Tag: autosport

2020 To-do List #1 – Update Racing Calendar

The Penske era of IMS and Indycar has officially begun. How RP still manages so many irons in the fire is truly notable and commendable. I can barely manage when to have lunch during any given day and this octogenarian is quite admirably slaying racing dragons at 6:45am.

I was able to find RP’s google calendar and it shouldn’t surprise anyone it looks like this:

(not in fact RP’s google calendar)

With the advent of the Roar before the 24 kicking off last week, I felt it was time to review and make some plans for enjoying the 2020 racing season. The ‘why?’ is a rhetorical question, but the ‘who?’, ‘what?’, ‘where?’, and ‘when?’ were still up for grabs aside from my annual pilgrimage to Indy in May.

“2020 WILL BE DIFFERENT!” I declared at the end of the 2019 racing season, having failed to plan, my race attendance and watching plan rightfully failed. Of course there were several expected life events I knew would belay my ability to plan for much of anything during the summer of 2019, outside of May. Nevertheless, we march on into 2020 and I need the various calendars of the racing sanctions I follow all in one place. Certainly this will be a rather easy task to complete…

Finding all of the major racing sanctions event calendars is not at all an easy task for the layperson. After some consultation with several racing friends about the internet, I found almost right under my aging proboscis what may be the best fit for my purposes. A good friend of the site and on twitter as well, Pat from @toomuchracing has just what you need HERE! If you also prefer to organize your calendars and keep them via Google, iCal, and the like, this should be your first stop (and may likely be your only).

I’ve subscribed to just as many (or as few) as I need, but the temptation is to basically overwhelm my senses and visual calendar with different sanctions and events despite knowing I’ll never have time to watch them all.

Pat eagerly puts in a considerable bit of time and effort to this endeavour and it shows. I gladly clicked his PayPal donation link on the upper right of his blogsite and I suggest you do as well if you take advantage of the massive amounts of time and effort he will save you.

There are a few other sites that I found, and if you are interested in being able to tell your friend in Sydney, Australia on what channel and time the Dakar Rally is being shown on SBS, or finding the time and location of the stream of qualifying for the F3 Asian Championships at the Autodrome in Dubai, THIS GOOGLE DOC may be your best bet.

Best to all on your racing season planning and I hope to see you at the track in 2020!

PS: Also, I’d like to spare a moment to extend my deepest sorrow and sympathies for the tragic fires that are consuming Australia now. We pray to the universe for a swift end to, and restoration from, the vast destruction they’re experiencing.

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

There is an axiom that floats about the business world, “people will tell you what they want, if you just listen to them”. The most successful salespersons and businesses shut up and listen, examine that information, and then figure out how to best provide it.

Today the Formula 1 drivers Association also took their concerns to F1 via an open letter to the ownership and directors of that sport, expressing a desire to see better stewardship of the sport with regard to long-term vision and plan. It all sounded so familiar. I even mentally inserted “Indycar” anywhere the words “F1” appeared with very little difference in consistency with issues known in Indycar for decades.

I thought to myself, ‘here’s yet another example of how Indycar has lead the world of autosport by 10 to 20 years’. We’ve been dealing with a sport whose organization can be characterized by the public as insular, short-sighted, lacking vision, and reactive since the late 1970s and especially so since the mid-1990s.

The good news for Indycar is, that is a bit farther up the road in dealing with a business ‘contraction’ than F1 or even NASCAR. The bad news is that the progress has come in fits and starts and is always much slower than the customer would like to see. It also comes at a time when it competes with ever-more diversions for the public, never less.

So how is it then, that a company can be perceived to be so aloof, especially when the lifeblood of its existence (sponsorship and broadcasting rights monies), is based on having eyeballs and ears on the product?

As we draw ever-nearer to the incredibly massive landmark 100th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, we again are reminded so vividly of a sport that has been extremely adept at holding up it’s super-speedway, golden era (early 1960s to mid-1970s) as the hallmark of it’s existence and implying a parallel with the modern day. Those who have lived long enough to have seen those days with our own eyes and ears, always bristle at the comparison and rightly so. The sport today resembles so little of that Golden Era. The fact that we STILL gush more about the innovation of 1961 Cooper Climax, or the 1967 Paxton STP turbine, a full 50 years later than we do about the one that won just 11 months ago, or even two weeks ago, I’ve always found to be quite telling.

F1 has also been good at holding itself up as the pinnacle for newest and most innovative technologies for decades. It some ways it actually has, but as for the management of the sport, it’s still shows a heritage with the Draconian-types of the industrial age. 

At one time, the production auto industry used autosport as a working laboratory for development of better machinery to be translated into the passenger vehicle. Now it appears a new day is dawning in the automotive industry where technology is rapidly changing the mobility vehicle and how we engage with it. Likewise, there is an opportunity to examine those changes and see how autosport can incorporate them into their future.   


I’m reminded of that famous phrase, uttered in front of a shiny, new ‘K-car’ c. 1981.

I’m not sure if he originated the phrase, but I recall quite clearly for well over 30 years now, Lee Iacocca, then President of Chrysler, making that quote famous via his television ads for the ‘new Chrysler Motor Company’ – “In this business, you lead, follow, or get out of the way.” 

At the time, the car company was attempting to emerge from a terrible recession and bring a new philosophy, optimism, and ambition to the fore. It was a successful campaign in many ways although it didn’t solve all of the ills that plagued the company or the industry as a whole.

Autosport is still a reflection of that industry in many ways, especially by being tied so closely to the worldwide auto industry for obvious reasons, but I think the future will hold that the sport who was able to show the ability to listen to all voices of interest (not merely a few select ones), establish a forward-thinking and relevant vision, a clear plan to achieve it, and provide the product that people will demand in the future, will be the most successful. 

Even at it’s relative nadir, Indycar can still be a player in that game. Once the celebrations, revelry, and nostalgia of the landmark 100th Indy 500 end, I believe strongly that a new era must begin. One that is bold, exciting, invigorating, and isn’t afraid to be something innovative.

“Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free” is the promotional tagline from one my favorite movies, “The Shawshank Redemption”, which was adapted from Stephen King’s Different Seasons group of novellas. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption represents the season of Spring and is also subtitled, “Hope Springs Eternal”.

The character of Ellis “Red” Redding in that story cautions the reader (through a dialogue with the optimistic protagonist Andy Dufresne) that “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane”. Later, however, in reply, the character of Andy Dufresne states, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.


I still hold out hope that Indycar can be the pinnacle of modern autosport it was.

I hope I’ll be able to make it to that day.

I hope to be there and shake my Indycar friends’ hands. 

I hope that Indycar will be as incredible as it has been in my dreams.

I hope.




Not Good Enough


It doesn’t seem so very long ago when we were all left in stunned disbelief following the death of Dan Wheldon, October 16, 2011.


Maybe it’s because it hasn’t been that long really. 

Now resigned to the terrible result of another all too fateful moment on Sunday, I finally had to take a moment away from my work duties this morning to read what I wrote in the hours (of shock and disgust with the sport) and days (of ‘Indycar family’ and hope) following Wheldon’s death. 

Seeing the television footage of the helicopter rising from its mid-track perch at Pocono on Sunday was an all too familiar scene and one that left me suspended between disbelief, despair, and hope. 

I told my kids this morning about Justin dying before they left for school. Certainly far from ideal timing but I also I didn’t want them to not hear it from me. 

Nick, Justin, Ellie. Milwaukee 2012.
Photo: (c) Lynne Zehr
My daughter is a casual fan who could name several drivers and recognize a few by face. My son has a bit of deeper interest and knows most every car and driver visually. In the case of Justin Wilson, he represents a rare moment that they both shared with him in Milwaukee back in 2012. 

He had just finished a TV report of his riding the Milwaukee Indyfest ferris wheel with a young fan and was heading back to the paddock. We just happened to be walking nearby and asked for a quick photo opportunity with him which he so graciously, and so ridiculously-commonly, obliged. 

That was over three years ago and while my kids have grown so much when compared to the picture, they both remember this moment quite vividly and fondly. Both were saddened to hear the news I had to share with them this morning. 

I was equally sad to have to deliver it.

Having just surpassed my recent “Gurney Eagle/Jerry Karl/Foyt’s third entry” birthday, each year seems to bring more energy into my brain for more existential pondering – “what, if any, is the purpose and meaning of life?”

You may have also read my recent post with the same question bent specifically toward the sport of Indycar. Having little remaining hope that Indycar will ever be any sort of genuine ‘innovative and working future-thought laboratory’ for auto manufacturers as I’d dream, I have finally come to grips that this sport is set-up primarily as an entertainment vehicle which sells thrills and tradition and nostalgia in direct support of the Indianapolis 500 and the benefit of those who own the event and property.

“Duh.” might be your response. 

Fair enough, but I bought in early and heavily into the ideals found in automotive innovation found in the golden years of auto-racing (c. early-1960s to mid-1980s). Giving up on that ideal has been difficult for sure as it represents, to me, all that is good about people – the unfailing human desire to achieve and progress – working together to improve the things in our lives and the world around us.

That flicker of optimism found in human nature as reflected in the form of automotive racing has finally been extinguished for me. So what is left is simply a sport as entertainment vehicle. 

What is left is simply not good enough. 

This sport, as we are all too-well aware, is horrifically brutal. There are moments of thrilling performance to be sure, but when things go wrong, it seems it is always in spectacular fashion. I’ve written before about the ‘the long dark thread’ woven into the fabric of autosport. Sunday was evidence that thread is long and continuous. 

And so here we are again.

Another death. 

Another widowed family. 

Another horrible event in a long list of horrible events. 

It seems that only numerous, and somewhat random factors, align to produce these darkest of events which often leave us with nothing else to ponder but “why?” Could every single death of every single racing driver and fan have been prevented somehow? Of course, but it’s always that strange alignment of wrong thing, wrong place, wrong time. 

In pursuit of something so uncommonly amazing, such as landing a human on the moon, the risks are significant and great and their achievement stands as incredible historical human events. People lined up to be selected for those ridiculously dangerous roles because their desire was so great to risk their very essence to be a part of that history.

For me, Indycars racing around tracks on a sunny, summer Sunday afternoon for the benefit of thousands watching in person or on broadcast are not of such gravitas. Likewise nor do I think the similar risk of life is worth the paltry sums of either glory or riches we have today in autosport, and Indycar specifically.

Therefore, I simply find no good, remaining excuse you can give me why the safety of the competitors (and crews and fans) isn’t paramount anymore. You may want to argue with me whether safety is or isn’t paramount, but following and understanding what has happened in this sport over the last 40 years, I’m of the informed opinion that cost-containment, not safety, is at the forefront. That isn’t to say that the current cars aren’t amazing in how they protect drivers and fans, but that safety needs to be at the forefront of autosport design now. 

The time for making only reactionary improvements in safety has long passed. These people aren’t sound-barrier or moonshot pilots, they’re highly skilled drivers of cars for entertainment purposes. I have no desire to see people on either side of the fence get maimed or killed for a paltry bit of entertainment. 

What we have is simply not good enough. 

Justin Wilson knew all too well the risks involved. By most all accounts he also was a very thoughtful and genuine person who spoke often of his concerns for the safety of fans and drivers alike. We know there are significant risks that have existed for several years and still need to be addressed as evidenced by the most recent injuries and fatalities from cockpit intrusion in autosport, and especially over the last seven years. I call for this issue to be addressed now via development of the full enclosure of the cockpit from all manner of intrusions. End of story. It will take nothing away from the sport and it’s enjoyment. 

Not just incrementally better but BEST driver protection should be the new hallmark.

No amount of tradition, nostalgia, or perception of danger is worth this. No excuse you can give me for not immediately pursuing, testing, and incorporating designs fully-enclosed cockpits in Indycar is acceptable. Anything short of this is not acceptable and I’ll go one further and propose that NO MORE Indycar racing should occur after Sonoma until this is properly done. 

What we have is simply not good enough.

I’m telling everyone in the positions of power and rule over the sport of Indycar – I will not watch people die anymore for the sake of mere entertainment. 

No reason you can give me, or Susie Wheldon or Julia Wilson or whomever the next is to be widowed by this brutal sport, is good enough.


What we have today is simply not good enough.

 
Right now, this sport is simply not good enough to go on.






Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning’s End

(This post was written on the last day of April, 2013 and, after 2 days of reflection and consideration, was posted)

Tomorrow represents the figurative upswing of momentum and acceleration in Indycar toward the Memorial Day weekend classic and what I still believe is the single greatest of all auto races, The Indianapolis 500. 

Before the clock strikes midnight and May begins, however, I take this remaining time in April and mark my final day of unvarnished opinion of the current state of Indycar until further notice. There is precious little to say that hasn’t already been said by myself or others if one bothers to read and, as my blog is not monetized (requiring steady and popular content), I choose to not add unnecessary noise… after today.  I plan to post in the future with most everything being nostalgic bits from the past I find worth savoring and sharing.

Today will be a summation of my thoughts on various subjects regarding the current state of Indycar. If you disagree vehemently with my opinions today, be assured you won’t see them rehashed in the future, and likewise, if you agree with some or all of what I’ve said, bookmark it for future reference, but I won’t continue to preach to the choir.

Preamble – Noting that I have no personal, first-hand experience on the inner workings of Indycar, Indycar teams, racecraft, race engineering, or race event promotion, except for what I’ve experienced from the end customer’s (fan’s) perspective since my early exposures as a kid in the mid-1970s, my writing is based in observations that attempt at best to be even-handed from my volume of experience as a fan, as information to used for the betterment of the sport, if possible.

Past – I doubt anyone will argue with the thought that the essence of Indycar (as also with many other autosports) has changed immensely over the last 50 years. Since 1911, as a standalone event, and later with a related racing series growing up around it (Midget/Sprint/Championship Cars), the Indy 500 and the Speedway has always garnered the most attention in the world of open-wheel racing. 

Initially, as a working laboratory for the automotive industry, IMS and the Indianapolis 500 evolved during the 1930s – 1950s from oddity to grandiose public sporting event with worldwide fame.  Many people paid money for the opportunity to see something they haven’t before. Most likely what they were paying to see (or actually saw) was a combination of competitive auto technology, amazing speeds, celebratory outings, sensory-overloading race action, and some even watching the perilous dance done by drivers with death. Out of this, the drivers who managed to survive and somehow even win races, became American folk legends. The drivers who won frequently became legends and icons of automotive sport. The general public swooned.

As traits from the past changed, gone are the days of competitive technologies, speeds that amaze, and, at Indy, the significant threat of horrific death. New traits emerged – tightly-regulated, limited-cost competition, a 20-year plateau in racing speeds, and the level of daring tempered with the likelihood of severe injury or death reduced significantly. Most of this evolution was absolutely necessary and needed on a permanent basis. Fairly sanitized, now people primarily come to the 500 out of tradition, to celebrate an annual memory, or to simply be at a world-class sporting event. 

Present – Today’s Indycar has an inherent dichotomy of appreciation between the popular and savage past and the evolved and refined present. The gap in these divergent viewpoints has only been widened over time, but I believe the best of both are needed to survive. Today’s reality is that lagging ticket sales and anemic TV ratings indicate a product that isn’t nearly as popular as it once was. Indycar as a business exists somewhere closer to Hunger Games than salad days. 

As recently evidenced, the associated sponsor exposure dollars that follow ratings, ticket sales, and client entertainment don’t stay around out of tradition for very long, therefore we have precious little time for reconciliation to produce a better future.

Future – Can there be a solution that satisfies all constituents? I believe so and in my view, clearly understanding and providing what people want or expect to see from your product is the key to it thriving.  The only question of importance then becomes, “what do people want or expect to see from Indycar”. In answering that question, the key to best securing a future will be found.  So often here the temptation is to look to the past, to the salad days, and replicate that today. Clearly if it were that simple, nothing need have changed before and the current problems would not exist so that argument is fallacious.  Also tempting is to copy the closest, most-currently successful model but will that also translate to the audience of Indycar?  Again likely not or there would have not already been a differentiation in product existing. 

It is my opinion, as a fan for nearly 40 years, the enduring essence of Indycar from inception, hallmarked throughout it’s most popular days, and recalled into the present can be summed in one word – innovation.

Innovation can be defined as ‘the introduction of something new’. It is a very broad term, but also one with much appeal in (and some might say it is synonymous with) this country. The very essence of this country is tied to innovation – from something as broad as bringing a new form of government into the world to the most minuscule of modern products for living. Improving things and methods is a rather optimistic view in my opinion in that people work and desire to see improvement for present and future generations.

Innovation in Indycar can be symbolized by the very vehicle itself. Autosport already exists in many forms with numerous sorts of rules and competition but by giving the public truly innovative and amazing vehicles and technology to witness and can’t find anywhere else, will you be able to capture the imagination of a nation of people for whom innovation is essential. 

How can Indycar use this national raison d’être for its own benefit seems rather easy. Of course the devil is always in the details, but without a more broad, unified vision and direction, the details become fiendish distractions that waste the time and energy of those engaged in the business. Only with a unified vision for the sport can an opportunity for its future be assured. 

I implore all those involved charged with the sport and business of Indycar to use that essence of what made this country to your own benefit.  With innovation as the escalator to greater altitudes, don’t be content to simply ride, but boldly climb with a purpose and direction.Remake this thing into the image of what made this country, the facility of IMS, and the Indianapolis 500, famous. Without the survival of the sport as a whole, no more can there be an Indianapolis 500, an Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Make it something with which people and businesses want to associate. Make it a sport that captures the imagination and interest of generations of people. 

I challenge you, overseers of the sport of Indycar, to boldly remake this endeavor into THE pre-eminent form of autosport in the world. 

I believe it can be done.

Be bold. You need to believe it can be done.

If you do not, the game is already over.