Tony Bucks lubricate Hemelgarn

[Ziggy]

With no solid orders for the IRL's new Falcon chassis in place, it has been reported that Tony George has taken care of two problems with one swipe of the credit card.

George purchased two Falcon chassis for the financially strapped Hemelgarn Racing Team. The cars are to be driven by '96 Indy winner Bloody Lazier (*).

When does Billy Boat get a dose of the Tony bucks? Or does AJ recieve the lions share of cash to compete against the RoadRacing devils?

Ziggy

[DaveL]

And if the car is a pig, where does that leave big Ron?

Cash strapped? Nice to see the influx of CART fifth columnists aren't causing any damage. (Coors to Toyotasbitch Ganassi Racing)

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by DaveL
And if the car is a pig, where does that leave big Ron?


The same exact place he's be without any cash - on the sidelines.



Cash strapped? Nice to see the influx of CART fifth columnists aren't causing any damage. (Coors to Toyotasbitch Ganassi Racing)

Hey, who would you rather have running your colors?

A team not smart enough to extinguish a pit fire before fueling who had a terrible 2002 season...

Or a team that won four CART titles in a row, who oh-by-the-way also handles your NASCAR team.

Even Mike Brown could make that decision.

[RaceGrrl]

Originally posted by mnkywrch

Even Mike Brown could make that decision.

I wouldn't bet on it- I've been a Bengals fan too long and know better. :p

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by RaceGrrl
I wouldn't bet on it- I've been a Bengals fan too long and know better. :p

Hey, in four months I can start on the Carl Lindner cracks. :shakehead

[DaveL]

Originally posted by mnkywrch
A team not smart enough to extinguish a pit fire before fueling who had a terrible 2002 season...


But, but, they won* Indy in '96. That makes Hemelgarn and Buddy one of the best gul durn teams going, right? Big Ron told us at the banquet that they would have won had the EVIL CART boys shown up or not. Or do you mean to tell us that the win is relative to the level of the competition competing that day? If so, that tells us that it's not the track that bestows greatness on the event, it's the participants...something I argued on Speednet in 1996 and look how far that ever got us CARTisans.

Lord Sagamore springs for a couple of cars that no one else wants, and that's his charity to his loyal serf, Big Ron. I'm surprised The Savior even bothered with that much. Too bad he won't spring for engines too. The Chevy boys are paying full freight for their engines while the Fifth Columnists will be getting theirs for free. And if anyone things that the engines that will be available to Toyotasbitch Ganassi Racing will be available to anyone at a league set price, then I have big punch full of Kool-Aid for them to drink. I'd love to see AJ's reaction if he tried to get those engines from Toyota.

[JSR]

Why don't you think that Toyota would give the same engine to Foyt?

[DaveL]

Originally posted by JSR
Why don't you think that Toyota would give the same engine to Foyt?

They only deal with professional racing teams.

[JoeBob]

Originally posted by DaveL
They only deal with professional racing teams.

IIRC, Toyota is ensuring that all of their teams get the same engines. (Although not for the same price. Foyt pays, while Ganassi gets paid.)

Honda, on the other hand has set up a pretty neat little deal. AGR is the only team that gets the engines put together by Honda Performance Development, while the rest get the "out of the box" Illmors.

[DaveL]

Originally posted by JoeBob
IIRC, Toyota is ensuring that all of their teams get the same engines. (Although not for the same price. Foyt pays, while Ganassi gets paid.)


Toyota will ensure that everyone who leases an engine will get the same stuff. But, Toyota will not lease to everyone and therein lies the rub. If you buy a Toyota, which is something no IRL team has even attempted to do to the best of anyone's knowledge, what you get will not be what Pimpski and Floyd will get.



Honda, on the other hand has set up a pretty neat little deal. AGR is the only team that gets the engines put together by Honda Performance Development, while the rest get the "out of the box" Illmors.

And the only teams that will have Honda power are those who are crossing over from CART. The teams that comprised the IRL are SOL in that they have to pay full price for their engines and will not be able to get Toyotas or Hondas if these engines prove superior ro the Chevies. When Toyota joined the IRL, the rule was changed so they'd only have to supply a percentage of the field, not the whole grid.

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by DaveL
But, but, they won* Indy in '96. That makes Hemelgarn and Buddy one of the best gul durn teams going, right? Big Ron told us at the banquet that they would have won had the EVIL CART boys shown up or not. Or do you mean to tell us that the win is relative to the level of the competition competing that day? If so, that tells us that it's not the track that bestows greatness on the event, it's the participants...something I argued on Speednet in 1996 and look how far that ever got us CARTisans.


Dan Gurney was big in the 60's & 70's. Didn't help him much in the 90's, did it?

There's a million NASCAR owners who've found out the same thing - it's not what you've done in the ancient past, it's what you've done in the past year or two.

And that's true in open wheel, too.

As far as motors, IIRC, Hemelgarn's still a Chevy development team.

[DaveL]

Originally posted by mnkywrch
Dan Gurney was big in the 60's & 70's. Didn't help him much in the 90's, did it?


No it didn't because Toyota effed him over. Gurney did all of the development work for Toyota and was stuck with some of the worst engines to ever compete in the series. The team looked like an absolute joke and couldn't attract a decent sponsor as a result. Then when Toyota started to get halfway decent, Dan got the rug pulled out from under him as Toyota thanked him for letting his team be embarrassed by those piece of junk engines and gave Floyd $40 million. Nope, didn't help him at all. They did the same thing to Cal Wells.



As far as motors, IIRC, Hemelgarn's still a Chevy development team.

They will be paying full price for those engines. Compare that to Toyota and Honda buying their teams cars, paying the drivers' salaries, giving them money to spend time in the wind tunnel and otherwise providing every other resource it will take to win races. Chevy teams will get none of these perks.

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by DaveL
They will be paying full price for those engines. Compare that to Toyota and Honda buying their teams cars, paying the drivers' salaries, giving them money to spend time in the wind tunnel and otherwise providing every other resource it will take to win races. Chevy teams will get none of these perks.

They're paying full price to be a development team?

You positive about that?

It makes... no sense whatsoever.

As far as Wells and Gurney, apply the point I made earlier: would either have been in business without Toyota?

Wells got to the point where they were winning races, and they couldn't get motors from anyone else?

Makes no sense either.

[DaveL]

Originally posted by mnkywrch
They're paying full price to be a development team?

You positive about that?

It makes... no sense whatsoever.


You're reading too much into "development team". It still means that teams have to pay the cost of the lease, but they get the better engines instead of the customer motors. GM has never given anything away in the IRL. They make money off of those engine kits and that's they way GM likes it. Of course, the builders then turn around and resell the assembled engines way above the "mandated league price", which makes the whole notion of the sanctioning body determining the cost of hardware moot, but that's a different topic.



As far as Wells and Gurney, apply the point I made earlier: would either have been in business without Toyota?


None of which is to the point. You forget that Gurney got out of champ car racing altogether after the 1986 season and it wasn't because he couldn't get engines or didn't have the money. You're looking at the relationship the wrong way. Toyota needed a team to develop the engines and they used Gurney because of the relationship from the GTP program. Gurney did not use Toyota to get back to CART. Wells started as Arciero-Wells and they ran the '95 season with Hiro. They had 2 fully sponsored cars (Panasonic and MCI) during the development years and when Toyota started to improve they dumped the team. Wells was left with no engines after foolishly hitching himself to Toyota under the mistaken impression that Toyota would reward the team for being made to look like a joke.

But getting back to Hemelgarn, if we may, the rhetoric was that the lower cost IRL would make it so that teams like Hemelgarn could compete where they couldn't when CART ruled the roost. Forget what happened in CART, wrench. We're talking about the IRL and one of its flagship teams. It can't afford to compete this season, and this after we had to put up with Lemmings tell us that CART got too expensive and didn't do anything to control costs, while the IRL was making Indy affordable for the little guy.

It's must more IRL propaganda BS to cover the Big Lie which is being exposed more and more as each new event unfolds. Don't argue this with me. Argue it with the Lemmings who still think the IRL was created because racing at Indy had gotten too expensive thanks to CART.

[Racewriter]

The real problem is that IRL teams simply can't attract "non-leveraged" sponsorships at the new increased cost levels. Current IRL sponsors, for the most part, fall into one of three categories:

1. Companies that can't get into NASCAR - Toyota and Honda, Marlboro, Hollywood.

2. Leveraged deals - suppliers that do business with #1, or deals such as Johns Manville sponsoring Menard.

3. Companies that run a small IRL budget as an adjunct to a much larger NASCAR program - Pennzoil, Delphi, Chevrolet, Budweiser, Coors.

Companies which are in the "open market" for sponsorship (in other words, those that have the option to seek the greener pastures of NASCAR) are few on the ground in the IRL. In fact, Red Bull is the only one that comes to mind - and they began last year as a leveraged deal with TWR, and are cutting back to one car (from three at the end of the year). Harrah's left as soon as an IRL program got as expensive as a BGN program.

Teams like Hemelgarn and Boat, without an engine manufacturer's tit to suck or someone to leverage a deal, are out there competing with NASCAR teams for sponsors - and losing. When the "cornerstone" race of the IRL is the 20th most watched race in the USA, and the others draw 25% of the viewers of the cornerstone race, it ain't pretty.

[DaveL]

Welcome aboard R-dub.

The fact that the IRL races on so many NASCAR tracks makes the acquisition of sponsorship even more difficult. If a company wants to market to oval fans, and the fans that are in the NASCAR markets, it will sponsor a NASCAR effort. A sponsor can get far more value in terms of eyeballs seeing the logo by sponsoring a BGN car than it can an IRL car, Indy or no Indy, and the cost will be the same. No sponsor will spend the same money for less exposure, and that's why sponsors participate. Simply put, outside of an Indy one off which will get your logo seen on TV by less people than a typical NASCAR race, there is no reason to sponsor an IRL car.

And before you say, "Why should you sponsor a CART car?", I'll answer. CART races in markets that are not served by NASCAR and has a different demographic so there is no redundancy like there is with the IRL in NASCAR markets.

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by DaveL
And before you say, "Why should you sponsor a CART car?", I'll answer. CART races in markets that are not served by NASCAR and has a different demographic so there is no redundancy like there is with the IRL in NASCAR markets.

Sure, CART races in different markets not served by NASCAR - three Canada races, two Mexico races, two races overseas...

I'd say CART's two biggest markets in the U.S. are LA (two visits) and Chicago.

NASCAR visits both. (You could also argue they visit Miami, too.)

I mean, what's the typical NASCAR rating in Portland, and how does it compare to the typical CART or IRL rating?

I'd reckon the NASCAR rating is higher.

NASCAR's getting to the point where they're serving markets they don't even race in.

[JoeBob]

IIRC, there are significant differences between the NASCAR demographic and the CART demographic.

If you look at NASCAR and F1 as the extremes of the racing demographic, you'll find CART and IRL towards the middle, with CART closer to F1, and the IRL closer to NASCAR.

The best way to hit the "F1 demographic" on a budget in the US is CART. The best way to hit the NASCAR demographic on a budget in the US is BGN.

[Napoleon]

Originally posted by mnkywrch
I mean, what's the typical NASCAR rating in Portland, and how does it compare to the typical CART or IRL rating?

I'd reckon the NASCAR rating is higher.

Of course this sidesteps the demographic issue.

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by Napoleon
Of course this sidesteps the demographic issue.

NASCAR isn't exactly the "po boys drinking moonshine" demographic it's portrayed to be.

If anything, it's inching closer to CART & the IRL's demographic.

44% of CART fans make over 50K a year. 37% of NASCAR fans make over 50K a year. source (http://www.hire-speed.com/front.htm)

It costs big bucks, but I'd argue you get better ROI on those bucks than you do in either open wheel series.

One of the reasons the IRL is costing more this season is because everyone has to buy new cars. Guys like Billy Boat can't run last year's chassis with an update - he's got to buy a new chassis, and he's got to figure out how to compete with teams with triple his resources.

Then he's got to worry about where he's getting his motor from. No more running last season's motor.

Then, finally, he has to worry about being perhaps the 15th to 20th best driver on the grid.

[DaveL]

Originally posted by mnkywrch
One of the reasons the IRL is costing more this season is because everyone has to buy new cars.

I had a feeling that you'd bring this up and it's a specious argument.

I highly doubt that IRL teams are able to go three years without replacing cars due to damage from accidents. So, while it is true that everyone has to buy new cars this year, it's more than likely that teams had to buy new cars each year anyway (or at the very least after two seasons because I can't think of a full-time IRL team that hasn't had a car in at least one tub righting off accident) to replace those that are no longer raceable.

As for the markets, CART is racing smack dab in the middle of metropolitan areas that are not served by NASCAR. There is a reason why so many fans show up for these races, and it's not just because of the Tecate girls. In contrast, the IRL considers it an accomplishment to get 25,000 people to show up at a NASCAR oval, and a great victory when people actually use the tickets they had to buy along with their NASCAR tickets.

Bottom line is that when chosing between two series that race on NASCAR tracks, a sponsor will chose a NASCAR touring series over the IRL. CART has no such conflicts, save for a couple of races. They are not expecting sponsors to shell out money for their logo to be seen at the same exact tracks NASCAR races on.

And yes wrench, there are demographic differences. I'm not saying that NASCAR fans are the stereotype you've described, but anyone who's done the market research has identified the different demographics (NASCAR has far more appeal to women, for instance). That's not to say that one demographic is better than an other, or more high falutin', but they are different.

[Racewriter]

Here's a defense of the cost issue:

"Costs are up in 2003 primarily because teams have to buy new cars."

For this argument to be true, then costs to go racing in 2000 (the last time the equipment cycled) would have had to be approximately the same as they are in 2003.

Were the 2000 IRL entrants able to pony up $5 million to go racing? Doubt it strongly - teams were still running on $1.5 million at the time.

Therefore, the argument is untrue. Boat has been remarkably candid and consistent about the cost increase since last October, as have Sam Schmidt and Eddie Cheever. Some just don't want to listen.

[mnkywrch]

Originally posted by DaveL
I had a feeling that you'd bring this up and it's a specious argument.

I highly doubt that IRL teams are able to go three years without replacing cars due to damage from accidents. So, while it is true that everyone has to buy new cars this year, it's more than likely that teams had to buy new cars each year anyway (or at the very least after two seasons because I can't think of a full-time IRL team that hasn't had a car in at least one tub righting off accident) to replace those that are no longer raceable.

That wasn't what I was saying.

Let's use Panther and Boat in our example.

Panther buys new cars.

Hornish uses cars for a season. Some get wrecked and fixed, some get wrecked and turned into show cars.

But the season ends and they have leftover cars.

The next season, Panther buys new cars.

They sell their leftovers to Boat's team, who turns around, installs the update kit, and uses the cars.

So you've got some teams buying new cars every season... while some buy used cars every season.

The IRL's given their teams the double whammy of more expensive motors and new cars. Not good planning...

What's one reason so many guys are getting started in CART this season? Because spare cars are all around.

Last season in the IRL... what's one reason you had teams adding second and third cars at the end of the season and puffing up the car count? Because those cars were worthless after the flag dropped at Texas.

(Aside: I'd love an Indycar or Champcar tub. It would make a great sim cockpit. :) )

[DaveL]

RW wrote a rebuttal better than what I could have so I'll let it stand.

Remember, a sponsor looking for exposure doesn't mind buying new cars. They'll happily fork over the money if it means running up front. Boat lost a sponsor to a CART team and can't find one that is willing to buy him what he needs to run. Only the teams funded by the Japanese engine mfgs and the IRL teams that already had big money are sitting pretty for the upcoming year.

We were told ad infinitum that one of CART's failures was not being able to control costs. Well, right now the IRL is every bit the Japanese Welfare League CART was, and has done what the IRL supporters condemned CART for-pricing racing out of the reach of the smaller teams.

All of this is just one more piece of evidence that supports the assertion that the IRL was started because CART was making racing too expensive is just one more Big Lie among many that the IRL told its supporters.

[Ziggy]

This is a good thread. A tip of the hat to DaveL, Racewriter and Mnkywrnch.

On the demographic issue, I believe that not all racefans are NASCAR fans. From it's past history, the stock cars had a very important place in developing the pony cars. Pony Cars were all the rage in America in the early 70's. Skip forward a few years, into the mid 80's, and you would have seen a changing face of NASCAR racing. One that was driven by driver personalities. Most Autoracing Fan's that I know, and I will use Chicago for an example, would not walk across the street for a NASCAR race. Why? It is not what they want out of racing. They are not going to root for Dale in Brand "X" sponsored by Brand "D" anymore than they would tune in to Hee-Haw.

Since the rear engine revolution era, Openwheel has been less and less for the ham sandwich and six pack crowd. It has been about the refinement of technology, stressing endurance and difficulty. I think this has a big role in the demise of the oval crowd attendance. The 500 milers have kept some of the charm, being essentially endurance races (albeit at a very rapid clip and dangerous as hell) while the traditional oval races have slowly ebbed away. Add to this philosophy the split in the factions, and you have a big problem on your hands as to whom to sell the racing too.

So, in short, I don't buy the "well, NASCAR has a race in that market as well" for one reason alone. NASCAR does not trip EVERYONE'S Trigger in the "racing needs" department. I know it does nothing for me, and I believe there are hundreds of thousands who feel the same way.

Ziggy