The Winter Olympics came to an end. The World Superbike season started and no British riders won a race! Kevin Harvick whooped the field in two races at Atlanta, Cup and Grand National Series. Kyle Busch had a loose wheel cost him a surefire Truck victory. Busch's misfortune opened the door for a surprise winner. Formula One teams are unveiling and testing cars. Courtney Force is bringing home the bacon for Graham Rahal. Road to Indy series were testing at Homestead and the entry lists were a little disappointing (looking at you Indy Lights). Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Reunification: Ten Years Later
February 26, 2008 isn't one of those days where I can recall exact where I was when I heard the news. All I can say is I was happy at the time. After 12 years of spiraling down the drain, American open-wheel racing finally came out the other side a long way from the mountaintop it once occupied.
Everything was rushed but I didn't care. There was one IndyCar although someone should have taken a breath and thought this out a little better. Champ Car was gone. It was broke. Everyone was abandoning ship and the Indy Racing League was the only ship responding to the S.O.S. but there were conditions to boarding. Gone were the mostly beloved Panoz DP01 chassis along with the turbocharged V8 engines after one beautiful year. It was either take on the Dallara and the Honda or drown and some decided to sleep with the fishes (Goodbye Forsythe).
It wasn't just teams and drivers that faced uncertainty. The schedule was shaken and historical American open-wheel landmarks vanished in the blink of an eye. The only races that transitioned immediately to the unified IndyCar schedule were Long Beach, Edmonton and Surfers Paradise, though Long Beach would only be Champ Car teams as IRL teams had to race in Motegi and the trip to Australia would be a non-championship round. It ended up being the final trip to Australia. Toronto returned after a one-year hiatus but others had a longer wait. Road America was off the IndyCar schedule for eight years. Houston was gone for five years and that was one of tracks few wanted back. Laguna Seca was slated to return to the Champ Car schedule in 2008 but that didn't happen and IndyCar has not been close to returning. Cleveland has not returned to the schedule and likely will not be back. Portland is back on the IndyCar schedule for the first time since 2007. Mexico City was on the cusp of returning in 2018 but it appears that will have to wait until at least 2019.
The sacrifices did come with a few pluses. Bumping returned to the Indianapolis 500 and not the one-car, A.J. Foyt sticking it to Arie Luyendyk's son type of bumping but multiple teams scraping to make the field of 33 with the few back markers off the pace and needing a dozen prayers to come within a half a mile per hour of making it. There was the heartbreak that has a place in sports. It is painful but it is necessary and why we watch, to see one's dreams come true while another is left shattered and must pick up the pieces from failures.
Looking back on that first season after reunification, it was quite a doozy. Did you know Marco Andretti led the most laps in that first race at Homestead? And Tony Kanaan had a victory knocked out of his hands when a damaged Ernesto Viso (before he switched to E.J.) made contact with the leader with less than ten laps to go. Scott Dixon won the race and it set the tone for the season. The next race saw Graham Rahal pick up his first career victory in a wet St. Petersburg. The next race weekend was the odd Motegi-Long Beach split, which is remembered for Danica Patrick's first career victory at Motegi. Will Power would win in the Panoz DP01 at Long Beach hours later.
While Scott Dixon won six races, Hélio Castroneves provided a strong championship fight despite only winning twice. The Brazilian ended the season with nine podium finishes in the final 11 races. It even included a season finale where Castroneves, already with his back to the wall in the championship battle, had to start 28th, dead last on the grid and he charged to the front. Castroneves needed Dixon to put a foot wrong, which didn't happen but it provided a great battle in the closing laps of the season between two top drivers at the end. It ended with a bit of... I don't want to call it a controversy, because it was clear who crossed the line first. It ended with timing and scoring incorrectly registering Dixon as the first driver to cross the line despite every angle showing Castroneves clearly got to the line first. What could have been another embarrassing moment for the IRL and what could have been a drawn-out affair over the obvious was quickly handed and Castroneves was rightfully declared the winner.
The 2008 season had a few other highlights. Dan Wheldon won on his birthday at Iowa and proceeded to donate his winnings to relief efforts for flooding that had occurred in the area. It was Wheldon's penultimate IndyCar victory. Ryan Hunter-Reay took a surprise victory at Watkins Glen over a surprise runner-up in Darren Manning after Dixon and Ryan Briscoe got together under caution. Justin Wilson scored Newman-Haas Racing's final victory at Belle Isle after Castroneves was rightfully penalized for blocking.
Looking back on the day IndyCar became one series again, had you told me then what IndyCar would look like in 2018 I would have to say I would be disappointed about where IndyCar would be ten years after reunification. In 2008, I had big dreams for IndyCar now that it was one series. I wanted multiple chassis manufactures and more than two engine manufactures. I would have been disappointed in the fluctuation in teams and how the Indianapolis 500 had once again returned to a no-bumping affair. The idea to complete flip the Indianapolis 500 qualifying schedule and have pole position decided on the final qualifying day would have been asinine and I would have been furious that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course hosted a race while the likes of Cleveland, Laguna Seca, Fontana and Michigan were not on the schedule.
However, look at what the past decade has been for IndyCar. It hasn't been pretty. Ten years of one series and IndyCar is barely any closer to where it was in 1995. NASCAR continues to rule the American motorsports kingdom and it is doing it despite shedding millions of fans and millions in sponsorship dollars along the way. We have had multiple fly-away races fall a part despite guarantees of an international series to start the season. But IndyCar has found its footing. The racing has been quite exciting with one chassis manufacture and mostly two engine manufactures. The numbers aren't great and they are getting better, although not making significant strides. Teams are hamstrung for sponsors but a few more teams have entered the series in the last two years after teams vanished quite rapidly at the start of the DW12-era. There is even hopes of a third manufacture in the near future.
Since reunification, we had Dario Franchitti, Sébastien Bourdais and Juan Pablo Montoya return to full-time IndyCar competition, Rubens Barrichello ran a full season of IndyCar, A.J. Allmendinger returned to IndyCar and made his Indianapolis 500 debut, Kurt Busch did the Double and Fernando Alonso took a sabbatical and missed the Monaco Grand Prix to run the Indianapolis 500. The six Indianapolis 500s in the DW12-era are the top six Indianapolis 500s in term of lead changes. The record for most lead changes in an IndyCar race was broken at Fontana. Iowa emerged as an IndyCar staple and Gateway came out of nowhere last year and put on a great event. There have been thrilling street course races at Long Beach, São Paulo and even Belle Isle has had a few stellar races.
Since reunification we have seen a changing tide and more Americans full-time in IndyCar. Josef Newgarden and Alexander Rossi were two kids in 2008 and both were American Formula One hopes. Now they are an IndyCar champion and an Indianapolis 500 winner respectively and two drivers who appear will be in IndyCar for years to come. Ryan Hunter-Reay found a stable gig after years of constantly being on the move. Graham Rahal is a frequent race winner and has been in the championship discussion. On top of that, the ladder system is working. Spencer Pigot and Zach Veach have been able to work their ways from U.S. F2000 to IndyCar and Gabby Chaves went from Pro Mazda to the top level. Newgarden, Ed Jones and Kyle Kasier are all Indy Lights champions set for IndyCar competition in 2018. Besides those three, Jack Harvey and Matheus Leist are Indy Lights race winners in the top series.
IndyCar isn't perfect. It is still difficult for talented drivers to get rides and there are many on the sidelines who should be in IndyCar (Sage Karam, Matthew Brabham, Carlos Muñoz should be more than one-off drivers and Scott Hargrove, 2013 U.S. F2000 champion and who went toe-to-toe with Pigot in Pro Mazda, has moved to sports car racing). The schedule has its holes and there is room for a few more ovals. On top of all that the series is fighting up hill to grow and have a healthy television audience as well as 17 well-attended race weekends but IndyCar is in a better position than it was ten years ago.
Reunification might not have been a moment where IndyCar soared from the fire of the CART/IRL-war back to the pinnacle of world motorsports with everyone taking notice. It is still a forgotten series, behind NASCAR domestically and a niche motorsports series internationally. More has to be done but there is a comforting feeling around IndyCar. Ten years ago, it felt every positive IndyCar story was suffocated out because of nine negative IndyCar stories. Positivity shines through more today. It isn't a headache to follow IndyCar and nor does something infuriatingly stupid come out of IndyCar on a regular basis.
It could be a combination of myself maturing and learning to not sweat the things out of my control but ten years on and after many missteps during that time I believe IndyCar has also matured as North America's premier open-wheel series.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Kevin Harvick but did you know...
Brett Moffitt won the NASCAR Truck race on Saturday night, his second career Truck victory.
Marco Melandri swept the World Superbike races from Phillip Island. Lucas Mahias won the World Supersport race.
Eli Tomac won the Supercross race from Tampa, his second consecutive victory and fourth of the season.
Coming Up This Weekend
NASCAR will be in Las Vegas.
Supercars opens the 2018 season at Adelaide.
Supercross heads to Atlanta.
Formula E returns to Mexico City.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
