Comments on: Why They Should Say No To Tony George

By: billytheskink

billytheskink — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:39:10 +0000

I intended for my statement to be taken at face value, nothing more. Buzz Calkins as an allegory for what ails Indycar was not something I ever expected to read.

By: Chris Lukens

Chris Lukens — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:01:57 +0000

Are you trying to say that Buzz’s background was not SCCA Formula V / Formula Ford or that the team was not financed by his father’s grocery store chain? I had the pleasure of meeting Buzz a few times when I had friends who competed against him in SCCA. He was truly a nice guy. I was actually very happy for him when he had success in the IRL, but that doesn’t change the story. Is there anything else in my reply that you take issue with?

By: billytheskink

billytheskink — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:08:32 +0000

Tony George may have become a wiser businessman, he may intend to own but not the lead the sport, he may have a great plan making money on Indycar. While I don’t think any of these things are likely, they are certainly possible.

But none of that matters, because Tony George is badly damaged goods. His return to the sport would, more than anything else, simply make already irritated owners and long-time fans angrier.

I don’t know if Tony George’s bid for Indycar is based on a solid business plan or an interest in getting a toy back. Despite my expectations, I really don’t know that he isn’t capable of running this sport better than it currently is run.
What I do know, though, is that I do not want to see him involved in owning and operation Indycar ever again. When you’re first chance is a decade-plus of pain and anguish, you shouldn’t expect anyone to want to give you a second.

By: billytheskink

billytheskink — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:53:12 +0000

This is one of the strangest references to Buzz Calkins that I have read.

By: Vic

Vic — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:24:21 +0000

Anton was a young cat when he got the keys to the castle. Now he’s an old dog. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Oh, and now he won’t have mommy’s checkbook. Bad idea!

By: Chris Lukens

Chris Lukens — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:18:05 +0000

I’ll start by saying that I supported the IRL from day one, but I am also a huge fan of Randy Bernard for what he has accomplished in the last few years. So, I don’t know what is going to happen, but I can tell you what I hope really does happen. I hope all of the people that have threatened ( about umpteen million times now ) to leave and never come back if anybody from the original IRL is put into a position with any authority; I hope they actually DO LEAVE …. and they take their framed pictures of Dan Gurney and their leather bound copies of the White Paper with them.
And for those that say this would kill Indycar, open your eyes, Indycar is killing itself now. At least we would have a consolidated fan base from which to grow the series. Without all of the constant bickering and backstabbing I think the series would start to gain fans, venues, and sponsors again.

What has been left unsaid in all of the reporting on this is that there is civil war going on inside Indycar, just like the early ‘90′s, and for basically the same reasons. We won that war once, it appears that we need to win it again.

How many major league sports are built around a single defining event. Soccer has the World Cup. Football has the Superbowl. Baseball has the World Series. And, of course, racing has the Indianapolis 500.
How popular do you think the SuperBowl would be if over half of the games leading up to it were Australian Rules Football and over 75% of the competitors were from Australian Rules teams.
How popular do you think the World Series would be if over half of the games leading up to it were Cricket matches and over 75% of the competitors were Cricket players.
Do you think those events would have TV ratings between 3 & 4 ( instead of what they get now)?
Do you think the games leading up to the big events would have TV ratings between .1 & .5?
Do you see a parallel?

European Football ( more precisely Futbal ) and American Football are both called football, but they are fundamentally different.
Oval racing and road racing are both called racing, but they are fundamentally different. The cars are different, the tracks are vastly different, the way they are raced are different, and the drivers mindset is different, i.e., “I don’t care about sector times, I just want to be in front of that other guy”, or ”I don’t care about fastest lap, I just want to lead the last lap”, etc.

When a road racer won the 1996 Disney 200, I suspected the fix was in. He used Daddy’s money to buy the best equipment in the pits. I kept hoping it was an aberration. It wasn’t. He showed the way for the second tier road racers to do to the IRL what the top level road racers had done to CART. Outspend everybody else ( using OPM ), until every one else was driven out of the sport. These guys had destroyed F-5000, the USRRC, Can-Am, Trans-Am and had nowhere else to race. They looked around and saw the Indy 500 and their eyes lit up with dollar signs. They thought they had found a bottomless pit of dollars to fund their equipment purchases. Reread the White Paper, it was pretty much an attack on the Indy 500s checkbook. This has led us directly to where we are today. Because we are now running out of OPM, we have cars that are too expensive, sanction fees that are too expensive, drivers that are to expensive ( unless they use OPM to bring a check ) and a dwindling fan base.

I am a long time race fan. The first race I saw that I actually knew what was going on was at the now long gone New Bremen to watch a USAC sprint car race. I was hooked. Two years later I went to the 1962 Indy 500. My greatest fear is that Indycars are just going to wither away. I’ve prayed to God that it doesn’t happen, I know He has more important things to worry about, but I did.

This reply is way too long and has wandered too far afield from Georges original post, so I am going stop writing.

By: Don Cusick

Don Cusick — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:54:19 +0000

Things have never been the same since the USAC/CART/IRL debacle. I have been an IndyCar fan since 1964 and vividly remember the excitement of many a month of May. (now two weekends in May unfortunately). I would love to see a return to it’s glory days, but like lots of things, they just aren’t developing legends like they used to.

By: sejarzo

sejarzo — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:45:39 +0000

What “the board” can do with respect to a major divestiture is advise Mari, and little else. If she wants TG to own the series, that will happen at some point. As much as I respect the H-G’s for the way that the family has maintained IMS as a facility and the 500 as a tradition, it’s clear that there’s far too much infighting that will always hinder growth. The number of comments on twitter that effectively say “If I were Randy, I’d tell those crazies to go etc. etc.” suggests that I’m not alone in that opinion. I’d rather see IMS and Indycar transition gracefully to a new ownership group that would run the new organization as a real business. Anything less than that will fail in today’s economy.

By: Carburetor

Carburetor — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:56:42 +0000

Selling to Tony George would make no sense for the board to consider. I know the argument that with enough money anything is for sale and perhaps this may be so in this case, but it would seem to me (IMO) that with all of the emphasis that the Hulman’s place on tradition (they agonize over whether to substitute singers for an ailing Jim Nabors for pete’s sake…), selling the series to a group of investors that are not that interested or vested in racing would seem counterintuitive to sustaining the 500, because it would put the event at great risk. It seems to me that they value control (which they should), so ceding that control, even at great profit, would indicate they no longer are as committed to the 500 as the premier open-wheel race in the world–and this seems unlikely. If money concerns are a lingering issue, there are other strategies they could employ–such as bringing on limited partners for additional cash infusion, but without losing controlling interest. The key of course would be that the series must eventually be profitable as an investment–or make the 500 event even more lucrative.

It is a shame that this type of distraction is occuring at this time since all efforts need to be on strengthening the series with fans, media coverage, sponsors, more competitive team-building, and manufacturers. Trying to appease some spoiled person’s attempts at being ‘king’ again must be really annoying to the board–it certainly is to this race fan.

By: JohnMc

JohnMc — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:53:10 +0000

George, this episode of the “Continuing Saga of Tony George’s Quest to Run IndyCar” is now over and I couldn’t be happier. Curt Cavin reported that Apex Brazil is “increasing” their involvement with the series and that tells me that they had to have a serious commitment from Randy AND the BOD to go forward with this. All good news.

By the way, I think that we can pay no more attention to John Barnes ranting about this, too.