New Track Record

IndyCar Blog

Archive for the tag “Toronto”

23 Oct 2014
2 Comments

A scary IndyCar Halloween

How about all the news out of IndyCar since the season ended in September?  You remember, right?  A race was announced for Brazil…and, uh….wait a minute…I know there’s something else.   Oh, James Hinchcliffe changed teams and has a beer named after him, and Simon Pagenaud is now driving for Roger Penske.  Did I miss anything?  The long off-season of the Verizon IndyCar Series has begun with what many predicted: a scary lack of anything resembling the buzz that IndyCar so desperately needs.  The fear that IndyCar will not build on its spectacular racing and personalities is only one of the tricks that the series may have played on it.  Here are a few more.

I sure would love to start planning my IndyCar travels for 2015.  To do that, of course, the series would have to release a 2015 schedule.  With all the talk about the importance of date equity, it seems that movement to new dates for Toronto, Milwaukee, Fontana, and Pocono may be in the offing.  Mark Miles and his team have suddenly gone quiet on when the schedule will come out after falling into the old IndyCar trap of talking about races before the checks have cleared.  Cue the sound of rattling skeletons in the closet.

Will one of the aero kits being designed (and clamored for by internet trolls everywhere) shift the balance of power between Honda and Chevy so much that the season will become class racing?  Could one aero kilt be dominant on ovals and another on road and street courses?  Sure.  The old Law of Unintended Consequences could be in full effect here.  Be careful what you ask for.  The racing last year was great, but that is no guarantee that next year will be.

Derrick Walker has stated that the series is closing on on having race control sorted out.  This recurring Nightmare on 16th Street could wreak havoc on the credibility the league has been so desperately pursuing if the decision is somehow mishandled.  With the track record of the series, this has the potential to be a flaming paper bag full of potential problems on the front porch of the series.  On one side, the hire needs to have the support of the owners and drivers form the beginning.  Beaux Barfield was an outlier and his support in the paddock was lukewarm, at best.  Brian Barnhart was a control freak that was liked in the paddock but had terrible PR with the public.  How about somewhere in the middle?  No tricks here, please.

One of the things I like about the holiday triumvirate of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas is the buzz.  You cannot escape the marketing might of corporate America from October to December.  Granted these marketing mavens have a lot of money to throw around, but they are out there selling every day.  Where’s the sell, IndyCar?  I know it is too early to have commercials on television, but where’s the buzz?  Did you know that John Green (3,296,107 Twitter followers), best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars, was in the two-seater at IMS?  How about Deadmau5 (3,015,012 Twitter followers) being on track with James Hinchcliffe?  It should be noted that IMS did tweet about these appearances as they happened, but not much before or after.  Build the buzz.  Both of these artists have more followers than the total viewers of every IndyCar race the last two years combined.  Leverage that.  And if Deadmau5 plays at the Snake Pit this year, that is HUGE, even if you have no idea who he is.  He wears a mouse head as he DJ’s electronic dance music, for what it’s worth.  Costumes are big this time of year, right?

So Happy Halloween, IndyCar!  The fans are still waiting for their treats, but keeping their fickle interest may be the biggest trick of all.

 

Posted in Opinions and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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.

 

Posted in Opinions and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
05 Jun 2014
5 Comments

Will Power: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson published a novella called the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  While quite obviously an allegory on the inherent good and evil in people, it can rightly be seen as a symbolic representation of whatever it is that Team Penske’s Will Power is now doing in the Verizon IndyCar Series.

Before and after races he is just like Dr. Henry Jekyll: mild-mannered and prone to bouts of wonderment.  In a TV interview at Toronto in 2011, Power responded to Dario Franchitti spinning him by saying, “I always race him clean, and he always races me dirty.”  That sounds like the mystified Jekyll trying to come to terms with his own inner demons.  Could Will Power actually be struggling to control, in his own Australian sobriquet, his inner “wanker?”

Wanker is a term that Power applies liberally to those with whom he disagrees.  In a recent interview, he hoped that the aero package at Texas allows some separation of good drivers like him from the “wankers…at the back.”  Good on ya, mate.  It seems Power is beginning to relish the Mr. Hyde black hat.

Need more?  How about at St. Pete when he slowed the field coming to the green flag and helped cause an accordion accident behind him.  His Dr. Jekyll self denied any culpability.  He blamed his teammate Helio Castroneves for trying to jump the start.  He blamed the early green flag.  If you watch him in post-race interviews, you often see a certain shifty-eyed schoolboy behavior.  And just like a schoolboy, Power often seems to follow the mantra of caught-in-the-act kids everywhere.  Deny, deny, deny.

After bumping Simon Pagenaud into the tires at Long Beach, Power accepted blame with a caveat: he thought Pagenaud slowed because of a flat tire.  C’mon, Will, isn’t it time you embraced your darker side?  Stop offering excuses for your Mr. Hyde and embrace him.  In the novella, Dr. Jekyll secretly revels in the freedom from conscience that Hyde offers.  It is the same here.

To make matters worse, in the first race at Detroit, Power had a run-in at with Pagenaud again.  According to Pagenaud, Power ran into him.  According to Power, he didn’t see him.  Once again, embrace the wanker, Will.  Winning dirty is still winning.

In the second race at Detroit, Power ruined the races of Josef Newgarden and Graham Rahal by trying to force a pass where the opportunity did not exist.  Was it optimistic?  Nope.  It was the black-hearted Mr. Hyde pushing lesser mortals out of the way.  No apology necessary, Will.  Drive on!

Sadly, the tale of Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde does not end well.  By the end of the story, Dr. Jekyll can no longer control his transformation into Mr. Hyde and it leads to his untimely end.  My advice to Will Power is not to fight the transformation.  Do not go back to the wide-eyed and apologetic Will Power/Dr. Henry Jekyll.  That way lies madness.  The next time the change occurs, gleefully rub your hands together, cackle softly, and allow your inner Will Power/wanker/Mr Hyde to become your permanent personality.  You already wear a black firesuit.  You might as well wear a black hat, too.

 

Posted in Humor, Opinions and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Post Navigation