RACER Rag

[camcartfan]

I saw on another forum that someone noticed that a picture in the March issue of Racer had been doctored prior to print. The picture is of an IRL race in progress and the crowd in the background is huge. When you look more clearly, you can see that the image of the crowd had been repeated to make it look like a full house. I wish I had the picture to show. Maybe someone can post it here.

I sent a letter to the editor of RACER expressing my distrust in the magazine. From the editor's response, it is aparent that several people have written to him. Here is their response:

Hey, lighten up folks. I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but I'm afraid you're completely wide of the mark if you think this was done for ulterior motives.

RACER's art director (a man wholly disinterested in the politics of racing) used limited Photoshop cloning for aesthetic reasons, i.e., to fill up the frame, and certainly not to make some quasi-political statement. Whether it's cloning sky, crowds, asphalt or grass, it's a common and, in our opinion, not unethical technique when used purely for design reasons (as it was in this specific case). Besides, had we done this with any politically driven motives in mind, I think we'd at least have attempted to cover our tracks with a little more finesse and subtlety.

In our Sebastien Bourdais piece in the same issue as the IRL feature you refer to, we've morphed two images into the lead spread, but that doesn't mean we're insinuating he's been cloned.

And, as a matter of interest, the Champ Car cover from November's RACER is also a composite of two separate images (the result being an exciting and dynamic image, not a politically motivated one).

It is not the policy of RACER magazine to change images to alter the context or meaning of a picture for political or sensationalist or morally dubious reasons. If you believe on this occasion that we have, we respect your right to hold that view, but stress once again that it was absolutely not the case.

We appreciate, understand and respect the fact that the IRL/Champ car split continues to be a source of strongly held and passionate opinions among RACER's readers. Indeed, our recurring and sustained editorial stance in RACER is that the split has damaged U.S. open-wheel racing and we would dearly love to see a single top-level series. In the meantime, if you take the time to look through a few issues of RACER, we hope you'll see that we treat both series even handedly, both on page counts and in our overall editorial tone. Naturally, and quite understandably, that will not be to the satisfaction of those readers who wish us to take a specific side.

I thank you for your interest in RACER magazine and hope that I have clarified this matter.

Laurence Foster,
Editor-in-chief