If IRL fans who write in here have been accurate, CART must've been
a pretty horrible operation back when the IRL was born. Those (CART)
team owners were "liars, crooks and thieves" by one account, and
their operation was literally endangering the Indy 500.
With Tony's stroke of genius, the IRL was born and all that was good
from Indy's glorious past would theoretically be preserved. Maybe
that first year when CART ran the US 500, one could argue that Tony's
momentum was threatened as "the split" was fairly big news to the
world outside of open wheel, but Tony soldiered on and what he has
achieved is here for all of us to see.
How could CART threaten or harm that? The IRL was doing
everything the "right" way, eliminating engine leases, encouraging
American drivers, doing that "all oval" thing, and apparently the
most im****tant thing: taking the owner****p of the series out of
the hands of team owners and assigning it to Tony George.
The starting point of the merged series appears to be that somewhere
in the fulfillment of Tony's vision, he ended up at about the same
level as that "CART" bunch. Low to invisible TV ratings,
dismal (certainly for the series-that-races-at-Indy) driver
counts, spec engine (don't know about their chassis),
and wouldn't you know, the introduction of street and
road courses as Tony encountered the same economic
realities those guys at CART had dealt with back in the
80's. So now, with Dave DeSpain, Tony slowly articulates the concept
of the series going overseas, racing on street and road
courses, and quietly concurs with the
suggestion that the series is like CART was in 1995.
Brilliant.
Nope, Ken, I'm not buying that CART's presence has had
much of anything to do with where the IRL ended up. Not
only has the IRL failed to catch fire "doing everything right,"
but the Indy 500 (an institution/tradition/"spectacle") took a
dive from the first year it was an IRL event. Go figure.
If anything, I was pleasantly surprised that CART and it's progeny
lasted as long as they did.
-Sterling
Ken Plotkin wrote:
>
> <sterlin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> [snip]> Everything you see in today's IRL comes from Tony doing what
> > he wanted.
>
> [snip]
>
> I suppose CART waging war for 13 years had nothing to do with the
> final outcome, nor the starting point for the merged series?
>
> Ken Plotkin
|
