Spy report from yesterday's Indycar meeting

SouperComputer

Stolen from a karting site


The following are notes taken by a friend at the meeting. There were a couple of references to karting including news concerning New Castle.

'Thought you would want a debrief on the Indycar. It was very well done and they had a great turnout. Nearly everybody is in town since they are holding drivers, owners and manufacturers meetings thstarting yesterday and through the week. Great turnout of media, so I am sure we will begin seeing more news beginning in today's papers etc.

Yesterday it leaked they opened a Los Angeles office. Hired the lady that got much of the programming aired for NASCAR and was the executive producer for Talledega Nights to run it so they are expecting big things to get more entertaintment type programming on air with Indycars as the centerpiece.

They have started a new theme, the fastest most versatile drivers on the planet and understand they have to make drivers heros in order to grow the audience. They are also mking a huge effort to attract the kids and will begin allowing children 9 and older into the garage areas at all tracks except Texas (they did not specifically mention Indy, so I don't know about that one). More on this stuff later.

Competition:
Yesterday the media picked up they would have double file restarts on the ovals, but they would retain the running order, in other words lapped cars hold their track position they will not be moved to the back. They made it clear this is kind of an experiment and may be modified as they go. In addition, the acceleration point for restarts will be moved closer to the start/finish line. They will not accelerate until a point after they have excited the fourth turn on an oval.

There is a new pit selection procedure. Now you will select pits based on the qualifying order of the last "like" race. In other words at an oval the teams will pick their pit box based on their qualifying position at the last oval race. So the pole setter gets first choice etc. Teams will not have the option to "average" their entries, they will have to choose separately. The first race for each type of track road course or oval pit selection will be based on last year's owners points. The only exception is the pit selection process will not change at the Indy 500.

On road courses, there will be a new rule regarding the use of tires during the knockout qualifying sessions. A driver will only be allowed one set of tires per knockout session, they can be either red or black, but once they start a session on the set they can not change during that session. There is also a new tire allocation system for all races, but it was pretty complicated and I can not explain it well enough here. Will wait for the published rules to see how they handle that one.

Engine displacement for the new for 2012 engines has been reduced from 2.4 liters to 2.2 liters after meetings with the manufacturers that have committed. Barnhart said rules have been given to the manufacturers who have committed, but will not be made public at this time. My guess is they want to have a big announcement at Indy where they expect to have samples on display.

Aero kit rules have been given to the manufacturers who have made a reasonable commitment to review. Sounded like there would be 4 manufacturers for 2012. Aero kit manufacturers have to make a minimum commitment for 2 years to be allowed in. They expect to have two show cars on display at Indy in May.

Firestone Indy Lights wil be back on TV this year. Their races will be shown the Wednesday after the race at 6:00 pm on Versus. Indy Lights will have a stand alone race this year at Trois Riveres in Canada. That race will be televised on Versus.

Edmonton is back on the schedule in its original slot.

They have initiated a "Centennial Tour" for ten days going out to ten American Forces bases throughout the world. They are taking the two-seater team plus Mario Andretti, Al Unser Jr. Johnny Rutherford, Sarah Fisher and a host of others to build awareness. Watch Thursday's morning shows for a sneak preview.

Starwood Resorts is a new sponsor of the Indycar series. (The Westin in downtown Indy is a part of that.) Look for opportunities to book rooms for races at their multiple propoerties around the world.

They explained the Indycar ladder system and how kids from karts, Formula 2000, Formula Mazda, and Firestone Indy Lights will earn scholarships for the next rung on the ladder. They will also provide a new emphasis in USAC's National series with a scholarship to run the ovals in Indy Lights to the National Sprint Car champion.

For karters there are something like 5 national organizations controlling karting. They are ging to take the top ten from each series and invite them to New Castle Motorsports Park and give them a school with their favorite Indycar drivers.

In addition to the being called the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" this year's Indy 500 will also be known as "The Most Important Race in History." A tag line the track and media will be using for the race.

ABC will televise the first race and last race of the season. The Indy 500, Milwaukee and Loudon. Versus will televise all others, plus Indy qualifications. They said the merger between Comcast and NBC will happen by the end of March and they have been advised not to sign contracts with on-air talent until after the announcement and the expected changes. I did not realize that even though Versus shows the racs IMS productions actually produces them, with Terry Lingner as the producer. IMS hires the on-air talent.

In 2011 every living driver who is a vetern of an Indy 500 has been invited to the track in May. Something like 270 living drivers. On the Saturday before the race in addition to the drivers for this years race they will all be invited to participate in an autograph session, the largest autograph session in history.

They said to also expect a special treat with the 24 original manufacturers from the first 500.

They talked about how they are consolidating all the records so it will be a comprehensive record book which begins in 1905 to present day and will include the achiements and stats from all sanctioning bodies including AAA, USAC, CART, Indycar etc.

70 of the 74 surviving winning cars from Indy will be on display at the museum during the month of May.

Sports Illustrated will be doing a comemorative issue on the 100th anniversary of the Indy 500. So will a number of other publications.

Kids 12 accompanied by an adult will be admitted free to all activities at Indy in May including the race (general admission ticket, still need a ticket to sit in the stands I suppose).

They did a nice job of allowing each department present their plans for the new year and it was nearly seemless between the sanctioning body, now known as Indycar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

amacachi

The majority of that seems like pretty damn good ideas. Which makes me think it could be BS. :pac:

TheChrisD

Then you might not want to read the IndyCar website because they've said pretty much everything lined out above :P

AugustusMinimus

I give this series about another 3 to 4 years.

The big thing is that IMS is still financing the entire series. Considering that the board of IMS (George family) were at logger heads with TG last year I think we might be entering endgame.

Just watch as IMS will pull funding due to the hundreds of millions thrown down a black hole due to TG's power grab and IRL will go bankrupt.

We can only hope that the teams get together and reform some sort of CART organisation to run opening wheel racing in North American properly.

If not, watch the Indy 500 run with NASCARs.

gs39t

Things are looking decent for 2012, its the entire of 2011 thats the immediate problem. The current series is a basketcase and US TV ratings and sponsorship etc are just woeful. Outside of the Indy 500 most of America is unaware of the IRL's existence through a combination of ignorance, bad marketing, and NASCAR's 'monopoly' of everything racing related.

I really dont think its going to ever be more than a niche-market series, it will never be what CART was. Just be thankful Tony George hasnt managed to run it into the ground entirely!

AugustusMinimus

gs39t wrote: »

Things are looking decent for 2012, its the entire of 2011 thats the immediate problem. The current series is a basketcase and US TV ratings and sponsorship etc are just woeful. Outside of the Indy 500 most of America is unaware of the IRL's existence through a combination of ignorance, bad marketing, and NASCAR's 'monopoly' of everything racing related.

I really dont think its going to ever be more than a niche-market series, it will never be what CART was. Just be thankful Tony George hasnt managed to run it into the ground entirely!

Well, it's going to get worse for us. As far as I know, Sky Sports do not have IRL for 2011 as their contract was up in 2010. Considering Sky dropped NASCAR, it's plausible that they won't renew. Motorsport on Sky has always been a bit of a disaster.

On TG. By all accounts, the whole establishment was as much a Bernie Eccelstone - France family creation as it was a TG creation. It's not known that TG had meetings prior to creation of the IRL back in the early to mid 90's. The obviously knew what was going to happen with the creation of CART.

NASCAR now is in an incredibly dominant position in the US market. I doubt open wheel racing can ever recover to such an extent in North America. The growing threat of CART was neutralised. Mansell winning the title in 93 was a big boost and put CART on the map for a lot of Europeans. Hell, there was a time in the mid to late 90's, I prefered CART to F1. Again, fell assunder, mainly due to the fact that IMS was subsidising IRL to such an extent.

amacachi

Sky may well renew the IndyCar, it got better ratings than NASCAR and the IRL will be desperate for Sky to show it for any price at all.
I can't help but feel they've gone the completely the wrong way with the cars for 2012, looking at speedways in the mid- to late-90s in CART and those really skinny cars with the little fins at the front instead of wings looked properly kickass.

In terms of publicity I don't know what all they do but based on the e-mails I get and the prices within those emails I don't know how they can improve that.

gs39t

amacachi wrote: »

Sky may well renew the IndyCar, it got better ratings than NASCAR and the IRL will be desperate for Sky to show it for any price at all.

Source? Always assumed it was the other way around, and also NASCAR rights are/were very expensive and theres a LOT of required airtime. I imagine the IndyCar rights are dirt cheap (even in the US)

Likely then no live IndyCar or NASCAR on TV this year.

amacachi

gs39t wrote: »

Source? Always assumed it was the other way around, and also NASCAR rights are/were very expensive and theres a LOT of required airtime. I imagine the IndyCar rights are dirt cheap (even in the US)

Likely then no live IndyCar or NASCAR on TV this year.

Can't find a source, I just remember that it was getting better ratings, you can take that or leave it. It would've been 2008 when I read that, think it was on Digital Spy. As I said, the IndyCar rights will be dirt cheap so I would be surprised if Sky didn't renew them.

EDIT: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1204007&page=2 Keith Huewen says there'll be news about coverage soon enough.