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Wish I had written down the internet name of the author, pretty good sketch of things at the time (which is now fading into the long term history of AOW)
I think this is an important point.
One of the main features of Championship racing in the CART era was its uneasy amalgamation of the fans whose primary interest was speedway racing with those whose primary interest was road racing.
I think it is also significant that five of the six founding team owners of CART came with a road-racing background. I would contend that it was CART’s road-racing orientation that gave it legs internationally as there was virtually no fan following for speedway racing outside the U.S. and Canada.
One of the significant effects of the “rear-engine revolution†in Championship racing in the 1960’s was its distancing of the sport from its traditional American grass-roots. The vast majority of U.S. motorsports venues are speedways and the type of racing taking place in them – and the “star†drivers arising from them – were increasingly irrelevant to Championship racing; while they fit perfectly with the various NASCAR series.
Left unchecked the separation of the sport from its grass-roots would have eventually marginalized it to a far greater extent than it already was (IMO) circa 1978. The road-racing refugees from Formula 5000 and the Can-Am – which were two of the only commercial road-racing series in America – who entered commercially-oriented Championship racing put it in contact with an entirely different grass-roots support structure; one that had global reach.
Therefore, I don’t think that it was an accident that CART’s brand of Championship racing was more and more oriented toward road-racing; as was its fan base. However, I think it is important to recognize that while the rear-engine revolution transformed Championship racing into something new, it was not transforming it into Formula One; a fear that many of its oval-oriented fans shared. The evolving sport was commercially oriented from its inception, unlike Formula One’s amateur basis, and it prominently featured speedway races; most especially its centerpiece and defining race, the Indianapolis 500. These were two of its features that made Championship racing a uniquely American motor sport with its own support structure.
I think there is little argument among its fans that the rear-engine revolution begun at Indy in the 1960’s dramatically transformed the speedway component of Championship racing. The road-racing influenced champcars of CART were simply the best open-wheel speedway racecars ever created and the speedway races featuring them were the fastest ones in the history of motor sports.
From my perspective CART’s speedway races were also the most competitive ever. When Tony George divided the sport, however, he did so with the intention of “making it more like NASCAR†and this redefined what it meant to be competitive in the speedway racing portion of the sport; breathtaking speed and an emphasis on cutting-edge technology was replaced with a focus on side-by-side racing at diminished speeds highlighted by photo finishes and featuring relatively “low-tech†racecars. Arguably, this was a NASCAR-defined form of speedway racing which Championship racing could never hope to compete with.
If one thinks of a motor sport’s support structure as a highway, Championship racing’s USAC ladder from the 1960's onward was increasingly diverting its celebrity drivers and its fans toward NASCAR. CART countered this by tapping into the global road-racing support structure which fed into Formula One. Since Formula One had a very limited ability to use the products of its support structure due to its limited numbers of teams and Grands Prix, CART was able to appropriate almost all of it that it desired after F1 had skimmed the cream off the top.
To the fans that were attached to the teams and drivers of the F1 support system, CART presented a uniquely distinct and affordable American motor sport that had as one of its features its own optimized form of open-wheel speedway racing to go along with its more familiar rough-and-tumble form of road-racing. This presented a competitive threat to both NASCAR and Formula One and the leaders/owners of both rival motor sports worked to contain or eliminate the challenge from CART.
Globally, F1 interests used their control over the FIA with its ability to sanction/schedule races and FOM’s control of international motorsports media to effectively keep CART at bay and out of the F1 marketplace and away from its fans. In the U.S., the NASCAR oval cartel used its ownership and control of the majority of North America's speedways to keep CART at bay and out of the NASCAR marketplace and away from its fans.
CART countered these efforts by approaching Formula One’s hegemony at its more vulnerable periphery – e.g. venues in South America and Australasia – and building or buying its own U.S. speedways to ensure their supply and to force the NASCAR oval cartel to deal with CART’s leaders (e.g. Roger Penske).
When Tony George split the sport he played directly into the hands of both Formula One and NASCAR interests. He redefined open-wheel speedway racing to NASCAR’s definition and he actively assisted the oval cartel in locking CART out of its speedways (most critically at his own Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its premier race). This quickly caused CART’s speedway owners to sell out to the oval cartel, more or less eliminating CART’s access to speedways. The result is that the NASCAR leadership’s belief that Championship racing redefined to NASCAR standards could not successfully compete with its stock car series was confirmed as George’s new open-wheel motor sport underperformed in terms of attendance and TV ratings at one speedway after another.
With its unique speedway component gone and under relentless financial assault from the IRL and NASCAR, CART was forced to make compromises with regard to the road-racing component of its sport – e.g. the adoption of a “spec†series outline – that put it at a serious disadvantage with respect to Formula One in the international arena.
Thus, the delicate balance of interests in Championship racing was essentially destroyed and the sport was polarized in favor of its two greatest rivals: NASCAR and Formula One. CART’s brand of Championship racing lost its uniqueness along with its well-recognized brand name to become a shadow of NASCAR in its speedway component and a shadow of Formula One in its road-racing component with more than half its polarized fans gravitating toward one primary interest or the other (meaning speedway or road racing).
As TheStranger accurately noted (IMO): “...I think the EARL successfully made the road racer/oval fan divide permanent....â€
To this might be added the observation that historically neither group of fans has been sufficient in number to support an exclusively oval open-wheel motor sport or an exclusive road-racing one. To those who would point to the long history of open-wheel speedway racing (i.e. the National Championship) in the U.S., I would say that this was applicable only when open-wheel speedway racing was the pinnacle of motor sport in America with all the country's grassroots motorsports efforts directed to it and in the absence of competition from a more perfect form of speedway racing (namely NASCAR). Even then, there were times when Championship racing hovered on the brink of extinction in America.
Today, the coalition of fans of both persuasions that once supported the sport has been torn asunder and neither remaining group has sufficient numbers to support the continued survival of the cobbled-together “unified†series (IMO).
One of the core beliefs of viral marketing (e.g. word-of-mouth advertising) is that a customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like.
If this is true, Championship racing in its present “unified†form is likely to be the victim of negative viral advertising with a much greater number of potential new fans hearing about former fans’ dislike of the series than fans speaking of their liking for it. As even Madison Avenue considers word-of-mouth advertising to be among the most potent forms of persuasion, it is probable that the meager traditional advertising put forth by the IRL’s media partners and sponsors is being overwhelmed by the former fan’s word-of-mouth negation of the sport.
I don’t know about you but I came to Championship racing in a time-tested manner: a friend recommended it to me. Since Championship racing with the exception of the Indy 500 was barely televised at the time, I think it would have been next to impossible for me to happen upon the sport while channel surfing and come to it that way. Moreover, I have serious doubts about the capacity of the sport – even at its height – to seduce channel surfers. For example, think back to the most exciting race moments that you can recall from the CART era – perhaps Zanardi’s pass of Herta through the dirt at Laguna Seca – and then put it in the context of a two-hour race broadcast. The thrilling moment and its replays occupied perhaps five minutes of a 120 minute program; what are the chances that a casual channel surfer happened to tune in during those five minutes? Even if he/she had, would the surfer have been able to put the pass involving two unknown drivers competing in an unfamiliar sport at an unnamed venue in a context that was attractive or compelling? What about the other, less exciting 115 minutes of the TV program? Is there anyone here who actually became a fan of the sport as a direct result of accidental channel surfing?
Let’s assume for a moment that it is possible for one’s interest in the sport to be ignited by compelling images on TV viewed by accident; what’s the next step? At some point the newly-interested person is going to convey his/her excitement to others. These others can probably be divided into two groups: people who know little or nothing about the sport and those who do know something about it. If the basic tenet of viral advertising is correct, it would seem probable that more people have heard negative things about IndyCar racing than have heard positive things. In any event, when was the last time that you went counter to an obviously sincere negative comment about a product? Our basic self-survival instinct argues against the proposition (e.g. “Don’t eat that weird-looking fruit, it made me sick†= “The IndyCar Series stinks, it makes me want to vomitâ€).
This is a trap that the IRL can’t get out of as long as it presents an obviously inferior motor sport. What fan of road racing is going to recommend the IRL’s open-wheel version of it over other competing versions? What fan of speedway racing is going to recommend the IRL’s open-wheel version of it over competing series (like NASCAR)? Even the fence-sitters are saying: “Well, I’ll give the ICS a chance to get its act together before I make my final judgment.†Boy, that’s a great recommendation to the “casual†fan.
Then there’s the “Gomer†factor. If one seeks other’s opinions about a product, say a new car, and one gets conflicting opinions (e.g. some love it, some hate it), I think there is a tendency to either play it safe and steer clear of the product or, if one’s interest is high, try to judge the relative merits of the differing opinions. This latter course usually entails a judgment of the people offering the opinions; and one has a natural tendency to give more weight to the opinions of people one likes or admires. This may account for the apparent fact that most of the IRL’s support seems to be primarily in the Midwest within a few hundred miles of IMS; this is probably the area of the country with the greatest amount of positive word of mouth about the IRL and the people (Gomers) whose opinion the new IRL fan credits (i.e. “He/she seems like good people and he/she likes IndyCar racing, so I probably will tooâ€).
In sum, the South may rise again (NASCAR perhaps being proof of it) but Championship racing is unlikely to do the same.
IMHO
I think this is an important point.
One of the main features of Championship racing in the CART era was its uneasy amalgamation of the fans whose primary interest was speedway racing with those whose primary interest was road racing.
I think it is also significant that five of the six founding team owners of CART came with a road-racing background. I would contend that it was CART’s road-racing orientation that gave it legs internationally as there was virtually no fan following for speedway racing outside the U.S. and Canada.
One of the significant effects of the “rear-engine revolution†in Championship racing in the 1960’s was its distancing of the sport from its traditional American grass-roots. The vast majority of U.S. motorsports venues are speedways and the type of racing taking place in them – and the “star†drivers arising from them – were increasingly irrelevant to Championship racing; while they fit perfectly with the various NASCAR series.
Left unchecked the separation of the sport from its grass-roots would have eventually marginalized it to a far greater extent than it already was (IMO) circa 1978. The road-racing refugees from Formula 5000 and the Can-Am – which were two of the only commercial road-racing series in America – who entered commercially-oriented Championship racing put it in contact with an entirely different grass-roots support structure; one that had global reach.
Therefore, I don’t think that it was an accident that CART’s brand of Championship racing was more and more oriented toward road-racing; as was its fan base. However, I think it is important to recognize that while the rear-engine revolution transformed Championship racing into something new, it was not transforming it into Formula One; a fear that many of its oval-oriented fans shared. The evolving sport was commercially oriented from its inception, unlike Formula One’s amateur basis, and it prominently featured speedway races; most especially its centerpiece and defining race, the Indianapolis 500. These were two of its features that made Championship racing a uniquely American motor sport with its own support structure.
I think there is little argument among its fans that the rear-engine revolution begun at Indy in the 1960’s dramatically transformed the speedway component of Championship racing. The road-racing influenced champcars of CART were simply the best open-wheel speedway racecars ever created and the speedway races featuring them were the fastest ones in the history of motor sports.
From my perspective CART’s speedway races were also the most competitive ever. When Tony George divided the sport, however, he did so with the intention of “making it more like NASCAR†and this redefined what it meant to be competitive in the speedway racing portion of the sport; breathtaking speed and an emphasis on cutting-edge technology was replaced with a focus on side-by-side racing at diminished speeds highlighted by photo finishes and featuring relatively “low-tech†racecars. Arguably, this was a NASCAR-defined form of speedway racing which Championship racing could never hope to compete with.
If one thinks of a motor sport’s support structure as a highway, Championship racing’s USAC ladder from the 1960's onward was increasingly diverting its celebrity drivers and its fans toward NASCAR. CART countered this by tapping into the global road-racing support structure which fed into Formula One. Since Formula One had a very limited ability to use the products of its support structure due to its limited numbers of teams and Grands Prix, CART was able to appropriate almost all of it that it desired after F1 had skimmed the cream off the top.
To the fans that were attached to the teams and drivers of the F1 support system, CART presented a uniquely distinct and affordable American motor sport that had as one of its features its own optimized form of open-wheel speedway racing to go along with its more familiar rough-and-tumble form of road-racing. This presented a competitive threat to both NASCAR and Formula One and the leaders/owners of both rival motor sports worked to contain or eliminate the challenge from CART.
Globally, F1 interests used their control over the FIA with its ability to sanction/schedule races and FOM’s control of international motorsports media to effectively keep CART at bay and out of the F1 marketplace and away from its fans. In the U.S., the NASCAR oval cartel used its ownership and control of the majority of North America's speedways to keep CART at bay and out of the NASCAR marketplace and away from its fans.
CART countered these efforts by approaching Formula One’s hegemony at its more vulnerable periphery – e.g. venues in South America and Australasia – and building or buying its own U.S. speedways to ensure their supply and to force the NASCAR oval cartel to deal with CART’s leaders (e.g. Roger Penske).
When Tony George split the sport he played directly into the hands of both Formula One and NASCAR interests. He redefined open-wheel speedway racing to NASCAR’s definition and he actively assisted the oval cartel in locking CART out of its speedways (most critically at his own Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its premier race). This quickly caused CART’s speedway owners to sell out to the oval cartel, more or less eliminating CART’s access to speedways. The result is that the NASCAR leadership’s belief that Championship racing redefined to NASCAR standards could not successfully compete with its stock car series was confirmed as George’s new open-wheel motor sport underperformed in terms of attendance and TV ratings at one speedway after another.
With its unique speedway component gone and under relentless financial assault from the IRL and NASCAR, CART was forced to make compromises with regard to the road-racing component of its sport – e.g. the adoption of a “spec†series outline – that put it at a serious disadvantage with respect to Formula One in the international arena.
Thus, the delicate balance of interests in Championship racing was essentially destroyed and the sport was polarized in favor of its two greatest rivals: NASCAR and Formula One. CART’s brand of Championship racing lost its uniqueness along with its well-recognized brand name to become a shadow of NASCAR in its speedway component and a shadow of Formula One in its road-racing component with more than half its polarized fans gravitating toward one primary interest or the other (meaning speedway or road racing).
As TheStranger accurately noted (IMO): “...I think the EARL successfully made the road racer/oval fan divide permanent....â€
To this might be added the observation that historically neither group of fans has been sufficient in number to support an exclusively oval open-wheel motor sport or an exclusive road-racing one. To those who would point to the long history of open-wheel speedway racing (i.e. the National Championship) in the U.S., I would say that this was applicable only when open-wheel speedway racing was the pinnacle of motor sport in America with all the country's grassroots motorsports efforts directed to it and in the absence of competition from a more perfect form of speedway racing (namely NASCAR). Even then, there were times when Championship racing hovered on the brink of extinction in America.
Today, the coalition of fans of both persuasions that once supported the sport has been torn asunder and neither remaining group has sufficient numbers to support the continued survival of the cobbled-together “unified†series (IMO).
One of the core beliefs of viral marketing (e.g. word-of-mouth advertising) is that a customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like.
If this is true, Championship racing in its present “unified†form is likely to be the victim of negative viral advertising with a much greater number of potential new fans hearing about former fans’ dislike of the series than fans speaking of their liking for it. As even Madison Avenue considers word-of-mouth advertising to be among the most potent forms of persuasion, it is probable that the meager traditional advertising put forth by the IRL’s media partners and sponsors is being overwhelmed by the former fan’s word-of-mouth negation of the sport.
I don’t know about you but I came to Championship racing in a time-tested manner: a friend recommended it to me. Since Championship racing with the exception of the Indy 500 was barely televised at the time, I think it would have been next to impossible for me to happen upon the sport while channel surfing and come to it that way. Moreover, I have serious doubts about the capacity of the sport – even at its height – to seduce channel surfers. For example, think back to the most exciting race moments that you can recall from the CART era – perhaps Zanardi’s pass of Herta through the dirt at Laguna Seca – and then put it in the context of a two-hour race broadcast. The thrilling moment and its replays occupied perhaps five minutes of a 120 minute program; what are the chances that a casual channel surfer happened to tune in during those five minutes? Even if he/she had, would the surfer have been able to put the pass involving two unknown drivers competing in an unfamiliar sport at an unnamed venue in a context that was attractive or compelling? What about the other, less exciting 115 minutes of the TV program? Is there anyone here who actually became a fan of the sport as a direct result of accidental channel surfing?
Let’s assume for a moment that it is possible for one’s interest in the sport to be ignited by compelling images on TV viewed by accident; what’s the next step? At some point the newly-interested person is going to convey his/her excitement to others. These others can probably be divided into two groups: people who know little or nothing about the sport and those who do know something about it. If the basic tenet of viral advertising is correct, it would seem probable that more people have heard negative things about IndyCar racing than have heard positive things. In any event, when was the last time that you went counter to an obviously sincere negative comment about a product? Our basic self-survival instinct argues against the proposition (e.g. “Don’t eat that weird-looking fruit, it made me sick†= “The IndyCar Series stinks, it makes me want to vomitâ€).
This is a trap that the IRL can’t get out of as long as it presents an obviously inferior motor sport. What fan of road racing is going to recommend the IRL’s open-wheel version of it over other competing versions? What fan of speedway racing is going to recommend the IRL’s open-wheel version of it over competing series (like NASCAR)? Even the fence-sitters are saying: “Well, I’ll give the ICS a chance to get its act together before I make my final judgment.†Boy, that’s a great recommendation to the “casual†fan.
Then there’s the “Gomer†factor. If one seeks other’s opinions about a product, say a new car, and one gets conflicting opinions (e.g. some love it, some hate it), I think there is a tendency to either play it safe and steer clear of the product or, if one’s interest is high, try to judge the relative merits of the differing opinions. This latter course usually entails a judgment of the people offering the opinions; and one has a natural tendency to give more weight to the opinions of people one likes or admires. This may account for the apparent fact that most of the IRL’s support seems to be primarily in the Midwest within a few hundred miles of IMS; this is probably the area of the country with the greatest amount of positive word of mouth about the IRL and the people (Gomers) whose opinion the new IRL fan credits (i.e. “He/she seems like good people and he/she likes IndyCar racing, so I probably will tooâ€).
In sum, the South may rise again (NASCAR perhaps being proof of it) but Championship racing is unlikely to do the same.
IMHO
-cap
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