Merger too late to matter much
Here’s why American open-wheel racing as we knew it is over, merger or no merger: Because 90 percent of you just read that and exclaimed, “WHAT merger?”
Why, the merger between the Indy Racing League and Champ Car, silly.
The former just bought out the pitiful remnant of the latter, ending the 12-year war that shattered the sport and helped make NASCAR the beast it is today. It was a huge deal, in case you missed it. They signed the surrender papers aboard the USS Missouri. Douglas McArthur was there. I hear he’s a big Danica Patrick fan.
OK, OK. So I made up that last part.
Not that you would know, of course.
After all, even the ravenous maw of today’s 24/7 news cycle spit this one out. The New York Times auto racing page Sunday included not a line on the big news, focusing instead on a Petty Enterprises story and a profile of NASCAR driver Reed Sorenson. My paper did run something, but tucked it into the racing page, packaged with (irony alert here) a feature on 2006 Indianapolis 500 winner Sam Hornish Jr.’s surprising Daytona debut.
Open-wheel racing has no juice anymore, alas. Which is a shame, because it’s still the best form of motorsports in the country. I, for one, will take Helio Castroneves and Dan Wheldon running wheel-to-wheel at 225 mph any day over NASCAR taxicabs going ’round and ’round. Like the NBA, you only have to tune in for the last 20 laps or so.
That said, the day when any sort of reunification could have saved open-wheel is long behind us. Too bad it didn’t happen a decade ago, when it might still have mattered.
All it means now is that Tony George finally starved out the competition, with the consequence that Champ Car will bring little more to the party than skin and bones. Maybe 10 cars are all it has to offer, and if Newman-Haas in particular is still a team that can pull in sponsors, there’s very little in the way of drawing power manning the cars.
You’ve got Paul Tracy, of course, and maybe Bruno Junquiera, and after that it’s all just cobwebs and a whole lot of Oriol Servais. Oh, and Justin Wilson. Oh, and a lot of random “c’s” wedged into “Frank” (Franck Montagney, Franck Perera).
Franckly, I wish there were more.
I wish the gifted Sebastien Bourdais, Champ Car’s one true star, were still around, but he’s already bugged out for F1. And I wish rising young American A.J. Allmendinger were present for duty, but NASCAR got him.
As it got Hornish. As it got Dario Franchitti. As it got Patrick Carpentier and Jacques Villeneuve and maybe one day Dan Wheldon and Danica Patrick, just to name two.
Let’s face it. For as much as the merger will bring open-wheel racing under one umbrella again, and consolidate both fan and sponsor support, the day when the sport could light up America’s radar in any meaningful way is past. Adding 10 more cars and a handful of drivers with less name recognition than Lauren Wallace, the mouthy kid in those NASCAR Geico ads, isn’t going to restore open-wheel or rebuild it or re-anything it.
What it will do is ensure that Bump Sunday at Indy might actually not double as a sleep aid anymore. It’ll be nice to see the fiery Tracy back in May, raising the delicious prospect of racing’s first guy-on-girl fistfight should he and Danica Patrick happen to tangle. Wilson might be fun. And racing can always use more father-son storylines, so welcome, Graham Rahal, and say howdy to Marco Andretti.
“This is a great day for open-wheel racing,” Graham’s dad, Bobby, said the other day. “I truly believe that this is the first step toward restoring open-wheel racing and the Indianapolis 500 to not only where it was, but beyond.”
Me?
I believe Bobby believes that. And, alas, that this is the first you’re hearing of it.
Maybe this is what you need here, a man who takes the game ball from his athletic director and considers the remembrance case handled.