RM, You're A Bad Boy

Robin Miller, I am thinking you're going to be in a bit of trouble for this one. Same with Bruce Martin. I think you two both might had done something not good today. Either someone fucked with you, or you fucked with someone else pretty poorly. Either way, you guys are going to take the fall for all of this I would believe.

Unfortunately, many people will no longer believe what either of you post. This isn't your run of the mill, "Conquest to run 2 cars in China" rumor, this is much bigger then that. You put out a story about someone losing their jobs, that someone is probably the most powerful man in American Open Wheel Racing. Something tells me that might have a little bit of backlash to it.

Either way, if you can't tell by now already, Tony George is still the CEO of IMSC. Now he is trying his best to subdue rumors he has either been removed from power or will be removed from power in the next couple of days or weeks.

Is TG still the big boss at IMS? Yes

Will TG still be the big boss in the near future at IMS? We aren't as sure as we were before.

If your a fan of what TG has done and were upset he was ousted from IMS, then be happy because he is still around. If you hate TG for what he has done in the past with AOWR, and were happy he was no longer in power at IMS, then be sad, you still have to put up with the man.

Tony George out?

Well, Robin Miller is at it again. He is reporting that Tony George has been ousted from the CEO position of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a board meeting late last night.

Apparently, Tony's siblings were upset with how much money he has spent the last few years in purses, cars, fees etc... is running the bank dry and they didn't want to be left with nothing. Understandable. However, personally, I could care less about the money at the moment. What I care about is what happens to the IRL?

Now that Tony George has lost control of IMS, this in no way can be a positive situation. IMS was a source of cash, a source of stability, and a source of tradition for the IRL over the last 12 and a bit years. When you think of the IRL, the first thing that comes to mind is Indy.

Now, I'm not saying that with Tony George out of power at IMS, the IRL will disapear from the Indianapolis, however, it doesn't make me comfortable that we don't have Tony George in power there anymore. If his siblings are upset with him spending so much money, could they in turn be upset with the IRL? I mean, if they really wanted to now, the Hulman-George family sans TG could really make things hard for the IRL.

And now that Tony doesn't have IMS to run anymore, he will probably take a more active role in the IRL's day-to-day business, and I'm not so sure I like that. I haven't been a fan of a lot of Tony George decisions. Now I'm not a TG hater like some people, I just don't nessicarily like his decisions all the time, but, I still don't think he is the right man for the job in the IRL.

I guess we are sort of stuck in limbo until all of this gets figured out in the near future hopefully. Most likely a press release will be put out to make it official amongst the media, and the IRL will have to put something out to explain what is happening and how this affects the ICS and FIL. Once that happens, I'll make sure to post it asap.

Edit: The story is now being reported as false by Tony George and Mari Hulman-George. They say there was a board meeting, but that the meeting was typical and TG's leadership was not discussed at all in the meeting. This is a very odd situation. We've had both Robin Miller from Speed and Bruce Martin from SI.com reporting Tony George's firing as truth.

Either both RM and BM were mis-informed or flat out lied (I'd pick the first one), or Tony George is not aware of either his lack of a job at IMS or his impending firing.

Pressdog made a good point on twitter though, people both reported unification prior to it happening, and denied it after it had happened.

And from 16thandGeorgetown, we have video of TG dismissing the claims.

Stay tooned, I'll update this as more becomes available.

Atlantic Invitation?

One of the IRL problems on ovals is the lack of support races for their races. I'm not really sure who usually runs with them at oval asides from ICS and FIL cars but obviously 2 races isn't enough to keep the schedule filled up. Back in the day, CART used to run Atlantics, Indy Lights, Star Mazda then run the feature race. That usually managed to fill up the race weekend schedule pretty well and gave the fans a bang for their buck.

But the last few years in the IRL, fans would either be forced to sit around between the FIL and ICS race because there were no other series on track. Gaps for 2 to 4 hours would and still do haunt the series because they just don't have any other oval series to help them fill up the schedule.

The Atlantic series has just been sold to Ben Johnston, and he is plunging some dough into the series. He just put up $3 Million in cash purses for the entire season while the Champion will receive $1 Million to do whatever he chooses with (unlike the past Atlantics/CC driver "sponsorship" of $2 Million). While the announcements have been slow in regards to drivers and teams entering the series this year, it is starting to come around, and once the tests today and tomorrow at Palm Beach International Raceway are completed, I expect the announcements to pick up substantially.

However, as what is still primarily a feeder series, Atlantics doesn't have a clear series to feed to. Many of the drivers want to progress in AOWR, however, their old link to Champ Car is now gone. Meanwhile, the series is now sanctioned by IMSA, who also runs the ALMS, so that connection is now available. However, the drivers still want to run open-wheel when they are done Atlantics.

Tony George, if he can swallow a little pride, would be considered genius if he would welcome Atlantics (and Star Mazda) to run a couple of their oval races, maybe Milwaukee, Richmond, and one of the 1.5 mile tracks. In one invitation, if the Atlantics accept of course, he would help fill the race weekends, he would create another semi-feeder series in the Atlantics series, since drivers and teams would see a direct link to the IRL once they start running the same tracks. He would create a larger talent pool for teams to draw from. On top of that, he doesn't have to fund anything in the Atlantics series since Ben Johnston seems to be doing that just find.

The Atlantic series is part of the history of AOWR and deserves to still be involved for developing drivers for the I500 and the IRL needs to recognize that. And while TG and the IRL can allow the Atlantics that rightful place in AOWR, he can also use them at the same time, to encourage series winners and standouts to look towards the IRL with their prize money and at the same time, teach some young North Americans to run ovals which will populate the ICS with more talented drivers.

The only question is, can Mr. George swallow some of that pride from the split and ask the Atlantics to join them now and then? If he can, I think it would be considered a major win for the development of Americans, and all drivers in open-wheel. If he can't, it just shows that TG refuses to put the past in the past and lose a valuable opportunity.

Time To Get Montreal

I might sound biased as I say this, but I guarentee you, if I was an American, an Australian, or a Brazilian, I would still be saying this.

With rumours swirling that A1GP wants to grab a race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal next year (if they last that long), now is the time the IRL needs to get on the phone and work out a deal to get into Montreal for 2010.

This track brings in plenty of fans every year and even during the CC years, the track was well attended and these fans love their open wheel racing. I guarentee that if the IRL gets to Montreal, they will fill that place up with the lack of F1. And if we let A1Gp get into that track before we do, chances are we lose Montreal for a long time, which we can't let happen.

Before you all go saying, "Canada doesn't need another IRL race", who cares about how many races Canada has. This is a North-American series. You look at Watkins Glen and you see the crowd filled with Canadians. You have to understand that a large percentage of IRL fans are Canadians. On top of that, a race at CGV is a good race. The race would be on TV, and what a race it would be. That track always produces great sightlines and good racing. It would translate to television very well and viewers everywhere would enjoy watching this race.

In this time, we need to put races on TV that people want to watch as well as races that bring in the fans, and I know, and the IRL would be stupid if they didn't know Montreal can do that.

And once A1Gp gets in there, that fills up the CGV schedule as they are only allowed so many weekends per year. With A1GP there, they would fill the place up with the similarity to F1 in cars. But the thing that would really fill the place up would be the French A1Gp car for the French supporters and the Canadian A1GP for the Canadian supporters. If they get into CGV, we won't see that place until A1GP dies.

So please, TG or BB, make it happen. Be smart and show some balls and pick up the phone and find a promoter. Ask Tony Cotman, he knows how important that race would be.

Happy Anniversary AOWR

Well, it's been about a year now since the shizz went down. About a year ago, it was announced the CCWS would more or less fold into the IRL and they would become one. Tony George and Kevin Kalkhoven sat down in front of 20 or 30 CCWS/IRL drivers and made the announcement live on SPEED TV (probably their last meaningful coverage of AOWR at its highest level). The mood was high that day, as enthusiasm for a new era began and things started happening very quickly. Decisions had to be made quickly in regards to the schedules, cars had to be delivered from IRL shops to CCWS shops, and personnel had to learn new cars as well as crack out some new sponsorship dollars.

Everyone seemed content to put in the extra hours between getting things organized and making things happen because it was a major step forward for the Indy Racing League and AOWR in general. Fans were getting more excited about the prospects of one series and the competition and talent in that series would be stronger then ever.

The season went off without too many issues (a couple occasions CCWS cars couldn't race due to practice/qualifying practice, or the lack of a race-worthy car). Hell, even a couple of wins by NHL showed that the CCWS teams could be competitive in this new environment, atleast on road and street circuits to begin with. Even by the end of the year, the competition had leveled out as many CCWS teams were competiting for top 10 positions at the finale.

Now with a full off-season to do some aero work and run some more oval tests, the former Champ Car teams are now in a position to compete full-time, and they will be expected to compete for the entire year. These teams have seen a lot of cars the last few years. Hell, the last three seasons have seen 3 different cars (2006 Lola, 2007 DP01, 2008 Dallara). If anything, the CC guys should be able to figure out new cars better then the IRL teams simply due to experience. This season will prove a better example of the depth of the field in the ICS with the so-called Big 3 maybe expanding to the Big 4 with NHLR looking strong in pre-season.

Even with the bad luck timing of the world-wide economic downturn, the ICS still looks like it will be in a good position this year. Indycars provide a better bang-for-your-buck then Nascrap and seem to have weathered the downturn better then the taxi's have. The IRL fields look to be a consistent 23 or 24 cars throughout the season, possibly (I doubt it, but I'm trying to be positive here) hitting 26 at certain times of the stars line up just right. We had 21 at the off-season test, and we can probably add a car for DCR. Add in what seems like a good bet of RHR at HVM and Tomas Scheckter landing somewhere since he has a bit of cash lying around and we are at 24. Now if the stars line up and Conquest manages to get 2 cars for the full season and KVRT or Vision find the money to run PT or Foyt IV then we are at 26 cars.

But what I'm really looking forward to is the second anniversary of the unifibilesbianficationmerger. Many economists are looking at the US economy rebounding in late 2009, so we will start to see more sponsorship money available for motorsports and hopefully the IRL can take advantage of that if things go well through this season and attendance numbers stay up and TV viewership grows a bit. We could use a good year out of the I500, TV-numbers wise so we could use that to sell 2010 sponsorship. Maybe get Michael Andretti back into a car again. Seeing Michael contend again might up the number of viewers up a bit. Anything to help the 2010 sponsorship season would be needed to keep the momentum going forwards.

If we can push forward, we can hopefully see some of these 1 car teams move back to 2 car teams in 2010 and make a push for more paid-drivers and hopefully see some of the old teams like Fernandez come back and RLR return. There are even some rumors of de Ferran Motorsports being interested in the IRL down the road.

Anyways, things are looking up for Open-Wheel in general and we should be happy because everyone of us are along for the ride. We all get to be a part of the growth of AOWR in North America. It will continue growing as it does, each of us will be as proud as the driver, team owners and management of the IRL.