With summer entering its final two weeks and having just returned from Road America, time in the year 2008 is quickly winding down. Lost in the shuffle of the RA weekend, which brought the crowds on Saturday, was an overlooked result of the open-wheel unification.
RA was one of the tracks that, although they lost their Champ Car race, was able to continue with its scheduled events for this season. As such, a plethora of feeder and sedan series stepped up to the plate on Sunday. The problem was, outside of the respective series officials, the media center was even deader than it was last year.
And the fan turnout was substantially less - in part due to ticket prices that were far more than they should have been due to what happened. $50 a pop for seven feeder series events is about double what the price of admission should have been.
A word also about the new television contract for the IRL IndyCar Series from 2009 forward. Versus, a.k.a. a channel no-one has ever heard of, gets the rights for 13 of 18 events for the next ten years. Contrary to many of the series' media, I am not only frustrated with the deal but fail to see how it can be beneficial to the series' growth in the long run. Moving a series from a network that is available in 20 million more homes (at the minimum), plus the avenues of SportsCenter, ESPN.com, and the Bottom Line, fails to catch my eye.
What incentive do sponsors have to commit to a series where so few races are available on network TV? CART/Champ Car tried this and failed - twice - though in both cases they were in a slightly worse situation by not only moving to a network that had less exposure (SPEED and then Spike TV, 2002 and '04) but paying for their airtime to do so. I'm all for better coverage and more exposure, but not on a network that a majority of the race fans don't get.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
2009 IndyCar schedule
All told, it was always going to be difficult to put a positive spin on IndyCar's 2009 schedule release. The statement uttered at the unification press conference was that '09 would be a "clean slate", and in hindsight, that was not the greatest choice of words. And of course there were those Champ Car fans who, bless their heart, wouldn't support the IRL for anything unless some of their venues were added and their cars adopted.
Contracts more than anything stipulated who made it and who didn't for 2009. For 2010 and beyond, when several contracts expire, the slate should be more open.
The difficulty in that lies with temporary circuits, a la Cleveland and Houston, that have been abandoned for two years. Resuscitation of events such as these take years to ever restart, if at all, as Houston would know previously. One downtown, 90-degree corner boring circuit was on CART's schedule from 1998-01 and after it went away, it took until 2006 and the new Reliant Park circuit before racing there resumed. Miami 's variety of layouts were on and off on a couple occasions.
So in terms of those, don't hold your breath for 2010. Cleveland was a CART staple for 20 years but it is likely not going to make the cut in the future. Developers want to create high-rise apartments on the Burke Lakefront Airport location, and reportedly the last few years as a Champ Car event it was a financial burden.
Previously here, I suggested that future IndyCar schedules needed to maintain the most long-term financially viable events, and for 2009, it appears they have done so for the most part. Playing to 30 or 40,000 in a 140,000 seat arena such as Las Vegas Motor Speedway would have been an abomination, and I can only hope the marketing "geniuses" at IRL, Terry Angstadt and Zak Brown of Just Marketing, can drum up enough interest in the finale moving to Homestead.
That one more than any other threw me for a loop. The party line was that "Southern Florida is best known for hosting championship events". Okay, but running in Miami during October is asinine for a number of reasons. Mainly, there are other sporting events (Hurricanes football, Dolphins if they can still be considered a legit NFL franchise) going on, it's hurricane season, and it's only a month ahead of the NASCAR finale.
If they don't come to IndyCar to get the season going, what incentive is there for fans in the region to go to the event when NASCAR wraps up right after? Especially with a lack of promotion more than likely.
Another murky area is the Australia race. Its on-again, off-again stance for 2008 has been annoying at best, and while it does rake in a considerable number of fans over the weekend, whether it is in the best financial interest of the teams remained to be seen. Already this year one Aussie backer went belly-up (Conquest's Opes Prime) and in all likelihood, Aussie Vineyards wouldn't be around without this race for Will Power. Does the travel expense justify the return on investment? Just food for thought.
Permanent circuits are the only hope in terms of being added for 2010. It's already a year off but I would like to see races at New Hampshire (oval), Portland (northwest market), Cleveland and Road America added for 2010 with a couple events (Kentucky, Detroit, Homestead) dropped. I'd say I wanted Phoenix too, but I doubt ISC will budge in giving a date with two NASCAR races there.
For what it's worth, I will be spending the weekend with a plethora of great road racing up at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. Until next week, cheers.
Contracts more than anything stipulated who made it and who didn't for 2009. For 2010 and beyond, when several contracts expire, the slate should be more open.
The difficulty in that lies with temporary circuits, a la Cleveland and Houston, that have been abandoned for two years. Resuscitation of events such as these take years to ever restart, if at all, as Houston would know previously. One downtown, 90-degree corner boring circuit was on CART's schedule from 1998-01 and after it went away, it took until 2006 and the new Reliant Park circuit before racing there resumed. Miami 's variety of layouts were on and off on a couple occasions.
So in terms of those, don't hold your breath for 2010. Cleveland was a CART staple for 20 years but it is likely not going to make the cut in the future. Developers want to create high-rise apartments on the Burke Lakefront Airport location, and reportedly the last few years as a Champ Car event it was a financial burden.
Previously here, I suggested that future IndyCar schedules needed to maintain the most long-term financially viable events, and for 2009, it appears they have done so for the most part. Playing to 30 or 40,000 in a 140,000 seat arena such as Las Vegas Motor Speedway would have been an abomination, and I can only hope the marketing "geniuses" at IRL, Terry Angstadt and Zak Brown of Just Marketing, can drum up enough interest in the finale moving to Homestead.
That one more than any other threw me for a loop. The party line was that "Southern Florida is best known for hosting championship events". Okay, but running in Miami during October is asinine for a number of reasons. Mainly, there are other sporting events (Hurricanes football, Dolphins if they can still be considered a legit NFL franchise) going on, it's hurricane season, and it's only a month ahead of the NASCAR finale.
If they don't come to IndyCar to get the season going, what incentive is there for fans in the region to go to the event when NASCAR wraps up right after? Especially with a lack of promotion more than likely.
Another murky area is the Australia race. Its on-again, off-again stance for 2008 has been annoying at best, and while it does rake in a considerable number of fans over the weekend, whether it is in the best financial interest of the teams remained to be seen. Already this year one Aussie backer went belly-up (Conquest's Opes Prime) and in all likelihood, Aussie Vineyards wouldn't be around without this race for Will Power. Does the travel expense justify the return on investment? Just food for thought.
Permanent circuits are the only hope in terms of being added for 2010. It's already a year off but I would like to see races at New Hampshire (oval), Portland (northwest market), Cleveland and Road America added for 2010 with a couple events (Kentucky, Detroit, Homestead) dropped. I'd say I wanted Phoenix too, but I doubt ISC will budge in giving a date with two NASCAR races there.
For what it's worth, I will be spending the weekend with a plethora of great road racing up at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. Until next week, cheers.
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