really can quanitatively say that there was 10x more interest in Barrichello than for Clauson.
http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/soc...00-infographic

---------- Post added at 6:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 6:07 PM ----------

It's no mistake at all. Long Beach and Baltimore get 100,000 spectators. Meanwhile, last year's Millwaukee's Indy Car race got an abysmal 0.6 rating on ABC.

We all know the racing on street courses is terrible. Nothing like watching exotic cars "race" single file at 40 mph by a big flower bed and fountain at Long Beach, or race across a freaking train track at Baltimore. But those races draw interest. With just a few exceptions, the circle track Indy Car races play to empty stands.

All in all it was a good race to watch. The last 30 laps were very exciting. I know how great the feat is to win this race once but to do it three times is unbelieveable, but to win it three times while finishing under caution to me leaves kind of an empty feeling. Let's go green, white, checkerd.

I went for my 2nd 500..I got goosebumps every time they had a restart..it's just a great sight to see and hear..I enjoyed the racing..was hoping for a better result for clauson but still starting a Indy 500 is better then not doing it at all I'm hoping they will start looking for more talent in the USAC ranks..they did have Tracy Hines there for his night before the 500 midget win which was pretty cool..all in all pretty good stuff and glad I attended

Posted via Mobile Device

If Indy Car and USAC would get back together and require drivers to run a certain amount of USAC races in order to run the 500, It would help remove all of the foreign$$$ that seems to be driving the series. If this could happen, it would also supply Indy Car the feeder series it always had in the early days. This would give those guys a chance to run Indy. Do you think these F1 guys would come over here and try to competitively run a open wheel dirt car? I think not. That is why I think it would give more American Drivers a shot at Indy. JMO

This would just return us to the '96-'99 IRL era when the Indy 500 was ridiculed by the mainstream media.

This isn't likely to go over well with most of us on this forum, but the fact remains that we're not really Indy Car's target demographic. The people that they're really after wouldn't be caught dead at a sprint car race. Why do you think that most of the road course races are titled "Indy Grand Prix"? Becuase they want to appeal to folks who might think they're seeing Formula 1, or at least something like it.

There's no bias against circle tracks with Indy Car. It's just that it's hard for them to make money on the non-Indy oval races when they can only get 10-15,000 people in the stands, and only a few hundred thousand to even watch on TV.

I agree with Craig word for word. I think Tony George and the IRL was going in the right direction with the exception of one thing. In 1996 the IRL had a clean sheet of paper to design the next generation of Indy Car. They chose to stick closely with a variation of the CART style Indy Car instead of a more radical departure, maybe moving away from the ground-effects, maybe a modern day 60-70 rules Indy Car or maybe even a modern day roadster for that matter. I think this was a missed opportunity. Today we now have the Dallara cars that in my opinion aren't much to look at. The Conway-Power accident concerns me. Did the powers-that-be stop the Indy Car from flying or are we looking at another possible Dan Wheldon type tragedy somewhere down the road.


As for the race, it was very enjoyable. I watched about every circuit Bryan made and had high hopes when he passed SeaBass. It's too bad his day didn't turn out as well as we had hoped but was proud that he gave a great effort. He probably learned a great deal Sunday which is always good.

I rooted for his team mate Josef Newgarden too because he is an impressive young driver as well. He ran near the front for a while but alas he was caught a lap down somewhow then finally his car quit on him. Was happy to see Ed Carpenter come up through the field but not so happy to hear reports that he dissed his crew after the race. I hope I read wrong. I wish it was not either a Penske car or a Target car that won but what can you do. I may be up there again next year especially if Bryan gets to run again next year. I wish it was like it used to be but I 'm sure it is better than watching Metta Whirled Peas play NBA Basketball.

I was sitting toward turn 3, when he took the lead on that restart everyone was up and cheering. Him and Carpenter got big cheers when they were moving up late. I think Sato did even when he got 2nd just because few people wanted a Ganassi car to win.

He looked comfortable early, passing Bourdais and was working his way up to Legge. Then he had the spin at the other end of the speedway. When he came back out later in the race he was just getting passed left and right. I don't know if they were just doing confidence laps and put on more downforce or what. Cavin said on Trackside that if he did well and the car didn't wreck there may be other races down the road for him with Fisher later this year. Well technicallly the car didn't wreck, but I'd like to see him on a short oval like Milwaukee or Iowa since that's closer to the types of tracks he does in a Silver Crown car.

Marco blew it in my opinion. He had the best car. When I watched the race on TV later that night and heard him on the radio talking about his vibration, this is coulda woulda shoulda but if he stayed out one more lap he'd've gotten a caution and could've pitted remaining in 4th instead of being on the tailend of the lead lap. Even running in the back he'd pick cars off and move up, but if him and his team was a little smarter he'd've never gotten back there to begin with.

Other random thoughts:

-Alesi and de Silvestro racing for 32nd early were blocking the heck out of each other and being side by side going down the backstretch.
-How did Oriol Servia get 4th?
-Looks like Honda's design philosophy on the single vs. twin turbo debate was proved correct.
-Penske a non-factor really. I didn't know at the track that Castroneves had maybe touched the stray tire in the Power/Conway wreck but he never really challenged, while Briscoe did about what I expected: competitive but not up there for the win.
-Michael Andretti has to be kicking himself.
-Great run for Justin Wilson.
-Conway before his wreck looked good. Flying up to Indy I sat next to the VP of the ABC Supply Co. racing program for Foyt's team and he's goes to all the Indycar races except for the overseas ones. He had a couple fun remarks on the team and A.J.

It's not the (street) race that most of those people are interested in. It's the party...the street festival. Yes, the street festivals drew pretty well for a while but, the dedicated road courses struggled to draw crowds. You forget that tracks like Texas and Charlotte drew crowds of over 100K back in the early 2000's. Kentucky Speedway had crowds in the 60k range during those years. There were some very well attended oval races.

The Alabama Grand Prix race at Barber Motorsports Park seemed to draw pretty well this year.

---------- Post added at 6:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 6:58 PM ----------

In light of all the griping we're engaging in about Indy Car, I thought I'd share this:

http://www.trackforum.com/forums/sho...-been-to!-quot

---------- Post added at 7:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 6:59 PM ----------

Was this really a viable option? Indy Cars had been a rear-engine series for 30 years even at that point. Would the public have supported going backwards an entire generation with the car design? How much slower would the cars have been?

I was at all three Charlotte IRL races in the late '90s, they had big crowds but never a crowd over 100k.

Personally, I don't think so. This is greatly simplified I realize, but CART I believe died with the American public being #1 series when Jeff Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard 400 after every CART team didn't want him. That victory at that track by that driver symbolized WHY NASCAR became #1 after being a mainly Southern thing for decades. And when Gordon became the top racing star of any series in this country it changed the entire landscape of motorsports in the U.S.

IRL I think was done when Tony Stewart left and went to NASCAR. I don't think any person can sit back and say with an open mind that Stewart made the wrong decision. Far more money, far more races, far more chances for acclaim, and it's worked out heavily in his favor. But his leaving Indycars to go to NASCAR was just an acknowledgement on how far NASCAR had passed Indycar by at that point.

This cannot be overcome overnight. IRL to me had absolutely fantastic racing in 2002 and 2003. These were the years when the early IRL stalwarts were still competitive and the first years of the teams coming over from CART with engine and chassis competition. Look at the winners those years, both teams and drivers. This led to nothing as a lot of those same teams disappeared in three years' time. You look at this year, and I think Indycar has had much better racing than NASCAR, and I'm not some homer for Indiana racing, I'm a resident of North Carolina surrounded by Junior fans and it's not like I can strike up a conversation on James Hinchcliffe or Josef Newgarden here with anyone except my dad.

It's definitely a long haul thing. NASCAR's down at the moment from past years, Indycar is up at the moment from past years, there's a lot of issues in NASCAR that the sanctioning body is not eager to fix because it would cost them money (race lengths, start-and-parkers, too many dates), and Indycar in contrast has taken to resolving some of the complaints to their series. Not all obviously (not enough ovals but that's because most major ovals are either owned by ISC or SMI), but you can't fix everything even if you want and definitely not all at once. We even have a USAC guy in the 500. Granted, Clauson did not do well, and racing like it is, there will be a lot of people out there that will think unfairly that Jerry Coons Jr. or Bobby East can't drive an Indycar because Clauson crashed in qualifying and wound up finishing 30th. I had to tear a new a-hole into a guy from Ireland pre-race on another racing forum that looked at qualifying speeds and thought Clauson should be pulled off track because he was as slow as de Silvestro. That's entirely not fair, but that's how racing works and that's a globally done thing on measuring development series by seeing how their "graduates" do, but the foot's in the door and we'll see how things look in a few years.

I don't care if you're NASCAR, Indycar, USAC, SCCA, Formula One, ALMS, Le Mans, etc. if you have bad leadership making bad decisions, it will detract the racing, no matter who you have in the cars or what they are driving, and I think Randy Bernard is the best leader American open wheel racing has had since before the CART/USAC split in 1979.