on june 30, 2009 anton hulman george formally resigned as ceo of the indianapolis motor speedway and the indy racing league.
[opinion mixed with fact]
george was the singlemost factor in nascar being as popular as it is right now. in 1995 the ppg indycar world series was around the same in ratings as nascar domestically, but internationally challenged f1 in superiority. indycar was so world renowned that the current world drivers champion at the time nigel mansell left f1 for indycar and promptly won the ppg cup in his rookie season becoming the only man to hold the world drivers championship in f1 and the indycar world championship at the same time for about a week when the f1 season concluded the next week. north american open wheel racing was BIG. so big that other than the race at the gold coast of australia, the series was forbidden by the fia for holding a road course race outside of north america. the aussie race was grandfathered into the decision.
if not for anton george and his splitting north american open wheel with his irl (and simultaneously holding the indy 500 hostage by having his splitaway series of has beens and never weres running the prestigeous event) open wheel racing would still be very popular today. since the split in 1996 the indycar world series (which became formally known as Championship Auto Racing Teams [CART] and then later the champcar world series due to trademark issues with ims) has had little success domestically with confusion about what the series was and had lost or rather had its identity stolen from it by the power play from george. internationally it was still big but the loss of identity at home severely hurt its image abroad. eventually CART went into bankruptcy and its assets were bought up by another organization called champcar.
heavily editorializing here, it's my belief that the key head of champcar had every intentions of reconciling with george when the best thing to do was make champcar better. by this point it had been 10 years of league racing and it had yet to turn a profit and simply burned the george family trust fund. the league has STILL not turned a profit yet to this day, and this is even including the 500 as its best known asset. five years after this bankruptcy which was last year, the heads of champcar sold out to george.
those of you who followed racing of all kinds may remember how much hype there was about there finally being unification. the only problem was that anton was still in charge. and his league had never turned a profit. adding in the roster of champcar drivers and teams was not going to turn around the league. the reason for that was that the fanbase at the time of the split was irreparibly split and the decisionmaking from the leads of both organizations rated from bad to gawdawful. both series were losing fans at a good rate.
at the time of the sellout, i can tell you that the champcar fans were not coming back because anton was in charge, and there was not much of a fanbase left for the league because it had strayed from its principles of being for the american dirt track racer getting a shot at indy. they hated foreign drivers, ride buyers, international racing, road and street racing and roger penske especially. what they have now is 5 americans in a field of 20-22, and foreign drivers who are racing only because they have money (milka duno is the perfect example), and team penske is one of the celebrated teams in the league. the fanbase now is only down to its fringe lemming core who if anton said jump, they'd ask how high.
last year's 500 which was the first 500 with only one domestic open wheel series slightly gained viewers from 2007 which was rain shortened. it was down from the 2006 race. THIS year's 500 with virtually no competition and no rain delays in indy lost viewers from last year and was down from the 06 race. anton had to go and the real tragedy is that he took down a prestigeous race to satiate his ego even though he knew nothing about the racing business.
as for why anton split the series in the first place, others can tell the story better than what i can, but the gist of it was that in 1993 or 94 anton went to the indycar board of directors (which were all of the team owners in the series) with a proposal- that he take over control of the series and that he base it around the 500. the team owners get a portion of the sale money and nothing after that. he was promptly laughed out of the meeting, but to appease the idiot in charge, he was given a non-voting seat on the board. he stayed on a year and then quit. later that year he announced that nascar winston cup teams were doing tire tests there in anticipation of a winston cup race at indy as a threat to the owners, which is essentially why there is a brickyard 400 now. this was all about power for anton, not any of the all american, all oval, low cost bs he said when he started the league. it looks a lot more like champcar than it did of his "vision".
[/opinion mixed with fact]
open wheel racing is still not better at this point. i think that it will only get better if the league restructures itself in the offseason to be less indy-centric. the best option would be for the indy racing league dies and something else takes its place that was not champcar and was not indy car.
btw indycar (1979-1996 and arguably 2003 which was the end of CART) ≠ indy car (2005-now). one having a space and the other not was intentional.
[opinion mixed with fact]
george was the singlemost factor in nascar being as popular as it is right now. in 1995 the ppg indycar world series was around the same in ratings as nascar domestically, but internationally challenged f1 in superiority. indycar was so world renowned that the current world drivers champion at the time nigel mansell left f1 for indycar and promptly won the ppg cup in his rookie season becoming the only man to hold the world drivers championship in f1 and the indycar world championship at the same time for about a week when the f1 season concluded the next week. north american open wheel racing was BIG. so big that other than the race at the gold coast of australia, the series was forbidden by the fia for holding a road course race outside of north america. the aussie race was grandfathered into the decision.
if not for anton george and his splitting north american open wheel with his irl (and simultaneously holding the indy 500 hostage by having his splitaway series of has beens and never weres running the prestigeous event) open wheel racing would still be very popular today. since the split in 1996 the indycar world series (which became formally known as Championship Auto Racing Teams [CART] and then later the champcar world series due to trademark issues with ims) has had little success domestically with confusion about what the series was and had lost or rather had its identity stolen from it by the power play from george. internationally it was still big but the loss of identity at home severely hurt its image abroad. eventually CART went into bankruptcy and its assets were bought up by another organization called champcar.
heavily editorializing here, it's my belief that the key head of champcar had every intentions of reconciling with george when the best thing to do was make champcar better. by this point it had been 10 years of league racing and it had yet to turn a profit and simply burned the george family trust fund. the league has STILL not turned a profit yet to this day, and this is even including the 500 as its best known asset. five years after this bankruptcy which was last year, the heads of champcar sold out to george.
those of you who followed racing of all kinds may remember how much hype there was about there finally being unification. the only problem was that anton was still in charge. and his league had never turned a profit. adding in the roster of champcar drivers and teams was not going to turn around the league. the reason for that was that the fanbase at the time of the split was irreparibly split and the decisionmaking from the leads of both organizations rated from bad to gawdawful. both series were losing fans at a good rate.
at the time of the sellout, i can tell you that the champcar fans were not coming back because anton was in charge, and there was not much of a fanbase left for the league because it had strayed from its principles of being for the american dirt track racer getting a shot at indy. they hated foreign drivers, ride buyers, international racing, road and street racing and roger penske especially. what they have now is 5 americans in a field of 20-22, and foreign drivers who are racing only because they have money (milka duno is the perfect example), and team penske is one of the celebrated teams in the league. the fanbase now is only down to its fringe lemming core who if anton said jump, they'd ask how high.
last year's 500 which was the first 500 with only one domestic open wheel series slightly gained viewers from 2007 which was rain shortened. it was down from the 2006 race. THIS year's 500 with virtually no competition and no rain delays in indy lost viewers from last year and was down from the 06 race. anton had to go and the real tragedy is that he took down a prestigeous race to satiate his ego even though he knew nothing about the racing business.
as for why anton split the series in the first place, others can tell the story better than what i can, but the gist of it was that in 1993 or 94 anton went to the indycar board of directors (which were all of the team owners in the series) with a proposal- that he take over control of the series and that he base it around the 500. the team owners get a portion of the sale money and nothing after that. he was promptly laughed out of the meeting, but to appease the idiot in charge, he was given a non-voting seat on the board. he stayed on a year and then quit. later that year he announced that nascar winston cup teams were doing tire tests there in anticipation of a winston cup race at indy as a threat to the owners, which is essentially why there is a brickyard 400 now. this was all about power for anton, not any of the all american, all oval, low cost bs he said when he started the league. it looks a lot more like champcar than it did of his "vision".
[/opinion mixed with fact]
open wheel racing is still not better at this point. i think that it will only get better if the league restructures itself in the offseason to be less indy-centric. the best option would be for the indy racing league dies and something else takes its place that was not champcar and was not indy car.
btw indycar (1979-1996 and arguably 2003 which was the end of CART) ≠ indy car (2005-now). one having a space and the other not was intentional.
