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IndyCar & NASCAR and My Evolving Consumerist Attitude

SO, IndyCar kicks off this weekend with a street race in St. Petersburg, Florida. (Sunday, March 30, 3:20 p.m. on ABC). Naturally, a lot of IndyCar fans are excited for the season opener. This is a good thing. Excitement, enjoyment … yay!

Yesterday, as my brain was decompressing from a week-long series of day-job meetings (meetings: necessary for revenue but not my favorite things), I began to muse about my evolution as a racing fan and popped off this series of Tweets:

If you like the road/street racing, then @IndyCar is a great choice. Not real competitive with @NASCAR for oval-centric fans, though.

A lot of @IndyCar's competitive disadvantage on ovals is that they drive too few during the year more than quality of the racing itself.

Fans who dig BOTH oval and street/road enough to watch every race of a diverse series like @IndyCar is a very small audience, IMO.

With that, I'll put on my Kevlar helmet and vest and wait for the INCOMING!

A bunch of good twitter-based discussion ensued. Some agreed with me, some disagreed and there was plenty of lamentation.

IndyCar Points Change is a Head Scratcher

I do not get why IndyCar recently changed the math behind its heretofore pure points championship system.

To me, it's like trading away a second-round draft pick for $600 and a used washing machine.

On March 20, IndyCar announced changes to the way points will be awarded in 2014. You can read full details here, but head-scratcher for me was the concept of making performance on the 500-mile ovals TWICE as valuable as performance on every other race. And by enhancing points for the Indy 500 qualifying AND race, IndyCar has made it the most important points race of them all.

Huh?

The Monetizing of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and How I Came to Love it

It's just business ....

To be an IndyCar fan is to get used to the fact that the Indianapolis 500 is the HUGE fish in the small IndyCar pond. So much so that for many people, the month of May and the Indy 500 are the entire IndyCar series. To be an IndyCar fan is to hear fans of the 500 expound on its virtues with admirable passion all year.

I can finally confess that for a long time as someone who lives eight hours from Indianapolis these facts grated on me. Those of us who attend one or more of the dozen-ish non-Indy 500 races can feel like Children of a Lesser God .. er.. Event. HUGE THINGS PLANED FOR INDY 500! Well, what about us? Table scraps.

Jealousy and envy are as seductive as they are unsightly. So, Confession II: I fell into the trap of resenting all the focus put on the Indy 500 while the Iowa Speedway race got — at least in my opinion — cursory attention. Corollary: I believe that this phenomenon has contributed to the demise of many an IndyCar focused racing blog based outside driving distance of IMS, but … I digress.

If You're Not First, You're Last ... and Other Unfortunate Myths

The Academy Awards were last night, which reminded me of what a travesty it was that Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby never won an Oscar. It’s a damn shame, and emblematic of what’s wrong with this great nation.

At one point in the movie (I’m pretty sure, anyway) Ricky says: “I’m a winner! I can do what I want!” which is the theme of the entire movie. If you’re not first, you’re last. More expository dialog:

(Ricky’s sons, Walker and Texas Ranger, are talking smack to their grandfather at the dinner table.)

Chip: [to Ricky Bobby] Are you just going to let your sons talk to their grandfather like this?

Ricky Bobby: Hell yes I am! They are winners! That is how winners talk!

Carley Bobby: If we wanted two wussies, we would have named them Dr. Quinn and Medicine Woman!