IRL to Race at Barber Motorsports Park

[cosworth151]

The IRL has announced that it will race next spring at Barber Motorsports Park in suburban Birmingham, Alabama. The 2.38-mile, 17-turn circuit featuring 80 feet of elevation change opened in 2003.

The week-end will also feature Indy Lights and Grand Am races.

Grand Am is a NASCAR-owned, semi spec racer series. This add to speculation that there might be a Grand Am race in IMS's future.

[lkjohnson1950]

Good thing Tony just keeps adding these great oval tracks!! Road racing is just too dang sissy european.

Lonny

[cosworth151]

Barber IS a road course.   

The 2.38-mile, 17-turn circuit featuring 80 feet of elevation change opened in 2003.

http://www.barbermotorsports.com/images/trackgeometry.pdf

[John S]

Looks a pretty interesting road course track too, there's certainly a lot of turns to keep the drivers busy. Turn 5 looks a bit tricky as its about 3 parts all close together, figuring out apexes looks awkward.

[lkjohnson1950]

Sorry, sarcasm is difficult online. That was a jab at Tony George and his effort to return the IRL to a mostly oval series. I know Barber is a road course.

Lonny

[PG_Gabriel]

That was a jab at Tony George and his effort to return the IRL to a mostly oval series. I know Barber is a road course.

Ummm... Tony George stepped down and dosent run the irl anymore

[lkjohnson1950]

No, but he launched the IRL on the premise that CART had too many foreign drivers and too many street and road courses and not enough ovals. He wanted more A J Foyts and fewer Helio Castro-neves. Though he managed to run the CART boys out of business, he otherwise mostly failed in his objectives and managed to nearly destroy open-wheel racing in America.

Lonny

[cosworth151]

Actually, Road courses were always part of the plan for IRL. Tony wisely started with only ovals for two reasons. First, to keep the cost of entry down. the new teams would only need to set up cars for ovals. Second, to attract fan interest. the vast majority of race fans over here love ovals and have a strong dislike for road courses. That's why NASCAR only runs two of them each season. Those two races usually have the lowest TV ratings, too.

CART's move to almost all road courses, and many of them concrete canyon, point-n-shoot street courses, is why open wheel racing had been circling the drain for a decade before Tony stepped in to save it.

[Jericoke]

Actually, Road courses were always part of the plan for IRL. Tony wisely started with only ovals for two reasons. First, to keep the cost of entry down. the new teams would only need to set up cars for ovals. Second, to attract fan interest. the vast majority of race fans over here love ovals and have a strong dislike for road courses. That's why NASCAR only runs two of them each season. Those two races usually have the lowest TV ratings, too.

CART's move to almost all road courses, and many of them concrete canyon, point-n-shoot street courses, is why open wheel racing had been circling the drain for a decade before Tony stepped in to save it.

I'll take a road course over a street track any day.  And I DO like ovals... it's a different sort of racing, unless you do them every time, then it's always the same kind of racing.  Indy and Milwuakee certainly covers it off for me.  I always thought that Clevelend was the most interesting though.

Tony George did build up the IRL the right way:  limiting to ovals while the series got its feet.  Just not something I wanted to watch.

[lkjohnson1950]

Cossie, we agree on a lot of things, but if you go and check your history, TG is the villain in the Split, or at least the biggest one of several. When they tried to write new rules for Indycar, the owners wouldn't swallow TGs set lock stock and flat bottom so he kicked them out of the 500. TG then started the IRL with the stated goal of running mostly ovals with mostly American drivers from the midget and sprint car ranks. Not a direct quote, but his idea. That resulted in several whodat winners of the 500 while Andretti and the Unsers etc played for CART. If TG (or the CART guys) had been willing to compromise a little, the split never would have happened. TG thought he should have the power because he owned The Race. The owners thought their investment should give them a voice in the proceedings. I agree with them.

Lonny

[cosworth151]

Well, one of us needs to check the history. CART attendance, TV ratings and general fan interest were in free fall. NASCAR, running on almost all ovals, was skyrocketing. Average American race fans were becoming downright hostile to the snobbery and elitism of CART. To them, most of the drivers in CART were "whodat." They knew the drivers from the sprints and midgets. They still raced at the tracks the CART had abandoned. If Tony, or somebody, hadn't stepped in, open wheel in the US would only be the sprints and midgets you look down on.

[lkjohnson1950]

What time period are you talking about. At the time of the split the Indy 500 was enjoying ratings it has never approached since the formation of the IRL. I do not look down on Sprints and Midgets. They are some of my favorites, especially Midgets. Please don't try to tell me that Buddy Rice et al are more famous names than Andretti, Unser, Fittipaldi etc. I will not bite on that one. Two of TG's stated goals were to bring in more American Drivers and return Indycar to the ovals, neither of which have really happened. As for rescuing Indycar, the ratings are the lowest now they have ever been, with most races on an obscure cable channel, and most American Driver's want to race in NASCAR not Indycar. If Danica goes to NASCAR we will probably see a further drop in ratings and attendance.

Lonny

[Scott]

Well, one of us needs to check the history. CART attendance, TV ratings and general fan interest were in free fall. NASCAR, running on almost all ovals, was skyrocketing. Average American race fans were becoming downright hostile to the snobbery and elitism of CART.

I don't know where that comes from.  You keep saying that ratings and attendance were in free-fall, but like I've said again and again, the three races that I knew about were sellouts every year.  I can't speak for the ovals, but if they were in free-fall, they apparently still are since when I watch the highlights, most of the seats are empty.  As for television ratings, I also can't exactly speak to that, but regards to the sellouts of the two street tracks and one road track (Vancouver, Toronto and Portland) that I have mentioned - I can't imagine that the ratings were that bad.  Besides, like I said, CART ran TV like an infomercial, so they could absorb the odd blip in TV ratings without too much trouble.  In comparison to F1, you can't say CART had any snobbery or elitism.  Of all the races I attended and worked at, the access was unbelievable.  If you were friendly enough to the teams, and they had the time, you could even get a quick tour of the motorhomes. 

Saying all that, there were certainly some management challenges at CART in the late 90's, but it wasn't insurmountable, and if anyone was not prepared to budge, it was TG, not CART.

[cosworth151]

The attendance at the race we had here went from sold out to zero under CART. That's because CART did away with it! (Mid Ohio). Attendance at the 500 was up, but CART had to pay to get the other races on TV. As far as Buddy Rice, I'll try an experiment tonight after work. When I go down to the AMVETS and the VFW, I'll ask how many people know who Buddy Rice is. Then I'll ask the same question about Michael Schumacher. Care to bet who's better known over here?

By the way, the race at Mid Ohio is back. Due to an ongoing family matter, I wasn't able to go to it last week-end. Everybody I've talked to who was there said the place was packed!

[Scott]

C'mon Cos, I'm seriously asking where you are getting your info about attendance and TV ratings.  Sold out to zero because the race was cancelled isn't exactly what I meant, and as I said before, CART paid for their races to be broadcast, and then they sold their own advertising to make up the expenses.  For Indy, they sold the rights directly to the network, but for the rest, it was an informercial that paid for itself depending on how many minutes of advertising they wanted to stick in.

I never saw the empty stands for CART that you see now in the IRL - on any of their broadcasts that I can recall - but I sure notice them now.  I never heard about low TV ratings.  In the early 90's there were some sponsorship issues, but that was because suddenly cigarette advertising was banned (Players Forsythe, KOOL Green, Marlboro Penske to name a few, and all the track signage that went with those sponsors).  Everyone in sport at that time was scrambling to replace the massive loss of tobacco. Economic hardship in CART had nothing to do with dwindling fan support or TV ratings.  In fact that was likely the reason that they were suddenly vulnerable to someone like Tony George.  If they had the massive sponsorship support that they had before the ban, then they could have told Tony to stuff himself and go find another massive track like Daytona or somewhere.  Wouldn't have been the same as Indy, but then Indy wouldn't have (and hasn't been) the same without them.