Saturday, September 22, 2007

Sept. 21-22 newsstand

It's been reported in several places already, but Cavin reports it again, that Ryan Briscoe is the leading candidate to replace Sam Hornish Jr. at Penske, should Sam go south.

Speaking of Sam, he's now 0-for-2 in Cup qualifying.

More on revenue sharing
The Indianapolis Business Journal checks in with the revenue-sharing story.
As usual, the IBJ comes through with a great, well-researched story that analyzes the revenue-sharing issue in extreme detail. The story says the IRL could pay out $36 million in $$ to teams next year, about $10 million more than this year, with the profits from the MotoGP race at IMS possibly paying for it. The story also says there will be "significant" bonus money for the top five in each race and the top five in the series standings.

It also says "industry experts" (who they are, we don't know) said several former IRL teams and some who have never been part of the series have expressed interest in joining the league.

Milwaukee bliss?
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Dave Kallman say the IRL wants more from The Milwaukee Mile.

The feeding frenzy, part XVIII
There are few more syncophatic groups than the NASCAR media, who are always happy to parrot the party line and, while supposed to be unbiased, refer to NASCAR as "our sport" a lot. And, as we've seen, the last few weeks have been a feeding frenzy for them. It's interesting -- almost like 10 years ago again. Back then, we endured the CART people telling the world that the IRL was a minor-league series full of hack drivers. Now, it's the NASCAR crowd. A couple more people check in ...

Ed Hinton says Big Bill France finally got his revenge for the 1955 incident in which he got tossed out of IMS, with a few gratuitous shots at the IRL in the process.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Bob Lipper says the IRL is racing into oblivion without stars. Uh, yeah. Dan Wheldon & Danica Patrick were hotter commodities than Dario Franchitti before the end of May this year, and suddenly the world is coming to an end for the IRL. My only question is ... would this feeding frenzy have started if Dario had gone to ALMS, if planned, instead of NASCAR?

Meanwhile, David Allen from the Chicago Sun-Times says the "help wanted" sign is out, and mentions A.J. Allmendinger might be angling to come back into racecars.

Other stuff
This week's official IRL news & notes deals with John Lewis' move to VP of Marketing, ABC Supply extending its sponsorship of the Milwaukee race, IPS testing and a few other items.

The "other side"
Robin Miller explores how Champ Car sold out a couple of drivers, including Oriol Servia, to try to keep its Mexico event afloat.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Brian France does not own the hallowed Indy track, nor does he need to. It lies prostrate at his feet, beholden to him. Without Indy's NASCAR race, the Allstate 400, speedway chieftain Tony George could ill afford to keep pouring money down the hole of his folly, the Indy Racing League."
I wonder if he compared the amount of tickets sold for Brickyard and the 500.

All I'm gonna say is pride cometh before the fall--this is the same kind of talk we saw out of the republican party going into last novembers election. Just sayin'.