Quote:
Originally Posted by The Happy Track Fan
You're kidding right?
Sonoma and Baltimore were two of the very worst Indy Car/Champ Car races I have ever seen in my 35 some odd years of watching North American top-tier open wheel racing, and they came back-to-back.
Imagine someone watching Sonoma for the first time, and a seasoned Indy Car fan says to them "ah that was a fluky race, it will be much better next weekend" and then you show Baltimore to them!!!!! Yikes. New fan permanently lost.
If you want to show a new fan how exciting this sport can be, show them the last couple of Indy 500's. Or show them the set up and pass of Kimball on Pagenaud at Mid-Ohio. Or show them how Hinch set up Sato on the last lap at Sao Paulo (although in all fairness, it was a lot of yellow flags too). But, those are the moments that show Indy Car at it's best. Defiinitely not Sonoma and Baltimore!!
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I quite enjoyed Sonoma and Baltimore this year. Race organisation kind of threw the Sonoma race for not making the pit slots explicit and with Baltimore they've been stacking up at Long Beach since year dot, so it doesn't really faze me if it happens at Baltimore. I won't inform you that they are classic tracks but I don't find either that problematic either. OK Sonoma can be hit and miss but the Baltimore race delivers.
I wouldn't be able to convince someone to watch Indycar because the cars look like plastic life boats on wheels. I switched onto Indycar on an F1 weekend recently with my mind distracted with other things and it took a good few seconds to adjust to the fact that these aren't dizzy GP2 cars but Indycars. That's very telling.
When I first got into Indycars during the 80's, I was watching F1 and stumbled upon Indycar in the evening and my head exploded! F1 was a tough turbo sport in the 80's. Real mean machines but this Indycar had all F1 had but with even more teeth and variety! If I had stumbled onto these plastic things today never having seen Indycar, I'd see some junior single seater-esque formula and I'd switch over without a second thought.
Until these Indycars look like beasts and aim to look more muscular and fierce than F1 so as to turn the heads of fans who have never seen the sport, Indycar isn't going anywhere IMO.