Alex Zanardi's Heroic Tribute Laps (2003 CART Lausitz)

I remember seeing this on television back in 2003 and shedding a bunch of tears at the sight; never let it be said that there aren't heroes in the sport of motor racing....Alex Zanardi is definitely one of them.

The Barbaric Nature of the Early IRL Years (1996-01 IRL Crashes Due to M...

The first half of the CART-IRL Split was an interesting period for American Championship Car (a/k/a Indycar) racing in that, while the racing was at times very good - case in point: 1997, Charlotte; there was a 20-25 lap period of back-and-forth racing btwn. Tony Stewart and Buddy Lazier that is still considered one of the best duels in motor racing of the past 30 years or so.

On the other hand, it was also a sign of the ego's of both CART president Andrew Craig, who refused to listen to IMS owner Tony George in 1994-1995....and IMS boss Tony George, who refused to understand/accept that, for all the glitz and glitter that the Indianapolis 500 has, it is still but one race on the calendar. Because of their respective egos, the sport had to endure a divisive split that benefitted no one but NASCAR.

Zak Brown Speaks on the State of IndyCar

Excellent interview by Indycar journalist David Land with Arrow/McLaren's Zak Brown on the state of IndyCar at present. Lot of good points all around, especially with regards to McLaren's intentions, not just in IndyCar but in other racing series.

ChampCar - Sebastien Bourdais vs Paul Tracy Rivalry Story

There simply was no better rivalry in the Indycar community than this one between Tracy & Bourdais; performance wise, Bourdais was simply better - 4 series titles for the Frenchman, 1 for the Canadian. In terms of wins Bourdais had 37 to Tracy's 31...

..that said, a major caveat has to be brought up and that is the fact that, due to the Split between CART/ChampCar and the Indy Racing League, they were literally the top drivers in what had become an increasingly thin CCWS field. By the 2003 season, the major players in CART - namely Penske, Ganassi and Andretti (Rahal would split time btwn the series in 2003-2004 before going full IRL in 2005) - had jumped ship so that they could compete in the Indy 500 and ChampCar's two remaining dominant teams - Newman-Haas and Forsythe - were essentially big fish in a small pond.

Timing is also important; had this begun back in the 90's it would've been epic as both Bourdais and Tracy drove for wht would have been at that time two of the sport's Big 5 and so one has to wonder what those totals above might look like in that case. There's also the fact that, if the Split doesn't occur, chances are one or both of them would have an Indy 500 win to their credit (which, given 2002, I'm betting still sticks' in Tracy's craw at times).

Change is needed... does IndyCar have the solution?

Short answer: no, not in the least.

Long answer: What do you do that either hasn't been done or is too expensive to do? (I'll get back to this in a moment.)

On a side note: why is there all this apparent hate towards Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou? The man is showing a master-class on how to dominate a racing series as his teammate Scott Dixon, probably the GOAT of his generation of IndyCar racers, once did in years past. Three wins in four races is a thumping and yet people want to blame the driver for, as David Land above points out, doing his job out on track?

As to the long answer, it boils down to one thing, cost. It costs a lot more money nowadays to run an IndyCar team than it has in past years and a lot of that goes back to the bazillions of dollars sponsors/suppliers pumped into the sport in the late 1990's/early 2000's....that money is gone and ain't returning; the sponsors ain't returning either. Nowadays its' a sponsor-a-rama which isn't not so bad (Heck, NASCAR, which once prided itself on single-sponsor entries, now does the sponsor-a-rama regularly as well and no one seems to complain about it.)

The other problem is on the supplier side; yes, we have a semi-spec series (semi-spec as in all Dallara chassis' and either a Honda or Chevrolet twin-turbo hybrid engine) but its' not the fault of the suppliers. That fault lies squarely under Roger Penske and Penske Entertainment for not providing a justification for other suppliers to want to enter the IndyCar Series.

On the chassis side, Dallara is akin to Boeing & Airbus in the airplane industry - they are the 1,000 lb. elephant and no one, not Swift or Taatus or Lola, is going to knock them off that perch. On that, I've got no problem. On the engine side, though, its' another story. I can think of several different potential IndyCar engine suppliers offhand - Ford Racing, Toyota, Cosworth, Lotus, AER, Mercedes - and other than Toyota, none of them are likely headed to 16th and Georgetown anytime soon. That needs to change and quickly.

So what needs to be done? I would say "take a page from the former Grand-Am Series." 

How? Instead of building a chassis and dictating an engine formula, put out RFPs (Requests for Proposals) stating what formula you're looking for in terms of the engine and in terms of the chassis and then see who bites. Grand-Am did that and throughout all three iterations of the Daytona Prototype class, they had a minimum of 4-5 different engine and chassis suppliers and these were well-known: Doran, Fabcar, Multimatic, Coyote, Crawford, Dallara and Riley for the chassis;, two different BMW, Ford and Porsche engine builds each, along with Nissan (via Infiniti), Toyota (via. Lexus) and Honda....and guess what? The racing was damn good during the 12-13 years of the Daytona Prototype era.

IndyCar could take a page out of it....otherwise? I'm afraid to ask.

IndyCar's Back

...and I couldn't be happier!

America's oldest form of motor racing (sorry, NASCAR!) returned today with the first practice session of the year at St. Pete and the Alfred Whitted Circuit. For the first time since the early 2000's IndyCar is on FOX - all seventeen races! - with FOX's cable networks, FS1 and FS2, joining in. (Practice sessions and Indy NXT competition on FS1/FS2, IndyC races on FOX).

Judging by today's practice, FOX did pretty good; still, it is only one practice in the season to come.