Indy Cars raced on the Indy road course for the first time on Mother’ Day weekend. (Credit: IMS photo)
By Lou Modestino
Is it just me or does Indy Car have a problem getting their advances out on the doings at Indianapolis?!? We kept looking at TV listings for Mother’s Day weekend particularly at a mysterious one called “Indy Grand Prix”. We knew that years ago Indianapolis Motor Speedway cut back on the amount of activity during the month of May because of the lack of interest (Read that as selling tickets).
We were surprised to discover that Indy Car ran the Indy road course that weekend when we found the results in the daily papers. The post race results were much better than the advance of last Fall! Anyway it’s a “good thing” that the folks at IMS finally came around to putting something on the IMS road course after the F1 circus left town. Apparently Bernie Eccelstone pulled the plug and left Indy in a huff because it wasn’t up to His Highness’ expectations. At that time, Old Bernie was miffed because his F1 GP event at Indy didn’t have a sponsor. Or was that just an excuse for him to “get out of Naptown”?
We checked back when the announcement that Indy Cars would run the IMS road course was first made and did find a few stories in September and October of 2013. The race in early May 2014 should have created a lot of buzz being big news. It’s even possible that the change over on the now defunct SPEED Channel which morfed into the Fox Sports Channel in mid-August of 2013 could have a lot to do with the word not getting out. Anyway we didn’t ever see the announcement. And therein lies some of the problems that Indy Car has had for a long time.
On another issue, NASCAR still can’t catch a break when it comes to the all important TV ratings. To put it in plain English, the NASCAR ratings really stink as we head into the second half of the season in just a scant six weeks! It appears that Brian France, and the suits that work for him, still haven’t been able to figure it all out?!? Brian, and the rest of you, just read the racing/motorsports blogs on the internet as well the daily papers around the country. Take this constructive critique seriously. The newbie fans have gone and they ain’t coming back. Listen to the core base of fans that have still stuck around NASCAR. From all indications it’s about 50% less since 2008 when everything, including the economy, crashed.
Things are much better now in NASCAR and the sanction is failing to capitalize on it?!? Jimmie Johnson is in a bit of a slump. Ticket seller Junior is doing better. Even Jeff Gordon managed to win a Cup race! Every once in a while there’s fender checking on the track and even some of the drivers are beating on each other and getting fined.
NASCAR could use a little more of that but not outright anarchy all of the time. Just have their eye on the right amount of dust Also, the NASCAR front office has to get on Comcast’s case about making Fox Sports 2 available to all of their millions of subscribers. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, NASCAR, and the other sanctions, have to get Comcast to make MAV-TV available to a wider audience. We hear it’s the same situation for those in the Time-Warner Cable areas. We tried to get some answers from Comcast on these questions month’s ago. We’re still waiting!
While we’re at it there has to be more wheeling-and-dealing on the pricing of race tickets on every motor sports front from NASCAR, Indy Car, NHRA, DIrt and right down to the short tracks. We know that it’s going to be a tough sell especially to the 18-34 males who are still employed. Never-the-less, NASCAR especially, get into that so-called critical marketing group and keep pitching those tickets at bargain prices.