World's greatest race - your opinion

#31

I'd give the nod presently to the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Because it takes
place early in the year, it is the only race that features top drivers
from many different series (wish they could get some F1 guys,lol).
Although the cars they use might be somewhat uninspiring, the racing is
usually pretty good.

The race itself might not get as much attention as Indy, LeMans, Monaco
etc., but the entry list is pretty impressive

#32

Slight delay in my end of the conversation...been on the road, without
usenet access.

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:02:34 GMT, "mark" <usenet1958 (AT) verizon (DOT) net>
wrote:

[snip]

Quote:

sponsors got a much better value for their dollars. No doubt it had
problems and the one person I never understood why they didn't hire to run
the thing is Dan Gurney. He got it.

Dan Gurney's White Paper is said to be the catalyst. One of the big
things he called for was a strong man to run the series, like
Ecclestone in F1. Instead, CART set up a board of all the car owners.

CART should have followed Gurney's advice, and maybe subbed the strong
man job out to Bill France.

Quote:

No but race fans tend to be very passionate about their sport. They made
two HUGE blunders right off the bat. One is starting before they had fully
developed the engines and chassis. This lead to some very severe injuries in
the early IRL cars, which with the new rules locked the design in for 3 full

Well, I think the rush to design a whole new car was an outcome of the
war. The transition was supposed to be a lot gentler. Once the split
was in place, they were stuck building new chassis without the
participation of CART's experienced chassis makers.

On the other hand... USAC carefully planned and designed their new
pavement Silver Crown cars. They wound up with stuff that looks like
crap, runs slow, and nobody wants to run.

Quote:

years. Mistake number two was even bigger, and that comes with just 2
numbers. 25/8 When you effectively lock out a group of people that had
[snip]

Geeze - you need to look in the archives. 25/8 was entirely CART's
fault.

Well...maybe not, but it wasn't an opening move. It was one blow in a
series of escalating shots. I'm not even sure if it was the fatal
one. One can argue endlessly about what the opening shot was, too.

Quote:

supported your track since 79 you not only tell the teams to go jump, you

25/8 was supposed to coerce CART teams into entering IRL races, not
exclude them.

Failure to invite CART teams in 1979 *was* an attempt to exclude.

Quote:

tell their fans too. Your at my house, playing with my ball so you will do
things my way usually doesn't work on the playground, and it doesn't work at
all in business. That is unless you like to play alone. It made it
apparent that this was a power play for which anyone with a brain could see
the stakes were the entire future of openwheel racing. That tends to make
one pick sides really fast.

Obviously a power play from the beginning. Both beginnings: 1979 and
1996.

Quote:

A racing series really has only one key asset, and thats its creditability.

Nah. Its asset is providing good racing.

Quote:

Lots of ways the IRL has damaged that over the years from the likes of Racin
Gardner making the field, to the absolute worst thing one could be perceived
in a racing situation. Whether they did anything wrong or not it doesn't
matter. Its the appearance that they could have manulipated the race win at
Indy to give it to team Penske, an IRL regular now from a CART team regular
and one off driver, Paul Tracy. Regardless of who really won, they way it
was handled left the appearance that should outrage every race fan.

No more than handing the 1966 500 to Graham Hill, even though Jim
Clark won.

The 1911 procedure that gave the win to Ray Harroun was much better.

Handling of the 1981 Unser/Andretti controversy makes the
Tracy/Castroneves deal look like it was handled by Solomon.

[snip]

Quote:

Now one thing that street racing vs racing at a track does is that it tends
to take the money race fans spend and spread it around a great deal more.
If you leave the track and there is a nice place to eat or drink right near
the track you are likely to just walk in and have dinner. That leaves the
cash through the local business community. Cities like that. For them its
much better than having you eat at the track which likely is outside their
boundries and thus outside their ability to tax.

That makes racing even more of an advertising medium than it's already
become.

Quote:

Crown jewels aren't that hard to make. All it takes is a good product and
time. The US 500 that everyone brings up so much suffered from two things.
One is the wheels that went in the stands from other events, and that often
gets underestimated as to its effect. Two they didn't stick with it. The
big wreck at the start of the first one didn't help and I never like the
idea of 3 wide starts, but it needed time. In today's world publicly traded
companies want success yesterday and to make a crown jewel it won't work
that way.

The wheels into the stands happened after the US 500, and wouldn't
have been a factor in that race's joke status. IMHO, damage to both
series was comparable, but in the long run the flying wheels spurred
very productive safety improvements. In fact, it seems that the "Your
series is killing and maiming people" spin really boosted safety
development.

Funny how the wreck at the beginning of the US 500 became such a
negative thing, but the much more serious starting wrecks at
Indianapolis in 1966 and 1973 just brought on more publicity. Why
hasn't the US 500 wreck made its way into highlight reels and stock
footage?

Both Memorial Day races in 1996 were plagued with cold, rainy weather.
I wonder what the outcome would have been if the month was warm and
clear in both places.

Ken Plotkin

#33

"mark" <usenet1958 (AT) verizon (DOT) net> wrote

Quote:

I never understood other than the chance for the IRL to say (to quote
Nelson
from the Simpsons) HA HA, why that first lap wreck was such a big deal.

It was because the CART folks wrecking the RASI newsgroup predicted that the
'96 500 would be a disaster, and nobody would be running at the end. The
IRL would call the race because the drivers were too incompetent to avoid
crashing. Then CART schedules the US500 to be run against the Indy500 in
yet another petty move against the IRL.

The IRL runs fine. The CART teams have to do a "do-over" due to multiple
crashes ON THE PACE LAP. After suffering lots of abuse in the weeks leading
up the race, the IRL fans will always a chance to point out what comes
around, goes around. The IRL fans considered the using crashes as an excuse
before the first IRL race to be pretty lame.

Quote:

Stan Fox comes to mind right off the top of my head.

They're STILL doing it.

#34

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:45:46 -0400, forty <cforteNO (AT) SPAMgmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

Quote:

How does one define greatness? Attendance figures? Quality of racing?
Technological innovation?

None or all of those - whatever you think matters. Personal opinion
matters more than anything else.

[snip]

Quote:

IMHO, Le Mans would stand tall as the world's greatest race.

Good choice - that clearly lines up with your opinion.

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World's greatest race - your opinion

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