trauma1
05-26-06, 10:17 AM
this isn''t going real well over at TF
Still a 2nd-rate race, by George
The Speedway boss is to blame for the long open-wheel racing rift, writes Ed Hinton
By Ed Hinton
Published May 26, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS -- What is billed as "the 90th Indianapolis 500" will be run Sunday. I'm still waiting for the 80th.
The last world-renowned one was the 79th in 1995, which Jacques Villeneuve won just before he set off to Europe to become a world champion in Formula One.
Every running since then has been makeshift.
That is the truth, regardless of the marketing and public relations spin of the hirelings of the capricious crown prince of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Tony George, who bosses this American institution with no credentials other than inheritance.
Simply put, he has muffed it, monumentally, for precisely a decade now.
After 10 annual charades, the 80th great one, the 80th flurry of news bulletins flashed around the world, could come as early as Sunday.
Third-generation Andretti, 19-year-old Marco, could dry his family's nearly 40-year trail of tears here. His father, Michael, making a comeback, could heal his personal 14 heart-wounds here.
Or Danica Patrick could become the first female winner, fulfilling the electric preview she gave the nation last year.
But none of that is likely.
Marco is a rookie, not yet prepared for all the horrific eventualities that arrive by the split second in this race. Michael, as always in his past, still has to beat both his life-long nemeses: first the immaculate cars of Team Penske and then the fates of this place.
"Danica Mania" has ebbed. She is in a lame-duck type of car this time, and so she is starting 10th. Last year she started fourth. The consensus is that she must be luckier, and even gutsier, than last year to do even as well as that fourth-place finish.
So, all told, the malaise of the past decade's titanic foolishness has settled again onto what was the most hallowed ground in motor racing.
The latest hopeful rumors of rebirth have fallen as flat as all the rest.
There is no chance--none--that the Indy Racing League and the rival Champ Car series (the carcass of once-mighty CART) will announce any sort of reunification this week.
A few die-hard optimists among Indy aficionados still cling to a notion of reconciliation sometime this year. You'll pardon me if I've heard all this before, and if I can't clear my mind of a refrain: "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," from a sad old song of both sides in the American Civil War.
The civil war in American open-wheel racing, 10 years after its own kind of Gettysburg, drags on. And on.
A decade ago this week, it surely seemed at the time, the decisive battle raged.
CART boycotted Indy, taking the best and brightest of the 500 away to Michigan for a rebellious race, the one and only U.S. 500. CART had no choice. The rules George imposed on it were outrageous.
By the end of that Memorial Day weekend, both sides were so devastated that nobody thought either side could hold out for long.
Just for openers, NASCAR's Daytona 500 became, by default, America's premier automobile race. It remains so.
And considering the popularity of NASCAR's Brickyard 400 here each August, the Indy 500, once the biggest race in the world, was no longer even the biggest race in town.
Enter Formula One with the U.S. Grand Prix, and by 2001 the Indy 500 was the third-rate race of Marion County, Ind. That is, unless you worshipped the sprint car races down at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, in which case the 500 ranked as the fourth-biggest race locally.
Only the U.S. Grand Prix debacle of last year, when 14 of 20 F1 cars pulled out before the race started, in an internal dispute, raised the 500 back to second-rate.
You would think the crown prince and his bourgeois opponents in CART, now Champ Car, would have learned. They didn't. It all remains a matter of royalty vs. capitalism: Tony George, who inherited this place from his grandfather, vs. (fill in the blank), the latest self-made millionaire to think he could reason with the crown prince.
First you filled the blank with Roger Penske and Pat Patrick, then Bobby Rahal, then the various CEOs of CART, and now Kevin Kalkhoven, the Australian multimillionaire who is the latest to gamble a fortune on the Champ Car series.
Tony and Kevin have become fast friends, until they talk business. Then it's over, as always.
The bottom line is that many a CART/Champ Car magnate has come calling, pleading, all but begging, virtually on his knees, and the crown prince has said no, just for the sake of the royal privilege of saying no.
Tony George may own this real estate known as Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But he does not own the Indianapolis 500. That is solely the property of the American public, and the world--the many millions of people who made this race, and who now have turned away from it in disgust.
Until and unless the Andrettis or Danica Patrick roar forth to save his skin, Tony George still owes the world 10 great Indy 500s. I'm betting it will be 11 by Sunday night.
__________________
Still a 2nd-rate race, by George
The Speedway boss is to blame for the long open-wheel racing rift, writes Ed Hinton
By Ed Hinton
Published May 26, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS -- What is billed as "the 90th Indianapolis 500" will be run Sunday. I'm still waiting for the 80th.
The last world-renowned one was the 79th in 1995, which Jacques Villeneuve won just before he set off to Europe to become a world champion in Formula One.
Every running since then has been makeshift.
That is the truth, regardless of the marketing and public relations spin of the hirelings of the capricious crown prince of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Tony George, who bosses this American institution with no credentials other than inheritance.
Simply put, he has muffed it, monumentally, for precisely a decade now.
After 10 annual charades, the 80th great one, the 80th flurry of news bulletins flashed around the world, could come as early as Sunday.
Third-generation Andretti, 19-year-old Marco, could dry his family's nearly 40-year trail of tears here. His father, Michael, making a comeback, could heal his personal 14 heart-wounds here.
Or Danica Patrick could become the first female winner, fulfilling the electric preview she gave the nation last year.
But none of that is likely.
Marco is a rookie, not yet prepared for all the horrific eventualities that arrive by the split second in this race. Michael, as always in his past, still has to beat both his life-long nemeses: first the immaculate cars of Team Penske and then the fates of this place.
"Danica Mania" has ebbed. She is in a lame-duck type of car this time, and so she is starting 10th. Last year she started fourth. The consensus is that she must be luckier, and even gutsier, than last year to do even as well as that fourth-place finish.
So, all told, the malaise of the past decade's titanic foolishness has settled again onto what was the most hallowed ground in motor racing.
The latest hopeful rumors of rebirth have fallen as flat as all the rest.
There is no chance--none--that the Indy Racing League and the rival Champ Car series (the carcass of once-mighty CART) will announce any sort of reunification this week.
A few die-hard optimists among Indy aficionados still cling to a notion of reconciliation sometime this year. You'll pardon me if I've heard all this before, and if I can't clear my mind of a refrain: "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," from a sad old song of both sides in the American Civil War.
The civil war in American open-wheel racing, 10 years after its own kind of Gettysburg, drags on. And on.
A decade ago this week, it surely seemed at the time, the decisive battle raged.
CART boycotted Indy, taking the best and brightest of the 500 away to Michigan for a rebellious race, the one and only U.S. 500. CART had no choice. The rules George imposed on it were outrageous.
By the end of that Memorial Day weekend, both sides were so devastated that nobody thought either side could hold out for long.
Just for openers, NASCAR's Daytona 500 became, by default, America's premier automobile race. It remains so.
And considering the popularity of NASCAR's Brickyard 400 here each August, the Indy 500, once the biggest race in the world, was no longer even the biggest race in town.
Enter Formula One with the U.S. Grand Prix, and by 2001 the Indy 500 was the third-rate race of Marion County, Ind. That is, unless you worshipped the sprint car races down at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, in which case the 500 ranked as the fourth-biggest race locally.
Only the U.S. Grand Prix debacle of last year, when 14 of 20 F1 cars pulled out before the race started, in an internal dispute, raised the 500 back to second-rate.
You would think the crown prince and his bourgeois opponents in CART, now Champ Car, would have learned. They didn't. It all remains a matter of royalty vs. capitalism: Tony George, who inherited this place from his grandfather, vs. (fill in the blank), the latest self-made millionaire to think he could reason with the crown prince.
First you filled the blank with Roger Penske and Pat Patrick, then Bobby Rahal, then the various CEOs of CART, and now Kevin Kalkhoven, the Australian multimillionaire who is the latest to gamble a fortune on the Champ Car series.
Tony and Kevin have become fast friends, until they talk business. Then it's over, as always.
The bottom line is that many a CART/Champ Car magnate has come calling, pleading, all but begging, virtually on his knees, and the crown prince has said no, just for the sake of the royal privilege of saying no.
Tony George may own this real estate known as Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But he does not own the Indianapolis 500. That is solely the property of the American public, and the world--the many millions of people who made this race, and who now have turned away from it in disgust.
Until and unless the Andrettis or Danica Patrick roar forth to save his skin, Tony George still owes the world 10 great Indy 500s. I'm betting it will be 11 by Sunday night.
__________________