IndyCar by the Numbers: The Age Game

47 year old Al Unser wins his 4th Indy 500

Age
23  -  Graham Rahal
29  -  Bobby Rahal wins his first IndyCar race

23  -  Simona de Silvestro
28  -  Al Unser Jr. wins his first oval race

25  -  James Hinchcliffe
27  -  Michael Andretti signs with Newman Haas

36  -  Helio Castroneves
43  -  Average age of the four time Indy 500 winners when they won their last 500.

38  -  Dario Franchitti
44  -  Mario Andretti wins the CART Championship

39  -  Rubens Barrichello
42  -  Emerson Fittipaldi wins his first Indy 500 and the CART Championship

25  -  Marco Andretti
29  -  Mario Andretti wins his only Indy 500

Maybe this sport isn't quite the young man's game that we think it is.
 

IndyCar is now NSFW

That's just pure pornography right there. 

I haven't seen a rear end that nice since Lara Sue Jacobson mooned me in 11th grade. Wow.

And how are we supposed to discuss the Indy 500 this year when the censors are going to blur the cars?

As with many things in life, I think Richard Pyror has the best way to describe this car. (Which really is NSFW)

(Credit Damon Sturrock for the pics)

Who will miss pack racing?

 Will it be those 20,000 people that showed up to the last race at Chicago? Maybe those 10,000 that showed up to the last race at Kentucky will miss it. I bet it will be the 200,000 people that watched the 2009 Kansas race on TV.

 Basically, no one will miss pack racing, because almost no one was watching it.

 Sure, the ratings across the board for IndyCar isn't great, but when you look at the highest attended and rated races outside of Indy, it's typically a street course. The ratings for the last Kentucky and Chicago races were so bad, Versus didn't even bother to report them.

 I hear you screaming over there mister, "IndyCar needs exciting races with .000001012 second finishes cause that's what oval racing is all about!!!!!" First, calm down. Second, that's fine once or twice, but race after race it's a little much. It's basically making every race into a Michael Bay movie. Sure, there's lots of 'splosions and sexy girls, but it's just mindless entertainment after awhile.

 When people talk about IndyCar's roots being on ovals, they're talking about flat tracks and super speedways. Not these NASCAR cookie cutter tracks. You want to return to the roots of IndyCar, you need to return to Michigan, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Pocono. Those are the tracks that are still around that made IndyCar famous.

 Why not tap back into that fanbase that made Indy popular in the 60's, 70's, and 80's? Why not be an alternative to NASCAR? They race at so many 1.5 mile tracks the fans call them cookie cutters, but not in a fun "Yay, were going to have cookies!" way, but in a way you get excited for McDonald's, cause that's what cookie cutter tracks are, they are the McDonald's of the racing world. Maybe IndyCar should strive to be a little better than that? I'd much rather be the In-n-Out than the McDonald's anyways.

Hey Chad Knaus, You Should Take Up Drinking

Chad contemplating his plans for his six race suspension.

Next time you think about cheating in NASCAR, you should just take up drinking.

I'm serious. Go grab a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and get hammered. Then, and this is the best part, get behind the wheel of a car and start texting people. But you have to wreck into someone. Trust me Chad, you should do that long before you think about building a car with a C-Post .01mm out of spec.

Why?

Cause NASCAR won't suspend you for getting a DUI, blowing twice the legal limit, and wrecking while texting. Just ask this guy...

Micheal Annett, is thinking, "Thank God I only got a DUI. I can keep racing!"

So, Mr Knaus, if you don't want a six race suspension, just get a DUI. You'll get to race the rest of the year without a single race off.

Going Forward By Looking Back

Lil' Al on his way to the 1990 PPG Championship

  The 2012 IZOD INDYCAR series schedule is just awful, isn't it? There's only 16 races, most of them are street races. Heck there's only five ovals. That's just depressing.

  It's also 1990 CART PPG Championship season. 16 races, 5 ovals and there were more street races than any other race. So why is it that in 1990 this was one of the greatest series in the world, but in 2012 the same schedule is a disappointment to fans?

  The schedule wasn't the only thing today's fans would have hated about 1990. Two drivers dominated the season and together they won 11 races. That's one more race than Will Power and Dario Franchitti won in 2011. Of course, those two drivers were Al Unser, Jr. and Michael Andretti so I'll give today's fan that one. By today's standards, the races themselves were extremely boring. The highest number of cars to finish on the lead lap in one race was eight and that was at the four mile long Road America. In five races, only two cars finished on the lead lap. If that were to happen today we'd put the audience on suicide watch.

Yet.

  In 1991 the ratings went up, attendance went up, sponsorship money being thrown around went up, and IndyCar even had a video based around it's championship driver released. How is that even possible? According to today's fans all of this would just be the most boring racing on the planet.

  So what's happened to the audience? I realized that many were lost due to the split, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what today's fans will tolerate. Why does today's auto racing audience need so many gimmicks? Red tires, push-to-pass, double-file restarts, lucky dogs, wave arounds, KERS, and DRS; IndyCar had none of these in 1990, and many more people were watching. 

  The 1990 season was just people building cars to go as fast as they could and drivers driving them as fast as they could. That was racing and it was great. So I have to ask, can we go back to this, or would we have to put Jack Kevorkian's hotline in the race scroll?

Stats can be found here: http://www.race-database.com/season/season.php?year=1990&series_id=4

Brace for the G's

"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

I'm starting this blog with one of my favorite quotes from Hunter S. Thompson (okay, it's the only one I know) because it seem very fitting for what I hope will be the major theme of this blog. I'm going to spend a lot of time discussing IndyCar, my passion for it, where it's been, where it's at, and where I hope it's going.

I started watching IndyCar in 1985. I was 8 years old, but seeing Danny Sullivan spin his car in the south short chute, not wreck, and then go on to win the race got me hooked. Now, at 33 years of age, I look back at IndyCar during my youth and realize how it was "riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." It was the greatest racing on the planet. Free from hype or gimmicks, it was the sport of auto racing in it's purist form. But, over the years, we've lost our way due to the egos of just a few.

In what is called his "Wave Speech," Hunter says, "You can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." After the death of Dan Wheldon, Las Vegas may end up being a water mark for IndyCar. Not the high-water mark in Hunter's speech, but the low-water mark. Maybe, Vegas will be the point were IndyCar finally sheds itself of all the things that went wrong during the split. I like to think that IndyCar can just get back to what it does best:

Pure, unadulterated, no gimmicks, no BS, straight up racing.