If Brickyard 400 ticket sales are trending down, how to turn around this NASCAR-Indianapolis thing? And more crew chiefs bite the dust...

  Kissing the yard of bricks, the finish line at Indianapolis: a tradition started by Dale Jarrett (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   (Updated)

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   But now....
   And anyone thinking that a successful Sprint Cup tour debut at nearby Kentucky Speedway, just two hours down the road, might be boost ticket sales for this 400, well, that might well have gone up in smoke, in that mother of all traffic jams. Not quite a successful marketing technique to pump up the fan appeal of the Brickyard 400
   So ticket sales are down?
   Still fallout from 2008 and those tire issues?
   Don't really think so.
   Not if you've been keeping an eye on Goodyear engineers, who have been busting butt the past three years.
   Drivers and crew chiefs may gripe about new tire codes nearly every week, and how that upsets all their race notes and computer simulations. But Goodyear's tires this year have not only been thoroughly tested but they've performed admirably.
   Now drivers willing to risk putting extra camber in their front tires in order to get through the four flat corners may put too much of a strain on them. But that's nothing new in this sport, of course.
   In fact Goodyear's tires have generally been so good this season that fuel mileage has become the name of the game, because teams need fuel before they need new rubber.
   And the usual NASCAR weekend problem with exorbitant hotel rates, well, the Indianapolis market has a heck of a lot of hotel rooms. Maybe not as many as Las Vegas, but enough that hotel rates shouldn't be that much of an issue.
   Same with restaurants. No standing in line at Red Lobster. Indy has plenty of places to eat.
   Traffic?
   Well, pre-race traffic on 16th may still be a headache, if you don't wake up early enough. But as far as post-race traffic, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has long been the benchmark for excellent traffic flow....even though smack in the middle of town.
   The airport?
   Brand new.

  Indy: long, long straights, and flat, flat corners. Not the best racing layout for NASCAR stockers, because it makes for one-groove racing (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   So if ticket sales are off, there must be something else at issue.
   Yes.
   Try boring racing out on the track.
   And consider the almost inhumane Midwestern summer weather.
   If the bloom is off this rose -- and for several years the Brickyard 400, which debuted on the stock car tour back in 1994, was one of the sport's biggest events -- maybe it's time to try to fix something.
   Has anyone in this sport considered why Bristol moved its summer race to Saturday night, why Talladega moved its summer race to autumn, why Daytona moved its July race to Saturday night, why Kentucky runs its July race Saturday night? Maybe some of these people ought to be walking around the garage area oven.
   This flat, square-shaped track demands high-downforce, which Indy-cars of course have in abundance..and which NASCAR stockers don't.
   So the Brickyard over the years has become too much a track position track. And with its much too narrow pit road -- dangerously narrow, even -- Indy presents headaches for crew chiefs.
   Drivers themselves are pretty much at the mercy of track position.
   Passing?
   Better head across town to short track Raceway Park...which next year won't even be on the Brickyard weekend schedule. (Why track promoters never figured out the pluses of having some major shuttle service between those two tracks for fans is a big question.)
   But that won't be an option next season, because NASCAR is moving the Raceway Park Nationwide race to the big track here. If Sunday's Cup race is boring, then why should a second boring stock car race on Saturday entice any more fans to show up?
  

   Indy's narrow pit road gets darned jammed. Maybe NASCAR needs to rethink its rule 'closing pit road' at the yellow, until all the teams line up tail-to-nose  for pit stops. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR) 

 

   Throw in, next summer, a Grand Am sports car race on the Formula 1 road course here? Not sure how much that is going to do to boost attendance for the 400 weekend (other than probably make a mess of infield traffic flow).
   Kyle Busch, on next summer's Nationwide event here, which he says he plans to enter: "Moving it to the Brickyard, you're obviously moving it into more mainstream, with the Cup cars the same weekend. More attention is going to be around it probably.
   "So you'll see some (more) Cup guys doing it....
    "I think it's good and I think it's bad. There's two sides to every story, and sometimes more -- A lot of people that only go to the short-track wouldn't really care to go the big track... you might lose some of those fans. But you might gain more fans because they like the big track."
   Might Busch be interested in trying a 2012 Indy sweep, adding a car for the Grand Am?    
   "I won't drive the road course; I would get confused coming through turn one backwards," Busch says with a laugh.
   "Those (Grand Am) guys being there is going to be cool....(though) I'm wondering how they're going to plan the weekend: How else are we going to get around the (infield) when those cars are running? That's going to be interesting.
    "And all the motorhomes  parked down in turn four, and the Miller Lite party deck and everything down there too, they're going to have to move all that."
   Hey, maybe put the Nationwide cars on the  F1 course too. Might provide a better race, with more passing, than running them on the big track.
   "That wouldn't be bad," Busch ponders. "I don't see anything wrong with it at all. There are some tight sections through the esses...when you come down that access road and then turn in and U-turn, U-turn, and then back out onto the big track. You'll see some congestion there/
   "But otherwise it would probably be a good event."

   Winning the Brickyard 400 is still one of NASCAR's biggest moments...but the race day action has been too much 'track position,' too much 'gas mileage,' too much 'single-file.' (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
  

   Kyle Busch calls Indy "probably one of the trickiest places we go to....(like) Pocono and Darlington.
   "It's so hard to find a particular line that really, really works for you, or really works for your car, because the groove is so narrow.
    "It's plenty wide for one, or one-and-a-half cars. But the line you run, if you vary six inches, it feels so different. You really have to be particular in hitting your marks and getting your car set up.
   "...the way (the track) changes throughout the weekend -- going from practice, with not much rubber on the track, and then to the race with a lot of rubber on the race track -- the trajectory of the corners changes.
    "How wide do you enter the corner?
    "How long do you stay out?
    "How sharp do you turn down?
    "Indy is definitely a particular track..."
    But exciting action?
    Well, it's no Talladega.

   So how to fix the problem, now that we've defined the problem?
   First, obviously, the NASCAR stockers need more downforce.
  One way to effectively increase downforce, of course, is to slow the speeds, which would seem to be a cheap fix. NASCAR drivers aren't going to be hitting 230 mph at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so why not slow the speeds, and maybe drivers could pass more easily.
   Second, the weather -- well, really what is the point of running the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in late July anyway? Why not move it to the championship chase, in September or October?
   Setting the Brickyard for this weekend, well, maybe it's simply to give ESPN a nice kickoff to its part of the NASCAR season.
   But what about the fans themselves?
   Wonder how well a night Cup race might work at Indianapolis? If these guys can race Daytona under the lights, why not Indy too?
   If ticket sales are down, again, for what should be one of this sport's premier events, it might well be time to start thinking outside the box.
  
  

  Gotta love those Indy fans...but can the sport get Raceway Park fans like this over to the big track? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
  

  
   THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK

  
   Panic.
   Sure looks like panic.
   Sheer panic, by some NASCAR team owners: over the past few days several top crew chiefs have lost their heads on the chopping block, as owners sweat out ways to try to keep sponsors happy.
   Four Sprint Cup crew chiefs have just been fired, and the wisdom of the moves could be questioned...though it is cheaper for a team owner to fire a crew chief than fire a drivers.
    The latest car owner move came Monday when Richard Childress put engineer Luke Lambert in charge of Jeff Burton's team, replacing veteran Todd Berrier. Burton has been suffering through a lackluster season, with his best finishes a pair of 11ths, at Texas and Dover. Burton's last tour win was in the fall of 2008 at Charlotte. 
   So, just for kicks, let's check out these teams over the rest of the season and see if any of these changes provides a positive boost.
   One of the more interesting changes is Chip Ganassi's curious move to pull crew chief Brian Pattie off the pit box and given Jim Pohlman -- named "interim" crew chief -- a shot at trying to get Juan Pablo Montoya in the championship playoffs over these next seven races.
   Pattie, well-respected and savvy, has been running Montoya's team since mid-2008; the two came within a speeding penalty of winning the Brickyard 400 two years ago. Montoya and Pattie made the playoffs in 2009 but they've missed it the past two seasons, and Montoya right now is 17th in the standings. Is that the crew chief's fault, or the driver's?
   Car owner Jack Roush just pulled Greg Erwin off Greg Biffle's pit box, with that team also in danger of missing the playoff cut. Matt Puccia is now running Biffle's team. Roush then pulled Mike Shiplett off AJ Allmendinger's pit box and has put Erwin there.
  
  
  
  

  So now it's Allen Bestwick (L) at the controls of ESPN's NASCAR coverage....(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

  
   The most hyped up story this week is TV, with ESPN taking over the last half of the season.
   Is that really the most exciting thing happening in this sport this summer?
   ESPN is tweaking its lineup of announcers, though it remains to be seen if that improves things. Veteran Allen Bestwick looks like the linchpin in all this.
   But how well such a shakeup might work, well, that's iffy.
   TNT just wrapped up its six-race package, with a New Hampshire 301 telecast that was slightly down from last season (a 2.9 rating to last year's 3.0). TNT's highlight was a 3.4-rated Daytona 400 (for comparison, NBC's Daytona 400 telecast in 2005 pulled a 5.5 rating); and TNT overall was slightly up for the June-July series, averaging 5.1 million viewers and a 3.1 ratings average.
  The numbers for ESPN to consider this week: The 2008 Brickyard 400 was watched by some 6.7 million viewers (a 5.1 rating); the 2009 Brickyard slipped to 6.5 million (4.8 rating); and the 2010 took a noticeable drop to 5.7 million viewers (4.2 rating).
   And consider that the Brickyard 400 is usually ESPN's top-rated NASCAR event.
   ESPN was, beginning some 30 years ago, a major factor in the rise of NASCAR racing from Southern-based sport to national phenomenon. (Can anyone in this sport remember the man who helped put it all together? The late Jerry Long.....)
    However ESPN has become a mega-sports giant, and just where NASCAR itself fits into the pecking order has become questionable. Some would argue that for ESPN NASCAR has become just another commodity, one that doesn't really get adequate prominence in its sports pantheon any more.
   Unfortunately for ESPN and the sport, Sunday's three-hour 400 is not likely to provide much drama for the sport's second-half kickoff.

  Head 'em up, and move 'em out. Miles to go before we sleep (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

NASCAR teams will be running nonstop from here till Thanksgiving:
   Indianapolis
   Pocono
   Watkins Glen
   Michigan
   Bristol
   Atlanta
   Richmond
   Chicago
   New Hampshire
   Dover
   Kansas
   Charlotte
   Talladega
   Texas
   Phoenix
   Homestead-Miami
   Whew!
   That's 21,482 miles if you're trucking....
   No wonder some of these guys have big rigs complete now with showers in the back. No time to stop. Gotta keep rolling.

  Making a pass at the Brickyard isn't easy, so on restarts drivers need to get all they can get (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

   The championship playoffs are looming, over these next seven weeks.
   And there are two classes of drivers to consider here:
    -- First, the men who actually have a legitimate chance to win the Sprint Cup championship ( http://bit.ly/pmGrR5 );
    -- Second, the men who simply want to make the playoffs and are not serious threats to win the title.
    This championship 'chase' is still one of the weakest parts of this sport's big picture....because fans don't come to these races to keep track of who may make the chase and who may not.
   The 'road to the chase' doesn't sell tickets.
   The chase itself doesn't sell tickets.
   The racing is what drives this sport...and over the past two months the action has been too much feather-footing by gas-mileage conscious drivers.
   NASCAR executives might well take this opportunity to reconsider the chase format and talk to tour promoters and ask them what they would like to see.
   For this season NASCAR has added two 'wild card' spots, to tour winners who are in the top-20 in standings by the end of the Richmond 400 Sept. 10th and who are not top-10 at the cut. Call it the Jamie McMurray rule, since he won the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 last season and yet failed to make the chase. At least NASCAR marketers won't have to answer the embarrassing questions about how a big-game winner like that doesn't make the playoffs...
   However anyone betting on such a wild-card player actually having any great shot at the title is looking at darned long odds.
   It's hard enough to challenge Jimmie Johnson even when you're already on your game, much less if you limp into the playoffs on some gimmicky wild card ploy.
   Considering the wild card, yes, maybe 15 teams may right now be looking at those two spots. Do any of those 15 have a realistic shot at the championship itself? Probably not. It's all marketing hype.

  
  Greg Biffle, here last summer at the Brickyard, is one of several drivers with new crew chiefs and pushing hard to make the championship playoff cut. But can anyone turn things around in the next seven weeks and become a legitimate Sprint Cup title contender? Or is is all just marketing hype? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)