Quite aside from the on-track product – which was astounding before it became insane, with cars four and five wide, bumping wheels in big packs at over two hundred miles an hour – the turnout for Saturday’s MAVTV 500 at Auto Club Speedway Fontana was about three thousand.
No, that’s not a typo. The premiere open-wheel series in North America could muster only three thousand paying customers at the track. Frankly, that’s an embarrassing number for a series that, back in the late nineties and early naughties, threatened Formula One as far as global prestige, sponsorship, track attendance and television numbers.
It’s been a spectacular fall from grace, hasn’t it?
This is a message for Mark Miles, the chief executive officer of the IndyCar Series.
By all accounts, Miles is a smart guy – though sometimes, the decisions he makes suggest otherwise – and I appeal to him in that vein. Mark, do us all a favour and forget every single thing the Boston Consulting Group ever told you. That’s the group who came in, with no motorsport experience to speak of, and produced a report that Miles has since claimed to be gospel.
It’s the basis for everything he does, every decision he makes.
The Boston Consulting Group apparently came on board to tell the IndyCar how to do things right. How IndyCar ever managed to operate before the Boston mob is beyond me! Excuse the sarcasm, but the mismanagement of a series I love, based on a report from a group who aren’t exactly motorsports veterans, is insane, and sarcasm is just about all I’ve got left.
Perhaps the biggest howler of them all is the decision to run a shortened season, with races only between late-March and late-August. That means seven long months with no racing. Drivers have nothing to do, teams have nothing to do, sponsors don’t get value for money, and some teams are forced to lay off large numbers of crew, simply because they can’t afford to pay them. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Strong events, like the street race in Baltimore, have fallen by the wayside because cities or tracks ask for later dates – often due to weather considerations – and are rebuffed because the Boston Consulting Group told Mark Miles it’s a bad idea to go up against the might of the NFL. I don’t see NASCAR or hockey or basketball or baseball shortening their season to fit it on either side of football season.
Yet, IndyCar does. It’s the most ludicrous situation imaginable. As hard as it is to get sponsorship to run an IndyCar season, you think the series would be doing whatever they could to stage as many events as possible each year, thus giving those rare-as-hens-teeth major sponsors the absolute maximum exposure.
It’s been rumoured that a bunch of big-name sponsors have baulked at putting their brand on an IndyCar because there’s not enough value for money as far as length of season, and brand name exposure goes. It’s a sad plight for a sport that once counted brands like McDonalds, Budweiser, Shell and Miller Lite. All of those brands have been lost to the sport, many switching their sponsorship to NASCAR.
This year’s major scheduling mishap was the MAVTV 500 weekend, a week ago now. In previous years, the ACS race has been held on Labour Day, the season finale, which basically guarantees furnace-like temperatures, even for a night race.
So, what does IndyCar do this year? Give Auto Club Speedway a Saturday afternoon date in July, when it’s just as hot, and without the benefit of nightfall taking a little of the edge off the sweltering temperatures. It was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (or 32 degrees Celsius) when the IndyCar field took the green flag.
No wonder only three thousand diehards turned up to sit in stands where there isn’t a modicum of shade to be found. The only way Auto Club Speedway should be run is by starting at dusk and running into the night in the spring (April-May) or autumn (October-November). Any other date, and, well, Saturday’s smattering of paying customers is an example of what you’ll get every single time.
Things have to change quickly, or IndyCar is going to collapse. It’s sad that it’s come to this, but it has. Sponsors aren’t happy, team owners aren’t happy, and drivers aren’t happy. I was pleased to hear veteran reporter Robin Miller deliver a nice broadside to Miles in a video on Racer.com – and it inspired me to express my thoughts, which are the same as Miller’s, and the same as most long-suffering IndyCar fans. We’re not a large bunch anymore, and we’ve had just about all we can take.
Robin Miller is completely correct when he implored team owners to march up to Mark Miles’ office and demand change. They have the necessary leverage to force the CEO into a longer season, and all the other changes that quite obviously need to be made. Without those team owners fielding twenty-odd IndyCars each week, the series is quite obviously dead in the water. Surely even Mark Miles realises this.
It’s not a stretch to say that American open wheel racing, and all the tradition that comes with it – remember, they’ve been racing at Indianapolis for more than a century – is on the line. The next few years are vital. The series needs to be going forward, not backward, and I’m not sure that that can happen with Mark Miles in the chair. At least not while he’s still taking his cues from the Boston Consulting Group.
IndyCar’s on-track product is too good – better than any other four-wheeled racing series in the world, for mine – to be sabotaged by the corporate types at head office. Let’s hope it can be salvaged before it’s too late.
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