Tony George (on 6/30) resigns CEO post of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IRL

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

To me, something like this is hard to comprehend on the family level:
"We're voting you out, but you can still come over for Christmas."

How exactly does that work? Seriously, how does that work to get voted out of anything by your mom? Wealthy people are a different sort.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

As I recall, he beat everybody on the reunification... by two or three years.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

UPDATE!

Tony George ousted at IMS. Just reported by ESPN2's NASCAR Now.

Robin Miller laughs.

1stADD: Indy Star calls it a resignation, presumably in the same way that the Pistons' coach resigned today: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090630/LOCAL/90630049/Tony+George+resigns+as+CEO+of+IMS

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

On one hand, good riddance. A hard man to like, a little bitch to interview.

On the other, without him, I would have probably never seen a NASCAR race in person and I definitely would have never seen F1 in person, much less covered four USGPs. Some of those experiences were among the most rewarding I've had as a fan and a journalist.

The irony is I now far prefer F1 to Indy racing, a sign of what some of his decisions meant to the greater IndyCar fan base at large. In 1995, my loyalties were unquestionably in CART's corner.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Interesting question is, who is going to run the IRL?

Tony George, in his role as steward of IMS, has done a pretty solid job. Tremendous amount of upgrades (anyone remember the old media center in Turn 1?), especially along the frontstretch. During his tenure, IMS pretty much redid the entire infield side of the frontstretch -- new suites, F1 garages, stands, media center and pagoda -- and built a rather popular fan plaza behind the pagoda. IMS tried to encompass more entertainment -- lots of concerts, et al. Of course, NASCAR, F1 and MotoGP have all run at the Speedway during his tenure.

However, the IRL has been somewhat of a problem -- for a lot of reasons. The "split" that drove IndyCar fans to F1 and NASCAR and divided the remaining fans into camps that are still having difficulty reconciling ... the calls made during the split that seemed to have little to do with improving the quality of racing and a lot to do with trying to get the upper hand in the war (notice the changes to drop ovals, include more road courses, turbocharged engines, et al, since reunification).

However, because of this, the IRL has struggled to gain an identity, and even though it has a stable driver lineup and (until this year) an outstanding product, getting any kind of traction in a world that has become increasingly dominated by NASCAR domestically (and fighting the NASCAR hype machine that leaves little room for anything else is very difficult), the perception of the IRL is as a bush-league series. However, every time it seems the IRL has a shot to get ahead, it seems to shoot itself in the foot (this year's exhibit -- aero changes that have made for horrible oval racing and the Versus deal, which seems to indicate that nobody's watching said bad racing).

However, the IRL must continue to exist -- the Indianapoolis 500 is the iconic race in motorsports, and a series needs to be built around it. In the 1970s, it was OK to have Indy basically be a stand-alone race. In this era of everything being on national TV, it's not. But the IRL must find a way to get past the perception of being a second or third-rate series, which it developed in the dark days of the split, and even with the migration of the top CART teams & drivers from Penske, Ganassi, Green/AGR and eventually, unification, it has never been able to shake that perception and build momentum.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Reading the press release, it appears TG was asked to concentrate on the IRL (and give up running IMS). Instead, he decided to also give up the IRL and focus on running Vision Racing.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

That's how I read it as well. I assume Belskus will run both IMS and IRL. He can let Chitwood run IMS day-to-day and concentrate on IRL. As the CFO, he knows where the money has been spent and (potentially) made.
It's sort of a big FU to the sisters from Tony. And mom hardly was effusive in her praise.

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Aero package changes today, too. Take effect at Kentucky (next oval, several weeks away).

 

Re: Report: Tony George says he's still CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Time to update the updated title with the latest update.

 

Tony George was the reason why the series split. And it was a disaster for both and NASCAR swooped in and took advantage.

Now that NASCAR is down with empty stands, stinky racing (three rain-ended races), an overly-long schedule and collapsing TV ratings, their opportunity to make inroads is now. The new car is craptastic (like NASCAR's inaptly named Car of Tomorrow) and the IRL races like at Richmond was nothing more than an F1esque parade lap.

They need new leadership to do this and Tony had to go. He did a lot of good work at Indy, but that still doesn't erase that he was a big reason why the series split, which led to the end of open-wheel racing as the top tier of motorsports in the U.S.

 

NASCAR's attendance slump is relative. The stands only look empty because they're built for 130,000 fans. There's still 100,000 people showing up.

The new car is just different. Doesn't make it bad. Of course, there are many in the fanbase who think NASCAR should go all the way back to Holman-Moody Ford Fairlanes and nothing but, with maybe an exception granted for The King's 1974 Dodge Charger.

 

This is oft-believed, but there are a few little secrets that keep me from really buying this narrative.

First, NASCAR was already bigger than open-wheel racing in the mid-1990s. Second, NASCAR's fan base isn't really made up of ex-open wheel fans that just decided to follow stock cars after the split.

Prior to the 1990s, racing was a niche sport generally followed by gearheads and diehards ... the casual followers watched the big events (Daytona, Indy) on TV -- and in the days before we had 372 TV channels, the big events were all that was on TV in any sport, so people watched them.

Where NASCAR capitalized was not on the CART-IRL split, but on the rising economic power of the south, ESPN needing programming in the 1980s, and probably more than anything, making the sport part of the culture. NASCAR became integrated into country culture, and country music (and the country lifestyle) suddenly went from a rural curiosity to mainstream in the 1990s. Two things managed to get themselves fused into the new urban country lifestyle -- the pickup truck and NASCAR. You might not have a farm, you might not even live in the south, but you've got a few Garth Brooks CDs, a pair of boots, know how to do the two-step to LeAnn Rimes and you have "a driver." (bonus points if that driver's last name starts with E). NASCAR's rise was more capitalizing on the mainstreaming of country culture than anything going on in open-wheel racing.

The part of that which sank open-wheel racing is that southern/country culture can be very defensive. Because they've been looked down upon by Yankees & city folks for so long, they have a tendency to be very defensive of their institutions, and when there is an opportunity to show that a southern institution is "better" than a comparative Yankee one, bashing/putting down the perceived competitor is necessary (trucks > cars, NASCAR > open-wheel, country > pop/rock, American > foreign).

Open-wheel got hit with the double-whammy of the criticism from the cultural NASCAR fans ("if you're a real racing fan, you only watch NASCAR and none of that foreign Yankee crap") AND the criticism from within. Most of the columnists in the racing journals sided with CART ... and even after the start of the U.S. 500 in 1996, even after the migration of teams in the early 2000s, even after CART's bankruptcy and the farce of a series that replaced it, even after some pretty good Indy racing after that, even with the finish of the 2006 Indy 500, even with reunification, some never got over the latent bitterness over the split (interestingly, one that did was Robin Miller, who was firmly in the CART camp early, but was being soundly criticized by the CCWS followers for being a "traitor" late in the split days). Scott Goodyear pointed out a year or so ago that if you tell people something sucks long enough, they're eventually going to believe it. That happened here.

I'm not sure the IRL is poised to overtake NASCAR, but what it has to do is make some inroads into the casual fan base. The problem is, the most diehard racing fans in the country -- southerners -- will ignore you because you're northern, foreign and a competitor to one of their institutions. The other is, IndyCar racing cannot ingrain itself into a culture quite like NASCAR did. Northern/Midwestern sports culture is stick-and-ball sports -- pro in the Northeast and in the big cities, college in the Midwest. Indy has tradition, and up until this year, was putting on better racing than NASCAR.

But old perceptions are going to be very, very difficult to overcome. Especially now that the IRL has given ESPN -- the premier opinion-maker in sports -- a reason to ignore it for the next 10 years.