Actually, it was John Cooper (at the suggestion of Roger Ward).
The next year, Dan Gurney invited Chapman over for a look-see but the handwriting was already on the proverbial wall.
That wasn't so much the demise of oval racing but it was the death knell of the front-engine package; the first Loti had considerable offset and even Brabham's little Cooper-Climax had a tad bit of left bias if I recall.

What? You mean it wasn't the evil twin entities of Penske and CART? Well, I do declare, you might want to be careful with those "selective facts" you pulled from Google.

Hell, before you know it, you'll be one of those evil businessmen with clean fingernails and shirts sipping on a glass of fine red wine while penning your racing manifesto.

The start of that race should have been waved off. They were way stretched out. Watched the replay several times and it looks like they started going into 3 before green. As far as the fast ovals they were really something to see live. I miss Michigan, Chicago and Kentucky. went to them all.

Yep. They really need to be listening to Will Power and others on the power/downforce they are running at these short ovals. They need to up the power to the levels they run on the road and street and knock the downforce back a bit. Hopefully that latter part gets corrected with the downforce production going primarily back to the undertray next year.

When they said they decided to add more downforce after testing I was completely shocked, they aren't listening to the drivers. With the current levels everyone is running equal and you hit a brick wall when you pull out to try and pass.

Nothing selective about it, not sure I get the sarcasm; Chapman was not even among the first to switch to rear-engine cars in Europe. Googling not required.
For better or worse, change is inevitable unless rules are made against it. ******** is a whole different matter...

Seems like the blame game comes along 2-3 times a year when we start pointing fingers at everyone and everything about the lack of interest in racing. There are those that are ate up with racing, those that believe the world will end if they are not at a race track every time an engine firers! I have seen guys that sit in the stands and take down every lap of qualifying and keep record on the entire event! People that will put their job in jeopardy before they will miss a race.But these people are but a blip on the radar. How about this for an idea, the population continues to increase at the same time race tracks and spectator attendance continues to drop?
Why, ?..The world has slowly changed and the general population of people know 0 about motorsports! I teach in a High School of 2000 students in Indianapolis (The Capital of Racing) and this year I have seen 1 open wheel t-shirt, 1...ONE out of 2000 students. I ask the student "do you go to sprint car races?"....He replies "what is a sprint car?"...I say "your wearing a Robert Ballou shirt" ...He replies "Who" ...so I tell him Ballou is a USAC sprint car champion...he says "what is U , what ever you said, I got this shirt at a garage sale because it fit me"

2000 kids, I can not find one to talk racing with, ZERO...You can blame whom ever, what ever, you can say we need to get kids to the race track...The ship has sailed, we missed the boat with the young people that are now parents of the little ones. The technology area has the market on the youth (40 and below) and the youth want a different kind of entertainment!

I refer to short track fans of open wheel as a "cult following" and they are in 100%, so for the foreseeable future it will survive... Long Term ??

Since this message board is the place for race fans most of you will not agree with me, I understand...I myself look forward to ever telecast of Indy Car, watching Chilli Bowl week is the highlight of my winter...I just have an opinion on why attendance is dropping from a realistic perspective.

Agree 100% with you. I, being an 18 year old highly into multiple forms of motorsports, found it VERY difficult getting into the dirt track, open wheel racing world. I am a HUGE IndyCar fan and grew up going to Indy and Kentucky and watching the old IRL on TV. When I first went to a sprint car race at Lawrenceburg less than two years ago, I fell in love with it. But looking back now I realized that Fans, Drivers, Announcers, Promoters and people involved with racing HAVE to inform new fans and people that are even the slight bit interested about the cars, the format, fun facts and things to make them more interested.

I got hooked on sprints when I heard the Lawrenceburg Announcer (Chad Cunningham) talk about how the sprint cars racing at Lawrenceburg had close to 900 horsepower and only weighed around 1400 pounds. To me I thought that was absolutely badass, and instantly made me interested. But as I went on, I went to some midget races, some sprint pavement races, some crown/champ car races and it seemed every new track I went to or to see new kinds of cars I was so confused as to what the difference was between a sprint and midget, sprint and crown car, winged vs non wing and so on. At the expense of my embarrassment I wouldn't try to ask questions to any of those folks I mentioned before, because I didn't want to be deemed "stupid" when it came to dirt track open wheel racing in our area. Google does not provide very good answers as to the questions I had. I know a cool moment for me came at May in 2015, shortly after I had seen my first sprint car race. It was at Indianapolis and after I had interviewed him, Bryan Clauson showed me around his car for the 500 and explained to me about the differences between an IndyCar and a sprint car, explained how this or that worked and did so in a very fine manner. From then on, I've been hooked. Even though it may seem stupid to some for a "kid" who has never strapped into a race car to look up to these guys as heroes, I know I sure do. The brave folks who put on the helmet and gloves, get up on the wheel and can drive a car for 30 some laps, then come have a chat with you in the pits afterwards like you've been friends forever, that is one big thing that made me a junkie about this stuff. I wanted a reason, like most, to have a reason to be interested in the event I was at. I wanted to talk to badly to people who had been around this sport for years. To hear stories about Kenyon, Hewitt, Foyt, Jones and so on but it seemed that some people I tried to talk to had zero interested in chatting with me, which was unfortunate.

So if you've been a fan, a driver, car owner, announcer or just someone who knows something about racing that you can pass along, no matter the discipline of motorsport, please...take a few moments to chat with that random person you see looking at a car, sitting alone during hot laps watching cars go by or walking around the pits during the course of the race. I would have loved to have more guidance from people to teach me what this or that was, and I still need that guidance as I'm learning every day about this type or car or that part...to me its just super fascinating. I may not be like most high school seniors, but I promise you that there are some people out there in the same situation I was some two years ago. It won't happen over night, but I really do believe that this sport has a huge future. Heck....I was chatting with my barber a few weeks back and he talked about the new Dodge Demon car. Said that nothing could touch the horsepower and ability that car had. I told him and showed him videos of sprint cars. He thought it was awesome, we talked about them for half an hour and he is going to his first race whenever the rains go away.

Sorry for the rambling on, but I felt obligated to put my .02 in on this topic. This stuff has become really special to me, and I want to be able to pass that on to others and to make this sport be a driving force for some people, instead of something random to do on a weekend.

It's sarcasm. A few of us have pretty much explained the same thing only to get the standard rebuttal of "evil CART", "evil Penske forced all of this", "you hate dirt trackers", "you're only cherry picking facts from a Google search", "true racers have dirt under their fingernails and don't do their own legwork in obtaining financing", "I only got through a few sentences of the White Paper and all I get is Dan Gurney is one of those evil buinessmen" ....standard fair for those who can't handle reality and will never do what it takes to get where they proclaim they want to be. It's always some other dude's fault.

Like you say and every leadership course known to man teaches, change is inevitable, you either get on the horse and ride or get left behind.

OK...
I wasn't blaming anybody, just relating a little history (from memory, incidentally; I may have been 9 years old when the Cooper came to town but I still didn't have to look it up somewhere). Heck, if you want to read between the lines you can say it was Roger Ward's fault. Didn't mean to get your knickers in a twist, though.

You didn't get anything in a twist. You added to what some of us have been explaining.