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17 May 2014
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Sitting in judgement of Indy 500 Time Trials

Suffice to say that opinions on the new qualification format at IMS for the Indianapolis 500 are mixed.  As a trained observer (I’m not), I have the opportunity to listen in on the conversations of media types, drivers, owners, and fans.  What follows is a sampling of what these different groups have to say about qualifying at Indy.  These quotes may or may not have really happened.  Go with the latter.

Old Time Local Media: “It’s a travesty.  Why, I had to park all the way over on the golf course.  I have a bad knee, a bad hip, and a bad attitude.  What would all those journalists from the 50’s and 60’s say about this parking?  I remember when the place was packed for the first day of qualifications.  Those were real drivers.  I could never really explain the old qualifying rules, but they were much better than these new ones.  Did I mention the parking.”

Modern National Media: *Crickets*

Drivers: “What the hell?  Do people know how hard it is to run flat out around this place for four laps ONE time?  Huh?  Do they?  And now they are asking us to do it on two days with chances for do-overs with no penalty.  What is wrong with these people?  This is incredibly dangerous stuff.  Wait.  Is your mic on?  Sorry.  I meant to say that the drivers are in full support of the series and IMS in their quest to bring excitement and fans back to qualifications.  A rising tide lifts all ships.”

Owners:  “We are busting our tails chasing sponsors who demand exposure and TV time.  You can believe that we support anything that helps us get this publicity for our partners.  Yes, it’s a risk for our equipment and drivers, but it’s one we are willing to take.  Anything for publicity…I mean the series.”

Hard-core Fans:  “Qualifications are ruined.  The split changed everything.  We are the only ones who really care about the history of the race and IMS.  Tony Hulman, Wilbur Shaw, and Carl Fisher would roll over in their graves if they knew what was happening.  The esoteric nature of the old qualifying rules is what separated the casual fan from the real fans.  A real fan is willing to work to understand the format.  The only redeeming feature of the new rules is that they are even more confusing than the old rules.  THAT we like since you really have to care about IndyCar to bother learning them.”

Casual Fans: “What new qualifying rules?  The fastest car is on the pole, right?  I have Twitter, Facebook, and the IndyCar 14 app on my phone.  Who needs to know about rules?  I can stream the qualifying and DVR what is not streamed.  Why does anybody care about what the rules are?  We just want to see the cars go fast.  Aren’t Hardwell and NERVO going to be in the Snake Pit this year?  The cars sure look pretty when they go by.  I liked the balloons.”

There you have it.  That’s the real skinny on what people are saying about the new qualifying format.  You can find the truth anywhere.  Always remember that this is your source for lies and innuendo.

 

Posted in Humor and tagged , , , ,
15 May 2014

Indy 500 Time Trials: a new day is dawning

Sorry for the turgid prose of the title.  A kernal of truth is in there, but really, “a new day is dawning”?  And I have the gall to write that after a week of rain delayed practice.  I have no shame.  What I do have, though, is a good feeling about how the new Time Trials format at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is going to play out.  So what if it is hard to understand.  The old formats required a little thought, too.

First a word about Time Trials.  I’m going old-school here and calling this weekend’s activities Time Trials instead of qualifications.  It adds an aura of authenticity and tradition to a month that has recently been described as ignoring it altogether.  Maybe if IMS will dress up the weekend with this moniker, it will help disguise the disgust that some people feel about it.  My mom always told me to wear clean underwear in case I was in a wreck.  There may be a corollary here.  Or not.

In any case, some compelling storylines are attached to the weekend.  The biggest positive from this new format is that the drivers must hang their rear-ends out on both days to make the field.  Truthfully, this both excites and worries me as a fan.  The stories of drivers white-knuckling ill-handling cars around the circuit to make the race are legendary.  And we get to see it twice.  That’s good for the fans.  Having to do it twice, with the inherent risk to both driver and car, is bad for the teams and drivers.  It is simply the price the series is exacting from the teams and drivers to build excitement.  The balance between just enough and too much is mighty thin.  I just hope they never ask me to vote with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a qualifying run.  Too gladiatorial.

The points earned this weekend make Time Trials worth another race to the drivers.  A driver can win points equal to a race, and more, by simply driving fast.  No passing, no pit stops, no fuel mileage calls – just raw speed and iron balls.  That by definition is compelling on TV or at the track.  That is a reason to get after it.  I don’t think the regulars in the Verizon IndyCar Series are going to want any one-off teams to out-qualifying them.  Expect competition, not complacency.

Even though Time Trials have been condensed into one weekend, most of the available track time on Saturday and Sunday in recent years has been taken up by practice.  An aficionado of open wheel might not mind this, but the casual fan, and more importantly ABC, find it less than entertaining.  So IMS squeezed the qualifying times into neat little TV windows to interest the fans and appease the network.  And it is about time.  Now everyone knows exactly when the Fast Nine are going to be on TV.  Will more people watch?  A few.  Will more people know about it?  Definitely.  It’s just one more baby step on the 500’s march to greater relevance.  And as the 500 becomes more relevant, so to will the series.  Hopefully.

The fact is that Bump Day, for all the angst about its demise, just hasn’t been that good, except for the last 30 minutes or so, for a long time.  As fans, we always seem to want what we don’t have.  The last minute jumping into cars has been gone for over a decade.  The lines of cars waiting to take a last shot at making the field had dwindled to a mere handful.  We no longer have the cars or motors to ever bring it back.

Will the new format be the vehicle to drive the race to new viewers?  Who knows?  What I do know is that the 33 men and women who take the green flag in qualifying attempts this weekend will risk lives, equipment, and reputations for a chance to be one of the 33 on the grid for the 2014 Indianapolis 500 on May 25.  Isn’t that enough?

 

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24 May 2013
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The Indianapolis 500: iconic is more than a word

An icon is someone of something regarded as a representative symbol of something.  It is fair to say that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500 are icons of auto racing.  Oh, other tracks like Le Mans and Daytona can lay claim to this iconic status, but primarily as icons of types of racing like sports cars and stock cars.  Even though Indy is open wheel racing, it has always been the track and the race most associated with racing in general.  Other tracks and series will not agree, but it is a fact.

Certain names, dates, phrases, and activities become associated with anything that rises to iconic status, and IMS and the Indianapolis 500 are no different.  Allow me to present a short list of the iconography of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

  • The Brickyard: Go ahead, name another track whose nickname is as famous as its real name.  Can’t do it, can you?  Only the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has a moniker with such a great backstory.  According to the Speedway, 3.2 million bricks were used to pave the track in 1909.  Iconic, indeed.
  • Speedway, Indiana:  There are many famous tracks named after the town where they are located.  IMS has a town named after the track.  Now THAT’S a return address to have on your mail.  Eat your heart out Talladega.
  • Memorial Day: How can you not love a holiday sporting event that NEVER forgets the holiday on which it races.  IMS honors the military with fly-overs and an always emotional rendition of “Taps.”  I’m crying as I write this and will cry again on Race Day.  Thank you for remembering our veterans, IMS.  And thank you to our veterans for serving.
  • Time Trials:  Any other race has “qualifications.”  At Indy we have Time Trials.  I can picture men in suits wearing fedoras and skimmers reading their hand-wound stop watches to figure lap speeds.  The name screams history.
  • Bump Day: Only at Indy do you have a name for another day of qualifying.  It’s agreed that Bump Day has lost some of its luster since there are no longer enough cars to bump anyone from the field, but the concept is still cool.  I will hate to see it go, but economics and the lack of action may doom it.
  • Carb Day:  Where else but at an iconic facility do you have a practice session named after a piece of technology that is no longer used in the race.  At least the deep thinkers at IMS were smart enough to move this day from Thursday to Friday to increase crowds and encourage heavier drinking.  And wasn’t Poison, this year’s Carb Day band, around when the cars were still running carburetors?
  • Snake Pit: The Indianapolis 500 has a LONG history of heavy drinking and bad behavior, and the Turn 1 infield area known as the Snake Pit was the epicenter for all of it.  It got so bad in the 70’s and 80’s that Tony George felt compelled to get rid of it to help make the 500 more family friendly.  Who needs an extra 20, 000 fans anyway?  I do admire IMS for resurrecting the concept with their own corporate version appealing to the twenty somethings that they already had on a yearly basis in Turn 1 before they cleaned it up.
  • 11 Rows of 3:  Some things never need to change and this is one of them.  Anyone who says 33 is just a number is either a casual fan or just doesn’t get it.  This is what makes Indy special.  If you have never seen 11 rows of 3 roll down the front straight at Indy into Turn 1 in person, then, as Al Unser Jr. said,  “You just don’t know what Indy means.”
  • The Pagoda: The scoring tower at IMS has always been called the Pagoda and has twice actually looked like one.  When you see the current version in film or in pictures, you do not have to ask where it is.  You know.  That’s iconic.
  • The Wing and Wheel:  Indy’s logo has been around as long as the bricks have.  You don’t change history.  The Wing and Wheel is a simple logo that suggests both speed and history.  I like the fact that speed has always been the calling card.
  • Gasoline Alley: The lane from the garage area to the pits is the original Gasoline Alley.  When you have the original, then you won history.
  • Back Home Again: The song has been sung since 1946.  It’s NOT the state song, but who cares?  It’s the 500 song.
    Back home again in Indiana,
    And it seems that I can see
    The gleaming candle light, still burning bright,
    Through the Sycamores for me.
    The new-mown hay sends all its fragrance
    Through the fields I used to roam.
    When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash
    Then I long for my Indiana home.
  • Gentlemen, start your engines!: Even though the provenance on this bit of Indy 500 history is a little suspect, let’s just say that Anton “Tony” Hulman owned it like a boss.  It was his, and no one will ever do it better.  I can’t wait to hear it again on Sunday.

Religious icons in history were often mosaics found in ancient churches.  I completely understand.  I hope you liked the little pieces of tile that help make up the picture of the racing shrine I will be visiting this Sunday.  Everyone is welcome.  The last time I checked, you only have to worship speed to step into this cathedral.

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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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