"KNOCK ! KNOCK!" Hey IRL; it's your big chance. TAKE IT!!!

[Grinder-Tank]

No questions asked: you need to get J.J. Yeley into an IndyCar ride for 2004. The situation which exist now for our favorite series is pivitol. A hot shoe in the U.S. is tearing it up and would like to race in your series. He happens to have a fan base. He also has a recent history which proceeds him....he goes to NASCAR. YOU have the chance to turn the tide. Do it. The guy is on fire. I don't care if you have to build him a home in Cabo San Lucas.....DO IT!

The fact that Robin Miller never mentioned his name on the radio yesterday when discussing possibilities for the Panther ride said it loud and clear. If Yeley gets an IRL gig and it's a stong one, folks like R.M. are rushing to the bank even faster to cash their CART paychecks, after they change their underwear that is.

Also, play up the Sam Hornish deal. That in conjunction with Yeley will have quite an impact. The planets are aligned,,,,,MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

[KnockOff]

(poking his head in the door)
Whaaa???

Oh, sorry.

Thought you were hollerin' for me.

[manson]

I'd love to see a driver like Yeley get a ride with a team like Panther and win right off the bat. Maybe then we could put an end to these oval v. r/c driver threads and accept the best available from both disciplines.

Probably won't happen, but it would be nice.

[mds24]

It would be nice if JJ Yeley showed he is interested in the Panther ride.

That's all I will say.

[WAS]

Originally posted by Matt-OTN
It would be nice if JJ Yeley showed he is interested in the Panther ride.

That's all I will say.

That, coupled with the following from Curt Cavin:

Cavin's Q & A
(4th answer down)

lead me to believe that Yeley would be a long shot - by his own choice.

[mds24]

Originally posted by WAS
That, coupled with the following from Curt Cavin:

Cavin's Q & A
(4th answer down)

lead me to believe that Yeley would be a long shot - by his own choice.

OK, I will expound a little on what Curt said and add that I have heard Panther has tried but something just seems to get in the way, always something else to do, another commitment.

[Grinder-Tank]

A bit of what I was referencing also had to do with Hornish. Even though he's still in the IRL, NASACR's pen jockies i.e. Dave DeSpane have it in their mind that Sam will be in Cup by 2005.

This illustrates the magnitude of Sam's decision to stay in the IRL, and what a Yeley ride in the IRL could do to emphasize a growing relevance in the league.

No real racer can stand up to the truth and say there's more challange when going 50 mph slower. You don't have to be a chief mechanic to figure that out. If you were to use the NASCAR point in regards to the popularity aspect, the U.S. AirForce would still be flying piston-engined planes under the demand by the majority. It would be like the old times and all of these pilots would be white.

A driver like Sam Hornish I think can see this. Why not Yeley. Has racing been re-defined as being the most popular and not the fastest. When the SR71 Blackbird flew from Edwards in California to D.C. in less than 90 minutes, was this to be ignored because perhaps more folks were interested in propeller airplanes?

[jimbo]

Fan Base? Really? How about you and take a walk through the downtown of any American city outside of Indianapolis and see if we can find anyone who knows who the **** this guy is.
**** you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who knew who Helio Castro Neves is and he won the Indy 500 which according to some is supposed to make you a household name.
Selling a few thousand t-shirts out of the trunk of your car does not constitute a fan base. The few thousand people who know who he is are probably already watching the IRL anyway so it won't be a big boost.
If your going to pull Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart out as an example of how popular USAC drivers are you can stop right now becasue nobody outside of a few die hards in Indiana had any idea who those guys were until they hit NASAR and they didn't make NASCAR what it is, NASCAR made them what they are.
Yeley might be a good driver, **** he may be a great driver but getting him or any other USAC driver in the IRL will not make any difference to a fan in Texas, New York, Nebraska or Oregon or anywhere else for that matter.
If the IRL ever hopes to appraoch NASCAR's popularity it need to do a a few things. First it needs to take steps to insure that it is not a revolving door for drivers. People want to see the same guy's year after year. A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva etc.. raced for years and years. That kind of stability need to happen and then the IRL needs to promote itself and it's stars in a shameless NASCAR fashion.
It doesn't matter where the drivers come from and if you don't think that's true look at Helio. The Xenophobes that frequent this board made remarks like "What's a Helio" or refered to him as "Fidel Castro-Neves" before he won in 2001 and after his victory he was adopted and procaimed to be good for the series adn lot's of other accolades were heaped upon him by people who had previously ridiculed him for being from Brazil.
You can not build the popularity of the IRL by riding the coat tails of a series/sanctioning body that 99% of Americans have never heard of and even fewer care about. It's a backward appraoch and it won't work.

[hdolan]

"If the IRL ever hopes to appraoch NASCAR's popularity it need to do a a few things. First it needs to take steps to insure that it is not a revolving door for drivers. People want to see the same guy's year after year. A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva etc.. raced for years and years."

PS: Why should Yeley take less money in front of fewer people...

[carl s]

Originally posted by hdolan
"If the IRL ever hopes to appraoch NASCAR's popularity it need to do a a few things. First it needs to take steps to insure that it is not a revolving door for drivers. People want to see the same guy's year after year. A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva etc.. raced for years and years."

PS: Why should Yeley take less money in front of fewer people...

I think he's got that one figured Howard.
It's up to us to make it worth his while to come with us and make this series a success.
We need about 20 JJs
carl s
Indio, CA
The series that hires the stars from the little tracks across this great land deserves to be #1.

[hdolan]

"I think he's got that one figured Howard. "

Yep...

[slinger]

Howard, I honestly believe that you really want the IRL to fail. It wouldn't make a particle of difference to you if they packed it full of short trackers. You'd still be trying to tell us how great NASCAR is and how that's the only series worth running. It's getting old.

[Mackie]

Originally posted by slinger
Howard, I honestly believe that you really want the IRL to fail. It wouldn't make a particle of difference to you if they packed it full of short trackers. You'd still be trying to tell us how great NASCAR is and how that's the only series worth running. It's getting old.

I agree with you on that slinger, but in this case, he is spot on.

Yeley never was coming to IndyCar, there is a good chance he was looking at all the pro-Yeley stuff here and at wind tunnel, and laughing as his worth went up.

[Cygni]

STOP THE JJ THREADS.

In all likely hood, he is NOT going to drive in the IndyCar Series.

Now for imho stuff. Hes never proven any outstanding ability in formula cars. As for his amazing fan base, i simply dont think that sprint car fans a) want to see JJ leave, and b) will follow him to IndyCar. Maybe they would follow him to NASCAR, but face it, its not like most sprintcar fans are glued to ABC to watch IndyCar... but i can bet you that most of em ARE glued to the Fox/NBC cup broadcast.

Fact of the matter, imho, is that JJ is MADE for NASCAR. Allmendinger? Thats a different story.

Oh, and this made me laugh:

No real racer can stand up to the truth and say there's more challange when going 50 mph slower

Yes, because we all know that speed is the absolute only thing that challenges a driver in a racecar. Hillarious.

[slinger]

Most sprint car fans will follow their drivers wherever they go. If they were going to the IRL, their fans would be there. Until the CART era, that's the way it worked.

As for Allmindinger, he'd bring nobody. If he came to the IRL, the CART fans would call him a traitor and never watch him again. No matter how good the drivers are, it is all for naught if you can't get the fans. If you're going to run a series based on ovals, you need to get the fans who like ovals and the drivers that race on them. That ain't Allmindinger.