Lack of drivers from sprint cars and midgets and such is why a lot less people care about Indy. Nobody wants to see the greatest oval race in the world being driven at by a bunch of road racers who can count the amount of oval races they've done on one hand. Just like people would be a lot less interested in something like Monaco or Le Mans if the field was made up of USAC or NASCAR guys who have done little road racing.

I quit when they went to the common car. Boring

Went to 86 CART/Champcar races
Went to 0 IRL races

Once these diehard fans of big track racing see the non-wing sprint cars racing on the 1/4 and 3/8 mile tracks with all of the racing action they don't go back to the big tracks. Racing is changing on what type of tracks that the people want to see race. As more short dirt tracks have big money shows, this will fill the grandstands at these tracks. Maybe because it was an early race event, Paragon had the biggest showing of race fans ever at this track. I look for most all short dirt track tracks to do good in the coming year.

I like how some of you guys complain about the cars being the same or clone cars, yet midgets and sprint cars are basically that right now.
Even the Chili Bowl, is almost that, minus a couple of cars. 370 cars and probably close to 90% of them are Spikes, that all look the same running either a TRD or SR11/x, unless it's a smaller team, that doesn't have the budget for one of them engines. Go to a national show and spike probably built 95% or more of the chassis there, and guess what? Besides the vinyl the cars have almost identical bodies too. Most sprint car races non wing or winged are the same. Crap most sprint car chassis are almost identical, even when it's built by different manufactures. For instance Triple X and Maxim, almost identical looking chassis, although the majority of one built in China.

HaHa good one hoscalecody!
As a big sprint/midget guy that has also road raced, in hindsight it would have been better if the IRL NEVER happened!!! Yes I said it. I loved it at the time just like you all did. For the same reasons you did. But looking at things now, with the momentum that CART had leading up to 1996 it could very well be that top tier openwheel racing would have been the premire American racing sport instead of NAPCAR. As it is now, you listen to your sprint car buddies and they all know what happened at "Bristol" or "Talladega" but they dont even know that IndyCar has a race at Iowa! THey know none of the drivers (How can you NOT like Helio or Kannan?) And to REALLY think that Dixon isnt "all that" is just being ignorant because you never saw him turn a lap at Kokomo... All it takes is to watch one race and see some interviews and now you "know" the drivers like you complain that you DON'T know them. But then they go and watch NASCRAP with a few sprint car guys but the rest have turned a lap at Paragon either....

I don't care about how big Indycar would be without the IRL, the schedule would still not have had enough ovals and the racing would still be terrible. The IRL was definitely needed.

NASCAR may not be as good as it once was, but it's waaaaaaaaay better than modern Indycar. And it's not even close. Even boring F1 is oftentimes more interesting than Indycar in recent years.

Best Indycar racing ever hands down. IRL. Chicago, Texas, Kentucky, man in the edge of your seat bravery. Even got to see them run at Michigan MIS. No crowd to speak of. Sad again. In my life I will probably not see that kind of racing rarely again.

Agree 100%. The people who complained didn't support it. That is why there aren't many ovals today. No one wants to promote an event where people who say they want to see it won't go.
Same as the people who say they want higher non wing purses then don't support the higher paying shows. Didn't you go to Charlotte too?