This year marks (hard as this is to believe) my 19th year as
a fully-fledged motorsports fan (1996) and my ninth straight working for a
media outlet covering the sport (2006). And to be honest, I can’t remember a
year getting off to as strange a start as this one has.
What follows is a random stream of consciousness from a series of observations gleaned from both North American racing and across the pond…
Almost nobody in sports car racing is happy. At least in the IMSA ranks. If you’re a driver, team, official, media member, partner or fan, there’s something that’s grinding your gears. It could be driver rankings (a convoluted process to determine who can drive where), Balance of Performance (a process to figure out how to best equalize a wide variance of machinery), officiating, safety, quality of driving, budgets, some combination of the above factors or something else altogether. I’m not smart enough to come up with any solutions other than to try to think, for a second, what got us into this crazy line of work to begin with and try to recapture that essence of what made it fun, rather than what’s making it miserable. To me, that’s the variety. Because the variety is fun, and it makes up for the approximately 726 acronyms currently in play.
The points, they are a-changing. NASCAR, Formula One and now IndyCar have all opted to shake up their points systems. In NASCAR, it’s a new Chase (version 4.0) where winning means everything, except it doesn’t, because likely three or four of the 16 Chase spots will still go to guys who haven’t won and have the most points not already locked in. And that’s before we even get to the Chase itself and eliminations. F1’s gone for a completely bonkers “let’s make Abu Dhabi worth double points” idea, because … well I have no idea what they’re thinking and the reaction against it was largely swift and visceral. Just this week, IndyCar’s opted to make its 500-mile races double points, and adjust qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. As one fellow media member put it, “they operate in mysterious ways at 16th and Georgetown.”
The leadership is changing, too. Bernie Ecclestone could well be on the way out by year’s end of F1, pending his legal battles, which would mark an end of the sport’s longest reign. The battle for political control of the sport is going to be an intriguing subplot beyond the new cars. IndyCar, too, has a wealth of new leadership staff in place ahead of the year, under Hulman & Co. CEO Mark Miles. To their credit, they have Verizon in place as a new title sponsor, and the activation, promotion and technological advancement potential there is off the charts.
Whinging about F1 noise misses the point. The new F1 cars sound different, they’re quieter and they certainly look different (insert your favorite phallic nose joke here). What they aren’t, still, is cheap. It’s more millions of new technology in play. Unless the powers-that-be rein in the spiraling costs there – and the UK’s Motor Sport magazine has put together a fascinating read on what F1 can do to evolve – it’s going to be unsustainable down the road.
Manufacturers hold the ultimate power and influence. Same as it ever was really, but it’s more now to the point as with limited dollars to utilize, where manufacturers opt to race speaks volumes. As has been said on SHAKEDOWN on YouTube, should they race in series that are “show” first, “tech” first, or “product” first? There's also a good take on SHAKEDOWN on series making sure they're running the series as they should.
The modern driver seems more beholden to their corporate backers. This isn’t entirely new, but it is a shame to write this because from talking to drivers over the last six or seven years, there are still plenty of great personalities. The problem is, perception is such that drivers have to be good for their sponsors first, then good for their own personality second. The death of Gary Bettenhausen this past week harkens back to an era of drivers as pure racers, not beholden to corporate interests first. It’s what makes guys like Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya so great now, as they’re among the last in a dying breed. You think of them with their at-times gruff exteriors more than them as corporate spokespersons.
But at the end of the day, this is still fun. Or at least it’s supposed to be. Seriously what would we rather be doing? Be grumpy in our cubicles, getting the latest memo about how we need to put that new cover on our TPS reports? Going in on Saturday or Sunday because our boss tells us we have to? The amount of negativity I’ve already had to deal with just in 2.5 months in 2014 is astounding, and unlike any year I can remember in the past. I know there are multiple issues. I know things are in flux in the battle for relevancy. But dammit, when I’m at a racetrack, there’s still almost no place else I’d rather be. Something about the sounds, the sensory overload and the aroma of tire smoke leaving pit lane just drowns out the shitty smell of the daily BS and politics. Every day I get to live my passion is a blessing. And as you can see from the lead image to this post, some of the sights at a track, you can’t get anywhere else.
