Q: Your concern over the Indy 2024 TV schedule on NBC is not unfounded, however it perfectly fits the pattern of how NBC is now operating. It, along with most other networks, is acting like it really doesn’t want to be in the broadcast business anymore. I’d say IndyCar is still looking pretty good. In years past I used to love sitting down on the weekend and watching English Premiership Rugby and also Biathlon on NBC channels. They have since moved all that to their streaming service, or gotten rid of it totally. I don’t think the bike people were happy with the Tour de France coverage this year. NBC’s MotoGP coverage is only marginally better than what you can get on YouTube.
I hope IMSA can stay on OTA NBC or at least USA, but I fear it will be pushed further off into the ether as well. I just can’t understand why these networks, which can reach almost every American household with a TV and antenna, prefer to broadcast infomercials and local news instead of solid, decent programming. Further proof we are living in Bizarro World.
Travis, Kansas City, MO
MP: Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Travis.
Q: Is there still an IndyCar test in October at IMS?
Phil Berg, Homecroft, IN
MP: Yes, it’s next week.
Q: ‘Who peed on my Cheerios?’ Roger, Miles and Jay; aka The Three Stooges. Larry, Moe, Curly, Shep were professional actors giving a clown show for us. These guys are clowning us. Time-trapped in the survivor days of 2010, they are convinced that they can pee on heads, call it blessed rain and we will lap it up.
Truth is, we are in 2023, the survivor days are over and it’s grow or die time. There is nothing about 2024 that says ‘grow’. It screams ‘2012’.
FYI: I take Cheerios with whole, straight from the farm (in a glass bottle) milk and fresh fruit.
Stephen Archer
MP: Doom, meet gloom.
Q: IndyCar introduced those nice electric signs on the tracks that show what color flag is out. Why is it that they still stick out and wave flags right under these electronic signs? (ED: See this pic from the Mailbag a couple of weeks ago). Seems silly to me. I understand having them there as backup in case the system fails, but waving it right under a working sign?
Craig
MP: Because the many amazing volunteers who make racing possible don’t give their vacation days up to sit and let electronics do their job, and before anyone in IndyCar can spot a problem in a corner and flip a switch, the flaggers are reacting and managing the situation.
Q: I feel I must add something to the matter of the hate that Ilott has been getting from Argentinian fans that is not being sufficiently considered here.
Callum Ilott is British. There are still a great many people in Argentina who were alive during the Falklands War, and who harbor a dangerous level of hatred towards the British. I advise anyone who hasn’t seen it to look up what happened to the Top Gear crew when they visited.
If it were most other parts of the world, or involved a driver of another nationality, I would share your lack of concern. But this situation involves a nation whose citizenry includes members that have previously demonstrated a willingness to attack innocents of a certain nationality over something they had no fault in, and they are now targeting someone else of that nationality.
That Top Gear incident happened barely short of 10 years ago. This is absolutely not something to be taken lightly if IndyCar intends to pursue any racing in Argentina. It needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed soon. If I were Roger Penske, my statement on the matter would be simple, straightforward, and factual: “This kind of behavior is harmful to efforts to stage a race in Argentina.”
FormulaFox
MP: I’m in full agreement that IndyCar needs to do more, and faster, when the next social media firestorm of hate appears.
Q: For years, I’ve been hearing about IndyCar’s Leaders Circle and for some reason I thought that if I would just keep watching IndyCar or reading RACER.com I would someday understand what this group is and what they do and how they control things.
But no, I don’t get any of it. No other form of racing has ‘Leaders Circles’ making decisions. Do they wear dark robes and bang gavels and participate in hazing and initiation rituals? Do they light candles around pictures of Carl Fisher during a seance?
Can you explain in a basic, Moron 101 way what Leaders Circle means and when/why is it the cornerstone of everything IndyCar?
Brad, Hollywood
MP: Your depiction of the Leaders Circle is awesome, BTW, Brad. Blood oaths. Secret handshakes. Human sacrifices. It’s got it all.
OK, here we go:
In the mid-2000s, the smaller IndyCar teams grew tired of the big teams earning the vast majority of prize money, and made the argument that there was no way the ‘have nots’ would level up and compete with the ‘haves’ if that prize money payout inequity was allowed to continue.
And since the IndyCar Series set aside a bunch of money each year to pay for the top finishers of its races, and since that was the Hulman George family’s money to give, they sided with the bottom half of the grid and decided to take that big annual prize money fund — more than $20 million — and create a socialized program that would distribute it equally among full-time entries.
The Indy 500 was the only exception, because that big purse was an impressive number to tout, but the rest of it was split across the full-time entries, and in round numbers, the new Leaders Circle program guaranteed $1 million per entry in exchange for the contract recipients’ agreeing to appear at every race.
This gave the series a large and guaranteed grid to present to its promoters and ensured the biggest and smallest teams got the same majority slice of prize money. Now, there was and is still a prize money payout for the top finishers, but it’s tiny compared to what it once was.
And to make the Leaders Circle program a competition-based thing, the series capped the amount of contracts it would award, which helped to keep some of the worst entries from getting paid despite doing nothing to earn that $1 million. I hope that helps.