Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Depends entirely on how you define "racing product." Is it closer and more competitive race to race than F1? Absolutely. It's a spec series, and damn near anyone in the field can win.

The flip side is, the drivers in IndyCar can't drive for shit. I'm tired of watching street races when two guys go side-by-side into a corner that only has room for one car... we have seven laps under yellow... and as soon as they go green, it happens again at the same corner. If I know you can't go two wide in turn 4 at St. Pete or turn one in Long Beach, why can't Graham Rahal figure it out?

I try to enjoy IndyCar. Ultimately I can't watch a race when half the time is spent watching tow trucks try to dig a car out from the tire barrier.

 

God, you're probably right about Mario. I don't know who else it would be.

If the face of your series is the father of a team owner... that's not a healthy thing.

 

So we are in agreement that the days of USAC and CART were better than today?
I'll sign off on that.

 

Definitely CART for me, but I'm not an oval guy at all, so I have a pretty strong bias there.

There are no great answers for IndyCar here. My ideal series would be the Indy 500, Long Beach, and a dozen permanent road circuits. I don't know that it's financially viable. There are people who insist there should be more ovals but there is strong visual evidence that would suggest those people don't go to races, because the ovals outside of Indy are empty.

Money is always going to be an issue going forward. They don't have any.

I would like to see them stiffen the penalty for driving like an asshole. I think the series wants to encourage aggressive driving, which I get, but I just don't enjoy watching the pace car that much.

Bottom line... I grew up going to Long Beach every year when it was an F1 race. My aunt's office was on the sixth floor overlooking the last turn. That's how I became a racing fan. And if you can't get me to care about Long Beach now, your series is probably screwed.

 

Someone mentioned Nashville upthread, yeah, it's a great city and maybe it's a great event to get tanked at but it was a shitty race.

 

It is. It seems to draw a crowd so they'll keep it but that layout is absolutely garbage. "OMG, look, a bridge!" is only worth so much.

 

When guys like Unser, Andretti and Foyt were coming up, they were racing bullrings in midgets. Of course now you're not putting these cars on a Bristol. I feel like the Richmond event grew. I think there were maybe 30k the first year (2001), and it slowly crept upward — not great when NASCAR was selling 90,000 tickets for a race, but it was something. Maybe splitting off the ovals would work so the main series could focus on the events people kinda pay attention to, but I kind of feel like that's what already happens.

 

Steward clown show in Saudi Arabia today. Alonso was assessed a 5 second penalty for an incorrect alignment on the grid. When he served the penalty the Jack touched part of the car, which the stewards deemed “working” on the car, but waited 30+ laps and didn’t assess the added penalty until the race was over. Alonso lost 3rd.

…And just now they changed their minds and Alonso is back in third.

It should not be this hard.

 

Is NASCAR the training ground for F1 stewards?

Yesterday in the truck race they called a caution a half-lap after going green from the last caution… because they didn’t spot debris on the track.

A national/international series is not the place to be training race officials. I guess Chad Little’s kid calls the shots for the truck races now.