Oo, I hate to look like an apologist for O Bruton, with what he did to North Wilkes and Atlanta. but here it goes anwyas. The paranoia of monoply that you speak of Lee does exist. Just look at the two recent schedule additions. Anyways you look at it it just doesn't add up. These tracks aren't even finished yet and have cup dates? Where's ythat leave Gateway, which has payed thier dues with lower series. Granted, Chicago is huge for amrketing, I'll grant that, but Kansas City isn't a hot spot, and ir ranked lower for tv exposure tahn St. Louis, so this whole "expand to where we can get exposure" deal is bs. It's just go to new ISC tracks and screw anyone else. That itsn't to say Bruton should get a 2nd date at tms either, NAscar should boycott running there in protest of closing NOrth Wilkesboro. Which is one of the many reasons I'd be open to a rival stock car league forming, if it was run correctly. I doubt Bruton SMith would be able to run it in a way which would take NAscar back to its roots, but he's about the only one powerful enough to do it, and he has been critical of NAscar's processioanl racing (of course, 1.5 mile quad ovals lend themselves to this, while closed short tracks don't), but he does have a point, hypocrite or not. IF Bruton were to form a league that was mainly short track based, had boxier, more stock car like cars, and a focus on track action instead of marketing, I'd embrace it in a heartbeat. Now, given his track record, would Bruton ever do something like this? Probably not, if he did form a rival league it'd be just as bad or worse in terms of processional racing and going to all these cookie cutter superspeedways.
But a word about CART and its owners.I think giving the owners some voice is a good idea because they are the ones investing in the series, but the series does need a dictators (a la Bernie Eccelstone) to get things going in the same direction, perhaps, as Dan Gurney had orinially suggested in his
White Paper: "One director/negotiator, one secretary and a staff accountant and gopher if needed." But otherwise, the owner based board of directors is fine, imho. Furthermore, the original proposal of the team oweners was for a board or 6 owner reps and 6 usac reps; that's hardly a hostile takeover, but compromise was not accepted by usac, so they had no choice but to leave if they wanted to improve thier lot. They didn't "ruin" open wheel racing, that was the action one of individual, Tony George. Look at cart prior to the split, and it was more popular than nascar and beginning to rival F1 in international popularity. And even though USAC still sanctioning the 500, cart bascailly ran the show, and quite efficiently too. But up until that time, they hadn't ruined anything; they had in fact saved a fledginig, nay languishing, series and built it into one of the top forms of motorsports.
Also a word about Penske. Junior Johnson making those comments about following the rules is like the pot calling the kettle black. Two words: yellow banana. Roger may have coined the unfair advantage, but Junior certainly lived by it. Big Bills rules were as maleable as any; just so along as it advanced the series. Cars illegal, well let it run cause we want manufacturer X in the series. Car illegal, we'll let it run cause we want these big name drivers in the field. SO please don't single out Roger for his rule bending when it was rampant in Nascar. Sure Junuior wasn't abke to rewrite the rules, but neither was Roger, at least not in trans-am/can-am.
Anyways, this isn't to say i want a cart style ownership deal in nascar. I think it's working fine the way it is, and the series is based upon the strong dictatorship, just wanted to throw my 2 cents in about a couple of things, but otherwise you're right, a move by Smith with help from Well et all would probably not be good.