Watching Speed channel with my dad growing up in the early to mid 2000's was some of the greatest memories ill cherish.

Me

Of course, that's a late delivered punch line!

@@fdzaviation Oh, the butthurt!

@@Ryeblue Indycar today needs more oval

@@matpk Milwaukee after Indy needs to happen again. Could even move the Road America date right after and have Wisconsin Fest.

Big Roy boy if wind tunnel was still on today Penske buying IMS would have been a huge show.

How ironic! I just watched a video talking about the specific weekend of the Motegi/Long Beach merger race weekend.

Could you imagine what might have been if CART hadn't been run by a bunch of Fat Cat elitists in the early 90s who only cared about enriching themselves at the expense of giving up some power that would have headed off the concerns of Tony George? Could you imagine what might have been if the Fat Cats like Carl Haas hadn't treated Tony George and the Speedway like they were just another ordinary racetrack and recognized the Speedway needed to have a greater say in matters? And that things had gotten out of hand with too much street racing and that costs were out of control and that too many superteams were dominating? I always find it funny how CART Kool-Aid drinkers of which Mr. Mush tops the list with his repetitive posts and his psycho-stalking obsession with TG, have within them this belief in the immaculate perfection and odor-freeness of CART. CART in 1994 was a shit series dominated by elite superteams loaded with boring street races and drivers who with the final retirements of the Old Guard who went back to the days when Indy Car racing was special, had zero charisma and appeal to American race fans. Tony George made some bad mistakes that didn't help, but spare me this shit about CART being so perfect in 1994 when it wasn't.

Except CART was the best until about 2001 when The Spilt finally lost almost all sponsorship money because a crybaby Tony George wanted to reset to an era that will never come back and refused to negotiate?

Greg Norman must have read that comment. He formed a rival a golf league.

Jean Pepin to bad he had to wait before going bankrupt after nascar was not making shit tons of money at IMS after the 2008 tire mismanagement.

Al Mattei nearly 10 years now

Might as well add Edmonton to the mix now.

Al Mattei Dane forget about Tony Renna and Paul Dana

However Greg Moore was the Martyr of the split. He could have won a few INDY 500s and INDYCAR series championships by now if he didn’t tragically die in 1999.

It killed Paul Tracy's remaining senior years in Champ Car since Gerry Forsythe decided not to join. With that disappointment, it was a necessary evil to 'reunify'.

it would have been funny if he did that and ended up winning the 2008 indy 500 (both the win before the split and after the reunification)

I thought Jacques Villanueve had joined F1 at that point ....

@@jcngokai-76 By 2008 JV had already been to F1 and was over a year away from being fired by BMW (his last ride) after crashing at Hockenheim

My thoughts exactly. In 2007 he was still only 35 or 36 and still capable of winning. In 08 he finished 2nd at the 24 hours of Le Mans, only beaten by the dominant Audi R10 of Mcnish and Kristenson.

MIKIEC71 someone should have told him that in 1994-96 but he was getting that NASCAR money thinking he hit gold and was the best auto racing executive in the world and F1 coming in was even better but quickly flopped. He should have stayed with CART no matter how much he disagreed and just formed a team with ALL Americans in CART which he easily could have afforded.

You have F1 teams coming over full time (cough McLaren). Rossi has said numerous times that he would rather be in IndyCar because he hates the politics of F1. Stop acting like CART wasn’t the same. Mansell came over to IndyCar because he didn’t want to race with Alain Prost as a teammate in Williams. Johannson? Mark Blundell? All those guys were also “F1 rejects”. What’s your point here

Mansell was fired because Prost didn't want him as a teammate, not the other way around.

@@danielhenderson8316 *refused to renew his contract

Champ car was a joke from 2002-2007

IMSA could possibly help if it continues to grow.

If NASCAR continues to drive itself into the ground face first, maybe

Ego satisfaction Also eliminating IndyCar as a competitor to NASCAR's success

TG wanted more USAC short trackers in the Indy 500, who weren't good enough to get in the traditional way. He made his own series so they could get in by default.

@@AlonsoRules with not one care about the tradition of the Indy 500 with the 25/8 rule.

Michael McIntyre thank god yes I’m American but open wheel racing was so much better when CART was at INDY and there were good American drivers as well in CART and they won races and INDY 500s. Thank god Tony George doesn’t have control over the speedway and INDYCAR anymore.

Michael McIntyre No, it’s going geared for short track dirt kids. Hasn’t been for 40+ years. If a young person wants to run IndyCar they race karts and work up the ladder system.

Jam5zW too bad that is what Tony George thought. Went Jeff Gordon went to NASCAR that is when Tony George was starting to plot his takeover of the sport. Look now the dirt track drivers go straight to NASCAR.

More like 60% of foreign drivers, not 75. There were 9 full timers in a 21 car field last year, and three of them were highly sucessful, so do your math. There's gonna be 10 this year, so there's that. You're probably thinking about 2010, the low point of the series post-merger, with barely 3/4 americans full time (and neither competitive enough by then) in a 26 car grid with lots of ride-buyers in the second half of the grid. The IRL offered the opportunity for short track dirt kids to get that Borg Warner sniff. Neither took it, because the likes of Stewart, Hamilton, Boat, Tyler, Durant, Michner, Kinser, Carlson, Beechler, Kite, Yeley, Hewitt, Steele (RIP), Reeves, Leffler, Erwin... all had their asses handed at Indy. Hell, even Team Menard passed on Dave Blaney because he wasn't fast enough. With the best car in the grid and all the pole positions in the world, Billy Boat got schooled by a second year Swede driver coming from Formula 3000. Even at ovals, drivers with a road racing background took every Indy 500 under the IRL auspices, and all of the championships, bar Stewart's one (with one win in 10 races): Lazier, Luyendyk, Cheever, Ray, Sharp, Goodyear, Hornish... even Salazar! and all of that just before CART's invasion. They were the image on victory lane 95% of the time, not short track dirt kids. And in the mean time, while those blue collar drivers were getting their chance at big time racing, fans flocked to NASCAR. That should be telling: people didn't care at all about those short track dirt kids.

maybe because the short track dirt kids aren't good enough or are too scared

+cdname47 I fucking hate the IRL and Tony George IRL dumb down the series to have Americans win the Indy 500 and it was a embarrassment to Open Wheel racing, CART/Champ Car should of been the authority figure Now indycar is improving these days but still fuck Tony George. I also agree with you about ALMS-Grand Am, Grand Am taking over is the reason WEC will be superior to United Sportscar Series

cdname47 the last Champ cars were unsafe. Paul Tracy broke his back doing 35 because the nose didn't collapse, as well as being untested on ovals. The crapwagons were needed.

cdname47

Open wheel cars on a mixture of road courses and ovals isn't "uniquely American"? I'm sorry, do they do that somewhere else in the world?

Thomas Booth This guy had to have kissed Tony George’s ass during the IRL days. His mom never should have let him spent one penny on the horrible IRL it became. Tony George thought he could develop and keep Aj Foyt like drivers and have a Jeff Gordon talent like driver stay for Americans to love because it was clear he hated the CART foreign drivers at Indy. Notice in 1994 when he announced his IRL press release was when Jeff Gordon was starting to get hot and win a ton of races. Thank God smart people are back running Indycar again. Not some rich asshole 3rd generation family Heir that Tony George was. By the way Brian France CEO of NASCAR is a 3rd generation Heir and look how he is ruining NASCAR.

the IRL was a flaming pile of minor league garbage

@@joeb7975 CART in 1994 was garbage. Anyone who thinks it was so wonderful to have all that elite domination on boring street races capped by the WORST Indy 500 I have ever been forced to watch (Penske's Mercedes was basically what we would have been forced to see if Grantelli's turbine had won in 1967) are the reason why I was glad to see someone stand up for what Indy used to represent and mean. He made a lot of mistakes, but if only CART hadn't gotten so lordly and Fat Cat and thumbing it's nose at the Speedway (Fittipaldi's refusal of the milk sums up why the CART image was rubbing people the wrong way) perhaps a compromise could have been reached. I'll be glad to say George made mistakes and maybe it's time the CART people acknowledge they weren't so perfect either.