IndyCar Series

[bill shoe]

The reality is that Fernando Alonso's tendency to publicly criticize his teams and suppliers when things are not going well or to his liking has cost him more than one top-flight motor racing opportunity.

I'm a Fernando fan but that's sadly true. He's been right about pretty much everything he's said in public, but sometimes keeping doors open is more important than being right in public. Even if you have great driving skills.

I sometimes wonder if RB tolerates and even subtly encourages Max to complain about Red Bull and other teams/drivers so that he'll pigeonhole himself into only being employable at Red Bull (among the top 3 teams).

Hail-Mary attempt at thread relevance: Wouldn't it be crazy-cool for Max to run the Indy 500 next year? Should be easy to put him in an Andretti car with Honda engine! That's how you'd double the U.S. consumption of Red Bull within a month.

[mzso]

By the way. Does anyone know how long Indycar's TV deals are supposed to last?
Last year I could follow it easily, but now no channel broadcasts it, it's friggin exclusive now...
I tried watching some races on shady streams, but they were usually were of these insufferable abominations of american channels with 2 minute advertisement blocks every five minutes. Unwatchable.

[strad]

Sebastien Bourdais is leaving Indycars.
He is parting ways with Dale Coyne and is going to IMSA in 2020.
He had4 years to go on his contract but lost the support from Honda.

[bill shoe]

The Hulman-George family had a couple of reasonable offers from Racing/Media companies, but at the last second Tony George decided to approach Roger Penske and that was the deal that got done. After some 25 years of Tony screwing up Indycar racing (or at least being thoroughly unable to fix its problems) does he come out of this with a halo for saving Indycar from a worse fate? Did Tony's personal wisdom and decision-making give my kids and grandkids a chance to watch American Indycar racing 40 years in the future?

[strad]

One can hope Bill, one can hope.

[gshevlin]

Sebastien Bourdais is leaving Indycars.
He is parting ways with Dale Coyne and is going to IMSA in 2020.
He had 4 years to go on his contract but lost the support from Honda.

The sub-text to this is simple: lack of money in Indycar. The sport is precariously financed. I read a claim a few weeks ago that only about a third of the Indycar drivers are actually paid any significant salaries by their teams. Bourdais, being a 4 time series champion, expected to be paid properly, so I suspect he has been dumped to make way for a driver with outside sponsorship. After a suitable mourning period, I expect that James Hinchcliffe will be announced as his replacement. Hinch has money from Honda Canada since he is their paid spokesperson.
Apart from a possible one-off at Indy, that may be the end of Sebastien Bourdais' Indycar career.
Indycar desperately needs one or two new engine suppliers, if only because they will bring more promotional money into the sport, which will allow the teams to actually make some money and allow all of the drivers to be paid properly.
Robin Miller just wrote about the whole driver shuffling process here. https://racer.com/2019/11/25/miller-the ... of-racing/
Bottom line: It's all about the money (or lack of it).

[strad]

for decades in all forms of racing money has been the big deciding factor

[gshevlin]

All motor racing is expensive, but open wheel racing has more structural problems than sports cars and stock car racing. The series rules and regulations and the management of the series always seem to result in a mismatch between budgets and revenues, which in turn forces prospective drivers to form relationships either with entrepreneurs who take a large chunk of their future earnings, or with long-term sponsors. Formula 1 established the model for drivers either bringing sponsorship or being paid by other benefactors, and other open wheel series have followed.
Without either of these forms of assistance, drivers mostly drop out and move to other forms of racing where they can actually make a proper living.
We also have to watch train-wreck scandals like Giedo Van der Gaarde vs. Sauber, where a struggling team kept signing drivers with sponsorship just to survive, which ended badly for both parties.

[Andres125sx]

I think that both Mclaren and Fernando Alonso have dynamited the bridge back to Honda for the forseeable future.

Do you think that comment about GP2 engine is worse than 2007 situation at McLaren? I read so much comments about McLaren after 2007 it was almost comical when they signed a new deal in 2014

I think you guys provide too much relevance to a comment on the heat of a race. For Honda what was embarrasing was his perfomance, not Alonso´s comments



Alonso deal with Toyota is a much bigger problem to sign with Andretti tough, first for WEC, now for Dakar. But they´re very different categories so who knows...

[Morteza]

https://twitter.com/RACERmag/status/122 ... 51040?s=19

[jjn9128]

That's big! He's clearly P/O'd Honda big time, there's gotta be more to it that the "GP2 engine" stuff.

[Jolle]

That's big! He's clearly P/O'd Honda big time, there's gotta be more to it that the "GP2 engine" stuff.

Duh.. he got McLaren so far to abandon the Honda project early for Renault so he could sign a contract with Toyota.

[bill shoe]

He's a great driver, but he's GOAT at burning bridges. I'm surprised his current ride-seeking effort went this far before getting a confirmed no.

[Morteza]

Arrow McLaren SP's liveries
Pato







Oliver

[jjn9128]

I think they're gonna have to rethink some of the onboard angles