Indy Car, Champ Car Series to Merge, Thank Goodness
Finally.
Those of us who always have preferred open-wheel racing know this is a great move. And long overdue.
Neither circuit was particularly viable. Especially Champ Car, which had its Long Beach race to open the season, then seemed to disappear. Indy Car was better only in that it held the Indianapolis 500, and people still pay attention to that race. (Though not remotely as much as they did even 20 years ago.)
The whole thing was petty and weird all along. I blame most of it on Tony George, who ended up controlling the Indy 500. He ran off/was abandoned by most of the top team owners, who created the CART circuit.
And the split did nothing but diminish both surviving entities.
CART had almost all the "name" drivers early on, and clearly was the stronger circuit, competitively. But not racing at Indy eventually sapped the breakaway group ... helping NASCAR complete its near absolute takeover of American motor sports.
This was a petty, ego-driven thing all along. So petty that George went to court to keep CART from calling its vehicles "Indy cars". That's how we came by the Champ Car designation.
Anyway, open-wheel racing had plenty on its plate with NASCAR running at it, but the idiots running the sport chose that exact moment to split into warring factions ... that eventually were warring over crumbs.
Open-wheel racing in this country has been a mess, now, for a decade. With short fields and limited numbers of competent teams and drivers, hemorrhaging stars to NASCAR, where the real money and recognition is. That is, the inverse of the situation a couple of generations ago.
I've never understood the preference for NASCAR. Open-wheel cars are so much faster than NASCAR's "taxi cabs" (as open-wheel folks derisively called them), so much nimbler. Able to race on road courses with ease. And yes, the Indy cars are more deadly, too, and if that gets your motor running, that would have been your preference.
Looks like the first order of business here will be for Indy Car to cancel its first event, scheduled to run the same weekend as the Champ Car race in Long Beach, which is on April 20.
And who won this open-wheel civil war? Nobody. There were casualties. Lots of them. No winners.
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