Brock Yates in C&D

[Snrub]

I thought I'd bring up the recent Brock Yates article in C&D since he's so popular here. It's titled "The Indy 500 is broken, so fix it." It's mostly about IRL, but has strong implications for CART. Essentially he mentions that the last Indy 500 had ratings of 4.6 and it's essentially "broken." He lements that a big part of the problem is that it no longer is an american race. American manufacturers and drivers are not involved or not competitive. He admits that while Gil, Helio & Tony are likable and popular they cannot be the core of the IRL. He also lements the absence of cars and drivers from around the world coming to compete @ Indy as sort of an all-star race. He also says about TG: "His intent, which I sympathized with, was to divest himself from the elitist clubbers of CART and their fascination with the European-style road-racing culture and reuturn open-wheel racing to the grass roots from which the 500 had grown."

If we look at the new potential owners of CART, they seem to be of the traditional Anglo-American types and are interested in making the US the home of operations. On the other hand CART seems to be going in the direction of mimicing F1. Do you think both CART and the IRL are doomed if they continue as they're going?

[Jay]

Who is Brock Yates, and what does he do? Is he a journalist? I'm getting sick of a lot of people in that part of the business...even though I venture into it myself. Seems like a number of people who would rather spend their time pulling others down to their level, than doing anything with their own lives or helping others with theirs... just my observations...

No, I don't think Cart and the IRL are doomed... they are taking completely different paths that's all. The IRL is cuddling up to Nascar, and trying to mimick that. Cart is trying something new (I think) and trying to capture the urban markets with an international racing series. The theory being that if they can capture the big markets with major events that draw hundreds of thousands they will build the profile of the series. I think this'll work, as it certainly has in Canada, Long Beach and Florida.

[Snrub]

Yes Brock Yates could be considered an automotive journalist. He's an editor of Car and Driver and does other stuff too.

I thought I'd post this because everyone got all POed when he critisized CART. This time he's critisizing the IRL for the same sort of stuff. I think he's on the right track that the IRL is NOT mimicing Nascar or if it is, it's not doing a very good job. The other question it sort of indirectly brings up is what is the current open wheel grass roots? Is it things like go karting, star mazda & barber dodge or is it sprint cars? What roots can IRL and/or CART return to? What is this american heritige that once existed?

Races that CART has that make money: 3 Canadian, 2 Mexican, 1 Ausi and 1 American. I'm tempted to say that CART should scale back to TEN races and only upon making a race profitable and viable long term go forward.

[Snrub]

Yes Brock Yates could be considered an automotive journalist. He's an editor of Car and Driver and does other stuff too.

I thought I'd post this because everyone got all POed when he critisized CART. This time he's critisizing the IRL for the same sort of stuff. I think he's on the right track that the IRL is NOT mimicing Nascar or if it is, it's not doing a very good job. The other question it sort of indirectly brings up is what is the current open wheel grass roots? Is it things like go karting, star mazda & barber dodge or is it sprint cars? What roots can IRL and/or CART return to? What is this american heritige that once existed?

Races that CART has that make money: 3 Canadian, 2 Mexican, 1 Ausi and 1 American. I'm tempted to say that CART should scale back to TEN races and only upon making a race profitable and viable long term go forward.

[dretceterini]

Who is Brock Yates? The ****er of the automotive world...

[Emfa]

Originally posted by Snrub
I thought I'd bring up the recent Brock Yates article in C&D since he's so popular here.

Originally posted by Snrub
... He's an editor of Car and Driver and does other stuff too.

Like Cannonball runs

Originally posted by Snrub
I thought I'd post this because everyone got all POed when he critisized CART. This time he's critisizing the IRL for the same sort of stuff.

So, what you're saying is that all he does is criticize the way racing series' are run?

[BootsOntheSide]

It's interesting to see this/ When he criticised CART, some people suggested that pehaps Tony Goerge had paid him off. Are any of the IRL purists going to sugegt Chris Pook has paid him?

Brock seems to contradict himself as well. He says that drivers like Tony, Gil and Helio can't be the core of the race because they aren't American and don't have midget / dirt track racing backgrounds. he then says that he wants to see the best drivers in the world come over for an allstar race.

I'm interested as to what this guy would think of the current British Grand Prix as well, given that only 4 of its 20 starters this year were British, and Coulthard, Herbert and Hill aare the only British winners since 1993.

The Indy 500 should be appreciated as a classic racing event, the msot saught-after race in its discipline, and one the rgeats all seek to win. To ahve full itnernational appeal the race needs its overseas drivers.

I wonder how many fo the 200,000 fans who lined Tony's pockets this year were from outside the US? Would they be there if thge race was still the preserve of nobodies like Hamilton, Boat, Beechler, Calkins etc.?

Americans need to be able to appreciate an itnernational field. In this year's 500, almost all the backmarkers were domestic drivers with IRL, not CART, backgrounds. In Sam Hornish Jr they have a big homegrown hero, and other US guys liek Sharp, Vasser, Al Jr, Yasakura and Ray all deserve fans - in particualr Greg has impressed me this year. By racing against and often beating international stars, these guys are boosting their reputations,a dn taht of the 500 and the IRL.

[KC]

Brock Yates is always chasing the wrong end. He laments the lack of American talent in the Indy 500, but then complains that its not a more international event. So what do you want Mr. Yates?

Want to know the real reason why the Indy 500 was dominated by foreign drivers in foreign powered cars? Because Honda and Toyota came to kick ass and Chevy tried to maintain the status quo. This is not NASCAR, the IRL is not going to give Chevy the Honda/Toyota technology as has been done for years in stock car racing. Sam Hornish is a proven racer and more than a match for Penske's duo and the other top talent, but he has been hamstrung by the slow Chevy for the first part of the year. Now Chevy has figured something out. How come two firms located more than 24 hours away can figure it out in one year and the world's largest auto maker cannot?

Mr. Yates uses bad logic to sort out why open wheel racing is not doing as well as stock car racing. In his mind... NASCAR is popular, it is full of American talent, therfore the fans only want to see American drivers. Where did that leap of logic come from? NASCAR has a huge hard core racing fan base. Then it also has at least that many more that merely watch because it is popular and they are lemmings and want to see a massive crash. Every thing popular has the same thing. The pop music business has been this way for years.

So, do the hardcore racing fans watch NASCAR because they want to see an American driver win? Or is it because its good racing and it has world class marketting and the coverage is huge? Or is it because there are not any divisive elements in it trying to rip the racing apart for their own selfish interests? Or is it because advertiser chasing pundits like you, Mr. Yates, only cover NASCAR and mention CART only to point out how much is wrong with it?

Mr. Yates has long been a proponent of the IRL engine formula. How has it made the racing better than CART? It is exactly the same damn thing that CART used to be. Honda and Toyota have their sweetheart lease deals to their favorite teams, Chevy is leaving a lot of the developmnent up to the teams and it shows. So Mr. Yates, what makes the IRL formula better than CART's? The biggest teams still demolish the smaller teams every week. The young American drivers don't get much of a sniff in one of ther ultra-competitive teams. So Mr. Yates, you got what you wanted in the IRL, it's what we used to have in CART, and now you can't undertsand why no one wants to tune in. Who did not see this coming? Have you had your eyes checked for myopia?

What we have is...

1. CART has good races and draws huge crowds to their events but have zero news coverage and minimal television coverage.
2. The IRL has good races but draws small crowds to their events and has terrible network TV audiences.

Isn't that the instant formula for success?

I also resent the notion that road racing is stereotyped as European style racing, as if America does not have more than 75 years of road racing heritage. Some of the greatest races ever held in North America happened at places like Sebring, RoadAmerica, Watkins Glen, Mid Ohio, the Daytona road course and a hundred road courses that no longer exist. Sports car racing in the 1960s and Can Am racing in the 1970s in America has long been considered the golden age of sports car racing in North America and produced some of this nations greatest racers. Remember Dan Gurney, Mark Donahue, and Mario Andretti? They are as great as Parnelli Jones, A.J. Foyt, and the Unsers. All of these guys road raced too and were great at it. So this notion that American fans do not watch road racing because they are just not sophisticated enough or need their racing to be reduced to the lowest common denominator is offensive to me.

What we have here is Mr. Yates, propping up his obvious agenda by slagging off CART, and now not being able to comprehend that the IRL is a carbon copy of CART from 1995 but only turning left. Maybe if Mr. Yates pulled his head out of the dark place he keeps it, or just clipped his unruly eyebrows, he could see that he has been wrong and neither CART or the IRL has the answer right now. Instead of standing around pointing his finger and *****ing incessantly, he could do something constructive.

[paul-collins]

Originally posted by Snrub
The other question it sort of indirectly brings up is what is the current open wheel grass roots? Is it things like go karting, star mazda & barber dodge or is it sprint cars? What roots can IRL and/or CART return to? What is this american heritige that once existed?

To push the question along, is the heritage even relevant any more?

Here in Canada, we do have a lot of stock car racing, and Modified stuff, too. But OW stuff is almost exclusively road or street. I'm not even sure if there's much dirt track.

And the kids these days drive karts instead of Edsels they rebuilt themselves. The ground is shifting, and the old fairgrounds don't have any lessons for OW up here. (In fact, I'd say that if the trend continues with the PlayStation generation, rally will outpace stockers in growth over the next 10 years, and it's going to be huge. But that's closed wheel, not open.)

[Liz]

That's a good point -- perhaps all the people trying to "save" open wheel racing are simply facing the wrong direction.

This may well have to do with the fact that we all try to maintain the world in our own image, because that way everything makes sense to us. (Try to explain to a modern kid driver the thrill of being able to repair your own car ... or watch them goggle when you explain that when you got your first computer, you had to build your own circuit boards and change out your own chips and write your own programs).

I suppose in Brock Yates' world, the IRL 500 would be an international race in which the Americans would always have superior firepower, technology and drivers (with Anglo Saxon names -- no Gonzales, Cho, Bluesky, or Yamamoto need apply, even with a birth certificate and family tree proving seven generations of American citizenship, and certainly no American with any accent save that of the Deep South, other than that pronounced by television announcers from the Midwest) and would always and without fail win every single race.

Even in a book he could not make that scenario plausible.

[Muzza]

Originally posted by KC
This is not NASCAR, the IRL is not going to give Chevy the Honda/Toyota technology as has been done for years in stock car racing.

NASCAR actually forbids the participation of foreign cars in any of its series.
The admission of Toyota to the Truck Series happened because Toyota - and NASCAR - explored a loophole, claiming that the Toyota truck are "American trucks, as they are built in American factories by American workers" (quoted from statement by a NASCAR spokesperson). Oh, yeah, et io, sono il Papa.
I am absolutely convinced that Toyota profusely paid NASCAR to have its Tundras racing in the Truck Series...

Originally posted by KC
Mr. Yates uses bad logic to sort out why open wheel racing is not doing as well as stock car racing. In his mind... NASCAR is popular, it is full of American talent, therfore the fans only want to see American drivers. Where did that leap of logic come from? NASCAR has a huge hard core racing fan base. Then it also has at least that many more that merely watch because it is popular and they are lemmings and want to see a massive crash. Every thing popular has the same thing. The pop music business has been this way for years.

So, do the hardcore racing fans watch NASCAR because they want to see an American driver win? Or is it because its good racing and it has world class marketting and the coverage is huge? Or is it because there are not any divisive elements in it trying to rip the racing apart for their own selfish interests? Or is it because advertiser chasing pundits like you, Mr. Yates, only cover NASCAR and mention CART only to point out how much is wrong with it?

Excellent analysis, KC. Your whole post is great.

[norman-normal]

If CART were the most popular racing in the USA it would not be the best. The most popular, of anything, never is.

If it ever attracts a NASCAR kind of fan, I won't be watching.

Brock Yates is guided by common sense. (common sense tells us the world is flat)
I think I would like to be in a demolition derby with him.

[Snrub]

I think some of this got taken a bit far. I don't think he's implied that he has a problem with a situation like when Jim Clark came over and kicked ass in a Lotus. I think was trying to say is that the core of IRL should be Americans and American equipment, but others are welcome to come and do battle for the 500. I think he's even saying guys like Gil & Helio are welcome in the IRL, but not if they are the majority and the most powerfull.

[flatlander_48]

I think the golden days of the 500 was when you had guys like Foyt, Jones, Johncock, etc. running against Hill, Clark, Gurney, Stewart, etc. That was truly world class stuff. But how can you have the "best from grass roots racing in the US" when those folks have been essentially pushed out? TG courted those guys when he needed them, but left them out in the cold when Honda, Toyota and the CART teams migrated. At this point, I don't think anyone should trust anything TG says.

In my estimation, most of this B/S could have been headed off if CART had created a series within a series. Everybody competes, but there are separate point totals for oval races, road races and overall. In that way, teams/drivers without much road racing experience still have a championship to chase while they are getting their act together. Same for teams/drivers coming from a road racing background. Then the overall title goes to the team/driver who has done the best in both disciplines.

[paul-collins]

I think what Brock wants is what NASCAR has in their road races - specialists who come in and look good for a while, before weird officialing, bad strategy and weak equipment relegates them to the back, allowing the regulars to win and claim that their assertion about being the best drivers is valid.

When Graham Hill won the 500 in 1966, there was so much negativity in the press about the English interlopers coming over and winning that Hill (who, as 1962 F1 WDC had been forced to go through the rookie test at 1966 - and was not happy) suggested that they strike a trophy for top American. Is this now considered to be the golden age by BY?

[Liz]

Originally posted by Snrub
I think was trying to say is that the core of IRL should be Americans and American equipment, but others are welcome to come and do battle for the 500. I think he's even saying guys like Gil & Helio are welcome in the IRL, but not if they are the majority and the most owerfull.

In other words, Furriners are welcome to compete as long as they never win!

[Liz]

Double post

[Omega99]

Originally posted by flatlander_48
In my estimation, most of this B/S could have been headed off if CART had created a series within a series. Everybody competes, but there are separate point totals for oval races, road races and overall. In that way, teams/drivers without much road racing experience still have a championship to chase while they are getting their act together. Same for teams/drivers coming from a road racing background. Then the overall title goes to the team/driver who has done the best in both disciplines.

That's not a bad idea... In fact if a merger were to occur, that might smooth things over. TG could run the oval part of the series, and everyone would be happy... well, should be happy but won't be. I'm still dreaming...

[botsquad]

those dern ferin drivers...they wrecked indy..
misser yates is all boy...
yeah...that cannonball run..thats racin.