After many years of people wanting the old Indycar Triple Crown to be reinstated, the powers-that-be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have listened, and the venerable old competition-within-a-championship is back in a big way for 2014.
Obviously including the legendary Indianapolis 500 – not all that far away, in late May! – the Verizon Indycar Series will also hold 500-mile endurance tests at the triangular 2.5-mile Pocono Raceway and the season finale at the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.
The idea itself is fantastic. Indycar belongs on all three of those tracks (and Michigan Speedway as well, but a deal hasn’t been worked out, so ACS will have to do) and so many of the sport’s greatest names have won the Triple Crown. You know, drivers who have built up such a fantastic history of open-cockpit cars in America, names like Unser, Andretti, Foyt and more.
What I don’t agree with is the recent news that, for the Triple Crown races, Indycar will award double points. If you win at Indy, Pocono or in Fontana, you get a leg-up on everyone else. Bad idea, Indycar.
I know it elevates these three races to a level of higher importance, which could be a good thing, but not at the expense of other events, which now seem, in the eyes of Indycar management, to be less important. It almost says to promoters at tracks like Long Beach, Toronto and Detroit that their events are far less crucial to Indycar racing than the Triple Crown oval races. That’s not a good look.
After all the negative talk in the Formula One world about the idea of the last race of the World Championship being a double-points race, you’d think that any other racing series considering some sort of similar gimmick would be scared off?
Apparently, not Indycar. Is that bravery of foolishness? Sometimes, I wonder what the people thinking up these ideas at the Speedway on the corner of 16th and Georgetown are doing. Are they even using their minds? You’d be forgiven for often saying ‘no’.
The fact of the matter is simple: Indycar racing in 2013 was as good as any other racing series in the world. Consistently better than NASCAR, often better than Formula One, and on par with the drama seen week-to-week in MotoGP. Why would you need a cheap gimmick to liven a product that can’t get much better than it’s been on racetracks around North America over the last two seasons?
This isn’t NASCAR. The Indycar fan base, small but intensely passionate about the future of the sport, has long cried out against any suggestion of things like green-white-checker finishes, lucky dog passes (first driver a lap down at the time of a caution gets that lap back) and the other interesting elements that NASCAR has introduced to it’s national series’ over the last few years, obviously to spice up what can often be, especially on cookie cutter 1.5-mile ovals, mostly boring races, when cars are strung out and there isn’t much passing except on restarts or in the pits.
Indycar doesn’t have that problem. Far from it. Their racing product is top notch – the great shame is that not enough people around the country know that. These double-point races smacks of someone not involved heavily in racing stepping in and saying, “Guys, I’ve got a great idea here!!”
The Boston Consulting Group was called in during the off-season to provide some ideas on Indycar racing. They are not an organisation with a deep-rooted background in racing. Two of their ideas were implemented during the offseason: the condensed March-August season, and the road course race at Indianapolis to start May at the Speedway, a month traditionally reserved for events on the hallowed oval. This smacks of one of their ideas. Most of them have not been well-received by the fans, yours truly included.
What concerns me isn’t so much those who win, but a situation where the guy only a few points behind the leader in a championship race crashes out, caught up in an accident not of his making, and the leading driver goes on to win. That’s a massive hole to dig out of, and perhaps, in some circumstances, an insurmountable one. It’s a scenario that has the potential to squash a titanic championship struggle, and cost Indycar valuable mainstream media exposure as a result.
Every race – with the possible exception of the Indianapolis 500; if there absolutely has to be some sort of double-points bonus, this might be the right race for it – should be worth the same amount of points, so that the championship can truly be called a season-long test of the best driver and pit crew.
Leave the race gimmicks to NASCAR and Formula One, keep the points awarded even for all races, and let the Indycar boys race like we know they can!
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