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24 Mar 2015
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IndyCar, Boston, and Labor Day

The Verizon IndyCar Series has a recent history of races that almost happened.  Brazil, China, Ft. Lauderdale, and Providence come to mind.  All were well-intentioned, of course, but somehow the organizers could not quite pull it all together.  The most recent name to be mentioned is Boston.  They do know a little something about hosting big races.

Boston is a big event city, with the Boston Marathon and its 35,000 participants serving as a benchmark.  When you add in the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots, it is easy to say Boston is the biggest of big league cities.  IndyCar connecting to this vibe is a huge benefit.

According to a recent article in the Boston Herald, the race would be run in the Seaport District, presumably using the Boston Convention and Exposition Center as a hub.  The revitalized area in South Boston is a happening place, home to museums, hotels, and restaurants.  Basically, this is the only place in town with the necessary infrastructure to host the race and not screw up the notoriously bad traffic of the city to the point where the natives would rebel.

The article mentions a Labor Day date.  That date would satisfy Hulman & Co. chief Mark Miles’ dream of a season ending race where the champion is crowned on Labor Day in front a big crowd.  If the season is going to end on Labor Day, this is the place to do it.  Boston checks all the boxes for the season finale.

There would be a big crowd.  If there wasn’t, at least the television viewers wouldn’t be able to tell.  Certainly, the VIP chalets around the track would be sold out.  The empty seats at the season-ending oval race at Fontana don’t really paint a picture of a thriving series celebrating a championship.  Boston is big time.  Crowning the champion there makes sense because it would not be just another race.  Miles is on record saying he wants to own Memorial Day and Labor Day.  This is where you own Labor Day.

The time zone is right.  Ending the season with an evening race in California is brutal, and not just because the setting sun is in the drivers’ eyes. No one on the East Coast watches, and the East Coast, whether the fans like it or not, is the center of the sports broadcasting universe.  There is a reason that crazy Bill Walton gets away with his stream-of-consciousness ranting on ESPN’s Pac 12 basketball broadcasts: no one watches it.  Yes, the East Coast sports elite look down on the flyover country of the Midwest.  Yes, the East Coast sports elite marginalize the Verizon IndyCar Series.  But the series still needs to curry favor and get on their radar.  If that means ending the season on Labor Day so you are the biggest show in town before the NFL starts, then IndyCar needs to grit its teeth, smile, and put on a great show.  The product will sell itself once people see it.

If the Verizon IndyCar Series is going end its season on Labor Day, then they have to own it.  The teams and drivers need to be on board and pretend to be excited about the Labor Day event as the season-ender.  It is worth noting that Mark Miles went out of his way to make the point that he may have been unclear about wanting to have multiple races in the late winter season after the Super Bowl, and that he certainly wants to build the schedule on the front end.  Right.  You can also read that as the team owners and sponsors letting Miles know that the season has to be longer in terms of duration to justify spending marketing money.  Miles is no dummy.  He knows that the push-back to a Labor Day end of the season is real and must be dealt with by an earlier start to the season.  Miles has drawn his line in the sand.  The season ends on Labor Day.

In a perfect racing world, the Verizon IndyCar Series would start in February and end in October.  Everyone would be sated with the best open-wheel racing on the planet.  In our imperfect world, though, the series needs to do what it can with what it has.  They need to be successful on the stage they control and build from there.  Boston is center stage and the series needs to be on it.  Hopefully, the Hub won’t be another city given the hook and pulled offstage before IndyCar can get its show on the road.

 

 

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11 Sep 2014
1 Comment

The Long Goodbye of IndyCar

In Raymond Chandler’s famous detective novel The Long Goodbye, the hero Philip Marlowe must navigate a labyrinth of events, accusations, murders, lies, and betrayals to somehow arrive at a truth that both surprises and stuns.  I can only think that Hulman Motorsports potentate Mark Miles must feel like Philip Marlowe as he tries to make sense of and explain what happens now as the IndyCar season goes dark for a few months.

Or maybe it’s the fans who are channeling Philip Marlowe.  They also have a few questions that need to be answered.  Is the first race really in St. Petersburg on March 29, or will the series pop up in Dubai or Brazil before then?  Will there be a race in Canada next year or not?  Will the empty grandstands in Fontana still bask in the heat of late summer?  Will we soon find out who is going to direct the races now that Beaux Barfield has found greener pastures.  Let’s take look at a few clues.

Clue #1: Mark Miles has been public regarding both Dubai and Brazil.  Let’s hope he doesn’t fall into the trap of his predecessor by being too public and suddenly losing a race like Randy Bernard and China.  Miles seems much too savvy to have that happen.  We hope.  A series with good news regarding ratings increases and sponsors climbing on board needs to continue saying good things.  Every day a race is not announced in those locations is worrisome.  The series needs TV time and sanctioning fees.

Clue #2: The old saying “You can’t fight city hall” is nowhere more evident than in Toronto.  Someone wanted the Pan-Am Games and got them.  It is a feather in the city’s cap and anything in the way had to get out of the way.  Will the series go to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (Mosport) for a year before returning? Both Honda of Canada and Target have strong financial reasons to stay.  Hopefully, that’s enough to keep a race on the calendar somewhere next year before moving back to Toronto.  The old adage “Out of sight, out of mind” is a little worrisome, though.

Clue #3: The series is making money!  Granted, adding a race and a concert at Indy helped, but they MADE MONEY.  Complain as we will, the short season helped make the series solvent for the first time in a long time.  With all the talk about making the fans happy, the series better make sure the board at Hulman & Co. is happy first.  Expect very similar things next year.  We will be saying adios in September once again.  The changes will be incremental.  The sponsors want consistency and sustainability.

Clue #4:  The TV ratings are up!  Whatever that means.  The ritual bloodletting at the end of the IndyCar season always has one camp intoning that the ratings prove that the road to hell is paved with TV’s not tuned to IndyCar while the other camp sees salvation through increases in some statistic.  I’m not a statistician;  I have no idea what is proven one way or the other.  What I do know is that CBS CEO Les Moonves was recently quoted as saying, “Overnight ratings are virtually irrelevant now.”  Whatever that means.  Statistics are designed to tell people what they want to know.  I trust smart people both design and interpret these ratings.  It is not just eyeballs, but whose eyeballs that matter.  It is not important what I think of the ratings or what any other peon thinks of the ratings.  They are above our pay grade.

Clue #5:  The Verizon IndyCar Series has a new survey up seeking to determine the type of fans that watch IndyCar and how they perceive it as compared to other sports.  At least the series is actively gathering information.  The only deep sigh I had was when lacrosse was mentioned as one of the competing sports.  Please tell me this was misdirection.  Please.  You can take the survey here: IndyCar Survey.  Do it right now.  There’s even a section where you can leave comments.  It is a hater’s dream.

The series will survive.  Post-season negativity and criticism is endemic to IndyCar, and while irritating, it doesn’t really affect anything. As always, haters will hate.  It is their right, no matter how misdirected.  In any case, at least someone is talking about IndyCar. Even though we don’t know exactly how many races will be run or where they will be racing, rest assured that the checkered flag will fall.  After much cogitation, the solution to the mystery of the offseason is obvious: it is Mark Miles at 16th and Georgetown with a fistful of money.

 

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11 Jun 2013
3 Comments

What IndyCar Fans Want

In the movie What Women Want, Mel Gibson plays a womanizing advertising executive accidentally gifted with the ability to read women’s thoughts.  This allows him to tailor his advertising proposals to a core female demographic that had eluded him.  If only the elite at INDYCAR and IMS had the same gift.  The Firestone 550 at Texas Motor Speedway certainly sparked debate on not only the core demographic, but also on the product itself.  The issue facing the IZOD IndyCar Series could be made into a movie: What IndyCar Fans Want.

In an interview with Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star published on June 10, Mark Miles, Hulman & Co. CEO, acknowledged that the Indianapolis 500 needs to provide more entertainment during the month of May than is currently offered.  Whether that means more on-track activity, concerts, or other entertainment options was not clear.  What was clear is that something needs to change to attract more fans to the venue.  The rub is determining exactly what those changes need to be.  It is also clear that the racing in the IZOD IndyCar Series suffers from a similar public perception issue.  What do IndyCar fans really want?

One type of IndyCar fan abhors the fact the series has spec cars.  This fan absolutely knows the solution is to open up development.  This open development would allow the teams with the most money to spend their way to victory.  In the good old days of packed venues, these rich teams dominated the podium race after race, often winning by wide margins with only two or three cars on the same lap.  In this fan’s mind, it makes perfect sense.  If the series goes back to the way it was, then the crowds will follow.  This post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) argument connects crowds to differentiation.  Of course, running all the small teams out of the series because they cannot afford to be competitive in the current economy may not be the best course of action.

Another category is the hard-core fan.  The mantra is always the same.  If everyone worshiped at the altar of history, and the series and IMS promoted how wonderful the roadsters were, then fans would flock to see the modern incarnations of Bill Vukovich and Wilbur Shaw.  I fit in this category, and as much as I love the timeline of auto innovation that the history of IndyCar racing gives us, it is not enough to interest a new generation of fans not weened on the car culture of my youth.  Cars may be cool to them, but the history of cars is not.  History is full of martyrs who were willing to sacrifice all to prove a point.  The hard-core fans need to open their eyes and see that neither history nor martyrdom will save the series.

Lets not forget the fan who says the series almost has it right.  We just need a few tweaks here and there.  If only aero kits were adopted, then it would create a difference, both aerodynamically and aesthetically, that the fans would love without breaking the bank for the teams.  The downside could be racing like we saw at Texas Motor Speedway recently when Helio Castroneves had a lead of half a lap with no competition.  Now that’s racing like it used to be: a few cars on the lead lap with very little passing for the lead.  Derrick Walker, the new president of competition for the IZOD IndyCar Series, just tweaked the aero rules a little bit at Texas and changed the racing completely.  These fans need to remember the law of unintended consequences.

Some fans and owners say that all the series needs is a better TV package with more enthusiastic announcers.  They believe the broadcast partners need to promote the venues, TV productions, and the series better.  Maybe the movie Turbo with its action figures and video games will be the catalyst that brings more viewers to the broadcasts and allows IndyCar to reach a new demographic.  Without a doubt, the TV ratings drive investment in the series.

A set of fans believe that races need carnival barkers, amusement rides, and the assorted freaks and geeks that go along with this.  Maybe it is the local promoters who need to succeed for the series to grow.  If the races make money for the promoter, then the series can worry more about the myriad of other issues that it faces.  Even though the racing in the series is as good as it has ever been, the consumer at the venue demands to be entertained at all times.

Another fan screams that it is all about the future.  This fan says find out what someone needs to become a new fan and do that thing, tradition be damned.  They use the quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”  IndyCar has certainly had plenty of that.

The movie What Women Want follows a typical romcom storyline.  Mel Gibson’s character acts selfishly, loses true love, repents, and gains the love of his life.  Like most movies of this genre, it has a predictable happy ending.  The saga of the IZOD IndyCar Series may not have the same story arc.  Mark Miles, who seems to understand that change is needed, has not been given the gift to know what all IndyCar fans, current and future, are thinking, yet he must decide the course of the series for years to come based on his perceptions.  After he is through with the fans, maybe he can figure out what the owners, drivers, sponsors, and TV partners want.  If he can do that, then the Academy Award is his.

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04 Jun 2013

A Tale of Two Detroit Cities

With sincerest apologies to the memory of Charles Dickens,  “It was the best of races, it was the worst of races…” at Detroit this past weekend.  What, you don’t recognize the mangling of the opening line from Tale of Two Cities?  What were you doing in high school?  It was required reading!  You can always count on New Track Record to bring up arcane connections to help you understand the value of a liberal arts education.  Let’s look at the best and worst of the Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit.

Best of Times

  • Roger Penske has created one of the best street courses in IndyCar racing.  He took a broken track in a broken city and made it racy.  From a track where passing was nonexistent and asphalt patches attacked the racers, Penkse revealed a new layout that not only held together but allowed actual passing.
  • Besides making a racy layout, Roger Penske is building one of the crown jewels of the IndyCar season on Belle Isle.  Yes, the racing is good, but so is the event.  Roger Penske is a businessman and promoter nonpareil.  At a time when most venues see no value in hosting the IZOD IndyCar Series, he saw an opportunity.  Instead of banking on ticket sales for his profit, Penske worked the business-to-business angle and made his money on corporate sales.  Having Chevy as a title sponsor helps, too.  According to Doug Guthrie of The Detroit News, grandstands across from pit row will become double-decker corporate chalets next year.  And we all know that a “chalet” is much tonier than a suite.  Great event, great people, great organization.
  • One of the best things about the year is the parity between the big and small teams.  Fill-in driver Mike Conway won the first race for Dale Coyne Racing and landed on the podium for the second while Simon Pagenaud won the second race for Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports.  You know that has to chafe Chip Ganassi, Roger Penske, and Michael Andretti like sand in the swimsuit.  Expect changes to the formula that allow the teams with the most money to buy success.  It’s the American way.
  • Mike Conway’s win was the best thing of the weekend.  A journeyman winner is always welcome, particularly one who suffered such serious injuries in a horrific crash at Indy.
  • Honda had a pretty good weekend in the heartland of Chevy.  After failing on the national stage of Indianapolis, the Japanese marque showed their twin-turbo street course savvy at Detroit by winning both races and sweeping seven of the top ten spots on Sunday.
  • Personalities once again shine.  In the first race, Sebastian Saavedra waved the double middle finger salute to Marco Andretti while Will Power, known for a similar obeisance to race control two years ago, hurled his gloves at Sebastien Bourdais after a safety worker restrained him from an actual physical attack in the second race.   Anything that makes me laugh out loud is the “best of times.”
  • Beaux Barfield, whose honeymoon is over with the drivers and teams, made a great call with a local yellow for Ryan Briscoe’s shunt into the tires at the end of the first race, allowing the race to end under green and silence the groundswell of moronic insistence for a green-white-checkered rule to prevent yellow flag finishes.  Kudos, Beaux.
  • Call it what you will, the doubleheader format worked.  The ratings were up, and the crowds were good.  The drivers, and especially the crews, suffered from lack of turn-around time, but tin-top drivers and dirt track racers have been doing it for years.  It was a good show.  Do it again.

Worst of Times

  • After the first race had only three yellow flags, there were high hopes for plenty of green flag racing for the second contest.  Not so fast.  Whether it was fatigue, as suggested by the television crew, or an abundance of optimism and idiocy, as suggested by me, the drivers could not seem to get out of each other’s way.  Ed Carpenter nerfed Alex Tagliani. Sebastien Bourdais biffed Will Power, starting a six car scrum.  Simona De Silvestro and Ryan Hunter-Reay both found the same wall.  Not quite the smooth event from the day before.  The big question about the two race format is simple: what if these wrecks happened during the first race?  Would safety be compromised because of crew fatigue and time constraints?  If the format is continued, we will find out.
  • The worst luck of the weekend happened to A.J. Allmendinger.  The Penske Racing driver did not complete a lap either race.  The cherry on his bad luck sundae was that both wrecks can be chalked up to driver error.  The pathos of his sincere sorrow and completely defeated demeanor touched me.  It truly was “the worst of times” for A.J.
  • Could the timing of IndyCar’s press conference regarding aero kits be any worse?  Since Mark Miles, the new chief plumber at Hulman & Co., has not yet been able to plug the press leaks that have plagued IndyCar, the series was forced to go public with their plan to increase speeds, provide more team development opportunities, and allow manufacturer designed body parts before they were ready.  Way to steal a promoter’s thunder, IndyCar.  We wouldn’t want the media talking about the race happening on the track, would we?  The politics and drama of the series continues to provide fodder for low-life bloggers like me to mock the dysfunction.  And I thank you.
  • Social media once again provided entertainment.  The Twitter dust-up between Randy Bernard (@RBINDYCAR) and Panther Racing (@PantherRacing) made me smile.  Gig ’em, Randy!  I actually debated which category this fit.  For entertainment, it’s the best; for the IZOD IndyCar Series, it’s the worst.  Call it a coin flip.  If you are not on Twitter, you are missing people talking first and thinking later.
  • The gimmick of double-file restarts causes wrecks on narrow street courses.  No debate.  Proponents can justify them by arguing TV ratings and NASCAR, but they create pack racing and lead to FUBAR’s like the six car melee that ended Will Power’s day Sunday.  Unlike the 40+ cars in NASCAR, the IndyCar Series has a diminishing number of contestants and open cockpits.  Exciting?  You bet.  Dangerous?  Absolutely.  Necessary?  That’s the real question, isn’t it?
  • Listening to the radio feed of an IndyCar race is exciting.  The announcers scream about the action in front of them.  It sounds like something is happening.  Listening to the ABC broadcast is mind-numbing.  The vapid and insipid delivery of the boys in the booth truly harshes the buzz of the great racing we are seeing on the screen.  I wonder if Lunesta, a sleep aid advertising on the race broadcast, complained about ABC/ESPN competing with them with its choice of broadcasters?

If only this writing was “a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…”  Get it?  That’s the last line from Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities.  You Philistines simply must read the classics.  It is always high art here at New Track Record.

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27 May 2013
4 Comments

Ten Worthless Opinions: Indianapolis 500 Race Fan Edition

How did the Indianapolis 500 start for a citizen journalist (read: blogger)?  I was up at 4:30 AM wrangling a household of relatives that included two from Greece, two from Virginia, and one from North Carolina.  Add to the mix my own young adult son and daughter plus a family friend.  I screamed, threatened, and cajoled until showers were taken, coolers were iced, and the van was packed so we could leave at 6:00 AM.  Drove 20 miles to rendezvous with friends only to find that I had forgotten the new North 40 parking pass that I purchased for them.  After formulating a new plan that required a split-second connection with my wife to get the parking pass, we left for the track.  It was 7:00 AM.  The difference between a real journalist and me is that I don’t relinquish being a fan to pretend to have objectivity.  I am a fan of the Indianapolis 500 first and foremost.  I saw the race live from our seats high in the Northeast Vista (Turn 3) and watched the replay on Memorial Day.   Here are my Ten Worthless Opinions: Indianapolis 500 Race Fan Edition.

1.  Hint to the brain trust at IMS:  If you plan to search every bag and cooler coming in the gates, it might be a good idea to add lines and employees to facilitate it.  I have absolutely no problem with security requiring these searches.  Safety first is always the correct mantra when dealing with large crowds today.  If IMS plans to make the fan experience the primary focus, then be aware that about 200,000 of your fans park outside the track.  The weather might have been part of why it was a late arriving crowd, but having security lines rivaling airport TSA at its worst just might have slowed down the fans, too.

2.  The fabled Yellow Shirts sure seemed to be spread much more thinly in the hinterland of the Northeast Vista, and they did not seem to have the zest for their jobs as the old-timers did.  Many staircases were closed and security was not as evident as in the past.  Cost cutting?  New guidelines?  The facility sure seemed to be much more bare-bones than usual.  When poachers took seats for which I paid, I could find no one nearby to settle the dispute.  Tension prevailed.  This did not enhance my experience.  Also, there were fewer concession stands open, and the ones that were seemed to have fewer offerings.  I hope all that money from the state of Indiana will upgrade more than lights and video boards.  The facility needs more than just cosmetic changes.  The fan experience is not what is was.

3.  Plenty of greatness ensued, too!  The pre-race flyover of the B-25 was aces.  Archbishop Joseph Tobin went a little long on the prayer, though.  After asking for God to bless the Indiana Pacers, I would not have been surprised if he said the prayer was brought to us by Verizon and IZOD.  He may want to dial it back a little next year.  Or just go ahead and sell commercial time.  Both work for me.  Also, Jim Nabors can still bring it.  Kudos.

4.  According to the gossips at the Indy Star, Randy Bernard was a special guest of Josie George, who is on the Hulman & Co. board of directors.  I LOVE politics.  I assume this is to be continued.

5.  Tony Kanaan!  What a popular winner.  All my thousands of new friends in Turn 3 agreed that he was most deserving.  Regular fans were crying in the stands.  It was very Lloyd Ruby-esque in that he is such a popular person and not just a great driver.  The story of his receiving the good luck necklace back from a girl he gave it to years ago was made-for-TV drama.  All hail TK!

Additionally, the NE Vista denizens gave a rousing Bronx cheer for Dario Franchitti when he was introduced.  While some may find him a little whiny, he has been nothing but a gracious 500 champion.  The NE Vista crowd is a surly lot.

6.  Kanaan’s win also brought up the ugly specter of IndyCar adding the reviled green-white-checkered finish to spice up the ending to attract more NASCAR fans.  Why else would they do it?  The casual IndyCar fan is not aware of GWC, and the majority of hard-core IndyCar fans do not want it.  The ONLY reason to do it is to attract the tin-top crowd since they are habituated to end-of-race carnage and bad behavior.  Don’t do it, IndyCar.

7.  Yes, IndyCar has spec racing.  Yes, IndyCar’s all look alike.  Yes, we need aero kits to separate and identify the cars.  With that said, how can anyone who watched the race complain about the racing?  For the first time in my four decades of watching the race live, I did not want to leave my seat for anything. There were 68 lead changes, breaking last year’s record of 34.  As a fan, you had to watch the cars come by you every single time or you missed a pass for the lead.  If ABC/ESPN and NBC Sports cannot find a way to promote this type of racing, then it’s on them.  There is no need to put lipstick on this pig.  Wow!

8.  One or two popular journalists decry that IndyCar has (gasp) pack racing, and it will surely lead to the end of auto racing and Western civilization.  I agree that the racing is awfully close, but the danger of pack racing with the old Dallara chassis lay in the fact that cars could not pass each other.  The new DW12, while not creating separation, not only allows passing but almost requires it.  Artificial it may be, but exciting it is.

9.  IMS is certainly looking to the future.  My tickets cost $80 and remain the same price for next year.  A section or two over the price increased from $85 to $100.  If you raise the price, the expectation of the level of service rises, too.  It will be interesting to see how the new bosses of IMS make this happen.  The ball, as well as the money, is in their court.

10.  Even though I watched live at the Speedway, I feel obligated to comment on the ABC/ESPN coverage.  The pre-race storylines, particularly the Tony Kanaan and Helio Castroneves segment, were prescient.  Lindsay Czarniak is quite the upgrade, too.  She may have been a little too reverent for my taste, but she gets auto racing and its personalities.  The camera work around the track and the super slow motion shots are beyond cool.  Now, I am sure that the trio of Marty Reid, Scott Goodyear, and Eddie Cheever are wonderful people.  They are probably active in their communities and coach their children’s youth league teams.  But their somnolent tones and torpid delivery make you forget that the race is so freaking exciting.  Can they take some classes?  Wake up!  Make me sit on the edge of my seat.  Make the race so exciting that I have to tune in, not next year, but next week.

The post-race celebration and libations with friends and family capped off another fabulous month of May.  I am reminded of the liner notes from Jimmy Buffett’s  Son of a Son of a Sailor.  He used a quote from Robert Wilder’s Wind From the Carolinas that sums of my month of May every year:

“There had been a time when the settlement had made a profitable living from the wreckage of ships, either through the changing of lights or connivance with an unscrupulous captain…

There would be a time of riotous living with most of the community drunk and wandering about in an aimless daze until the purchased rum was gone.  After that the residents sat moodily in the sun and waited for something to happen.”

Now if you’ll excuse me,  I need to go sit moodily in the sun until next May.

 

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19 May 2013

The Time Trials at the Indianapolis 500

Even with all the changes to its format over the years and the possibility of more to come, the pathos of qualifications for the Indianapolis 500 never gets old.  The Time Trials both test and reveal character every year.  The true cognoscenti of IndyCar racing understand and savor the power of these raw moments of human emotion.  John Mellencamp, a good Indiana boy, sang that we live “Between a Laugh and a Tear.” That describes the Time Trials at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the drivers and the teams.

With a series and a venue on the cusp of change, both major and minor, decisions are in the offing regarding every element of the race.  The question is what to do with the Time Trials.

One suggestion, even with changes in format, is to keep the historical moniker of Time Trials.  In an era of homogenization, the IZOD IndyCar Series needs to find ways to get noticed.  As much as the current formats of the series and the race are going to change, anything that defines you as different, particularly historically different, needs to be accentuated.  As much as the name Brickyard or the slogan The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, the term Time Trials shouts Indianapolis 500.  Recent comments by Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Co., suggest that both IMS and the series do not want to be wedded to a past that not only comes with some baggage, but often seems to stifle forward thinking.  Instead of being guided by its past, IMS needs to use its history to define its product to a modern audience.  The name Time Trials does that.

The most obvious element of Time Trials is the true humanity that is revealed every year.  The ticking of the clock down to 6:00 PM on Bump Day creates a tension that is absolutely not artificial.  A game is not on the line as time counts down; a chance to participate in one of the world’s most iconic events is.  It doesn’t get much more compelling than that.  The faces make for perfect TV drama.  The moments that bring tears, sighs of relief, and joy always do.  The pit scene with Ed Carpenter after he secured the pole for the 97th running of the Indianapolis 500 was a moment custom-made for television.  Those David and Goliath stories always are.

Lack of interest and the cost of opening the doors at IMS may doom even the current two-day Time Trials, which were pared down for those same reasons from the four-day Time Trials of the past.  Will the future bring a shortened week one with Fast Friday being the opening day followed by one or two days of qualifying?  The shortened attention span of the modern sports fan says it will.  The drawn out two weekends of track activity will most likely be packed into a much shorter time span.

Of much more concern is the viability of Time Trials on television.  NBC Sports was unfairly pilloried on Pole Day because they cut away from the Fast Nine shootout to show a Preakness post-race show.  It has to be assumed that contracts and paid advertising were in place for that live show.  IMS made the decision to extend the Fast Nine not only beyond 6:00 PM, but past the 6:30 PM coverage window of NBC Sports.  Doing so most likely created a fair and equal opportunity for all participants to have a chance to practice and qualify, but if social media outrage is any indicator, the switch infuriated fans who had invested hours of their Saturday in watching the lead-up to the Fast Nine drama and then were denied the pay-off.  IMS made the best decision for its drivers and teams; unfortunately, this decision put its television partner in a bind.  If a series or race is looking to expand its media reach, locking out viewers or telling them to go to live streaming may not be the best avenue to pursue.  With that said, in ten years switching from broadcast or cable networks to live streaming will simply be a button on the remote.  Maybe IMS is just way ahead of the times.

The nexus of television, live streaming, compelling drama and the modern fan’s attention span is changing how we interact with our sports.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection suggests that organisms must evolve or diminish.  The Time Trials at Indianapolis Motor Speedway have been evolving over the past twenty years and must continue to do so.  If not, the concept of the Time Trials will be just another grainy newsreel of a diminishing past.

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10 Dec 2012
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IndyCar Fan Dilemma: Fever Pitch Edition

I’m a sap.  There, I’ve admitted it.  Everyone thinks I only care about sports, action movies, and sophomoric comedy for entertainment, and to some degree, they are right.  I like all those things.  But in the deep, dark corners of my heart lurks that bane of manliness, that enemy of all things male: the hopeless romantic.  Please don’t judge me harshly.  It is my belief that some form of romanticism plays hide-and-seek in the souls of all men.  It is what keeps us from really being the miserable bastards that most people assume we are.  My guilty romantic pleasure is the genre of movies called romantic comedy.  Show me someone making a life-altering decision or suffering from the injustices of the world around them, and a salty tear will roll down my cheek to the amusement of my family.  Of course, I fake coughs, yawns, and eyeglass adjustments to cover the tears, but I fool no one.  If the movie includes an animal, then audible sobs ensue.  This is my deep secret and my shame.  The question is how this baloney relates to IndyCar.  The answer can be found in the romantic comedy Fever Pitch.

In the movie, Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore star as Ben and Lindsey, two mismatched lovers with entirely different perspectives about life.  Ben is a Boston Red Sox fan who has given his complete devotion to a franchise that continues to break his heart with epic collapses and mismanagement.¹  The movie examines the humor, absurdity, and pathos of giving your heart and soul to something that cannot love you back.  All hard-core IndyCar fans can see the connection of this to the IZOD IndyCar Series.  One of my go-to conceits in this blog is to connect movie lines to the doings in IndyCar.  Let me show you how IndyCar and Fever Pitch dovetail.

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Ben: We scout the players.  We say which players they should keep.

Lindsey:  Which players they should get rid of?  And the Red Sox ask your opinion?

Ben: Well, not yet.  But if they ever do…

Ben attends Spring Training in Florida every year and tries to explain to Lindsey why this is a completely rational obsession.  Ben is channeling the hard-core IndyCar fans and bloggers.  These individuals (and I am a card-carrying member) are heavily invested in IndyCar, quite likely in a way that seems unhealthy to the uninitiated but in a way that seems normal to us.  Like Ben, the hard-core fans on Twitter, Track Forum, and on the various blogs just know what the answer is if only someone would listen to us.  IndyCar fans are like the long-suffering Red Sox or Cubs fans.  We show up every year only to have management, owners, promoters, and/or drivers break our hearts, but unlike the devoted fans of those star-crossed baseball franchises, many of us are coming out of our self-induced hypnosis.  We realize that our love is not being reciprocated by that entity to which we give ourselves.  Bill Zahren (@pressdog) asks for level-headedness about this topic here, and Tony Johns (@TonyJWriter) questions the value of the emotional investment required to be an IndyCar fan here.  Both writers opine often about the emotional and financial investment needed to be a hard-core fan and reference, in one way or another, the business concept of return on investment (ROI).  The basic question is this:  is the time and money put into following IndyCar worth what IndyCar gives us?  And that’s really the question facing IndyCar fans right now.  Of course, there are always the Kool-Aid drinkers who may see problems, but never lose their hope and emotional connection.  For better or worse, that’s me.

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Ryan: You love the Red Sox, but have they ever loved you back?

Ben: Who do you think you are, Dr. Phil? Go on, get outta here!

A character in the movie asks Ben this existential question: how can you love something that is incapable of loving you back.  Most of us deal with this issue by simply ignoring it.  Like Ben in the movie, we put our hands over our ears and pretend that the question was never asked.  The reason IndyCar fans are coming out of their “Yes, sir.  May I have another?” dysfunctional relationship with IndyCar is because they honestly felt that someone in charge, Randy Bernard, was actually loving them back.  This novel approach to marketing, paying attention to and acknowledging the concerns of your customers, made the fans feel like shareholders.  And the fans liked it.  But unlike the baseball fans in Boston shelling out their money to pack the stands, this reaching out to fans in IndyCar did not immediately pay the dividends of packed houses at racing venues around the country.  So like dysfunctional sports franchises across the country, the owners of IndyCar sacked their leader because he did not change the culture that they created.  What he did do was show the fans a little love back, which goes a long way with any fan.  It is nice to know you are appreciated.  Do you feel me?  But the owners and the drivers wanted to feel a little love, too.  When they didn’t, they were no longer fans.

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Troy: Why do we inflict this on ourselves?

Ben: Why? I’ll tell you why, ’cause the Red Sox never let you down.

Troy: Huh?

Ben: That’s right. I mean – why? Because they haven’t won a World Series in a century or so? So what? They’re here. Every April, they’re here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don’t get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that’s here for you.

Ben and his friend are talking about why they put themselves through the rigors and heartbreak of being Sox fans.  Even though the Sox never won (until the movie was made in 2004), they still showed up and that act gave you hope.  A common thread of current INDYCAR fans seems to be exactly that.  Why do we do it?  Is it worth it?  The payoff is simply the renewal of the thing you love without reservation.  Every year it’s still there.  The fans of IndyCar mark the calendar by the month of May.  Regardless of the sanctioning body, the car, the drivers, or the owners, the Indianapolis 500 lets us all know that one thing will never let us down.  We truly know what it’s like to be a fan, to love something that is bigger than us, to know that the total really can be more than the sum of its parts.  But as much as this seems to complete many of us, it is not enough.

With all the justifiable jerking of knees and gnashing of teeth by American open-wheel fans about the series, the owners, the drivers, and the management, the big picture is still simple.  INDYCAR needs to grow new fans at the risk of alienating the hard-core fans who do not exist in enough numbers to drive the series forwards.  It’s a dilemma.  And the true hard-core lovers of open-wheel, with all of our opinions and solutions, really do not have the answers.  The answers that Mark Miles of Hulman & Co., Jeff Belklus of IMS and INDYCAR, and whoever is eventually hired to run the series have to focus on how to create new fans who will eventually become the hard-core fans of the future.  Those new fans may not reflect the car/driver/track ethos that current long-time fans have.  The series may need concerts, carnivals, support series, feature-length animated movies, and other draws to get and keep fans.  IndyCar fans are starting to ask why they “inflict this on ourselves.”  American open-wheel racing need new fans.  But just like baking bread or brewing beer, it needs the yeast of the hard-core fan to get them started.  How will INDYCAR chose to keep the old and grow the new?  That’s the real question.

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Uncle Carl: [after seeing little Ben is liking the Red Sox after his first game] Careful, kid. They’ll break your heart.

Ben’s Uncle Carl is the man who initiated Ben into the nuances of worshiping at the Church of the Red Sox.  His admonition to his nephew is a powerful warning to all fans of IndyCar, new or old.  I guess the possibility of having our hearts broken is the risk we all take in loving open-wheel racing.  The problem is IndyCar is running out of hearts to break.

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1.  The movie was filmed in 2004 and was expected to end with the Red Sox once again disappointing their fans and with Ben and Lindsey coming together to show that love is more important and enduring than sports, but the Red Sox won the World Series and forced a new ending to be written.  Fact and fiction once again freaks us out.

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