FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Detroit
First Impressions, IndyCar — By More Front Wing Staff on June 3, 2012 9:45 pmSTEPH’S IMPRESSIONS:
It’s fair to book a sub-par event to serve a strong partner of INDYCAR, but this is ridiculous.
Even months before going into this weekend, it could be stated with some confidence that the race was going to be a parade at best. Knowing that and putting it on network television in an awkward time slot on the weekend immediately following the Indianapolis 500 was highly irresponsible and was never going to be positive for anyone involved.
But the insanity didn’t stop there. Nope — instead, a way was found to run half a parade interrupted by a disintegrating track surface (wonder where the blame will land on that one), a red flag that closed out the network coverage in many markets, and then a resumption that saw that parade turned into INDYCAR On Ice by rain (to mostly empty grandstands, mercifully).
I was willing to give credit where due at the start of the day when the stands were full and the sponsors were being well-served, but when all was said and done there was very little about this event for anyone to be happy about.
(Except Scott Dixon. But it’s fair to say the only thing that kept him out of trouble was being at the front of the field and therefore away from the mayhem. The fact that the points race is now a little more interesting — due more to happenstance than anything else — is the only redeeming quality of this event.)
GM and Roger Penske absolutely deserve to have a race at which they can wine and dine their executives and VIPs — we go to Mid-Ohio and Sonoma every year for the same reasons, after all. But there’s got to be a better way than this. Maybe something can be worked out with Michigan International Speedway, or maybe a completely different track layout can be properly paved onto Belle Isle somehow. (I understand there aren’t very many people using the park these days anyway.)
If INDYCAR returns to Detroit without making any attempts to improve this event, though, they deserve the abyssmal ratings and empty grandstands they’ll have coming to them. Enough is enough.
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PAUL’S IMPRESSIONS:
Well, I’d say today’s event on Belle Isle confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that even Roger Penske can’t polish a turd and make it into gold. The only good thing I can even think of to say about this race is that the fans who stuck around to the end should be congratulated. Everything else was pretty weak at best.
Without even getting into the embarrassment of the track situation that caused a two-hour red flag, the race was about as poor an exhibition of INDYCAR racing as I’ve ever seen. I understand Roger Penske has taken on this race as his pet project as an effort to help revitalize the city of Detroit and the event has major corporate sponsorship that makes it happen. However, if I’m in charge of marketing for a major Detroit corporation and I read all the negative reviews from INDYCAR fans following this race and I know there is a superspeedway 40 miles away that puts on thrilling shows every time Indy cars race there (that, oh by the way, was built by Roger Penske himself almost 45 years ago), I can’t help but wonder if the same resources couldn’t put on a much better show there.
From the outset, this event was destined to be everything many INDYCAR fans hate about street-course racing. Not only does the track offer few, if any, real passing opportunities, it’s so difficult to pass on that when EJ Viso held up most of the field through the first 30 laps, the 10-car line of traffic behind him couldn’t even pass him when he hit the wall. Four years ago, drivers apologized at Richmond when the leaders couldn’t pass a backmarker. Today, all seems to be forgiven because the road course guys got to turn left and right. I’m sure they had fun. I didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was actually much more exciting to watch my two kids enjoy themselves at the petting zoo that we visited when the red flag came out.
It’s hard to imagine a much bigger letdown after a thrilling Indianapolis 500 than the show witnessed today. If INDYCAR must return to Belle Isle — and I don’t think anyone would really be sad if they didn’t except Roger Penske and Scott Dixon — then please don’t make it happen immediately after Indianapolis. Perhaps this would be a good race to put in the fall when competing against opening weekend of the NFL season but not immediately following the event with more eyeballs than the rest of the season combined.
And please don’t burn one of the valuable network TV slots for this travesty. Let’s use those races to highlight the exciting parts of the Series, not this. Then again, with the way Scott Goodyear tried to convince the viewers all race long that this actually was an exciting race, maybe a few of the new converts actually believed it.
Okay, I hate to be 100% negative, so I’ll try to find one positive from today’s event: Nice move by Josef Newgarden to sneak pass JR Hildebrand near the end of the race. Perhaps if that’s the only passing zone, reconfiguring the track to be about a half-mile long and just going through turn 8 a couple hundred times would add some excitement to this race. Maybe.
Tags: Detroit
It would be a far better race if they’d go back to the original layout from the 90s and early 2000s, and it needs to be repaved for sure.
agree. wrong race at the wrong time in the wrong place. and then everything that could go wrong, did. if penske and chevy want to race on this island, they’d better have the track redesigned and repaved by next year. indycar managed to shoot itself it the foot–not once, but several times this week– only a week after it looked like it was heading in the right direction.
I’m sure the owners will blame Bernard.
I wonder if Belle Island was choosen over Michigan….and will continue to be choosen… because of Will Power’s dominance of twisties. He is Penske & Chevy’s star driver and you want to give yourself the best chance to win. I expect Belle Island to be back next year with few changes…except better paving.
Nobody pays me to schedule races for the IICS. However, the person who does schedule races should be fired. Every fan that posts anywhere knew well in advance that this race was going to suck the life out of the series and kill any momentum resulting from the Indy 500.
They should NEVER go back to that sorry excuse for a race track.
PS: I almost forgot. Thank you to Steph and Paul for calling a spade a spade and not simply being shills for this series, unlike another leading forum whose sole purpose seems to be kissing the backside of the executives at 16th and Georgetown. You have my respect for that.
Thanks, RR — appreciate that. Always great to hear from you.
[…] final event opinion excerpted and edited from More Front Wing […]
Couple points.
1. I believe Detroit’s 3-year contract stipulates they are first race after Indy, must like Texas’s did a few years back. So it’s not as simple as Indycar just moving it.
2. A lot of clamoring for MIS but the big auto companies that Penske is wining and dining don’t have any desire to drive 2 hours out to the boonies (Brooklyn really is the boonies– not even within 15 miles of an interstate) for a race. A race at MIS might be supported by a fraction of Belle Isle’s corporate dollars if regular fans would show up, but– sadly, like most ovals– they haven’t recently.
Penske did not build MIS he used to own it. It was built in the 60’s before he was even in Indycar. It would be nice to dump Detroit and bring back MIS
This failure falls squarely on Roger Penske. He has fought for the return to this rat-infested dump, as Robin Miller called it years ago. It cannot be saved. Paul Tracy was on Wind Tunnel, and said the truth, it’s ALWAYS a bad race there. Always. What’s worse, Roger is helping to return us to the 2nd worst borefest, Houston’s Reliant parking lot in 2013.
First:
1) MIS is a DREAM. Forget it. It is out in the middle of Nowhere, as expressed. Plus, MIS would not promote the event. Indycar would be on its own. And what support races would you have? There were 40,000 people at Belle Isle. You will Never get that at MIS. And if you did, it would look like no one was there.
2) All that said, the Belle Isle track layout has to go. Indycar should demand to go back to the longer layout AND they should demand that the whole thing be repaved AND they should demand that run-offs be added to the end of the longer straights (Let’s see how much money Chevy wants to Spend!). The Long-course races in the CART days were no worse than any other street course. With run-offs at the passing zones, racing would be much better.
3) As for it being after Indy, what race would you suggest be after Indy? Texas does not want it. I suppose if Milwaukee is successful, you could try that. But it is going to take LOTS and LOTS of promotion. One of the problems is that lots of people from Chicago go to Indy. And Half of the Milwaukee crowd is probably from Illinois, since there is little population in Wisconsin north of Milwaukee. Are the Illinoisians going to do back-to-back road trips? There were plenty of good reasons for running Milwaukee after Indy in the good old days. But I am not sure it works now. But it might.
4) ANY DATE would be better for the Belle Isle “event” than the first Sunday in June. This is because in almost any other month you could get ALMS instead of GrandAm. ALMS draws a whole hell of a lot better than GrandAm. And ALMS put on some good shows at Belle Isle (see Pagenaud, Simon). The present date conflicted with LeMans test day.
5) We have to do something about the squirrel carnage.
Overall, I think Roger & Co. should be commended. But they need to make plans now for a better show next year.
One more thing:
Anyone notice that so far this year, Chevy and Honda have lost every race that they sponsored?
You think that Guarantees that No one from Andretti will win at Milwaukee or Baltimore, and that Honda will lose Mid-Ohio?
BEST NEWS OF THE WEEKEND:
China might not happen!
Does this open the door for more Road America on the Sunday of the ALMS weekend in August? Is this the Plan B of which Mr. Bernard Speaks?
A Real Big Boy Road Course. Who would have thought of that?
Losing China would be a massive, massive financial blow to INDYCAR. But I’m so excited at the prospect of a return to Road America that I can’t bring myself to care.
Steph hit this one rite on the head yet again, what a joke this “race” was
Agree with most of the above and also appreciate the call a spade a spade vibe from Paul and Steph. IndyCar isn’t going to MIS (or Road America) because neither track wants IndyCar enough to pay a sanctioning fee. End of discussion. You can’t go where you’re not wanted and IndyCar doesn’t have the cash to rent the track so 19 fans can show up. If you want IndyCar at MIS and RA, tell the tracks that. The day IndyCar has enough fans to stop going to places like Belle Isle just to appease big sponsors will be a very great day indeed. Unfortunately that will require about a 10x growth in TV ratings. If ratings were NASCAR-ish, IndyCar won’t have to worry about throwing what amounts to a private concert just to keep Chevrolet or whoever happy, because ROI for Chevrolet from participating in IndyCar will be high enough they wouldn’t need to be stroked to get value from sponsorship.
Thanks, dog. The only part of your comment I can’t agree with is that the need to coddle sponsors goes away when the TV ratings go up. A well-run sport always serves sponsors in good times and bad — that’s just a basic principle of client relations.
As I said in the post, I don’t have a problem with running a private concert (as you so aptly put it) so long as the on-track product is good. But as much as a good race helps everyone, a bad race hurts everyone, including the sponsors purportedly served by it. This fact gets lost in the shuffle somehow, sadly.