CAUSING THE FIRST INDYCAR SPLIT! The Story of the Gurney White Paper (1978)
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- Опубликовано: 21 авг 2024
- Some splits and breakaways are caused because of TV rights, or the opportunity to make more money on top of already earning a lot of money. The Premier League, this Golf thing, European Super League whatever it might be.
But over in American Open Wheel Racing, Dan Gurney realised that the teams were not getting what they felt they were worth, and that it was the cars and drivers putting the bums in seats. So where's their cut of the money?
So- Gurney asked the other team owners to form a new union to try and get USAC to give them what they're worth. And when USAC wouldn't give it, they went and started their own series. And then that would be split up nearly 25 years later.
So what happened? Who is Dan Gurney and why is he so special? Let's find out.
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Screeches in Red Tailed Hawk because the Bald Eagle sounds like a drunk seagull in reality.
What the f*ck is a kilometer?????
@@F-Man meanwhile SVG in NASCAR:
Whit the feck is a mile????? 🥝🥝🥝🥝🥝🥝
ruclips.net/video/JQnwx10DT9o/видео.htmlfeature=shared
What is an Eggplant having to do with SVG?
@@captiannemo1587 … that’s a kiwi
I am actually sitting at the same desk right now where Dad penned the White Paper. He did not take advantage of the plane crash or Tony Hulman's passing. It was all already in the works. Dad put every penny back into AAR and his people to keep the race team alive and he wasn't too happy the way it was going. If you read the paper he mentions Golf, Baseball and of course Bernie in Formula 1. We still have the letter from the Hulman/George family that says Dad and AAR is not allowed to race at the 500. It would be difficult to name a bigger all around RACER than Dad. He wanted to raise all boats and see the sport flourish like he knew it could if the right people were in charge.
By the way, Spa wasn't the only win. He did win all three heats at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch with the Eagle in '67 and also had the German Grand Prix at the 'Ring almost won when the Eagle broke down two laps from the end with a 42 second lead. Happy New Year to all and thank you for remembering this.
Yeah, should have been clearer with regards to world championship and non championship races. Typically non championships don’t get counted.
Thanks for getting in contact, wasn’t expecting a family member to appear! 😅
I understand what you mean. But it just can't be dismissed as it was quite an accomplishment that I don't want anyone to forget and since Dad isn't here I am here to keep the record straight and stand up for him and AAR. @@AidanMillward
The eagle on the nose is something that was both amazing and always seemed to work so well in all the liveries where it showed up. AAR rarely if ever, put out a bad looking car on the track, to my mind, the 67 Eagle/Weslake is one o the best looking cars on the grid, beatn out only by the Ferrari or how good the cars looked in 67. Brands was non championship at that time however if I'm remembering right, so even though he won, it didn't count in F1's record books though, he only has one official win and more that F1 don't count as official wins, like how it is with sprint wins vs GP wins in 2023. Even so, Dan won four races in the Eagle/Weslake. That, given how the sport was in the late 60s, is an amazing feat, he beat a list of great racers to do so in F1and
I didnt know about this and found it interesting. I am sure Mike knows all about it but it was news to me. What I see is that your dad was a visionary not just as a driver, designer and owner but as a businessman. Happy New Year Justin and all of your family. Lisa
👍🏿
Gurney was the kind of guy that made you proud to be an American. Innovative, great driver and drove hard but clean. I never got to meet him in person but did get to see him race. I did get to know some of his friends and they spoke with great respect. Also he bulit his own unique motorcycle as well.
4:16 As someone who watches both NASCAR and Indycar and really dislikes the playoff system, I had an audiable groan when you said that 😂
Gurney was a very smart man. Imagine if he'd been fully listened to, and it had all stuck. I hope that the fact that he was very well respected by the rest of the F1 world (fans as well as teams) is known and understood by his American fans.
13:18 from what I gather the USAC & CART rules were pretty close when it came to the cars itself. However, in order to maintain interest in the (then) monthlong qualifying procedure, USAC had more-liberal engine rules to allow for more one-off race entries. While it DID allow some Indy-only teams like Team Menard to survive, it got blown up when Team Penske exploited a loophole (legally I might add) with The Beast.
Qualifying lasted two weekends.
The next year the lack of that engine destroyed Penske. They had the same engine as everyone else and had fallen behind in aero and chassis development. Qualifying became a nightmare.
USAC continued to have its own technical and sporting regs during the era when Indy was theirs and everything else was CART’s. They weren’t radically different for the most part, but there were some oddities that arose. For instance USAC introduced a pit speed limit several years before CART, used dual green flags for the race start, and had a general Keystone Kops feel to their race day officiating. But the most memorable difference is that USAC tried desperately to make production-based engines competitive with the DFX and its successors/competitors, so they offered more displacement and more boost to production based power plants. This is why you’d see the 3.5L pushrod Buick V6, essentially derived from the Buick Grand National’s engine, set lap records at Indy with the likes of Scott Brayton and Roberto Guerrero, then essentially vanish for the CART part of the season. CART allowed the extra displacement, but not any extra boost. But while they were fast in USAC spec for qualifying, the GM iron blocks were heavy and never meant to be put to such punishing use, so they would inevitably die spectacular deaths in the race. USAC eventually loosened the loophole a bit further and said for current purposes any engine with a cam-in-block, pushrod valvetrain counted as “production based.” John Menard took this as an invitation to build an all-aluminum version of the Buick V6, with some degree of success. Long Island machine shop owner Peter Greenfield built an aluminum V8 with his name in it and hired his son to DNQ it twice. But some guy named Roger Penske who happened to own a big chunk of Ilmor exploited this juicy loophole to the absolute fullest, eventually getting Mercedes to sponsor the project and badge not just this beastly engine, but also Ilmor’s 2.65L DOHC CART engine, which had previously been badged the Chevy Indy v8.
I remember when CART came to the UK at Rockingham. I think the recently late Gil de Ferran won the first year and Dario Franchitti won the second. I was there for both (early 2000's I think). It was great to watch these cars, the smell was totally different to F1 as they were running on a methanol mix (I think, I'm sure someone will confirm that). Good times!
As an American watching the races on tv at the time I can tell you that CART was smart. They adopted the USAC rules for the cars at the time. So CART cars were ok to race in both series.
When it comes to this “civil war” Gurney gets the pass. All focus was on Pat Patrick and Penske and Gurney, even though was the orchestrator, he’s not the bad guy. Gurney was always lived so we looked the other way. Love or hate Bernie but he made F1 what it is today, a giant. The racing, isn’t that great but you’ve got a healthy sport
This was the catalyst for the 96 split. Had it happened when Tony Hulman was still alive, it probably would have gone down very differently. Because USAC was able to treat the 500 as a super special separate entity from CART's whole organization, it gave a very naive Tony George the confidence to go it alone after his spat with the CART board. I don't fault Dan Gurney or Roger Penske for wanting a better deal for teams and drivers, but the way it ended up playing out created a future headache they clearly didn't see coming.
Fun fact: the Indy 500 winners between 73 and 76 are AAR, McLaren, AAR, McLaren
Also Jenson Button said that he had talks with McLaren about running non-ovals in 2020. The plans apparently fell apart due to you know what.
That would've been an interesting pitch, F1 champion in IndyCar
‘72 winner was a McLaren as well; just not prepared by the McLaren team. ‘73 was an Eagle Chassis built by Gurney but not prepared by AAR team but rather Patrick Racing.
RIP Gil de Ferran
The first split and the subsequent truce was well covered in the Indy Split book
4.3k to Moreno!!
The climb to 100k is slower than Roberto used to drive :(
Read the book, "Indy Split" by John Oreovicz. That'll fill you in for all the detail you were wondering about, Aiden. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada. And Happy New Year.
The crazy thing about USAC/the 500 was how it had a massive benefit for running a "stock block"- which was originally about using some "production" engine that was superboosted- generally that was a Buick V6 that were super fast and qualified really well, but never finished a race. That changed with Mercedes and Penske- who made one (sort of) and just dominated the '94 race. I'm betting that loophole helped the discontent for '96.
But also, when you look back to the '78 paper- way back then, you could not see the race live. The TV was shown later in the day. It wasn't until 1986 that the race was shown live. Crazy. I remember listening to the race on the radio, and it's absurd to think about it now that they had so many live sports on TV at the time, but not the most important race... Talk about missing an opportunity.
Which is the rule Penske exploited with the Beast, right?
Yes, pushrod engines were allowed more displacement and more boost pressure than non-pushrod engines.@@AidanMillward
@@AidanMillward Yes, because it allowed a pushrod configuration, More displacement (209.3 cid vs. 161.7) and higher boost (55 inHG vs. 45 inHG). Lead to the higher horsepower and torque .
@@AidanMillward Since the bias was to a pushrod set up- that was generally what American V8's always ran (it was ~1993 that Ford had a production OHC V8)- so the preference to "American" was always there. Part of the 1996 breakup.
In fairness though, even the NBA finals were on tape-delay in late 70's and early 80's...when we only had 3 national networks it was very easy for a "huge" sporting event to not be shown live on TV.
it's funny that you mentioned the differences between the cars at Pocono and Indianapolis in 1979 because there actually weren't any. After CART was formed and began their own series with most of the top teams and drivers, USAC still continued to sanction championship car races in 1979 with an abbreviated seven race season. Pocono stayed with USAC and was the only other 500 mile race that year outside of Indy (the 500 mile race in Ontario was originally going to be a USAC race before switching alliances mid-season to CART). None of the CART drivers or teams raced at Pocono that year except for Danny Ongais. Because of Pocono's proximity to New York City, Ongais' sponsors wanted him in that race and later he was fined $5000 by CART for his participation. With none of the "cars and stars of CART" racing, attendance at Pocono that year plummeted by more than half which lead to Pocono filing an antitrust lawsuit against CART for the boycott. in 1980, both USAC and CART reunified under the "Championship Racing League" banner and all of the teams raced at Pocono that June. However the following race at Mid Ohio in July, USAC pulled out of the CRL agreement and declared their season over while CART continued racing. In 1981 - once again USAC and CART held their own races and once again Pocono was part of the USAC schedule. Because Pocono's lawsuit against CART over the 1979 race was still ongoing and also not wanting to see another Danny Ongais situation, CART again boycotted the 1981 Pocono race, even threatening to suspend any driver for sixty days if they raced there. All of this lead to probably the most fascinating IndyCar race ever held - the 1981 Van Scoy Diamond Mine 500 at Pocono. the 1981/82 USAC Championship Car season was a mess - it started at Indy, then Pocono, then a few dirt races later that year before it was scheduled to finish the next season with the Indy 500. Somewhere around twenty CART drivers originally had planned to race at Pocono, but after CART announced the sixty day suspension for racing there, twelve of those drivers dropped out. That left Pocono with a huge problem of not having enough entries to put on a proper 500 mile race. To solve that problem - and this is mind-blowing - Pocono opened the entries to several front-engine USAC Silver Crown dirt cars. And eight of them entered, competing against several modern Championship cars plus a ragtag collection of ancient castoffs that may or may not have been pulled out of the IMS museum to round out the field. Unfortunately for Pocono - only around 25 thousands fans showed up for the weirdest open wheel race in history outside of the 2005 US Grand Prix and the debacle nearly bankrupted Pocono. But this race was also notable for two reasons - first it was AJ Foyt's 67th and final Indy Car victory when he took the lead just before that rains came and mercifully ended the race after a little more than 300 miles. And second - if you're saying to yourself "dirt cars in an IndyCar race? I have to watch this" - you are out of luck. There is currently zero video footage of this race anywhere to be found - only a handful of photos exist to prove this actually happened. From what I understand the race was not shown live, but a one hour highlight film was sent to NBC stations and shown several weeks after the race but that film remains lost to history. However it is believed that the IMS Museum does have a film of the race, but so far has not made it available. Hopefully someday we'll get to see this. As a footnote - in 1982 Pocono was awarded a second NASCAR Cup race after Texas World Speedway dropped off the schedule, and they did not plan to host an IndyCar race that year. Shortly before the '82 Indy 500 Pocono and CART resolved their antitrust lawsuit via a confidential settlement, and Pocono was a late addition to the schedule that year after CART agreed to rent the track and put on the race themselves.
15:49 We had that With Alonso in 2017… that rookietest video livestream was the nost populair livestream Indycar ever had …
Well, if were talking about motorsport splits, you should do an episode on the ALMS and Grand Am split of the late 90's.
Regarding race purses, several years ago Indycar started the Leader’s Circle program, where the top 22-25 teams running the full season get a bonus payout, at the expense of smaller purses for every race except the Indy 500. Recently it’s been about $1 million each, which helps those last half-dozen teams be able to run a full season. It’s almost to the point where the number of entries will have to be limited by the available space in the paddock.
At the end of the season, you’ll sometimes see teams on edge of missing out on the bonus replacing their regular driver with a veteran who might give the team the few extra points they need. That Leader’s Circle payout could be worth 20% of a team’s budget for the year, if they’re really doing it as lean as possible.
Some of the best content on RUclips,
Agreed 👍
Just wait till he hits 100k subscribers.
USAC tended to support more stock engines such as Buick with the turbo pressure. Cart tended to be more concerned with keeping the race balanced with more usual racing engines, like Cosworth and Ilmor Chevy.
But basically it was the same rule book, except for a few years.
Also, USAC was harder on people getting lapped.
The amount of parallels between USAC at that time and indycar right now is pretty wild
And NASCAR...NASCAR is in a bad position right now.
AAA still exists. When they dropped racing, they focused on improving driving conditions and standards
I feel like IndyCar today is in the same position as it was before the USAC-CART Split. USAC was incompetent with managing the series before CART took over
With all the bad news that has happened in IndyCar recently with Roger Penske and Penske Entertainment making bad decisions, it feels like history is repeating itself
Especially if Honda leaves, could a third split be in the making!? And if so, that would be most catastrophic!
How did Penske make bad decisions? I look forward to your answer....
American open wheel racing has been fraught with mismanagement from even prior to the USAC. When AAA ran American open wheel racing, they arrogantly opposed NASCAR, adopting an elitist attitude while emulate European style racing. NASCAR won that war.
Yeah, Bill France Sr. was (in)famously ejected from Indianpolis Motor Speedway. Forty-ish years later Bill Jr. presided over the first Brickyard 400...
There was a lot of hope and trust in Roger P when he purchased IndyCar. That hope has faded somewhat, folks were hoping for a lot more from Mr. Penske.
I am an American and lifelong racing fan who has followed both F1 and IndyCar. I don't like the comparison between the two because the philosophy behind and reason to exist behind each series is very different, in spite of the fact the cars have similar looks. F1 has always been about encouraging, innovating, and developing technology, while IndyCar has been (mostly) about going as fast as humanly possible while still being able to turn left. Yes, there have been periods of technology development in IndyCar (brought over from F1), but for the most part they keep banning technology when it becomes too good (Dan Gurney's BLAT Pepsi Challenger being my favorite example). You'd never see exotic fuels, the origination of carbon fiber use, and active suspensions in IC. That's why F1 has a global stage, while IndyCar does not.
Difference between Indy and Pocono set up wise - Indy is BASICALLY the same...same banking in the corners same lines. Pocono all 3 turns are different banks and radius. You can sacrifice 1 corner for the other 2 and still be good.
perhaps if Gurney had run the series instead of having a board things would have turned out different
You should actually talk more about the 2nd split because it is just as important as the Gurney White Paper - I have an interesting story about the meeting that took place inside the board room that caused the 2nd split, but it could be just hear-say -- even as interesting as it is
Already did like 4 videos on the second one.
The difference was around the engines. Different boost pressures and "stock-block" pushrods also allowed higher capacity. There were differnet rules around refuelling, yellow flags etc. Another one was pit lane speed limits started at Indy under USAC rules before becoming CART the next year.
One thing you have missed is how Aj Foyt hated CART, refused to join CART, and kept with USAC. He won in 1979 because of the lack of competition. This hatrid contiued, which is why he was pro-Tony George and Joined the IRL in 96.
I love the sport, but the modern Indycar is the poorer version of the USAC era*. I wish someone had the guts to do another white paper now.
*12 year old car. Honda threatening to leave, can't get a 3rd engine, poor attendance at oval races leading to being cut off and basically irrelevant outside the indy500.
Foyt Joined cart because he felt he was being screwed over by Penske and CART, and nowadays foyt is the back of the pack team under his and larry's administration.
And these engine rules was what Penske exploited to create their '94 omega-engine. Indy allowed stock-blocks (primarily so the poorer teams had something to race with) and CART didn't. Penske simply bent the hell out of the stock-block ruleset to create an engine that would only be legal for the 500 and nothing else. Wonder why they never ran that engine at, say, Michigan? That's why.
@@Vitosi4ek1 well in the race that is. They did test there
AJ wasn't so much anti-CART as he was pro-Hulman family. Tony Hulman had personally done several very helpful, altruistic things for AJ in Foyt's early career, and AJ was very appreciative. Consequently, because of that past treatment, and as a way of thanks, AJ remained super loyal to Tony Hulman, and by extension, the Hulman/George familys, even at the points when it was probably not in AJ's personal best interest to do so. But AJ's a stand up guy, so he'd do what he thought was best for the sake of Mr. Hulman, regardless of any consequences he incurred with continuing that loyalty. You have to admire that about AJ.
AJ Foyt only hated CART after the first split. He was a CART member through 1978 and supported Gurney's ideas but when they decided to form their own series he left the organization and sided with USAC.
I Hope we a video on the other Split original imsa ALMS and Grand Am.
My thought process (and opinion[s]) is that CART was a necessity but the sport had bigger problems that were going to manifest over time and that the prior split to form CART in Gurney's time in the first place and the seeming bitterness by the speedway and it's ownership (noted by how they tried to shut them out only to have it overturned in court by your video) were never going to completely go away. The product that CART had at the time of the second split was fantastic but it was wholly unsustainable and became even moreso because of the second split itself. I also feel that the second split has done irreparable damage to date because of the misdirections of Tony George and his supposed agendas. We've made progress since unification but a lot of the damage that came during that span has been incapable of being overcome.
The best way I can put it... the costs of the sport, like any form of racing, were unsustainable. Further, when the split happened it allowed for entities that were likely to sponsor the combined prior series more inclined to just pile in on sponsoring NASCAR, sponsoring something else (drag racing, road racing, etc.), or just walking away from sponsorship of anything in general. I don't care if it's NASCAR to CART/IRL/Indycar or F1... cost controls ALWAYS happen whether via caps or needs to make something spec-related for better or worse, etc. My opinion is that the sport had a better balance under the CART/USAC era because the speedway had it's packages and unique rules (i.e. see the Buick V6's that had faded from being a regular package in CART over time but were kept competitive at the speedway with different boost and pop-off valve rules for years -- hence people like John Menard kept bringing them back to the speedway year after year) but the cars were compatible to both series and put on great racing regardless of the circuit. Once IRL came about and they moved to the cheaper Dallara platform and the stock block NA V8's... the cars were tailored more to oval track duty and weren't as tractable or torquey on road circuits. So once Tony (George) backtracked from his oval-only series to trying to do his part to bury CART/Champcar and basically steal the teams out from under it, it was an inferior product that was eventually going to win out despite not being anything ideal to field a full oval + road series with. The cars just sucked to watch on road circuits during that time compared to the twitchy turbo V8's of the CART/Champcar era.
Even Champcar had to do similar when it became a spec series of Panoz chassised cars and Cosworth V8's but it was still by and large the old CART formula with some new wrinkles (i.e. push to pass, everyone on the same engine, no chassis or motor brand competition, etc.). I'll also argue that while Champcar had just modernized to a beautiful brand new car... it was this car and the lack of financial means by their teams because of NOT having the marquee event that was Indy on their schedule nor anything suitable to replace it in the American/global eye. The teams just couldn't afford to upgrade to the new car. As a result, the team roster began to shrink and if you're going to switch from continuing to patch up the old car you already had a financial investment in... you had a clear choice: Buy the new Panoz + the Cosworth engine deal and still not end up back at Indy or have that marquee event that the drivers, teams, and fans were passionate about and that drew in $ for funding the program itself or... just go buy one of the old Dallara's and run Indy and Indycar Series events instead knowing that sponsors would pay willfully to be out in front of whatever the crowd was in Indiana on that weekend. This led to a lot of Champcar teams just buying the aging IRL/Indycar Dallara's which had been around for awhile and were available and were relatively cheap overall. The new Dallara Indycar didn't come until after the reunification was done and in the end... while the turbo cars are much improved over the older V8's... they still aren't nearly as exciting as the old 2.65 Liter turbo V8's or the old turbo Buick V6's at Indy. It also failed on the plan of making it the path for USAC open wheel talents Tony had hoped it to be and it ultimately led to the same pathways that had become de rigeur since the CART era started. Cont'd:
I'll be honest... if Tony wanted an oval series that used USAC sprint, midget and Silver Crown/Gold Crown/Champ Car drivers (not to be confused with Champcar) to fill out the roster... the only real way to do that would be a more NASCAR-like effort at Indy and the other oval-only events. Tony would've needed to have doubled down and done his part to reverse things away from everything that had happened in the 60's on at the Speedway and abroad that led to mid-engined cars that developed aero and became decisively different than anything that USAC ran outside of it. You want it to be a hotbed for young American open wheel talents from the dirt and paved short track racing of USAC (which are all still front engine cars with no aero...) you basically need modern front engine roadsters at Indy. Otherwise, there was always going to be an argument that the mid-engine open wheel talents growing up through American open wheel series like Indy Lights, Star Mazda, Formula Ford, Skip Barber, Toyota Atlantics, etc. or global racing series like Formula Ford, F2, F3, etc. (straight to F1) were always going to have equal if not greater footing. Heck even those coming up through Sports Car racing with mid-engine prototypes with tons of aero had their opportunity. The only open wheel series in America with aero on that level were winged sprints (still front engine), Winged Super Modifieds (ditto), etc. Dirt driving with a wing didn't exactly translate to Indy and Super Mods are probably almost as close as you can get on an oval with front engine... but... add road courses on the schedule and few if any of the short track oval guys have much road racing experiences.
To be fair... I kind of would like to see what a modern front-engine roadster with less aero and mechanical grip to see what it could be like for an overall series. Similar to what NASCAR did that kept things primitive enough to keep costs down by relying on antiquated technologies for decades (even as engineering on those antiquated parts became stratospheric and ballooned costs leading to the eventual need to revise the cars leading to the Car of Tomorrow and subsequent next generation revisions) it could've been the very thing that pushed the talents from the short tracks to Indy and the other venues and been enough to divert away from what CART/Champcar had as a package while playing to the Americana heartstrings of the Nationalistic elder statesmen fans that clung to Foyt, Parnelli, and Unser and were like... "F you Arie!" (I'm not a member of that clan FWIW).
The problem, of course, is that part of the Indycar allure had been tied to technology and even while technology isn't exactly on the same level it once was nor anything like you find with F1 (Indycar had already begun reigning it in some going back to the 70's)... it's still a mid-engine missile on wheels that looks like something out of an alien planet. Putting Pandora back in the box probably wasn't going to happen with a modern roadster anymore than we were likely to see a full field of DeltaWing's at the speedway (arguably probably more likely since nobody penned a modern roadster and there was no talks of that as a direction; the DeltaWing had a lot of discussion enough to warrant it actually being built to road race). Cont'd:
That said, I think it ultimately was what led to this weird Indycar won without truly winning on what Tony set out or wanted to do. His grand plan... failed, even though he sort of won by default. Which IMHO is also part and parcel why he lost his position at the top of the organization and why the family eventually sold out vs. ever considering reinstating Tony again. His vision failed and while he succeeded essentially in putting Indy back in charge of the entire series... in the long game, not only did he lose his title and position at the speedway, he lost the track and the family sold out to a CART team owner that was part of the first split. Like I said, Tony George won in the short game... but only because CART/Champcar lost... while having the superior product (that was sadly unsustainable). They didn't lose from total mismanagement either. They lost simply because Indy, is the most important piece of that puzzle. CART/Champcar had no substitute. The U.S. 500 gaffe didn't help which is sad as Michigan was always a beloved event on the schedule. It's hard to sell the fans on Nazareth and Milwaukee and Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen, Cleveland, Palm Beach, etc. when everyone wanted to go to Indy. And to be fair... it's not like Tony didn't have similar failings with Disney, Texas, etc. It's just that he had Indy in his lap with a bow. That truly, in the end, was all he needed. Well, until he was uprooted by the family and the family eventually sold out. At which point you can argue that in the long game... the plan failed and they lost.
I feel having Roger Penske in charge today is a benefit overall to the sport but I feel like there's a lot to unpack and the hurdles are bigger than they've ever been. The gains back on trying to undo some of the damages that still lurk from the split is still a monumental challenge to overcome. And Roger, for all of his acumen, is only one man that at his age... likely can't do it all on his own. I'm not sure anyone else possesses comparable vision to what I think Roger has (today and evermore prior/future) but pushing 70+ he's going to be reliant on a lot of others to help push things in the right direction and they're all still a bit vulnerable to the state of motorsport in general. In North America... I kind of feel like even with NASCAR's seemingly wounded nature of poor decisions and their alienation of set in their way fans and the divergent pairing of the fanbase in general (a whole other discussion -- NASCAR didn't have to contend with this until they started repaving venues... at which point purists that wanted better racing were at the crossroads with American NASCAR fans that wanted the continuation of drama even if that meant butchering freshly repaved tracks to make them less side by side and lead to more bump and run, more Bowman-Gray style WWE on wheels driving)... it's still hard for Indycar to overcome NASCAR even in the shell of a state NASCAR is in IMHO compared to that 80's-2000's heyday. As such, the one that's made the most gains in America out of NASCAR's failings isn't Indycar... but F1. That's even with the FIA and F1's and FOCA's gaffe-a-tron amongst loyalist F1 fans watching the changes mount and looking on with "WTF?" eyes. I mean... ask the NASCAR fans that look at what Brian France's changes led to or ask any of the CART vs. Indycar fans their thoughts on the matter and you're going to get similar WTF reactions from different perspectives. The reality is that with F1 right now, even with the changes that old guard F1 fans from Europe grumble over... it's not doing enough to drive you completely away even as the new school fans from Netflix flip the turnstyles upside down in ratings and in attendance.
I was going to Indy car races at the time at Phoenix International Raceway (PIR), I think it's called Phoenix Raceway today and as far as I'm concerned NASCAR ruined the track. Any who's, the CART split was centered almost completely around money. At PIR to win the team would get around $1,000 - $1,200 at the time that was about 1 set of tires. Teams were hemorrhaging money, lots of small teams with 6 teams really able to win on any weekend. Those teams would be Penske (Penske), AAR (Eagle), McLaren (McLaren), Pat Patrick (Wild Cat), A.J. Foyt (Coyote), and Jim Hall (Chaparral). Everyone was changing over to the Cosworth DFX except Foyt who built his own engines for years before.
I don't think Indy car racing is really any better now compared to 1979. Back then we had different chassis' even different engine suppliers. Tom Sneva won Phoenix running a Dykstra Lightning in 1979 with a Drake Offenhauser engine. That was a couple year old chassis and even older engine. I would really like to see some life pumped back into Indy cars, add one or two chassis' one or two more engines and run the season until NOVEMBER!! The series ends WAY too soon.
Nascar own the track bud not indycar.
I'm with you on different chassis and engines. Not a fan of spec series.
@@alexmaccain2362 I know, though in 1979 it was a privately owned track. It would still be private for many more years to come.
Great video as usual. Very entertaining and informative. The best part for me was when the car had ABDICK written on it.
The USAC rules allowed for “stock block” engines to run higher boost pressures on the turbos.
So what that means is that some teams ran the Buick turbo v6 engine for Indy only to capitalize on higher boost pressure as it was based off of the production 3.8 liter v6 Buick engine.
I’m not sure if there were any other stock block engines. The Buicks were super fast, but unreliable unlike their road-going counter parts. The Buick was like a crackhead’s version of the DFV engine in that you were guaranteed to make the field with that engine if you had half a driver, but it was going to go boom by lap 100.
I think Dale Coyne used a stock block chevy engine around 1987 / 88
Indycar should go do a couple of oval or near oval races at Euro venues.
Did that back around the most recent turn of the century. While they worked fairly well, this was also right after the CART/IRL split, so not all of the teams were still with CART, so the fields were down and Bernie did everything he could to inhibit these races, through the FIA. Unfortunately, Tony used the Indy 500 to draw sponsorship and TV coverage away from the CART series, which actually hurt both CART and IRL on the international stage.
@@patlatorres7000 Yeah, I remember. Also it happened at the time of 911 and the German venue is where Zanardi's horrible ceash happened. It would be great for European fans to see speedway eacing again. Indycar already has several European drivers.
Great idea, I really support it. But IndyCar under Roger P seems more interested in a non-points race in the outback of Argentina. Go figure.
Bear in mind in 1978, the Indy 500 was not live on TV and would not be live for another 10 years, you'd get the Wide World of Sports treatment for it from ABC, lie flag to flag only came about in 1988 with ABC an how that happened is probably worth a video all on its own, it was live, however, on the radio. Indycar IMO has never really fixed its issues, Penske has the sport centered around the 500, and other races not being promoted well, or if at ll and it being on a multitude of platforms.
The press kit was, at least as I understand it mostly for the radio and news sides of itt having been told this by someone who worked at at Indy area radio station aroun the time, the quote was oh we would get the press kit and give it to our sports guys to talk about on the news casts, sort of deal, with it being different for the other USAC and CART races as well. Also for 19980, you had the whole saga of the Marlboro Championship Trail
So Gurney had USAC in a flap over his paper.
I'll get me coat......
Thank you for this informative video 👍
awesome video. Happy new year
Indy is awful at marketing, same with nascar, not everyone who wants to go to a race is a diehard fan, or watches their proprietary outlets or twitter feed; there have been races I would have gone to that I didn't even know existed until the highlights show up on youtube. All forms of racing would be smart to market their next few races at the end of any highlights and during other races, and through various youtubers channels, it would be so much less expensive than classic media marketing too.
Yeah, especially when not enough people even realize that it's the IndyCar Series and not just the Indy 500. To be honest, I probably wouldn't know much about it or be as interested in it as I am if I didn't grow up as a race fan in the Indianapolis area.
There's a big difference in tone between F1 and IndyCar's media presence - look at the production quality of the driver intro that leads every F1 Sky broadcast. You don't get that focus on the people in the sport from IndyCar.
I really dislike how commercial right are all over the place, I tried buying a WEC membership to watch race and it doesn't include Le Mans and another of the big race ... Errrm yah no pass !
Would like to see you do a story on the possible split in American sprintcar racing, between the High Limit series and the World of Outlaws
Max is going to go for a triple crown, I guarantee it. We're gonna see a Verstappen run in Indy. And WEC.
You are a dirt disturber mentioning playoffs.
I have seen the AAR Eagle at the Rev Museum in Naples Fla. It is a gorgeous machine and a man's car....Dan Gurney was a gracious and smart guy and his white paper showed he was a big picture guy. The problem is most of the Indycar world isn't always full of big picture guys
In the BBC coverage of the 1992 Italian Grand Prix James Hunt called CART/Indycar a glorified club series and the Indycar drivers a bunch of Amateurs
And that's when IndyCar was actually a threat to F1, now NASCAR ain't even scared of IndyCar, and IndyCar is on the verge of death IF Honda leaves
Schumacher said it was beneath him as well. Then admitted it scared the shit out of him.
The ads in Indy car make their television broadcast absolutely unwatchable. I don't know how anyone involved thinks that's a product that will grow. They're doing the absolute maximum amount of ad interruptions and types of advertisement that they possibly can get away with while still keeping their current viewers. If they added a single drop more they'd lose their core voters too. This means they're strangling their growth and potential. This cap and barrier of maximum ad revenueextraction freezes their current viewership and as they die or lose interest there's no one to replace them. There's no convincing anyone to go to race of they can't watch the season.
I just don't understand. You can't get drawn in or learn what's going on or follow and get updates on a battle or understand what they're cutting to if the screen suddenly shrinks and there's no announcers audio because they're playing the ad audio. How can you follow when they both shrink the screen and remove audio? There's no building of narrative and educating viewers on the series and the season. WTF? And practically every two to three minutes! Then, then there's the real kicker. They actually cut from the race completely and play ads on top of that in were gross like 10 minutes intervals on top of the barely blended 3 min interval ads! Though this isn't they much worse as the shrinking screen is basically the same as cutting away. Every three (what it feels like) minutes you listen to a minutes long ad. Screw that. It's literally an atrocious product on TV. I wouldn't watch any media that bad. Nothing. They are strangling themselves and they make a tighter knot the longer they wait to grit their teeth and address it.
I was talking to someone about the indycar ads thing and said that the BTCC is on all day and you get every support race. She said how do I watch all that with the ads in the middle and was staggered when I explained that the ads are in between the races instead of during.
Same for every sport shown in the UK now. ITV did do ads when it had the F1 but wouldn’t do it in 2024.
2008 dixon won.
These days it feels like IndyCar is spinning it's wheels pun intended. I go to the Portland race and I went to texas this year as well.
I feel like IndyCar can do better
Looks like the article I read was a year out.
Interestingly enough, Anglo American Racing had only one win, in Indy car All American Racers also had just one win.
Yeah but AAR built the Eagle chassis for Indycar, which had had a total 51 wins over the years.
@@hippyjason yeah but not for them tough
Nice try
@@MrSniperfox29wrong Bobby Unser drove for Dan Gurney on the factory Eagle team regardless if it was under AAR or a team sponsors name. He alone won multiple 500's. They won a hell of a lot more than 1 race with the Gurney.team. Customer Eagles along with McLaren dominated the sport in the mid 70's with the Eagles being chosen by more teams than the Mclarens. They won a fair share more with other teams too. The Samsonite team was still AAR just as it was still Lotus when the team was called JPS.
@@othgmark1 The fact you admitted it was not under AAR just proves anything else you waffled on about wrong.
All American Racers won ONE indycar race, that is an undisputed fact so please pipe down
@@MrSniperfox29 Wrong AAR won Indy, it won the California 500 at Ontario California for just 2. Bobby Unser was the contract driver for AAR from 1972 thru 1978 and won the entire championship in a dominant 1974. You couldn't be more wrong if you actually tried. He actually was the driver to beat during that entire era. He was the driver for AAR which is who he contracted with, not the sponsor. He went where Gurney went. Additionally the first 200 mph lap was set at Ontario was set by an AAR entry driven by Jerry Grant. Belittling AAR by trying to claim that they only one once ignores the facts and shows a lack of knowledge and research. The 1972 Eagle dominated the USAC series for most of that decade. All of those cars were built by AAR.
I can't help but wonder where Indycar would've been if there wasn't the second split in 1996, if Dan Gurney's White Paper was still in effect, if Tony Hulman's grandson didn't decide to be a total douchebag.
It might be at the level of popularity where NASCAR is today, with great social media outreach, ad presence, and the broadcasting rights over multiple channels and extensive coverage from 24/7 sports channels NASCAR currently enjoys
I’m my opinion it’s seems to me that NASCAR is nothing but bush league anymore while Indycar is legit but NASCAR has all kinds of money and they pay to get their airtime. To much Ricky Bobby like hyping of each race like the movie which I did go see but I was still a big follower nascar then. Now anymore the sanctioning body wants to do too much entertainment crap.
@@robertmusgrave9236basically modern NASCAR in a nutshell, it's terrible.
The X factor of a F1 driver in indycar could work, but only if he'll do well. Look at Romain Grosjean. Once he went to Andretti and his results became mediocre, there was seemingly less interest in it. Sure, the reasons were little bit diferent as to why Indycar popularity started to decline, but still, my point remains.
Biggest gold they ever struck there was Nigel Mansell. Fittpaldi and Andretti were long past their F1 peaks when they won the CART title, Mansell arrived as the reigning world champion and doubled up immediately.
@@azapro911 Exactly. The driver in question needs results like, or atleast close to, Mansell or Alonso (looking more at his 2017 Indy 500 effort)
The problem is that drive that good would likely just stay in f1. Like would a Indy team be able to provide a competitive contract compared to just staying in f1.
@@rexthewolf3149 Again I agree with that. I can't see Max, Charles or Lando for example switch from F1 to Indycar just because why not.
I think we are seeing the beginnings of a possible F1 split. One side keeps making green environmentalism the focal point. And the other just wants a traditional racecar series. Here we are doubling down on the 2014 regs. More electric. More packing batteries around. If the new regs don't transition smoothly, I think Red Bull will want out. And maybe Ferrari will side with them.
Why would Ferrari side against hybrids they have already started building hybrid cars.
Also RedBull has that Ford deal which is all about battery development. There also the fact due to the cost cap the teams are profitable and rocking that boat would not be worth it for any involved.
Ferrari is racing in WEC with a v6 hybrid based on their current road car. Car Manufacturers have based their future futures on electrification. So there was no chance that the hybrids would go anywhere.
This is the standard EV supremisist reply. EV sales have fallen. EVs have a place as a niche but are not taking over for ICE.
@@rexthewolf3149 The same was said about CART et al. The money was big then too and it didn't stop them from ruining it. Ferrari won't be happy when Mercedes runs away with it again after 2026 thanks to complicated and expensive hybrids
Gurney took advantage of Tony Hulman passing away and the airplane crash. Pretty much over night you had lost the sports top personnel which just lead to another split