Mar 3, 2008

Together Again...for the Last Time

Civil wars are never pretty. Pitting brother against brother, countryman against countryman, has always been an ugly scene. And so it was with the rift in open-wheel racing here in the United States. The conflict between Champ Car and IndyCar has been written about hundreds of times in this space, and many are the times we made pleas for the two sides to get together for the sake of what was once the premier branch of motorsports in the United States, so one would think we would be celebrating the reunification. But, sadly, instead of celebrating, we have to wonder aloud if this move is too little, too late. Has the amount of blood spilled over the past decade and a half irretrievably damaged the sport of open-wheel racing to the point where it can’t recover?

I read a very troubling statistic the other day. A news report pointed out that the recent Daytona 500, NASCAR racing’s crown jewel, logged a television rating twice that of the 2007 Indianapolis 500. To me, though I’ve been a fan of NASCAR racing since the Fifties, this was shocking. How could the race that was once clearly the most important race in the world sink so low?

The answer, of course, is it is the clear result of the civil war. The battle between hardheads on both sides -- spoiled, rich, Type A’s, who are always accustomed to being right even when they are wrong -- led directly to the predicament that open-wheel racing now finds itself.

It is tempting to look for winners and losers in all this. That’s what sportswriters do. But though on the face of it you could say the Champ Car guys, led by Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven, signed a surrender treaty, agreeing to cease operations, we’re hard-pressed to find a winner in the scenario. You might point to Tony George as the victor, since his Indy Racing League will now be the only major-league open-wheel series in the country, but look at the blow his top race, the Indianapolis 500, has taken. TV ratings have tumbled and, equally troubling, corporate sponsors have bolted for NASCAR or have been turned off on motorsports completely. And there are more negatives to come, most especially the disenfranchisement of racing fans who will not see an open-wheel race at Laguna Seca, Cleveland, Mont Tremblant, Toronto, Portland or Road America this season, although they’ve been promised one. Just ask the folks in hockey, who endured a season-long shutdown because of a labor conflict. The hockey games returned but some of the fans didn’t.

So while we’d like to be optimistic about IndyCar’s future -- we love open-wheel racing -- we can’t help but have big concerns for its future health. We’d love to celebrate the unification, but frankly we don’t believe it is time to celebrate yet.