IndyCar racing after reunification
Author's note: This article previously appeared in print in The Classic Racing Times. Subscribe to this fine auto racing history journal at http://www.theclassicracingtimes.com/subscribe
After the final Champ Car
World Series (CCWS) event was held at Long Beach in April 2008, the 2008 major
league American open-wheel racing season was held under the banner of the Indy
Racing League. Big league open-wheel racing achieved peace after twenty-nine
years of turmoil which began with the initial CART (Championship Auto Racing
teams) split away from the United States Auto Club (USAC) in 1979.
One key factor in the
successful reunification was the establishment of the TEAM (Team Enhancement
and Allocation Matrix) system which encouraged race team’s full-time series participation.
Aside from the jewel of the series, the
Indianapolis 500, individual race purses were eliminated and teams were
scheduled to receive a minimum of $1.2 million for each car that completed the full
IRL season schedule, supplement by “special cash bonuses” for the top five
finishers in each race.
One immediate improvement with
the TEAM program for the reunited series was the increased car count. In 2007,
the year prior to reunification, the Champ Car World Series (CCWS) and Indy
Racing League (IRL) had averaged 17 cars at each event, but for 2008 the IRL series
averaged over 27 cars at each of the fourteen North America venues except for
the Indianapolis 500-mile race.
The 2008 IRL schedule was
predominantly was dominated by oval track venue, a stark change from the 2007
CCWS schedule which had been comprised entirely of road and street courses. The
2008 IRL champion was Ganassi/Target Racing’s Scott Dixon who had started in
the CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) series in 2001, but who had competed
in the IRL series since 2003.
Dixon was the fastest
qualifier at seven races won four of those races from the pole position with a
total of six wins on the season including the Indianapolis 500-mile race. The
2008 IRL championship runner-up Helio Castroneves from the other series
powerhouse, Team Penske, had a remarkably consistent season with eight
second-place finishes and five top-five finishes to go along with two wins.
The April 19-20 2008 “split
weekend” occurred as the former CCWS teams raced at Long Beach in order to
complete the CCWS series contract with the Long Beach Grand Prix organizers.
Meanwhile the IRL teams raced at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan and history was made
when a woman, Danica Patrick, won the first ever championship car race for her
gender.
The 2009 IRL series schedule
was largely unchanged with the loss of one venue, the street course on Belle Isle
in Detroit, and Long Beach came into the IRL fold. During
the 2009 season there was final surprising victim of the second open wheel
racing sanctioning civil war - Tony George the IRL ‘s founder. In late
June 2009 the Hulman & Company board that controls the IRL and the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway) largely comprised of his sisters and mother
removed Tony George from his leadership roles at the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway and the Indy Racing League.
During the early years of
IRL, series sponsorship did not appear to be a pressing priority and there was
the public perception that due to the massive income derived from the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the deep financial pockets of the
family-controlled Hulman & Company provided an income cushion. During the IRL series’ 1996 and 1997 seasons,
the IRL had no presenting sponsor, then for the 1998 and 1999 seasons the
series was known as the “Pep Boys Indy Racing League,” with sponsorship from
the national auto parts and service chain. For the 2000 season, the series
naming rights were sold to Northern Light, an internet search engine.
Although the Northern Light,
agreement was set to run for five years, after two years Northern Light
discontinued the public side of its business and dropped the sponsorship. The IRL continued to operate without a
presenting sponsor through the 2009 season, but in July 2009 the Hulman &
Company board members’ reached the end of their rope regarding the ongoing
losses which press reports later claimed totaled $600 million over 13
years.
"Our board had asked
Tony to structure our executive staff to create efficiencies in our business
structure and to concentrate his leadership efforts in the Indy Racing
League," said Mari Hulman George, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS)
chairman of the board and Tony’s mother, stated in a press release. "He (Tony) has decided that with the
recent unification of open-wheel racing and the experienced management team IMS
has cultivated over the years, now would be the time for him to concentrate on
his team ownership of Vision Racing with his family and other personal business
interests he and his family share.”
With Tony George removed from
his leadership positions, he was replaced by Jeff G. Belskus as the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of the Speedway while Terry Angstadt was promoted to
head the commercial division of the IRL with Brian Barnhardt in charge of the
competition division.
The 2009 IRL racing season
was again dominated by the Ganassi and Penske teams as between them the teams
won 16 of the series’ 17 races. Ganassi captured the championship with driver
Dario Franchitti followed by his teammate Scott Dixon, with Penske drivers Ryan
Briscoe and Helio Castroneves.
The 2010 IRL season saw four
remarkable changes. First while the Indy Racing League continued as the name of
the sanctioning body the series began to be called the IndyCar series. In November
2009, it was announced that the men’s clothier brand IZOD would be the series' title
sponsor for a five-year term beginning in 2010 with the IZOD title sponsorship
deal worth $10 million per year according to journalist Robin Miller. The IZOD
sponsorship the third title sponsor in the series' history, and the first since
the departure of Northern Light in 2001 reportedly included the addition of
$100,000 per car, per year for teams on the TEAM revenue-sharing program.
The 2010 IRL season schedule
began to shift away from the oval heavy mix off IRL’s early years, as the
traditional post-Indianapolis date at the Milwaukee Mile was dropped along
after years of problems with the promoter as well as the ¾-mile Richmond
International Raceway date after the loss of SunTrust bank as the sponsor. In addition to an overall series champion,
IRL announced the establishment of the AJ Foyt Oval Championship and the Mario
Andretti Road Course Champion. Unfortunately after several years these two
championships which provided a connection to our sport’s history, but which the
series never properly promoted faded from view.
In the place of the two short
ovals dropped from the 2010 schedule were new dates at the permanent road
course at Barber Motorsports Park and a temporary street course in Sao Paulo
Brazil. IRL Commercial division chief Angstadt
claimed that each participating team for Sao Paulo would receive a six-figure
sum from the event promoters in addition to having all their expenses paid.
Unfortunately after three years the Sao Paulo dropped from the schedule,
although there were several failed later efforts to resuscitate the
promotion.
A major controversy erupted
after the February 2010 hiring of Randy Bernard as the CEO of IndyCar with a
five-year contract. Bernard, the former CEO of the Professional Bull Riders
Inc. was tasked by the Hulman & Company to lead the series into the future,
most notably the selection of a new chassis design, new engine suppliers and
possibly new tire manufacturers. The man with no experience in motorsports
faced an uphill fight to win over drivers, teams and fans before he could
complete his goals.
In the meantime the 2010 IRL
series was contested by all drivers in cars which used Dallara Chassis, Honda
power and Firestone tires. Franchitti repeated as the series champion, with the
top five finishers in the championship members of the Ganassi and Penske teams.
On January 1, 2011, the Indy
Racing League LLC officially adopted the trade name INDYCAR while all legal and
official documents to this day still list the series operator as “Indy Racing
League LLC d/b/a INDYCAR." For 2011 the INDYCAR series again changed up
the schedule mix as four tracks owned by the International Speedway Corporation
(controlled by the France family) were dropped from the schedule - ovals at
Joliet Illinois, Homestead Florida and Kansas City Kansas and the permanent
road course at Watkins Glen New York.
In place of those four tracks,
INDYCAR added a second 275-mile back-to-back race date at Texas Motor Speedway,
with new dates added for the New Hampshire Motor Speedway oval in Loudon, New
Hampshire, and a street course date at Baltimore Maryland. The 2011 series was
scheduled to end with the IZOD IndyCar World Championships presented by Honda at
the other schedule addition the high-banked 1-1/2 mile oval Las Vegas Motor
Speedway.
One of the advertised features
of the World Championship race was Bernard’s offer of a $5,000,000 prize for
any driver “outside of the IZOD IndyCar
Series” to start the race from the back of the pack and win the race. His remarkable offer was intended to attract
interest from drivers that regularly competed on the Formula 1 or NASCAR
circuits, but responses from drivers in those series came with conditions such
as a demand to drive for only either the competitive Ganassi or Penske teams. Faced
with a lack of expected responses to his original offer, Bernard later revised
the challenge to include drivers who had only competed in IndyCar part-time
during the 2011 season and the 2011 Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon
accepted the challenge.
The IZOD INDYCAR series during
2011 had again been dominated by the Ganassi and Penske teams as between them
they won 12 of the seventeen races before the finale at Las Vegas. Ganassi’s Dario Franchitti led the points with
Penske’s Will Power trailing but still in contention for the championship. During the season, Benard had overseen the
INDYCAR ICONIC (Innovative, Competitive, Open-wheel, New, Industry-relevant,
Cost-effective) program to select the suppliers for the new chassis/engine
packages to replace the 2003 INDYCAR Dallara chassis scheduled to debut with the
2012 season.
The ICONIC committee
requested designs from automobile manufacturers as well as non-automotive
companies such as Lockheed Martin and General Electric. In the end Dallara’s
chassis design was selected over the radical 'Deltawing' concept, and
turbocharged V-6 engine proposals were accepted from Chevrolet, Honda and
Lotus.
34 cars qualified for the
IZOD IndyCar World Championship race scheduled for 200 laps, and the first twenty cars in the field posted an average
lap speed of over 220 miles per hour (MPH), and the slowest car over 218 MPH.
The race’s pole sitter, Brazilian Tony Kanaan led the first ten laps with the
field tightly bunched in his wake. As the field entered turn one on the
eleventh lap, the car piloted by rookie Wade Cunningham touched wheels with the
car of fellow rookie James Hinchcliffe.
Drivers in the tightly
bunched pack of cars behind this initial incident had little time to react and
nowhere to escape. The crash eventually
involved fifteen cars, which included Wheldon’s machine which launched into the
air, inverted and struck the second turn outer fence on the cockpit side. The
remaining cars completed one additional lap before INDYCAR officials stopped
the race with the track was littered with debris and the catch fencing badly
damaged.
Wheldon, Power, Hildebrand,
and Pippa Mann were all injured in the crash; Wheldon suffered fatal head
injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival via helicopter at the University
Medical Center of Southern Nevada. Mann and Hildebrand were kept overnight for
treatment while Power was evaluated and released. Mann later underwent several
surgeries to repair her hand injury. Wheldon’s death was the first in INDYCAR
since Paul Dana’s accident at Homestead in March 2006
Hours after the accident an
emergency drivers' meeting was held which followed by Benard’s brief statement
broadcast live on ESPN sports television, Bernard revealed Wheldon's death and
stated that the remaining drivers and teams agreed not to continue the race but
would pay tribute to Wheldon with a five-lap salute.
The IZOD IndyCar World
Championships presented by Honda is considered as abandoned or cancelled by
INDYCAR after twelve laps and is not recorded as an official race and no points
were awarded. Dario Franchitti received his
third straight INDYCAR championship trophy in February 2012 after the planned awards
ceremony following the Las Vegas race was cancelled.
INDYCAR completed an
investigation of the Las Vegas accident in an attempt to stem criticism that
the track was too steeply banked (18 to 20 degrees) for the tightly bunched
field of high-speed open wheel cars. Several drivers admitted that they had
been uneasy before the event; Oriel Servia stated “we all had a bad feeling
about this place.” Driver Will Power was
quoted that the Wheldon tragedy was "an accident waiting to happen,"
and Dario Franchitti told ABC News that Las Vegas “was not a suitable track” as
it offered “nowhere to get away from anybody."
The Las Vegas tragedy resulted
in massive changes in INDYCAR. Benard
stated in December 2011 that INDYCAR felt “we need to give our technical team
ample time to conduct thorough testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, once we
complete our ongoing investigation.” It is widely believed that driver
objections are the primary reason for the cancellation and the reason that INDYCAR
has never raced again at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Five drivers that were
entered that tragic day- Davey Hamilton, Alex Lloyd, Vitor Meira, Buddy Rice,
Tomas Scheckter, and Paul Tracy- never drove in INDYCAR again after the Las
Vegas race. The new ICONIC car with many new safety features was renamed the
“DW12” in honor of Wheldon who had been intimately involved with the testing
and development of the new much safer machine.
The 2012 season schedule saw the
Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix return to schedule, and in place of the finale at
Las Vegas, the season concluded with a 500-mile race at Auto Club Speedway in
Fontana, California. The series did not return to the New Hampshire Motor
Speedway, Motegi Twin-Ring in Japan or the Kentucky Speedway.
With much fanfare, the
INDYCAR series was scheduled to visit the huge potential market of China for
the first time in 2012. The ‘Indy Qingdao 600’ was to be held on a 3.87-mile
street circuit in the eastern coastal city of 9 million people on August 20.
With little fanfare, the race was cancelled by the promoter on June 13 2012 and
was not replaced on the schedule.
The new DW-12 chassis was
quite successful in its inaugural season, and the Chevrolet and Honda engines
proved reliable and racy. The same could not be said for the ill-fated Lotus
engine program, which started late, arrived at the first race in St. Petersburg
with little testing and proved to lack power and reliability. Of the five
drivers that began the 2012 season with Lotus power, only one – Simona de
Silvestro - completed a trying season with the hapless Lotus engine.
In April 2012 Honda and
Chevrolet engaged in a rules dispute that came to be known as “turbogate.” Despite that fact that Chevrolet had won all
the 2012 INDYCAR races to that point, claimed that Honda had illegally switched
turbocharger housing designs after the start of the season. Following the
protracted protest and appeal process Honda eventually prevailed in early May
as retired Indiana Supreme Court Justice Theodore Boehm denied the Chevrolet
claim following the final appeal hearing.
In the end, it was a moot
point as Chevrolet powered driver Ryan Hunter-Reay who drove for Michael
Andretti’s team won the 2012 IZOD championship as he edged out fellow Chevrolet
driver Will Power. Since the end of the end of the 2012 INDYCAR season, all
races have featured only two engine manufacturers- Chevrolet and Honda.
After the 2012 season ended,
the INDYCAR world faced another shock, as INDYCAR CEO Randy Benard either quit
under pressure or was fired with two years remaining on his contract during an
emergency meeting of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway board of directors. Benard was thought to have mishandled
“turbogate,” and had come under increasing criticism for his proposal to
introduce differentiating DW-12 bodywork kits for the competing engine
manufacturers.
The INDYCAR owners group opposed
Benard’s idea and also complained that Dallara replacement parts were too
expensive. Benard have never escaped the criticisms from members of the INDYCAR
community for the Las Vegas tragedy, but in end the unraveling of the China
race which meant INDYCAR lost a potential cash source to offset the ongoing
series financial deficits appeared to cost Benard his job.
After his departure Benard
issued a statement through the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that noted that “we
created a foundation for IndyCar that positions it to grow over the next several
years”. With the foundation established
by Benard and under the steady guidance of Hulman & Company CEO Mark Miles
and his leadership team, INDYCAR added a new title sponsor, the
telecommunications giant Verizon in 2014 that replaced the departing IZOD
sponsorship.
Through the years since its
introduction the DW-12 chassis has proved to be a safe stable predictable race
car, despite the ill-fated engine manufacturer body kits in use for the last
three seasons. Through recent testing, the new universal 2018 INDYCAR body kit
has proven to be very popular with both drivers and teams alike and promises a
new era of exciting INDYCAR racing. The DW-12 chassis is scheduled to remain in
service through the 2020 season when it will replaced by a new chassis developed
and built by the series current chassis supplier, Dallara Automobili, in its
Speedway Indiana factory.
Which is not to say that
INDYCAR does not face challenges in the future; namely the aging of the sport’s
biggest names, the replacement of Verizon as the title sponsor for 2019,
additional engine suppliers, and securing broadcast rights for digital and
television platforms in the future, but for now the future appears bright.
Sixteen of the 17 races from the
2017 INDYCAR schedule return in 2018, with the newcomer to the schedule Portland
International Raceway, which hosted races under CART and CCWS sanction from
1984 through 2007, with the Portland race set for Labor Day weekend.
