Open wheel racing in the US to be decided today...

[boyRacer]

Text

Its still going on right now... i believe its being broadcasted on speedtv... dunno. it doesn't look good for Tony George... and as much as i hate the guy and the IRL... i would rather have one series... but prefer that they go on road courses and not be stuck on ovals.

 

[opticalmace]

Go OWRS!!!

 

[boyRacer]

The thread at the speedtv.com forum says...

The sale of CART's assets has been approved to Open Wheel Racing Series with no stipulations attached.

So they live another day eh?...

 

[GreenGhost]

I don't know how the split happened in first place, but what always intrigued me was that after the split IRL was for American-born drivers only, while Cart was all foreigners, plus 3 or 4 Americans. Was it only the total lack of interest on the all-oval racing series, or were there other issues.

In a similar context, I saw some dumb comments from Nascar people on TV (no clue who they were), where they were totally against a foreign manufacturer. How do you prove you're the best if you refuse to compete?

 

[opticalmace]

woooohoooo!

 

[boyRacer]

Well... IRL was born because supposedly... CART did not give the locals a chance... so they're going back to american racing roots and stuck with ovals... and took away the Indy 500 from CART. :frown: Which more than likely ended up into this because of that one race... since most of the famous CART teams switched over to IRL due to their sponsors wanting to race at the Indy 500. Funny thing is... if you look at the IRL drivers now... there's almost no more americans there either...

I still get to go to a Long Beach race in April. :beer:

 

[GreenGhost]

It's really a pity the way some people think (and act). While there's nothing wrong with helping the locals, keeping competitors away just reduces the local competitiveness. It's like a good downhill skier in Chile calling himself World Champion without actually competing with Austrians, etc.

For the past 15 years (or more) the US has not produced many world class drivers. The growth of Nascar has been great for many people, but like the skier in Chile, that does not give much credit to the drivers. I'm sure there's talent out there...

 

[ElFenix]

IRL was a cost cutting measure, pure and simple. sure, it did create a bit more autonomy for the teams from the engine manufacturers (CART's engines are all licensed, not bought), but mostly it brought the price of a car down from $1 million to about $100,000. thats not as cheap as a winston cup car, but stock cars are the land yachts of race cars.

 

[gsellis]

On IRL, the real reason is that Tony George is a crybaby who got mad because CART, then Indy Car, refused to let him control the organization. So he took his track and went home to do IRL. At least NASCAR turns right at two races.

Go OWR. Unfortunately, it does look like the US cannot support two formula series.

What really annoys me is Bernie gave Tony the USGP. I still want to go, but it annoys me.

 

[Triumph]

All politics aside, I vote for whatever league will give me something besides oval racing. If I want to watch cars go around a 2 mile loop for 3 hours, I'll watch Nascar.

 

[boyRacer]

NASCAR benefited from all of this... fans from both IRL and CART got sick of the drama and went somewhere else...