IndyCar officials today denied they were trying to make street/road racing look good by "staging the most fugly oval races in open-wheel history."
"It's pretty plain to everyone watching what the IRL is doing," said one disgruntled oval fan. "If you hold a bunch of butt-ugly oval races, naturally the street/road races will start looking better. That's obviously what we have going on here."
IndyCar officials denied that they were intentionally uglying up ovals like Richmond and Nashville.
"We can't help it that drivers drive like their clown makeup has gotten in their eyes," said one IndyCar source who asked not to be named. "You can't have a Festival of Carbon Fiber unless the drivers brain lock. And Nashville, well, that's a one-groove track. We just consider it a fan vacation ... a race they can take off and not miss a lot."
The official said 1.5-mile tracks like Chicagoland, Kansas and Kentucky promise to offer better shows with surprising outcomes. "Sure, you know one of the big three will again bitchslap the field as they have on every oval since 2005, but you don't know which of the big three's cars will win," said the anonymous league official. "It could be any one of eight cars that win the thing. Now that's entertainment."
The oval-lovers were unmoved and noted that, to make things worse, street/road races now offer the excitement of non big-three drivers like Graham Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay actually winning.
"That really was the last straw," said another fan. "Look, if the big three cars are going to bore everyone sightless by winning every oval, they should bore everyone sightless by winning every street/road race too. All I know is when you need to show tape replays of action from a street race because the oval race is so boring there's something up. Since IndyCar can't sell road and street racing on its own merits to more than 5% of the masses -- no matter how much money the pour down that hole -- I guess the next step is to throw some hideous oval races to make them look good in comparison."
Fans said if the IRL ever figures out how to use a local yellow they might find themselves on the slippery slope to an all-road/street series.
"We just hope IndyCar continues to go full-course yellow for cars stalled 239 yards from the track," said the oval fan. "Equal ugly, that's all we want. If you're going to allow blocking, goofy-ass restarts and 13-lap cautions for no apparent reason, you should do it on ovals and street parades equally. Fair is fair."
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