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NASCAR Sprint Cup and Indy-cars: Double-header race weekends? IRL's Randy Bernard loves the idea
NASCAR men race at the Brickyard in stockers....maybe there can be more crossover between the Indy-car world and NASCAR (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
(Updated)
By Mike Mulhern
mikemulhern.net
LOUDON, N.H.
A NASCAR/Indy-car doubleheader weekend? Cup and Indy-cars?
Randy Bernard, the new CEO of the Indy Racing League: "I'd love that! That's a great question for NASCAR.
"If it makes sense for everybody, we'd love to do it.
"We've talked with ISC about a couple different (track) locations about doing that...and they said they'd go talk to NASCAR.
"We'd love to do it. It makes sense for us. Any place we can showcase our sport, we want to do it."
Mike Helton, the NASCAR president, says it's never been brought up to NASCAR by any promoters, but he didn't rule it out.
"It's never been presented. If a promoter asked us to look at it.....we'll see what happens down the road," Helton said.
"Our sanctioning agreements with the tracks call for us to be able to work out the rest of the weekend schedule (companion events).
"We're both part of motorsports, so the overall health of motorsports is important to both of us. But we're also still competitors, for sponsorships and dates and drivers and owners and all that.
"But Randy has a good spirit about how to figure out how to do things. And we'll see, going down the road....."
Richmond is just one obvious track that could handle an Indy-car/NASCAR Cup double-header. Okay, so the last one there was a dog, but now they've got push-to-pass. (Maybe they just need Jeff Gordon in the field) (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
Actually, given the TV slump NASCAR seems to be in right now, any good promotion like this is ripe for consideration: The Michigan 400 two weeks ago pulled a weak 2.9, lowest in years for a regularly scheduled race, and then last Sunday's Sonoma 350 pulled only a 2.7, considerably off last year's 3.4, despite some of the hottest racing of the season.
Bernard and Helton both are working on 2011 schedules right now, for release probably by late summer. Bernard says he expects as many as 24 tracks or venues to request Indy-car dates, some of those of course international. Here Sunday Bernard and promoter Bruton Smith announced a new Indy-car race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next summer, probably July. And Smith promised 'a national promotional campaign' for that event.
Indeed, Bernard coming here for the announcement – and Helton giving the okay for an Indy-car 'preview parade lap' just before the start of Sunday's Lenox 301 – might signal the start of something new in this part of the American sports world.
Bernhard himself pointed out the sluggish TV ratings for racing, particularly for the Memorial Day 500-600 double-header, as indicating the need for some new dynamics, to boost crowds and ratings and attract sponsors.
Roger Penske (L) is big in both Indy-cars and NASCAR (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
Bernard just got this job a few months ago, and he's still learning: "Brian (France) called me and congratulated me on the job. I've had several conversations with Mike, at Eldora and Chicago; I run into Mike quite a bit. And Lesa (France Kennedy, who runs the ISC) and I have been good friends for many years; we're going to have breakfast or lunch or dinner next week in Chicago."
A NASCAR/Indy-car double-header somewhere seems to intrigue Bernhard, who hints that Gillian Zucker's LA area track might be very interested in just such a pitch.
Most of the 22 NASCAR Cup tracks can also run Indy-cars, except perhaps Daytona, Talladega, Bristol, Dover, Darlington and Martinsville. Indy-cars and NASCAR Cup both run the Sonoma and Watkins Glen road courses this season.
And this season track promoters have been struggling to make things happen.
So the issue of what helps track promoters for both tours – virtually the same cast of characters – is key here.
California's Auto Club Speedway, for one example, and Michigan International Speedway, for another, and Chicagoland too, might all well have larger race weekend crowds with such a double-header package.
Plus, there would be the potential for driver crossovers. Tony Stewart might now be reluctant to resume Indy-car racing, but Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and of course Robby Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya could do both.
NASCAR pres Mike Helton (L, here with Jeff 'the Bulldozer' Gordon) says no promoter has yet raised the prospect of an Indy-car/NASCAR Cup double-header. But that question may well be coming his way soon. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
"We're pretty conscious of the fact that the promoters are a major stakeholder in all this," Helton says. "And we're also conscious of the fact that we (as NASCAR Sprint Cup) can't be everything to everybody...so if there's another form of racing that a facility (promoter) can make sense out of, then we're all for that.
"But the timing of all that is relative to us. I mean we're busy making our form of motorsports work right."
So is Bernard, new to this sport, and with perhaps some fresh ideas.
First thing, Bernard would like to have Indianapolis move the starting time of its 500 back to 11 a.m.
"In my opinion, that's a must," Bernard said.
"The ratings used to be fantastic when it was at 11 a.m. It's important to our sport....and that would allow NASCAR drivers to make both, if they wanted.
"I know for a fact there's a great interest level from some of the top drivers in NASCAR who would like to race the 500 (too) if they could. I met with several of them at Eldora (Tony Stewart's charity event), and they gave me commitments they'd race the 500 if they could."
Bernard wouldn't mention any of those drivers by name, but he did point out that Stewart "is more reluctant to do it. He didn't say no, but he said he'd need a lot of practice, because he didn't want to do it if he couldn't be competitive. We told him we'd give him all the practice time he wanted."
Drivers might be the easy part of any Indy-car/NASCAR dealings.
But how about team owners? Right now the Indy-car world is pretty much ruled by two men, car owners Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi, who of course are also long-time NASCAR team owners too.
If NASCAR engines were good for Indy-car racing too, some other NASCAR team owners, like Jack Roush and Richard Childress, might be persuaded to put Indy-car teams out on the track too, or at least provide parts and engineering.
Ace Ford engine man Doug Yates (R, here with Bill Elliott): Wonder if that new Ford FR9 NASCAR engine could be modified for Indy-car racing? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
Engines? Bernard says the new IRL engine rules for 2012 may help open the door.
"Up to V-6 turbo, 550 to 700 hp, and open competition, so any auto manufacturer can get involved, and we understand a lot of European car makers might want to get involved," Bernard says.
He plans to talk with engine makers Ilmor and Cosworth in the next few weeks, beginning Monday.
Maybe Bernard should also talk with NASCAR engine men like Doug Yates, Danny Lawrence and Jeff Andrews. Why couldn't a stock block NASCAR 358 couldn't be detuned to 550-700 hp? And as much money as NASCAR team owners have invested in engine building equipment, it makes good sense to have another sales outlet.
But then Bernard, taking over the IRL in April after a 15-year stint as head of the Professional Bull Riders association, is really quite new to racing, after all, and to racing's high-powered personalities, like Bruton Smith...and perhaps how to play that delicate balancing act.
The two major track promoters in the United States are Smith's Speedway Motorsports (SMI) and the France family's International Speedway Corp. (ISC). And it's hard to have a legitimate racing series without dealing with those two powers.
This year four IRL events will be held at ISC tracks – Kansas, Watkins Glen, Chicago and Homestead-Miami – and two will be held at SMI tracks – Texas and Sonoma. The Richmond, Nashville, Dover and California Indy-car stops have been dropped from the tour; Indy-cars have also run at Atlanta, Pocono and Charlotte over the years.
So with the addition, announced here Sunday, of a new Indy-car race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next summer, is a major boost, both for that branch of the sport, now returning to the Boston market, and for this track.
Maybe Las Vegas and California's Auto Club Speedway should also be added to the IRL schedule, and Michigan -- an obvious pick for a good double-header crowd.
The new Indy-car CEO, Randy Bernard (C), says he'd "love" to have some NASCAR-Cup/Indy-car double-header weekends. Maybe promoter Bruton Smith (L) will make the pitch. Wonder if Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti (R) would then take another shot at NASCAR stockers? (Photo: IRL)
"Bruton has been a great partner...and one thing we've found with Bruton is he's very aggressive," Bernard says. "He wants the best for Indy-car; it helps his tracks.
"And we want partners who will help grow us. That's our number one goal – to get the most fans into a track, to get the most viewers on TV, and to get the best sponsors. So we will be very, very accommodating to those promoters that want to bring us in and promote us well. And those that don't won't stay on the tour very long.
"I was just asked how good our relationship is with ISC. I think it's good; what we're trying to do right now is ask 'what can you bring to the table that you're not bringing to the table, in terms of support in marketing and advertising.
"And we have to ensure we have exciting races. No one wants to see a boring race."
California's Auto Club Speedway, Bernard says, wants to have an Indy-car race next season: "They would love to have us on tour. That's a big point with ISC....
"What I want to do is bring as many tracks and promoters to the table as possible, and then go through them one by one and see which ones make the most sense to us."
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Chip Ganassi (L) and Dario Franchitti. Okay, not every Indy-car/NASCAR cross promotion works out that well, but at least Dario gave NASCAR the good college try.....(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
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The biggest problem is that
The biggest problem is that all the series that are part of doubleheaders with Cup have been drained dry - BGN and Trucks are no longer viable series; they can't stand on their own now because they're hamstrung by being Cup support races. Putting Indycars onto Winston Cup weekends is just another gimmick that at best can provide a minor short term boost but cannot provide any long term benefit.
Indycar also has the problem of not recognizing that technology provides no benefit to racing - Randy Bernard talking about V-6 turbos is the kind of talk that shows nothing has been learned from history. Indycar racing suffered because technology drove up costs, killed car counts, and ruined passing. Bernard says he wants more manufacturers involved, so why does IRL need V6 turbos instead of naturally aspirated V8s? And where is the Hanford wing CART used in the late 1990s? That wing (a direct response to the bulkier bodies of IRL that produced a strong drafting effect at Texas in June 1998) created the greatest Indycar racing ever seen.
Indycar racing needs far more passing. Overtake buttons are a joke and the wrong idea to start with - passing is supposed to be done with the draft and by the driver making the car pass; push-button passing is the ultimate dumbing down of racing.
i agree that v-6 turbo stuff
i agree that v-6 turbo stuff is silly. not that nascar's 1970s era 358s aren't too off the wall too these days.
how about letting detroit be detroit and put some different stuff out there. cookie cutter tracks, cookie cutter cars, cookie cutter engines.....hey, maybe all this equality stuff is just a bunch of crap. i dont see where the cot has made racing a bit better or more even or let smaller teams compete with bigger teams; just the opposite.
you're right, too much technology isn't good for racing.
why can't indycars and nascar run common-type engines, and put all these high-dollar engine shops to work on a second front. nascar's tracks needs a promotional shot in the arm, which a couple indy-car doubleheaders could provide. maybe some crosstechnology, crosspolinating sponsorships....i agree push-to-pass is a little silly. just put jeff the bulldozer on the track to clear a path.....
and i have no idea of the
and i have no idea of the fate of the truck and nationwide series. there's nobody left there, because it's too expensive, and the rich teams take all the money, such as the purses are. those two series should be development series, and after two years you've got to move on up or out. and i'd put some strict price controls on that stuff. drivers are easy to find; it's car owners who are the endangered species.
A spending cap and
A spending cap and elimination of Winston Cup participation in the BGN and Trucks are a necessity (a cap is also long overdue for Cup and IRL). The two series cannot afford WC involvement.
The COT has indeed failed, but not because it's a "cookie cutter" design (the cars have been "cookie cutter" on and off since the late 1960s because form follows function and it inevitably forces a strong "conformity" in performance) but because it's a bad design with its gapped airdam, top-heavy roofline, and shortness of the snout. It also ignores the sheer scale of the sport's technology arms race - I'm noticing the bodies getting more and more off-kilter and I remember Kyle Busch's comment on the site last year about the metals teams are using to improve the cars.
As for Indycars, that class of racing needs to get back to basics of what worked when the IRL started - bulkier bodies, downforce, wings that generate a drafting effect for passing (and nullifying the need for those stupid push-to-pass buttons), cars that require real muscle to drive (so pantywaists like Danica are disqualified from consideration for these rides while real racers like Ted Christopher become candidates for IRL rides), and a retro-tech landscape to keep costs down and allow short trackers to become candidates for rides. Indycar racing also needs to get back to superovals like Pocono and second dates at Texas, Kentucky, and Kansas because those are the tracks that have made the greatest racing.
i agree that a spending cap
i agree that a spending cap may well be needed right now...and if nascar officials can 'go over the books' of these big teams to check on those 'satellite' operations, they can see what the deal is overall too.
i dont necessarily agree with the idea that cookie-cutter car designs are form-follows-function: i still remember the notchbacks and then bill elliott's fastback, and then that 3/4 chevy earnhardt had in 1987..and look at some of those pix of the 1968 and 1969 stockers -- with virtually no rear spoiler. i say open up the rules, and let these guys get creative, and see what happens. rememember the old buicks and pontiacs were different (and remember bobby's slick fastback lemans back when...)
i need to think about your 'bad design' ideas: i think you mean get rid of the splitter (yes!), do something about the high-center-of-gravity (yes!), and lengthen the nose (hmmmm, nice idea). what i dont like about this all is nascar -- which really doesnt know all that much about building race cars -- has been getting so tight on the rules that there is no room for innovation. supposedly that's to make competition closer....but we've seen how that has backfired.....
let's expand this boys have at it to include the crew chiefs too..
When I say "form following
When I say "form following function" I'm talking about the general evolution of the cars and their shapes (illustrated in this blog posting). As far as specific cars Bill Elliott's mid-80s Ford was the TQ-scale car; Earnhardt's car was the one with the roofline greenhouse all ground down to smaller scale - that kind of raking was already common; Richard Petty's early-80s Pontiacs were "so chopped up and down they resembled a dirt car" according to Bobby Allison.
As far as not having rear spoiler in the late 1960s, a by-product of the Talladega boycott and other controversies as the cars got faster was that spoilers (debuting in 1966) got bigger to keep the cars stable - if you remember 1978, even Cale was scared of the cars because they were so unstable until spoiler size was increased. "The Magnum is undriveable at 190," Petty noted before that season began: "I can't drive the Olds, it moves around too much," Donnie Allison added.
I'm not sold that NASCAR's tighter rules package has been a complete failure - I agree it has not worked but that has more to do with the sheer enormity of the technology arms race nowadays; this is an ecomomic and technology issue more than a traditional rules issue. And I also remember what a circus it had become with ever-escalating rules lobbying as teams got more innovative and the cars kept changing - it was THE reason why Gary Nelson got hired and even the racers agreed with his basic reasoning.
On bad design of the COT - Yes get rid of the splitter; go back to the flush airdam (the "snowplow nose" some called it) they had before the COT; chop the roofline so the car isn't top-heavy; if they want topside drag then bring back the roof blade - heck, with the roof blade they can indeed toss out the CLAW supertemplate because they can keep the speeds in check (and keep the draft powerful) by regulating the roof blade; and lengthen the snout.
as usual, brilliant work,
as usual, brilliant work, dude. you're one of the big reasons i read mikemulhern.net (lol). when's the book coming out....your reasoning is so well laid out on these topics (even when i disagree) that you need a bigger audience (of course so does mikemulhern.net).....
but one point i would like to make here is that all that 'lobbying' was fun to cover, and it made the car makers more important -- the guys who could lobby well, the guys who couldn't, the explanations each side would offer -- it was all interesting debate.
Ah, the Magnum...i remember it well, a dinosaur when it was introduced....i always wanted to drive one on the highway and see if it was really as bad as it looked....
yes, the economics of the 'arms race' is important...but in fact the biggest teams have the most money to play that game....i sort of liked it when a small bunch like richard and leo jackson and andy petree could pull off some surprises with just a little trick or two.
thanks for the good work....the check is in the mail.....
Sorry boys but TURBOS are not
Sorry boys but TURBOS are not new TECH. Take a look at most vehicles being sold in the US. They DO NOT HAVE V8's. Turbo's have been around almost as long as Nascars ANTIQUATED engines. I mean really, any racing series that is still running CARBS can not speak about any other series engines. You can also tell that Nascar fans here have no idea what an engine does in an Indycar. An Indycar engine is a stressed member of the chassis, there is ZERO chance a cup engine could be put in an Indycar. Also the Author of this article apparently doesn't realize that you CANNOT detune a V8 into a V6. He clearly states that new engine rules for Indy will allow UP TO a V6, then proceeds to want to detune a V8.
i agree v-8s are dinosaurs,
i agree v-8s are dinosaurs, and nascar's 358 ci engines should have been downsized 15 years ago, when robert yates first suggested that.
of course turbos are not new tech, and maybe that's something nascar should be looking at it, along EFI. Carburetors, yes, are a joke in this day and age...except they're easy to police; my solution, get better policemen lol.
but the key argument to consider is how to get nascar engine men and team owners more involved in this indy car thing, which is clearly struggling at the box office (the indy 500's weak 3.6 ratings show that). and nascar needs a shot in the arm too. randy is game for some new ideas; now the ball is in nascar's court.
one point -- top nascar teams have invested millions in their engine programs, which is why the sport is controlled by just a handful of engine departments.
those nascar engine departments -- hendrick, childress, yates-roush -- could get more return on investment if they had an additional outlet for sales, i.e., indycars.
putting stock block engines in indycars is nothing new either. that's been bandied about since the early 1980s at least, when junior johnson was pushing it. and jack roush did some of those stock block v-6 buicks for GM in the early days of the IRL. cosworth too did a 3.5 L V8 for Chevrolet/Indycars a few years back. and of course there is the famous penske-mercedes indycar engine, the ilmor thing a few years back, 200 ci/push-rod/two-valve/single-cam, which did rather well.
of course you cant detune a v-8 to a v-6 in a race engine straightup. that's not the point i was making -- what i was trying to say was if the spec is 550 to 700 horsepower, then detune a nascar stock block to that spec -- easily done.
bottom line: randy is putting the ball in nascar's court on the promotion/marketing/doubleheader side.....and randy now ought to be getting with jack roush and doug yates and doug duchardt and jeff andrews and danny lawrence and richard childress and mark cronquist and joe gibbs to see how to match up some nascar engine design with the specs indy wants....and by the way, maybe nascar could get some ideas on how to cut the darned hp out of these grossly overpowered 358 ci 900 hp monsters...
and maybe something green?
interesting topic for debate....send us some more.
thanks
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