Fiti and little Al finish is one of the greatest endings in motorsports. It was made famous by little Al giving the thumbs up!!!! A truly great moment.
Kb showed patience, poise and speed when he needed. He did a great job for michael!! He will be asked back
amazing race! RHR is one of those guys who just shows up and does his job, not a lot of fanfare or press but he's there when it counts. I hope Indycar promotes him better as a 500 winner than they did (or, rather, didn't) after he won his championship...good looking well spoken American with a hot wife, that's who you want as the face of your sport agree, I was impressed by KB. I hope he comes back, and brings Smoke with him.
What Indy Car needs is to build the strength of the rest of the series to match the level of Indy. This has always been their most difficult task but as good as the race on Sunday was, the rest of the series flounders for an audience, finding them live on TV is a crap shoot and the races are at times, haphazard at best. BHW
in 2012, a young, good looking, well spoken American won the Indycar title and the series didn't do a damn thing to promote him. his name is Ryan Hunter Reay. So now they get a second chance. Indycar HAS to start building stars out of their drivers, and RHR is a great place to start, and right now is the time to start. I just heard my local classic rock DJ talking about the race; they have buzz, they need to capitalize, now. some other young Americans like Newgarten and Karem, not to mention Marco and Graham, could really help (re)build the Indycar brand. BUT....someone in the Indycar front office has to lead the charge.
Absolutely Chas! I wish Indycar was significant enough to be a conversation outside of diehards and to be spoken of more than a week of advance notice before respective events by local residents & promoters. I live 5 minutes from The Milwaukee Mile and not a whisper about the upcoming event. Last year and this year our race kart team was sponsored by Andretti Sports Marketing; and with Indyfest, AA & ASM graphics on all our stuff we went to many shows & parades trying to promote Indyfest. On a grassroots racing level it was successful and was awesome creating new fans of the sport/ event and introducing several into the racing world. Aaand... Indycar and Road America need to quit fooling around and get these cars back to that track!
My guess is that Indy Car's front office is filled with a bunch of dead wood that have been there since the 60s and/or recent college grads with shiny new marketing degrees and absolutely no knowledge of racing out to show everyone how smart they are. If I see another Indy Car ad with drivers sitting around an office in their driving suits shooting the breeze, I'm going to pull an Elvis and shoot the TV. This, and their other big idea of putting the Indy winner on Letterman seem to be all they can come up with over the last decade and a half. BHW
contrast this to the billboards I saw in Atlanta last week, advertising the NASCAR race at Atlanta Motor Speedway....in September! so, wood paneled offices in Daytona and dead wood offices in Indy? why the Hulman Corp doesn't see the need to promote its greatest asset is a miracle to me.
Or brush your hair and put on a bit of makeup if you are going to be on TV once a year, Mary Hulman George.
If Indy has gotten that complacent, they get what they deserve. Perhaps the subtle tweaking they've done to the schedule including the Indy Grand Prix and qualifying restructure may have paid off with the big crowds yesterday. There certainly looked to be more spectators there than in recent years. BHW
Apparently Indycar was trying to pull a few fans out of the closet with the segment shown before the race featuring someone in a PVC Catsuit taking a milk bath
I looked at this year's event as somewhat pivotal. I was praying it would be safe and exciting. The thought of losing open wheel racing in the us has not kept me up at night but has worried me. I think the 500 was fantastic and with the exception of the newgarden piece, the broadcast was very well done Of the three races I watched yesterday it was indy hands down!!!# I hope things get better an fields get stronger. Good stuff ahead I hope.
Come to Terre Haute sometime (not really, this place is scary). The amount of this town that the Hulmans own is just unreal. The Hulman empire is huge.
Spot on 100%. They needed a good 500, ran three quarters of the race without a caution, got an excellent finish, huge crowd, hopefully decent TV ratings and momentum to build on. They should be in a good enough place to scrap the spec formula chassis and allow another chassis manufacturer or two in and one or two more engine manufacturers to get into the game. Evidently Ford are weighing their options and since they're only in NASCAR currently, perhaps they may be looking to do something relevant again. BHW
even if Indycar does have momentum right now I think we won't see chassis competition in this generation of car-lead times are too long, development is too expensive, and who would do it? Lola and Reynard are gone, Swift has moved on to defense, etc. someone is going to have to emerge from left field to create a new chassis. Ford is interesting, for all its racing heritage they currently have no IndyCar or F1 presence and a limited NASCAR presence (basically Roush only); but they are putting a lot of money into "emerging" programs like GRC, Rally, Drift, V8 Supercars, etc. it will be interesting to see how that shakes out. Although you'd think the turbo V6 in Indycar would make perfect marketing sense with their EcoBoost engines, even if they weren't truly based on that engine architecture (ie they rebadged an Cosworth engine)
And then where was this weird pre-race promotional video/ad... ABC Sports' Indy 500 Promo Is All Kinds of Weird | Bleacher Report BHW
This is critical IMHO, and would go a long way towards making things interesting again. Fix those silly bodies too, make the car look more "traditional". Good news. Also, Hunter-Reay winning can't hurt. Nice to see him win it, although Andretti would have been a great story. Kurt Busch - awesome job. Hope to see more crossover stars like we did in years past with Sammy Swindell or Steve Kinser.
