Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Yes. And NBC can't do this because....?

 

Fascinating. Rebuttals, disagreements and huzzahs ...

- NBC is great for IndyCar is some ways. The streaming wall-to-wall coverage on Peacock cannot be taken for granted, and though I don't watch it much outside of Indy, I appreciate that they do it. For so many years, broadcasters did the bare minimum with every iteration of open-wheel racing. Good that NBC at least treats it as a big league.
So with that out of the way? Yes, the commercials are way too much. The production itself is OK. The pit lane reporters are fine. Broadcasts are guilty of the same bullshit other broadcasts are guilty of ... slavish devotion to narratives instead of what's happening in front of them. They *really* fellate Santino Ferrucci, for example, and though he earned the praise this month, he rarely does otherwise.
The broadcast crew? I like James Hinchcliffe. Townsend Bell has his detractors, and there ought to be a drinking game for every time he yelps when someone gets loose in a turn or comes close to a wall, but he's fine otherwise. Losing troglodyte Paul Tracy a few years back was a major upgrade. He was awful.
It's time for Leigh Diffey to go. I defended him for a long time because he treated the series with respect in a way the subnomulent ABC crews (Allen Bestiwck aside) never did, but he's painful to listen to. He is the head cheerleader for the narrative hype machine and it's long past tiresome.
- By most accounts, attendance has been up this year. Detroit will be an interesting test case since they'll be off of weirdo Belle Isle this time and back downtown. The road courses tend to do well because fans make a weekend of it by camping, etc. Street courses draw for the same reason they always did ... it's a chance to party.
Oval problems aren't limited to IndyCar. Ovals have struggled to understand the changing tastes of ticket buyers. Actual "race fans", there purely for the racing, just aren't a demographic that is sustainable. Younger fans want something more than just three hours of racing and that's it.
As for Laguna Seca, it's an iconic CART track, but IndyCar should not be finishing there, nor should the IndyCar season dip into the NFL season at all. Know your limitations. Racing as a draw has largely dried up in California ... NASCAR's events don't draw well either. IndyCar needs to identify a venue to properly finish its season on.
- I disagree about the driving standard. I think that's a trope that holds much less water than it did a decade ago when buy driver crap like Milka Duno graced the series. It's certainly light years removed from the nadir of the IRL. Of the full-time drivers in the IndyCar field? The only driver I think out-and-out sucks is Devlin DeFrancesco. No one else is performing at an embarrassing standard based on the strength of their team. (Helio and Pagenaud are field fillers these days, but perform about as well as Meyer Shank can). The IndyCar feeder series is finally churning out some graduates.
O'Ward's pass did suck on Sunday, but late-race wrecks are not unique to IndyCar. My mind races back to Albert Park earlier this year, when F1 did an Indy-style late-race sprint and half the damn field hit each other. I'm not sure there's a series where driver adrenaline doesn't get in the way of their brains.
- The wheel warrants it's own post. I've been thinking a lot about it because they really did dodge a catatastrophic bullet.
- American open wheel turned me off with the split and the general mediocrity of the 2000s and I turned to F1 somewhat fanatically instead. My interest in F1 eventually faded, though, because they never will address competitive balance. I appreciate the technology, driver skill and ambiance, and I still do watch sometimes, but race-to-race, it's boring as fuck, because it rarely produces compelling on-track action. I can get into race strategy, pit and tire calls, as much as anyone, but at some point, the on-track product has to deliver, and F1 just has way too many snoozers and teams that have zero shot at contention.
IndyCar has its dud races too, so does every discipline, but the series is stronger, top to bottom, than it's ever been, including the halcyon days of CART. There are legitimately 20 cars that can win on a given weekend, so the points race is lively and so are many of the races. I grew up with yellow flag stoppages, restarts, and diversity of racing circuits, so I have an affinity for IndyCar.

 

After seeing the tire flying out of the track, I keep flashing back to the Final Destination movie where the big opening death scene is at a race track and the girl gets absolutely obliterated by a tire flying over the grandstand.

 

I agree with a lot of this. A few quick thoughts...

• Losing Paul Tracy was a massive example of addition through subtraction. He was awful and embarrassing for the sport.
• Heralding Santino Ferrucci as any kind of feel-good story was nauseating. Yeah, he's driving for Foyt. And he's doing it because he can't race in Europe anymore because he's a racist, reckless piece of shit who doesn't pay his bills. He's unemployable there. But hey, Supertex!
• And in terms of the driving standard: the bottom end of the driving pool is definitely higher than it has been in the past. Still, there are a lot of mediocre drivers in the field.. but beyond that, the amount of just flat out stupid driving is remarkable. Pato wrecking himself in the closing laps of the 500 is somewhat understandable. I'm more aggravated by the 3 or 4 yellows every year at Long Beach because someone tries to go two-wide at turn one. It's not possible, but they'll still give us 15 laps of yellow doing it every single race. I think F1 can be a little draconian with the penalty points for causing an accident, but the alternative seems to be a series where the drivers act like they're in a video game with the damage turned off.
• I think F1 has addressed competitive balance pretty effectively -- it's just that Red Bull absolutely nailed the design of its latest car despite not having the full advantage it had before. Aston Martin is second in the constructors race. Alpine had a car on the podium yesterday. It's getting there. Red Bull's dominance is not great for the sport, but the playing field is pretty level now, so maintaining that will be tough.

 

Lack of sponsorship, and the ongoing unwillingness to abandon the typical advertising model.

 

While I agree with most of your points, Bubbler, I disagree with what is bolded above.

F1/FIA is correct to largely leave this alone unless it's a serious safety issue. If you've watched much NASCAR, their obsession with competitive balance – to the point of consistently meddling with a new cylinder-head approval by a manufacturer considered struggling too much of late – is blatant meddling.

If someone – like Red Bull the last season-plus and Mercedes the last few seasons prior to Red Bull – has the rules better figured out than the others, it's imperative that the other teams either find a way to become more competitive rather than allowing the governing body to meddle and manipulate because they're so concerned that someone "is messing up their show." Is it a show ... or a race?

The Frances were wrong. It's not a show.

 

Does anyone actually like that fucker?

 

His mom says he's cool.

 

I thought much as you did about Ferrucci. However, I'm currently torn a bit.

First of all, the guy can drive at Indy. Top 10 finishes in all of his races, almost always in shit boxes. That can't be denied. He's really uneven otherwise and is one of those drivers you mentioned who does dumb shit, but to me, he's graduated beyond the Sage Karam Memorial White American Driver Of The Moment Club a certain corner of troglodyte IndyCar fans champion. (Re: old IRL fans who want the return of 1976 in all things.)

I spoke with him this month and thought he was engaging. He is cocky straight of out driver central casting. That's OK. More of that than droning boredom from some of the other drivers.

His horrible behavior in Europe turned me way off too, but he was also pretty young at the time. It's not quite a Josh Hader-on-Twitter equivalent, but I'm more inclined to think along the lines of second chances for shit like that when the sin is committed with a "1" in front of the numeral for the age the discretion occurred in. (I think he was 19-20 at the time.) He's kept his behavorial nose clean in IndyCar so far as I know.

What does bother me is the whitewashing of his past by media types here who sell a no-warts version of Ferrucci that doesn't acknowledge any of the above which means it isn't honest.

NBC has been on his jock from day one, to the point where you question the motives of both Diffey and Bell, who are the two lynch-pins of the fellatio.

Hinchcliffe isn't anywhere near as bad, but it was painful during Carb Day, when Ferrucci stupidly jumped Rossi in the pit apron, Hinchcliffe called him out for it, and Bell acted like someone just kicked his dog, defending Ferrucci as if it was a wise thing to do. Equally embarrassing was the cheerleading when Ferrucci's tire got away in the pits in the 500. It was a clear violation, but when it was announced that the penalty would result in a fine, not a drive-through? Forget the tire potentially going into the crowd, the jizz spurt from the TV booth might have been fatal.

Doyel, who did admit within his column he did little research, also wrote a Ferrucci column that only mentioned his driving issues in Europe, not the racist stuff or the money problems or the Trump MAGA thing. Why leave that out? (Ferrucci did say he regretted his poor behavior in Europe in the Doyel column which is good.)

Anyway, I've softened on Ferrucci a bit, I suppose a forgiven, but not forgotten place is where I'm at with him. I do think he's earned the right to be thought of as an up-and-comer, not a buy-riding no-hoper.

 

Executives of companies that sell hair gel and Hot Wheels, perhaps.