Help he understand here...

[Lizzerd]

Link (http://espn.go.com/rpm/2003/0415/1539402.html)

Another "stock" car series? I remember hearing rumblings of this a couple years ago, but I thought it had mercifully died.

All chassis to be designed and built by R&S, yet there will be Corvettes, Mustangs, and Vipers. Common tube frame chassis, different bodies. Uh huh...


With the open-wheel ChampCar Series, formerly known as CART, floundering in recent seasons, it is a wonder whether or not another racing league can be successful, even if it's stock car.

Sounds a lot like the XFL to me...

[Eagle104]

Well, it's unique if nothing else, I guess. Not even having a driver championship...just "team" winners.


All 24 cars will run in each race, but a team - not individual - will be determined the winner.


But, what-in-the-hell prompted the slam at CART?! The 'by line' says "ESPN.com news services". Sounds like Arute probably wrote it.

[Lizzerd]

Here's another indirect slam at CART, from an anonymous, clueless AP reporter...

LInk (http://espn.go.com/rpm/cart/2003/0409/1536641.html)


CART's decline was directly related to the formation of the rival Indy Racing League, which began competition in 1996, splitting what was already a shrinking open-wheel fan base in the face of the growth of NASCAR.

Uh huh again... CART was thriving in 1995. The early to mid '90's was the greatest era of CART. Boy George, the lucky ***** cell, just couldn't deal with it. NASCAR's greatest growth has been since then, it wasn't happening at the time and had nothing to do with OW racing's decline in television ratings and popularity. There is only one person responsible for that...

[Napoleon]

Originally posted by Lizzerd
Sounds a lot like the XFL to me...

Or the Arena Football League, which is partially owned by NBC and gets great exposure. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago and sports leagues like that may be the wave of the future on broadcast tv.

[Turn7]

I think it may be a good idea. It may or may not ever take off. If it does Bill France will be on it like a duck on a june bug.

Anyway..

The idea of localizing the teams is a good one if you ask me. Think about what makes the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA successful. Local teams and a hometown pride. If a racing series had teams spread out across the nation and each locality hosted a race, it would garner much more casual appeal to non racing sports fans. I know there were Sigma fans because they were in Chicago instead of Indy and the same goes for Rahal being in Ohio. Instead of all being bunched up in Indy imagine if each of the domestic races had a team that they could call the hometown hero? I think it would be great to have a team or two based in Florida, California, the Northwest, Texas ect...



If they are going to be centered in N. Carolina and just use stage names for local areas then that will not work. They will need a shop in the town they are representing and have the local sports guys show up and do stories, ect.

This model may be something to keep an eye on.

[Treeface]

Bruton Smith/SMI needs to find a product that is not controlled by ISC. They easy answer would be CART. SMI has tracks in all the right places. Too bad Texas, Charlotte and Atlanta are not suited for formula cars.

This is attempt #3 to replace NASCAR on ESPN. I dont't think it will work.

[pchall]

The only thing interesting about the TRAC concept is the cars themselves. They may be tube-framed, but the wing and the body styles make them much more attractive than the NASCAR uniblob. They should use engines from the original manufacturer, though. The rest of the concept is silly.

Now that I think about it some more, this may hark back to the late 60s/early 70s NASCAR pony car division. They seemed to run on short tracks only. What did they call that? Grand American?

[DaveL]

Originally posted by pchall
Now that I think about it some more, this may hark back to the late 60s/early 70s NASCAR pony car division. They seemed to run on short tracks only. What did they call that? Grand American?

They also ran at some of the larger tracks like Atlanta, and Grand National (what WC used to be called) regulars participated in the races.

TRAC will run exactly as many races next as they will this year and last combined. We've been hearing about it for, what, four years and they still haven't run so much as a test lap. The last time it was in the news was when the mfgs said they would not allow the copywrites associated with their brands be associated with the series.

[Kate]

Why not watch Speed World Challenge instead? Real men, real cars, real racing. TRAC sounds too much like TRON to me.

Personally I can't imagine Michael Schumacher bothering to race if "Ferrari" were declared the winner and he AND RUBENS were on the podium together when HE had actually won the race.

On the other hand, although there is a drivers' championship in the ALMS, everyone knows that it is a team that wins. (For Alex Job Racing, it is the same thing though.)