2008 ChampCar Commentaries..............

All about the Champ Car World Series (CCWS)

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Will ChampCar answer the bell for 2008?

Poll ended at Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:57 pm

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Total votes: 1

mlittle
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2008 ChampCar Commentaries..............

Post by mlittle » Mon Jan 21, 2008 3:57 pm

Consdering the current abysmal situation in ChampCar right now, a quote from the David Weber novel The Honor of the Queen comes to mind....right before taking her heavy crusier HMS Fearless into battle with a Masadan battlecruiser over 3x as big, Royal Manticoran Navy Capt. Honor Harrington is discussing the situation with the other captains in what remains of her strike group when she opines,
The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the world's second-best swordsman.....he fears the worst because he can't predict what the idiot will do.
That quote comes to mind as one looks at what was an abhorrently bad week for ChampCar....... :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:


Three things took place this past week which underscores the prescience of the above quote.......
(1)ChampCar releases its' 2008 TV schedule, and it has all the appearances of a bullet-riddled corpse; only a third of the schedule is live(and most of those are for races outside the USA) while, for some reason, they've decided to show all four European races not as 2-hour broadcasts(either live or tape-delay) but as 1-hour highlight shows..... :evil: :evil: :evil: ........with that kind of thinking, why couldn't they have just stayed on ESPN Classic?
(2)The resignation of Tony Cotman from ChampCar's top ranks........with all the bad business decisions and bad news that the series has taken over the past 18+ months, its' a wonder Cotman stayed that long.....but toi make things even worse.............
(3)The decision by reigning Atlantic Championship winner Rapahel Matos to not only forego the $2 million prize but decides to go to the IRL and race for Andretti-Green Racing in the Indy Pro Series in 2008................

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :evil: :evil:


With all this bad news, is it any wonder one can faintly begin to hear the proverbial fat lady cueing up for a performance? The last two of the three items above are more nails in ChampCar's coffin...........As long as I've followed the sport, I've never seen anyone in the ChampCar paddock run it with as firm, honest and fair hand that Tony Cotman. Did he have to play the bad guy every so often? Yes; that goes with the territory. But in the end even he couldn't overcome the knawing realization that the series is being run by a bunch of rich hobbyists who can't seem to figure out that their business model(the 3-day "Festivals of Speed") are money-sinkings losers of the first order. (No wonder other AOWR bloggers refer to Kevin Kalkhoven, Gerry Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi as the "3 Amigos".) The last straw IMHO was when Cotman tried to get them to keep an open period during the month of May so that any ChampCar team that wanted to could run the Indy 500, since it is still the ONLY open-wheel race that draws sponsors AND fans in large numbers. What'd he get? A race at Laguna Seca in mid-May........in other words, they *****-slapped Cotman and did so publicly. :evil: :evil:

The Matos news, however, was just as bad, if not worse......Raphael Matos, like many ex-pat Brazilians in AOWR, comes here and works his way up the ladder, winning in Barber Dodge and Star Mazda before entering ChampCar's Atlantic Championship in 2007 and winning 6 of 12 races enroute to the series championship. As a result he gets the $2 million dollar prize which should've gone to help him secure a ChampCar ride in 2008. Unfortunately, it appears ChampCar's "3 Amigos" wanted him to race with Rocketsports(a/k/a Paulie G-String's team or the Black Hole Team, as in 'the place a driver's career goes to disappear'). Unfortunately for ChampCar, Matos actually had the idea that he should be paid to drive and no one(other that Derrick Walker and Team Australia) was willing to pay him to drive in 2008. So he and his business agent begin looking at the other series and makes a deal with Andretti-Green Racing for a 2008 ride in IPS with a potential Indy 500 start to boot. In other words, Matos now has a secure ride, a steady salary, expenses paid and a multi-year deal.........which, from what I hear, is a h--- of a lot better than 2006 Atlantic champion Simon Pagenaud, who, rumor has it, still isn't certain of a ride in ChampCar for 2008. :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:


My take.........with all the missteps ChampCar has taken, not even Honor Harrington could save that bunch of dolts.....my advice to the Three Amigos: Take whatever assets of value there are in ChampCar and SELL THEM to Tony George and then get the **** out of the sport!!! Tony George may be a dolt, a moron and an idiot, but he sure as **** knows how to run a series a **** of a lot better than you three do!!!!

(apologies for the above language...... :oops: :oops: :oops: )
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Post by GhoGho » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:28 am

You tell them "M"

The worst thing that happened to N American open wheel was the split all those years ago, causing a slow decline into the pit of obscurity......
I'm in shape

Round is a shape...........


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Post by mlittle » Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:34 am

GhoGho wrote:You tell them "M"

The worst thing that happened to N American open wheel was the split all those years ago, causing a slow decline into the pit of obscurity......
The really bad part nowadays about the split, GhoGho, is that thanks to the actions of the aforementioned "3 Amigos", Tony George is starting to look like a saint....... :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
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Could Tony George win in the end?

Post by mlittle » Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:11 am

Ask any of the owners in the ChampCar paddock and they'll give you similar answers on their view of the split........
~~Carl Haas and Michael Lanigan(co-owners of NHL Racing) both have said publicly that it is "way past time" to make peace with Tony George
~~Keith Wiggins(co-owner of Minardi Team USA w/Paul Stoddard) has said that if he still owned CTE-HVM Racing, he'd already be in the IRL for 2008
~~Team Australia co-owner Derrick Walker says "anything" ChampCar can do to unify the sport is better than nothing
~~finally, 1996 CART champion Jimmy Vasser(co-owner, PKV Racing) has said that ChampCar "must' find a way to work with Tony George and the IRL

So, the question begs......why haven't they done anything?
The answer...........two reasons and their names are Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe. :evil: :evil:

And....why haven't they done anything, such as........
--accept TG's recent offer of free engines, free chassis, extra testing time to acclimate to the Dallaras' for 2008?
--want to return to the Indianapolis 500 and all of the glory and history that it entails?
--continuing to be the b------ red-headed stepchild of ABC and ESPN, timebuying from them rather than being paid by them?
--wanting to stop the continued bleeding of a once-dominant sport in North America?
The answer..........Because Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe aren't racers at heart. They're hobbyists who play at racing, period!

It is my opinion that they don't give a ---- for the sport, that they don't care that, for instance..............
1--their attendance figures are now being seen as outright lies by motorsports journos, bloggers and those within the AOWR community
2--their series is considered in many parts of the world to be a laughing stock
3--promoters they trusted to run races such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Jose are now being hounded as charlatans and worse.......
4--quite frankly, they just don't care for the future of the sport!

Now, it frankly disappoints me to say the above about Messrs. Kalkhoven and Forsythe; when they bought the assets of CART from TG's grasp at the end of 2003, a lot of people(myself included) had high hopes for them, and the first two years seemed to confirm this, especially when they succeeded in holding onto Long Beach, Toronto and Cosworth. Unfortunately, the past few years have disabused me of those hopes, especially when one looks at the combined missteps the series has made the past two years..............
--letting talented drivers like A.J. Allmendinger and Raphael Matos leave the series for other pastures(NASCAR and the IRL's Indy Pro Series)
--continuing to try to schedule events in Korea and China when they weren't able to
--allowing the least-popular co-owner in the sport's history(Paul "Paulie G" Gentilozzi) have more of a say in the sport than he should have(or deserves..... :evil: )
--telling fibs such as having a 20-24 car grid in 2007 when they could hardly keep 16 cars on the grid
--holding information such as Tony George's merger offer from their respective team owners(all of the above have confirmed to me and others that no one in the home office told them about it until a week or so ago)
..........and that explains in principle why Carl Haas, one of ChampCar's scion owners, approached Tony George about possibly moving NHL Racing to the IRL either this year or in 2009. :shock: :shock: :shock:

To be fair, it is true that I have, on occasion, beaten up on one Anton Hulman "Tony" George on many an occasion here but.....this time he ain't the bad guy or the villain. Say what you want about him, but he's the one who put up the offer recently to give the ChampCar teams free Dallara chassis, free Honda engines and extra testing and practice time in 2008 if they would switch. Oh, and he also offered to take on the events at Long Beach, Edmonton, Toronto, Mexico City and Surfers Paradise should ChampCar fail to answer the bell in 2008. While TG's spent upwards of(depending on the count) $300-$500 million to run the IRL the past twelve years, he's managed to run it with more common sense than anyone in ChampCar has combined. Had this offer been accepted in November, there could've been the possibilty of seeing Graham Rahal at one press conference alongside Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick, while Paul Tracy and Tony Kanaan could needle at each other at another. TG was actually willing to allow ChampCar to save face and was willing to work with them in 2008 and 2009..............but the two boneheads named Kalkhoven and Forsythe, by all accounts, threw it right back at George, asking for $100 million to be given to the teams as a condition for any deal. :shock: :shock: :shock:

For what it is worth, say whatever you want about Mr. George and company, but racing is a way of life for the Hulman-George family ever since TG's grandpa bought the Brickyard just after World War II and they aren't going away anytime soon. By contrast, racing is just a side hobby for Gerry Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven, who by their recent actions have proven that in spades. I'll repeat(in paraphrasing) what I said in my first commentary of 2008.................
mlittle wrote:Tony George may be a dolt, a moron and an idiot, but he knows how to run the sport a heck of a lot better than either of you do!
The Sci-Fi Station Come by and visit when you get the chance. :)
The Wayward Tarheel I'm even in the blogosphere.... :shock:

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