Quote:
Originally Posted by Razzzor
Part of Indycars issue is no one cares about the manufacturers. V8 Supercars in Aussie, to the casual fan, is more about manufacturer and Ford vs Holden than the actual drivers.
Even F1 still has manufacturers with all the Ferrari fans not really giving a damn who's actually in the car, all they care about is that it's Ferrari and winning.
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The problem is that IndyCar never really fostered true team competition. This goes way back. You can't change that overnight. I'll give props to F1 because they always had two championships, the driver championship and the constructors. In Formula 1, they have a real constructor (team) championship. How are you going to have a constructor championship in IndyCar if most teams run one car, but others run two, three, or four? In F1, each team has two cars, so the point arithmetic for teams is very simple, and both cars both look the same. Having the same color is very important for branding purposes. If you want the fans to care about the teams, then make sure that the cars that belong in one team have the same colors. You know Ferraris are red, Mercedes are silver, Lotus is black and gold, etc.
On the other hand, in IndyCar, it's always a mess. You don't even know how to identify cars that belong to the same team. Each car normally looks different, due to different sponsor deals that are specific to each car and driver. The same team can field a car that looks green, and another that's yellow and blue. Sometimes the color of the car changes depending on the race. So, even though Dario's car normally looks Target red, sometimes it's back or blue or whatever. It's maddening, but that's not something you can't change overnight. IndyCar teams are broke and always look for sponsors, even if that's a one-off deal for a single car for a single race.
At the same time though, perhaps a good team competition/branding will not add a whole lot of excitement to IndyCar. F1 teams often have strong fan following because F1 has always been a nationalistic sport, so Italians root for Ferrari, regardless of driver, the British support McLaren and Williams, and Germans support Mercedes, Indians Force India, etc.
Next, regarding the engine competition, no one cares about Chevy vs Honda in IndyCar, and I personally would dare to say that no one cares about engine competition in F1 (besides Ferrari fans). Most fans only get irritated if a certain car goes slower due to a slower engine, because the engine is something that's outside of the team's control. Fortunately, F1 engines have been frozen and equalized for the past few years, so engine competition was not really a factor. It's all about chassis design and team work in F1 IMO. This will change next year with new engines in F1.