Dario Franchitti kept his IndyCar title hopes alive by finishing fifth at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway last Saturday night. The Scot edged closer to championship leader Will Power, who led for more than 80 laps but finished eighth after almost hitting the wall late in the 300-mile race. Power and Franchitti were among those who had to stop with only a few laps left for a splash of fuel, allowing Hélio Castroneves through to a smart win. Castroneves stalled while trying to leave the pits during his last stop, but Penske team boss Tim Cindric then advised him to save fuel so that the Brazilian made it to the finish without stopping again.

Castroneves thus scored his second win of the year, while Ed Carpenter was second in Kentucky after employing a similar fuel-saving strategy. Carpenter drove his first race since the Indy 500, teaming up with Dan Wheldon and Panther Racing, and surprised many people by taking pole from Power and his team-mate. Carpenter is former IRL boss Tony George’s nephew and an oval specialist who finished a close second at Kentucky last year. He again showed his stuff last weekend, heading the first 10 laps and running with the leaders all the way.

Wheldon also ran well, leading half the race until having to make an eleventh-hour stop for fuel with five laps to go. He rejoined to finish third ahead of Tony Kanaan and Franchitti. The 2005 Indy 500 winner and IRL champion is hoping for similar strong runs in IndyCar’s remaining two races – he will be replaced next season by Graham Rahal and is looking for work.

IndyCar’s remaining races are at Motegi, Japan on September 19 and Homestead-Miami Speedway on October 2. As it stands Power leads Franchitti by just 17 points, 552 to 535, with Scott Dixon (469 points) and Castroneves (448) in third and fourth.

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All of a sudden the World Championship calendar is starting to look more than a little unbalanced – and, some would say, unstable. As of now, the 2009 schedule contains 17 races (two fewer than originally envisaged), and for the first time a majority of them will be run outside Formula 1’s cultural home, which, no matter what some might claim, has always been Europe.

We know why this has happened, of course. For a very long time Bernie Ecclestone was the ‘commercial rights holder’ in F1, and years ago bought them from the FIA for no fewer than 100 years for what most observers regarded as a derisorily small sum. No one needs to be reminded that Bernie likes to make a buck, but at least, while he owned the rights, he had the facility once in a while to do a deal with a race organiser that didn’t necessarily stack up financially, but was in the good interests of the sport and its competitors.

Since he sold the commercial rights to CVC Capital Partners, however, that situation has changed. To finance the deal, CVC had to borrow heavily – from the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others – and those loans are expensive to service. CVC did not get involved for reasons of altruism, and fundamentally couldn’t care less where the Grands Prix are run: all that matters is the bottom line, and inevitably that means more and more ultra-lucrative venues, where government backing is guaranteed. Bad news, of course, for Europe, which has the fans, the history and the heritage, but not the financial clout to compete.

As European races begin to disappear from the schedule, there is of course a risk that ultimately the fans will become disenchanted. Why did we have a ‘night race’ in Singapore? Because starting it at 8pm enabled it to be televised live at 1pm in Europe, a time convenient to TV viewers here. There will always be hardcore fans prepared to watch a race in the middle of the night, but not enough of them to please the TV companies, whose financial contribution to F1 is enormous.

The trend, therefore, is increasingly towards the East, Middle and Far. Already we have Bahrain, Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, and on the near horizon are Grands Prix in Abu Dhabi, India and South Korea.

Magny-Cours, France 1995. Damon Hill (Williams FW17 Renault) followed by Michael Schumacher (Benetton B195 Renault)

Given that Ecclestone has said that his intention is to stick with a maximum of 20 Grands Prix in a season, the influx of new countries necessarily means that some traditional ones will have to be shown the door. France has recently cancelled its 2009 race, citing the current economic situation as the reason, but next year’s would anyway have been the last Grand Prix at Magny-Cours. Another French venue may appear in time, but we shouldn’t hold our breath, and as far as the British Grand Prix is concerned, the ’09 race will be the last at Silverstone – the circuit which hosted the very first World Championship Grand Prix back in 1950. Will the race at Donington come to be reality? The F1 community has its doubts, let’s say.

1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. King George VI meets the drivers, including a young Stirling Moss in the foreground

Over time both Ecclestone and FIA president Max Mosley have endlessly stressed that something calling itself a World Championship should be just that – this was the reason given for expanding into Asia. But, that being so, is it not almost beyond belief that the 2009 calendar entirely bypasses a little continent called North America? This year we lost the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, because Tony George was not prepared to keep pace with the new tariff of F1, as set by ‘government-funded’ events. That made the manufacturers – Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Toyota etc – extremely angry, for they quite like selling cars in the US.

1966 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, New York. Jim Clark leads the field away

Now the Canadian Grand Prix, too, is gone, after more than 40 years on the schedule. Apparently the bill for the ’08 race has not – yet, anyway – been paid in full, and therefore the ’09 date has been lost. Once again the manufacturers are angry (to say nothing of the F1-mad Canadian fans), and it seems to me that it’s about time they did something with their anger, and put pressure on the powers-that-be. It is not only to the commercial rights holders that markets are important, after all.

As for the fans, well, as ever they get what they’re given, take it or leave it. And if increasing numbers, feeling ever more excluded, leave it, presumably the power brokers will consider that a price worth paying.

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Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

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This week’s formal announcement of unification between IRL and Champ Car was badly needed, but everyone knows that the next couple of years will be tough for Indy car racing as it tries to rebuild and regain momentum under the unchallenged control of Tony George and the Indy Racing League. Difficult choices will have to be made this sumer over which IRL races to keep and which former Champ Car races to adopt or revive in 2009. Equally difficult decisions also will have to be made over the next year or two in determining the much-anticipated 2011 rules and the shape and sound of the Indy car of the future.

(Tony George and Kevin Kalkhoven shake hands following the open-wheel unification)

These decisions will determine Indy car racing’s content, look and appeal, and provide the essential framework for the sport’s energetic rebirth or consign it to a life of mediocrity and stagnation. Let’s hope that some inspired thinking will provide the basis for real leadership capable of pushing Indy car racing forward.

I’ve written about the debate over Indy car racing’s rules for the future in the new April issue of Motor Sport and will continue the discussion in the May issue with some wisdom from Mario Andretti. All of us hope the right decisions will be made over the next year or two to begin to transform Indy car racing into the first-class version of motor racing it deserves to be and you can be sure we’ll provide plenty of debate about these matters in the pages of Motor Sport.

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