Once the devastating civil war that destroyed North American open-wheel racing ceased, attention immediately turned to how IndyCar could recapture its lost glory.
IndyCar seeking to become more than just Indianapolis 500
The pieces are there for IndyCar to reclaim its status as the preeminent racing series in the United States, but nobody knows what to do with them.
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Often the popular refrain by those within the sport and the few remaining fans who still followed said an American winner would be a cure-all. Give the general public a successful driver they could relate to on some level and IndyCar would experience a rejuvenation. Just as all those great American drivers of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s -- A.J. Foyt, the Andrettis, the Unsers -- had done to previous generations.
Except that’s proved untrue.
A year ago, American-born Ryan Hunter-Reay outdueled Brazilian Helio Castroneves in one of the best finishes in Indianapolis 500 history. Hunter-Reay showed moxie, guts and the steel nerve of a fighter pilot landing on an aircraft carrier in the dead of night, as he and Castroneves exchanged the lead several times over the final laps.
By definition it should have vaulted Hunter-Reay into the conscious of America. Already an IndyCar Series champion, he certainly was no fluke winner and the victory served to further validate his talent. Add in an adorable baby son wearing a firesuit matching that of his father, and all the ingredients were present for Hunter-Reay to launch IndyCar back into the sport’s stratosphere and no longer play second banana to the 800-pound NASCAR gorilla.
Say what you will about NASCAR, which has its own ills, but there are many reasons for optimism in the sport. The Sprint Cup Series is flush with young talent, its most popular driver is competitive, and a record $4.48 billion deal with FOX and NBC provides a very solid foundation.
As for IndyCar? Twelve months later it still finds itself in an all too familiar position -- struggling to be something more than just a form of motor sport the majority of the mainstream public only expresses interest in one weekend a year.
Any positive attention IndyCar may have garnered was squandered by recent events that saw three drivers become airborne and flip after crashing within a five-day span. Although they all walked away uninjured, a fourth driver wasn’t so lucky when his car broke a suspension piece and sent him careening into the Turn 3 wall. James Hinchcliffe, one of IndyCar’s most popular stars, suffered serious leg injuries and is out indefinitely.
The allure of auto racing has always been drivers flirting with danger and the ramifications of what can happen when things go awry. But there is a balance and that equilibrium has been off kilter this month as teams struggle with under-tested aerodynamic body kits that seemingly turned the Chevrolet cars into kites.
Further hindering IndyCar’s ascension was its initial non-reaction and later mad scramble to come up with a solution to keep cars on the ground -- something akin to a clown show than that of a professional racing organization.
Officials at first shrugged off the eerily similar wrecks. They dismissed concerns something was amiss with the much-hyped aero kits that brought some long overdue ingenuity into a series that had regressed to where every competitor had the same engine and chassis combination.
It was only after Ed Carpenter, on the morning of time trials, became the third driver to summersault that IndyCar realized how the severity of the situation. What ensued was a three-hour delay of qualifying as officials, team owners and manufacturer representatives brainstormed ideas.
The revised schedule produced a truncated version of qualifying -- excluding the popular Fast Nine Shootout where the nine fastest drivers gun for the pole. But officials did allot time for the four slowest qualifiers to re-qualify for one of three remaining spots. It was a sad spectacle, only further eroding the one storied mystic of “Bump Day” -- another storied tradition that became the casualty of the needless civil war that fractured open-wheel racing.
That’s modern-day IndyCar in a nutshell: Desperately trying to cling to its past, while uncertain how to best promote its future. The pieces are there for a series and a race to become more than just a once-a-year blip on the sporting calendar, except no one can figure how to best put everything together.
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