Quote:
Originally Posted by ptclaus98
At the end of the day it's not about the Road to Indy. All things considered I could give a damn about a Road to Indy, but we need a strong ladder system to create better drivers overall, no matter where they end up, the strongest junior category in the last twenty years has already been killed off, now they want to kill off the second strongest? It's not like the European ladder which needs clarification by subtraction. The American ladder desperately needs an overhaul, a complete change in structure, and I was willing to wait on the series to stabilize, and then get on with it, but Star Mazda is the only legitimate rung on the calendar. It makes absolutely no sense to me to get rid of it, manufacturer clash or not. They should be using Star Mazda as a base to build around.
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It all comes down to money and the point of it all. indycar is basically dying and without a strong professional series the ladder system is useless when successful drivers have to turn to nascar, alms or europe to make use of their experience.
Lets say you are Mr. Rich Dad and you want junior to be an indycar driver. So you pay $400,000 for a few years in Formula Ford, $700,000 for Star Mazda and then $1.5 million for 2 years in indy lights. Add in some other expenses and you are in for $3 million going up the ladder. Now it's time to go race indycar but instead of being hired on merit you are asked for a $5 million dollar check.
So okay let's go find the sponsorship. Hmmm... well because almost nobody watches indycar anymore the media value of sponsorship of a whole car is about a million bucks. Those numbers don't add up so no sponsorship, no drive, no career in indycar.
Don't believe me? Look at the current indycar teams, some of which are dying and where their sponsors come from and who has real sponsorship of $$$ value paying full rate.
What does make sense is to take that $3 million and start on the nascar ladder. At least then talent gets noticed, sponsorship can be found, prize money exists and so on.
I've been to some Star Mazda testing and I can only think of unless you just like spending wads of money on junior formula cars, it's really a pointless endeavor. It's preparing you for what? a career in the ALMS, apparently.