Posted without comment

[indycool]

Zero, I suppose I could bore everyone -- again -- by taking your post apart inaccuracy by inaccuracy, but in short, let me say it this way: It fits much better at CW than here.

[GTRMagic]

Jeez Macdaddy, you are earning your moderator money with this thread

The article has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight of course, so pinpointing the place where the 'sport' fell in the toilet as the writer seems to suggest is interesting, but doesnt necessarily provide any valuable learnings.

Especially when at the time the author complains that Penske was winning all the time, American motorsport royalty in Al Unser Jr was in the driver's seat of one of them....

I dont think the C^RT cars are outrageously technical, I mean the Honda and Toyota engines pushed the envelope, but was arguably no worse than when Mercedes Benz built a one-off pushrod engine to USAC specs to blow everything else away at Indy....

As for some teams having access to "the good stuff" and others not, I havent seen a championship in the world where this is not the case. In NASCAR, if you are hooked into a good engine program, the car is quick.

If the engines are not quite there, you dont win. Simple really. Same as C^RT. And same as IRL, where if you didnt get the Cosworth-Chev, the other GM runners shouldnt have bothered showing up..

[dirtfan]

I believe it was Penske/Ilmore, and all MB did was open up the check book and furnish the drawings of their logo...

[macdaddy]

Perhaps, but said chequebook was a very thick one.

It's like MB were a property owner, hiring contractors to build the biggest house on the block, no matter what the cost.

And it was excellent publicity. Especially when added to the fact that their "ordinary" engine blew the competition away in most every other race on the calendar. No rules were broken, and that's the funny part!

Actually, the funny part is how those rules were changed by the end of May!

[GTRMagic]

Of course it was Ilmor's work, it could have been Chevrolet's, but for some reason that didnt quite work out.

[MLM]

Originally posted by indycool
Zero, I suppose I could bore everyone -- again -- by taking your post apart inaccuracy by inaccuracy, but in short, let me say it this way: It fits much better at CW than here.

I was thinking the same thing...touche!
Is it the style or the content?

dirtfan, I agree on the "marketing" aspect.
As per foreign drivers meeting with the fans: I have seen foreign drivers interact with fans....that is until their PR person drug them away to a sponsor function or press conference.
OTOH, I've been hearing more and more NASCAR fans complain how INACCESSABLE drivers are now a days! This so-called "fan friendly" sport is becoming rarified and is in danger of losing touch with their fan base.
See, NASCAR is the one which is pandering to the "almighty dollar" these days.

[Liz]

I am an American and I have never had any problem "relating to" people from every country in the world. If I don't know how to pronounce their names, I ask somebody and practice. I don't think "Montoya" is harder to pronounce than "Earnhardt", actually, and if Juan Pablo had been born in East LA of exactly the same parents, you would "relate" to him just fine. Oh wait, people related to him just fine anyway, didn't they? And what about Alex Zanardi? Not an American bone in his body or a Southern drawl in his mouth, yet he was and remains one of the best loved drivers CART ever produced. I do think it's rather funny that Helio Castroneves was considered a "dadblamed furriner" until he jumped to Another League and won the Indy 500 once. Now he's considered an All American Boy and America hugs him to its lumpy bosom.

It's proper marketing that the drivers need, not elocution lessons and American names. And that, IMO, is where CART really needs help, and always has. They never quite figured out what they wanted people to know about their drivers, their series or anything else. It's kind of like Canada marketing itself as "We're Not Americans." CART needs to tell us what and who it is, not what and who it isn't.

[corkholio]

CUT IT OUT.

[Jay]

Liz is American and always has been (though I can't recall her using the American phrase "he ain't"), but has lived in Toronto for the last few years. I've seen her be accused of being both anti-American and anti-Canadian by different people here, so she must be doing something right.

If I remember rightly, Alessandro became Alex when he told Chip Ganassi that he wanted to be called 'anything but Alex' - so Chip, as a joke, put 'Alex' down on the entry form for him - it's stuck since. The short form of Alessandro (as my Italian friend tells me), is actually 'Sandro'.

[dirtfan]

Liz is American and always has been (though I can't recall her using the American phrase "he ain't")
What does she have against Mark Twain?
yuk yuk!

[power&glory]

Let me just say a couple quick things here.

First of all, if you look back to 1998, which was a great, great time for CART, you will see that NASCAR was bigger in the USA, but the gap was not that large. If you look at North America as a whole back then, CART was way bigger than NASCAR, and if you look at it internationally, CART was massively bigger. I say 1998 because it was a very high point for CART, where there were 28 cars, 4 engines, 5 chassis, a well-known and loved champion, a balanced schedule, great TV package and most of all massive attendance at every stop. And the future only looked brighter. Now the destruction that happened between the end of '98 and the start of '02 had nothing to do with NASCAR, Tony George, or a communist conspiracy- it had everything to do with horrible mismanagement and lack of leadership in CART. The series could have stayed just as good and big as it was in '98, without Indy, with the IRL existing and being ignored, but all it needed was a little screwing with, and Mr. George was waiting with his deep pockets to pounce on his opportunity, and he did so very well.

But we know all that. I'm getting sidetracked. Let's get back to the point.

The point is that NASCAR was a sleeping giant. All it needed was a little sharpening up of it's image and to be thrust out into the mainstream media and it would explode, and it was able to do that and the rest is history.
When NASCAR took a big risk and signed with ESPN back in the early 80's, both, especially ESPN, were a little obscure, the cars were almost literally "stock", and it was basically just good 'ol boy, Southerner stock car racing. But it had a seriously loyal, how ever small, following, much like Champ Car does today, and that was a solid basis to grow upon. As ESPN grew, and got further into the mainstream, so did NASCAR. And NASCAR adapted and ever so slightly (although nothing like in the last few years) changed it's image to fit the mainstream, by doing things like going to Indy and picking up Jeff Gordon, and it's popularity increased, and increased...and you know the rest. Eventually the Southerner-sport image was gone almost entirely (as seen today), and NASCAR has become an American mainstream entertainment monster. Absolute monster.

But why? Why was it a sleeping giant? What qualities does it have? Well, I think it's more about the qualities of the American sports fan.

NASCAR is simple. It's easy to understand, it's fast, it's colorful, it has 43 American drivers with sponsors that are everyday products that Americans use, or restaurants, or whatever. A fan can attatch himself to a driver, number and sponsor that will stay together for years on end, much like rooting for a football or baseball franchise.

But most importantly- it's completely mindless entertainment. The hardworking suburban guy can hang out and relax on the couch one sunday in the summer with a couple of beers and a bag of chips and just sit there and watch the cars go round and round all afternoon, for like 4 hours, and not have to think too much, because this is America, we don't want to have to think, we just want to sit back and be entertained. Not that that's such a bad thing- I mean I don't like hate my country or anything. I love my country and my people; I speak in this post about the people in general, the mob, and this is just the way the mob is.

But NASCAR is easy for the American sports fan to identify with and to understand and enjoy; Champ Car racing, or F1 or any sort of road racing is far more sophisticated, and just doesn't fit the American mentality, and that's just the way it is. That's why, back in '98 when CART had 14 of 19 races in the U.S., and 11 American drivers and even though it had huge attendance at all those U.S. events, it was still getting killed in the TV ratings by NASCAR, and TV is how most people watch races.

So basically what I'm saying is this- first of all, people need to stop blaming Tony George and Roger Penske or whoever, because CART killed itself, or at least walked itself to the guillotine and laid it's head under the blade, and when you've put yourself in that position anything subsequent that happens is not the fault of the executioner.

And secondly, all Champ Car needs to do is be relatively close to NASCAR in American popularity, and it will be the biggest North American motorsport, because it is already so massive North and South of the border. We need to realize that unless the series is half or more ovals, it will probably never be more popular in the U.S than NASCAR ever again, because NASCAR was a sleeping giant that will never go back to sleep. I really really like Mr. Gentilozzi and I really trust him, and I firmly believe that he will help this series get back to the position it was once in in terms of America. And I also think that a "merger" will never happen with an ego-maniac like George and that 5 years from now there will be only one open-wheel series, but that's an entirely different discussion. I'm out

[Hazza]

Give the man a Boag's!

[indycool]

Re Zanardi: Actually, the American driver issue was aflame back then and it was Ganassi's PR guy who came up with the concept to call him "Alex" rather than his given name "Alessandro" or nickname "Sandro," for that reason, to "Americanize" him. One of the best PR moves in motorsports in this era.

[BootsOntheSide]

Presumably, if Phil Giebler makes an established career in Europe, you'd be happy to see him called Felipe or Phillippe?

[GP Racer]

Boots, if thats what it takes to get an American back in F1, you can call him anything you want!

[MLM]

There was an article in today's NY Times about the so-called "NASCAR Dads" voting bloc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/we...acg.html?8hpib
It's a rather long article but it's interesting...especially toward the end where is deconstructs the attendance and TV rating numbers.
The article states that there's an estimated 75 MILLION NASCAR fans...almost 1/4 of the population in the US and more than the entire population of France!