Both of last weekend’s Indycar and NASCAR races featured fierce, side-by-side duels to the flag, with Hélio Castroneves shading new IRL champion Scott Dixon at the Chicagoland Speedway and defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson beating Tony Stewart in a similar battle on the tighter, slower Richmond Raceway in Virginia.
In the TV ratings, NASCAR blew away the Indycar race, as always of course. “That’s probably one of the greatest races I’ve ever had here at Richmond, racing like that with Jimmie with 15 laps to go,” remarked second-placed Stewart about his battle with Johnson.
At the Chicagoland track, Castroneves and Dixon were equally enthusiastic and complimentary about their wheel-to-wheel contest, but the sad truth is few people in America care. Unification of the IRL and Champ Car has at least cast Indycar racing in a favourable light this year, but the American public and media continue to be transfixed by NASCAR.
For example, USA Today, the country’s leading national newspaper, did not send a reporter to cover the IRL championship decider. Nor did Chicago’s two leading papers, the Tribune or Sun-Times, send their motor sport writers to the race. The American media was focused instead on Richmond where the 12 qualifiers for NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup were being determined.
Without doubt, one of the factors in this sad state of affairs is that NASCAR is jam-packed with American boys while the days of American open-wheel or international drivers seem to have disappeared. The highest-ranked American in this year’s IRL IndyCar Series was Danica Patrick in sixth place, while Marco Andretti finished seventh in the points ahead of Ryan Hunter-Reay. The only other Americans regularly racing Indycars this year were Graham Rahal, Buddy Rice, Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV. And Japanese driver Hideki Mutoh won the IRL’s rookie-of-the-year award, beating Brit Justin Wilson and Aussie Will Power. Jimmy Vasser was the last American to win a CART or Champ Car championship back in 1996, and while Sam Hornish won three IRL titles, the most recent with Penske in ’06, Hornish moved to NASCAR this year, of course.
We’ve whined on and on for years in America about the decline of our domestic talent in Indycar and international racing, and the recent passing of Phil Hill has emphasised the irrefutable truth of how far the United States has fallen off the map of worldwide motor racing. In the ’60s we had the likes of Phil, Dan Gurney and Richie Ginther racing in both F1 and international sports cars, as well as race-winning Cobra, Ford and Chaparral sports car teams. In the ’70s we enjoyed the worldwide exploits of Mario Andretti, Peter Revson and Mark Donohue.
But the stark fact is an American hasn’t won a Grand Prix in 30 years since Mario’s last victory in the Dutch GP at Zandvoort in August 1978. In fact, Eddie Cheever aside, the United States has been without a regular presence in F1 over most of the past three decades. Indeed, following Michael Andretti’s failed season with McLaren in 1993 and Scott Speed’s brief, more recent flirtation with F1, courtesy of Red Bull, the likelihood of any more Americans racing in F1 appears to be zero, unless Graham Rahal somehow makes the leap in a few years.
The fact is, America’s race-driving talent heads at an early age to NASCAR these days, and unless the IRL can find a way to create a new generation of champion American drivers, Indycar racing will continue to languish light years behind NASCAR.
It really comes down to marketing. As a native to the U.S. I see it first hand. Due to massive marketing schemes NASCAR has become the leader in American motor sports. A good friend of mine flew down to Atlanta a few years back to join myself and others for Petite Le Mans, when he was seated he struck up a conversation with the young lady next to him. She asked why he was heading to Atlanta, and he informed her because of a race, she immediately said “Oh NASCAR?” This young lady knew nothing about motor sport, but she did know NASCAR. Which brings me to my point; there are racing fans and NASCAR fans. You can be both, but it is rarely the case. And in a country where girls diet excessively and guys strive to be like Justin Timberlake because the magazines and TV say he is cool, you will never see anything else.
It’s a crying shame that the IndyCar series has such a mountain to climb. That race Sunday was fantastic, and I really enjoyed this year overall. (After not following either the IRL or ChampCar much the last couple of years…)
It’d be nice if Scott Speed were to get a good offer in the IRL rather than being primed for climbing the NASCAR ladder.
When a driver can make telephone numbers tooling around near the back in NASCAR, where’s the attraction in this modern age of climbing the greasy pole of single-seaters?
Can you blame them?
All boils down to money – salaries, sponsorship, prizes.
And as far as TV goes, NASCAR is WWE wrestling with wheels – easily identifiable good and bad guys, a spectacular, gladiatorial sport. By comparison IRL, Grand Am and ALMS are five-day Test cricket – a relatively refined form of entertainment that needs time and background understanding to appreciate.
NASCAR wasn’t made for TV, but it was very easily packaged for it.
As an American, I can attest to the NASCAR juggernaut. I can also say that it too is waning from the halcyon days of yore. Perhaps even our short attention spans and penchant for left-turn-racing has begun to wear thin and the mobile billboards are starting to lose their luster. When, truly, was the last time you saw the “car of tomorrow” with a carburetor?
Messrs. Ecclestone and George have discovered that the “build it and they will come” mantra is not really true in America. It takes more than that to attract a crowd (blood usually helps and a pop-tart socialite in rehab isn’t bad either). Not even Max Mosley’s tawdry actions with Woman #5, whips, bleeding bums and tea made it to any real mainstream media for very long. What does it take to get our attention!
Well, I am an avid F1 fan but I must say that I think the ALMS series is really starting to do things correctly. I know their viewership is not large but they have been steadily growing and attracting great talent and Manufacturer’s to the sport. The interest is starting to hit the radar screen with Chevrolet battling the Aston’s and the Audi domination being challenged by the Captain and his Porsche’s in a completely different class.
NASCAR, for all its glory, has become contrived and F1’s elitist nature doesn’t sit well with many but ALMS is humble, real racing that involves men and women who love one thing…racing. No Michelin tire debacle, industrial espionage scandals, Spanking scandal and no free-passes to those who have dragged the F1 moniker through the mud. No, just simple beautiful racing in all its complexities. Not contrived or staged, just running for running sake and the right to say we came, we ran and we won. Thank you Don Panoz. Let’s hope that we Americans don’t find a way to ruin this.
Agree strongly with Negative Camber that ALMS is “real racing” that’s accessible, sportsmanlike and exciting – and the average punter can get close up with the cars and the teams right up to the start of the race. Grand Am is more of the same, I’ve never felt closer to the action than when I’ve been spectating at GA and ALMS sports car racing.
I think NASCAR has a lot to learn from its little brother GA about keeping it real and keeping it relevant. I hope the controlled diversity of GA is the future in the whole France empire, not the stultifying uniformity of the two CoTs. There’s too much dull one-make racing on this side of the Atlantic, let’s not let the USA fall victim to the same thing ;)
All else aside, how about the (non existent) media coverage of Phil Hill’s passing?
Sport in a the USA is showbiz. NASCAR has moulded itself to fit.
The saddest decline of all is simply how NASCAR is setting a new precedent
by creating all kinds of artifices to appeal more to the mainstream – the Chase, the free pass, the green white checker. My worry is that other series will be forced to follow suit. Already this year there’s been pressure on the IRL to introduce GWC finishes after *two* (count them!) consecutive yellow finishes. Lest we forget that NASCAR spent it’s first fifty years finishing under yellow and nobody seemed to mind.
The only hope for other series is that maybe some sponsor will get tired of spending millions to win nothing in NASCAR and sees an Indycar or F1 deal as providing more wins-per-buck, but even that seems unlikely given the clamour to sponsor absolutely anything to do with NASCAR (in English it’s the Pre-race show, in NASCARspeak it’s the ‘Discover Card Countdown to Green’). The only other option must be targeting sponsors and manufacturers who don’t want the ‘NASCAR Dad’ demographic. Getting rid of the USA GP wasn’t the smartest way to start though was it?
Agree with much of what Negative Camber said. As a fellow American, I would also make the point that racing in any form, even NASCAR, is considered a niche sport because of the preoccupation with stick and ball in this country. In fact, many sportswriters in the U.S. don’t consider drivers to be athletes. I speak from 15+ years in journalism, and it shocks me when I hear it.
Additionally, NASCAR’s fans have a negative stereotype about them, the “Ricky Bobby” image, which whitewashes many people’s vision of all motorsport.
Both issues are difficult to overcome, especially considering Tony George’s seeming inability to market his product.
It’s worse for F1, a sport which traditionally feels it just needs to show up to dominate a market. In many ways it faces the same issues as soccer in America, the perception that it is an elitist sport played and run by Europeans, who are all “Frenchmen” and “Communists.”
Well, I am an American who was raised in Europe during the Fifties and early Sixties. I attended many, many GP and other races during that time. However, my first race was at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, the rack being literally within walking distance of where we lived. During stints back in the States, I would attend American races, usually stock car races in the South, but also Champ or Sprint Car races in the Midwest.
I ended up in South Carolina when my Dad retired and we returned to America — the mythical Land of the Round Doorknobs. Although I continued to follow GP and sports car racing (making the trek to Watkins Glen in 1961 for the first of many times), I took to stock car racing like a duck to water. Ditto for the USAC Champ Cars.
Some years ago, about the middle of the Eighties, I wrote off formula one for any number of reasons. My attention turned almost exclusively to the American scene, the European scene I had followed for years seeming to be, well, dull and not very intersting. With CART, IMSA, and NASCAR all going great guns at the time, the Seventies and Eighties, I think many of us were in hog heaven.
Today, IndyCar is trying to salvage the remains of a mutual suicide pact. ALMS and Grand Am are trying to exist by contesting for a fanbase that most minor league baseball teams would be embarrassed by. Whatever it was that CART and IMSA once had that excited people is long gone. Outside of the annual 500-miler at the IMS, IndyCar rarely raises an eyebrow; and while the spirit of IMSA might still exist, well, why are there two weak organizations? I like them both, but….
Which brings me to NASCAR. While I might try to watch an IndyCar race, I often either forget or can’t remember which network it is on. Even if I generally watch NASCAR out of habit, I still watch it and stay rather well informed about its activities.
Never confuse enjoying the racing NASCAR provides with liking NASCAR the organization. I like the former, but often despair over the later. This dates back back to the Sixties & Seventies when I literally followed the Grand National circuit as well as watched lots of Sportsman races in the Southeast. However, NASCAR has managed to do what none of the other member of the sports niche that motor racing occupies in America — make itself known.
NASCAR has always known what business it was in — providing entertainment. That so many in motor racing continue to deny this blinding flash of the obvious would be funny if it were not for the fact that they really don’t get it. What NASCAR does marketing-wise pales beside what professional football (I include the colleges in this category along with the NFL since the former is truly professional, being literally the farm teams for the NFL) marketing machine does year-in and year-out. Remember when every time you turned around someone seemed to be wearing a Bulls hat? That was the NBA marketing machine in action.
While most here can moan and bitch about NASCAR being the focus of American racers rather than formula one, keep in mind that to most Americans NASCAR Cup raccing IS the American “formula one,” the pinnacle of the racing pyramid.
That America and “international” — code for European — racing have once more drifted so far apart is not what I would have liked, but given the direction taken by the FIA some decades ago, it is scarcely surprising. I point this out because so much, if not all, the finger-pointing and tsk-tsking has been point in the direction of America, as if there were not factors in Europe which also influenced this.
Got to agree with the folks who enjoy the ALMS series. There has been some great racing, there are beautiful cars in the series, and the drivers are more accessible than the mythical fan-friendly drivers in NASCAR.
I also do agree with Don Capps that while I don’t like the NASCAR organization, I do enjoy some of the racing, and many of the drivers and crew.
But my favorite series here are surely the ALMS with the IndyCar series really doing a lot to win me back as well.
Right on Mr. Capps, some finger pointing must go Europe’s way. I have often thought that it was the influx in the 60s by the Europeans (Clark, Lotus) in Indycar racing that has led us to this point where we have an excellent set of series sanctioned by USAC (like in the ’50s and ’60s), but the only place for the drivers to go is NASCAR because there is a tremendous difference between a sprint car and the current IRL car. This difference didn’t exist as much before the Lotus came. That’s why a lot of USAC stars end up in NASCAR and not the IRL. And the feeder series to the IRL is difficult to get into because of a lack of ‘names’ there. Jay Drake, USAC Sprint Car Champ, did a season of Indy Lites (or whatever they were called in 2005 and rarely impressed.
Several people have made some very comments about on the part of the mainstream media. Both the American media and public at large have the same attitude about worldwide racing. They act as, “Hey, we don’t need that, we’ve got NASCAR! Who needs that foreign racing?” I can’t stand that attitude. While I like just about every form of racing, including NASCAR, the racing that inspired my passion as a youngster growing up was Formula 1 and the Americans who took on the world’s best. While Dan Gurney and Phil Hill were a bit before my time, Phil’s 1961 F1 title and Gurney’s win with his own American made car against the likes of Jim Clark are, in my mind, every bit as significant as the US Hockey Team’s win over the Russians and Gold Medal victory at Lake Placid in 1980. A lot of people would call me insane for that notion, but really, how is it any different? Phil Hill came from California and had the talent and skill, – and just as importantly, a thorough understanding of cars – that he developed to a point where he could race with people like Stirling Moss and be succesful. And most people in sports don’t know who he is or why he is so revered by people in racing, probably because he never really did NASCAR. Hill paved the way for the next American Champion (with a European pedigree), Mario Andretti. As a teenager, I watched Mario Andretti take the F1 crown in 1978, in what has to be one of my proudest moments as an American sports fan. Thankfully, Mario is a true American sports icon, otherwise, he might be like Phil Hill, almost invisible.
I think my proudest came in 1967 when Gurney and AJ Foyt took victory at Le Mans with American Ford iron. I was reading all about this in Road & Track and other publications, and I was awestruck even at that young age to hear of an American team and car company beating the world. Le Mans remains my favorite race to this day and I look upon this great event as the Olympics of Motorsport. While I’m not the biggest Chevy fan, I am nonetheless very happy to see the Corvette compete so well at Le Mans and other sports car racing venues. Same goes for the Dodge Viper when it was blowing the doors off exotic European makes.
My point in going through all this is that as Americans, we shouldn’t be afraid to take on the world in any sport, least of all racing. The Women’s US Soccer team has shown that we can compete with anyone at any level in anything, given the determination and will to win. I’m angry at Goodyear for not keeping up with the state of the art in design and manufacturing (As Gordon Kirby has discussed in recent past) and getting their butts handed to them by other tire makers; but instead of retooling, redesigning, and getting motivated to take back their previous role as top tire maker, they have instead shriveled up and gone back to Akron, Ohio with their tail between their legs, forced to make an exclusive contract with NASCAR to retain a high profile in motor sports. Goodyear should have come out fighting, but instead can only compete using a stacked deck. This attitude is not only with the public, but also in the mainstream media. Whereas the media decades ago had an even handed treatment about Motor sports (thank you, the late, great, Roone Arledge of ABC), now we barely get the same respect that lacrosse gets. Back in 1973, Sports Illustrated selected 1973 F1 Champ Jackie Stewart as its Man of The Year; I don’t think SI has done that much on F1 over the years until Lewis Hamilton came along.
As I said, I do love NASCAR, but we as a nation must show much the same national pride in our motorsports athletes as the Europeans, Japanese, Brazillians, Australians, and even Canadiens do. We need to look upon that competition as a challange. We do send our drivers to the ROC event overseas, and we won at least once, but hardly anyone here knows or cares. Once the USA realizes that it can’t dominate everything and must function as a part of the world community, then hopefully our attitudes about world competition such as soccer and racing will change as well, which will give us a lot more great moments like 1961, 1967, and 1978.
We did it before, and we can do it again.