Fabio Quartararo made it two-for-two this MotoGP season, as Quartararo led a Yamaha sweep of the podium ahead of Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi. Marc Márquez tried but decided to sit this one out. NASCAR's caution consistency has gotten worse and the series doesn't seem to care. The plan is for no practice or qualifying for the remainder of 2020 in NASCAR. Formula One announced returns to the Nürburgring and Imola and a debut at Portimão. IndyCar is on the verge of making Mid-Ohio, Gateway and Harvest Grand Prix doubleheaders at the expense of Portland and Laguna Seca. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Welcome to the Experience
Motorsports series around the globe have been doing all they can to remain afloat in 2020. Majority of events have been held behind closed doors or with significant attendance restrictions. Many events were cancelled, notably the Monaco Grand Prix and Grand Prix of Long Beach. Some were postponed. The Indianapolis 500 will be in August, Le Mans will be in September and Sebring will be in November. Everyone is scraping to remain alive. Through all this, one series has emerged from the chaos.
Birthed out of this pandemic, the Superstar Racing Xperience was announced last month, form through the partnership of Tony Stewart, Ray Evernham and former NASCAR COO George Pyne, who saw Nextel take over as title sponsor of the Cup Series.
This series will comprise of six races over six weeks in the summer of 2021 and CBS and CBS All Access will broadcast the events. The plan is for races to take place on short tracks, dirt tracks and possibly a road course with drivers from multiple series coming together.
Evernham will design the car and his goal is for a low downforce, high horsepower automobiles to showcase the drivers' skill. Each race will be 90 minutes in length and broken in half with a halftime break without need for live pit stops.
The announcements drew comparisons to the long-gone International Race of Champions, FastMasters and stillborn TRAC series. It's mission bucks against what NASCAR has professed for the last few seasons. NASCAR adopted a high downforce, low horsepower package ahead of the 2019 season and it has been met with mostly sour responses from fans and drivers. NASCAR has pulled back a bit and lowered the downforce for short tracks and road courses but remains dug in that this is what the fan base wants.
SRX's emphasis on short track again answers the cry long heard from the NASCAR fan base over the desire to move away from 1.5-mile ovals that have proliferated over the past 25 years. NASCAR has been slow to change the makeup of its schedule and it has been seen as an anchor holding the series back.
Make no mistake that SRX is not positioning itself as a rival series to NASCAR. It is not looking to poach the top teams and drivers and hold a 20-race championship at a more affordable cost. However, it is hard to label what this series means to be.
It is not IROC. It is similar and wants to bring together IndyCar, NASCAR, sports car and drivers from multiple series, but it is intended purpose is not to be an all-star, mini championship to determine the best driver.
It is not FastMasters, but the series followed retired drivers such as Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon, Paul Tracy and soon to be retired Jimmie Johnson on Twitter immediately after launching. Tony Stewart confirmed he would compete. The second confirmed driver was Tony Kanaan.
It is not a development series, though Evernham said one hope of the series is to give a driver a "Rocky Balboa type a chance" against some of the top drivers of the 21st century.
I am not sure what this series is and who it is for.
A series including Stewart, Earnhardt, Jr., Gordon, Tracy, Johnson and Kanaan sounded great from 2003 to 2006, but in 2021, does an appetite exist for a senior series? All these drivers are at least in their 40s with Tracy the oldest at 51 years old. All had their share of the fanbase 15 years ago and some still have admirers now, but will people follow to see these drivers compete in a series with an average age of 45?
Competition and saturation led to the demise of IROC. The series had a strong run in the 1990s and into the 2000s, but at the same time NASCAR was growing in popularity, IndyCar split and there were two series and sports car racing split and did the same thing. Television time became tougher to come by. The series lost value to sponsors. Drivers became specialized and isolation from the motorsports world outside their own bubble.
In the mid-2000s, IROC vanished because it could no longer squeeze into the table to get its necessary nutrition.
In the nearly 15 years since IROC folded, things have started to turn around from the hyper-specialization and division that have dominated the last 30 years. We are hungry for an all-star competition that brings together the best of every series. We want something that is different. There are still many obstacles, from sponsorship conflicts and contractual restrictions, but more than ever would an all-star series draw attention.
Drivers are talking about more cross-pollination than they ever did during the heights of IROC. It has been six years since Kurt Busch did The Double, competing in the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. At the time, Busch was the first driver to do it in a decade. Jimmie Johnson is openly flirting with an IndyCar opportunity next year and Johnson will be testing an IndyCar this week on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Kyle Busch is very interested in attempting the Indianapolis 500. Fernando Alonso skipped the Monaco Grand Prix to run Indianapolis and he moved into sports car racing with Toyota while wrapping up his time with McLaren in Formula One.
IndyCar and the NASCAR Cup Series shared a weekend this year and that will likely happen again in 2021 or 2022. The motorsports world is more connected and series are more interested in one another than ever before. An IROC-ish series has legs in 2020, but that isn't necessarily what we will get with SRX.
SRX is looking to stand on its own, and we are seeing that with its desired schedule and television partner. SRX isn't looking to run an additional event when NASCAR is at Bristol or Martinsville or when IndyCar is at Iowa or Gateway. It wants to go to the short tracks below the top level of American motorsports. Regional legends such as Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, Stafford Spring in Connecticut and the Nashville Fairgrounds are the venues Evernham expressed as desired locations. Eldora and Knoxville were two of the dirt tracks listed.
IROC events happen concurrently with NASCAR or IndyCar weekends. A few drivers would have to travel, but some were already at the track. If SRX hopes to attract the current top drivers, it will likely force NASCAR drivers to travel the night before an event and possibly across the country, same for IndyCar. One or two events could fall on idle weekends for the series, but if the hope is for six or eight current drivers to compete there will be conflicts and those conflicts will hurt the series.
Add to it CBS is the television partner for this series. I don't think NBC is going to be accommodating to make sure NASCAR and IndyCar drivers can make a race being shown on CBS.
CBS has been relatively out of the motorsports game since NASCAR left its airwaves in 2000. There were the time-buy Champ Car and American Le Mans Series races and CBS did show a handful of Formula One races but CBS has not had a serious motorsports effort for 20 years. CBS' cable sports network has become a hub for series such as Supercars, Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, World of Outlaws and the SRO GT Series from around the globe, but CBS is not heavily invested in these properties. It is more filler for the cable network. Races are typically shown significantly delayed using world feed announcers.
This series will get a few races on network CBS, but majority will fall behind the CBS All Access paywall, similar to what CBS did with the National Women's Soccer League Challenge Cup that wrapped up this weekend. Events are heading to streaming platforms, but if you are a series with no social capital it is going to be hard to attract a following on a streaming service where events are not broadcasted but narrowcasted.
SRX is setup to be a one-off series that quickly becomes a brief chapter in motorsports history or another entry in the book of failed motorsports experiments. Over the next 12 months the series has to establish its identity, who will be competing, where it will be competing and why it matters. It has to be more than just another filler entity on a cable sports network or streaming service. It has to drum up excitement to survive beyond year one and secure life for the next four or five years.
This series has the fixing to standout and gather a respectable audience but could be suffocated because of the number of competitors and fail to be more than a gnat buzzing in your ear.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Fabio Quartararo but did you know...
Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR Cup race from Kansas, his fifth victory of 2020. Brandon Jones won the Grand National Series race, his second victory of the season. Austin Hill and Matt Crafton split the Truck races, their first victories of 2020 and Crafton's first since Eldora in 2017.
Enea Bastianini won the Moto2 race from Jerez. Tatsuki Suzuki won the Moto3 race. Dominique Aegerter won the MotoE race, his first MotoE victory and first grand prix victory since Germany 2014 in Moto2.
The #31 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi of Kelvin van der Linde, Mirko Bortolotti and Matthieu Vaxivière won the 3 Hours of Imola.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One is back with the British Grand Prix from Silverstone.
NASCAR will be in Loudon.
Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters opens its 2020 season with its first visit to Spa-Francorchamps since 2005.
World Superbike is back in competition and Jerez hosts motorcycles for a third consecutive week.
IMSA is at Road America.
Indy Pro 2000 and U.S. F2000 will run triple-headers at Mid-Ohio.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
