Except Watkins Glen didn't have an IndyCar race sponsor and failed attract a decent crowd.
So?
Pocono Raceway, on the other hand, has an IndyCar race sponsor and the attendance has grown every year. With Pocono Raceway losing their 2nd NASCAR race weekend next year, it's a prime opportunity for both Pocono Raceway and IndyCar to attract an even larger crowd.
So?
In case you're forgetting, what you said in this discussion about a track's safety was that I should care more about how people want to go see the track in person (as if a race track has never had a series drop it at any point in the past) and how much money the race makes for the series more than I should care about my own long-held feelings of the track's safety relative to other similar tracks. Repeating that people want to go see the race in person and that the race makes money is not a rebuttal for that; even ignoring the fact that if it was replaced with another venue
people may want to go see that and it may also make money.
See above motorsport.com article. Dixon, Power, and Pagenaud still want to race there.
I like how you think just because the actual quotes were posted, that we both were clearly already aware of since you already referenced them and I already acknowledged them, I'm supposed to change my mind for whether I want them back at that track.
They're much more experienced than the part-time drivers who are too scared to do their job.
I'm sure Wickens would love to hear that if he hadn't become paralyzed in his rookie year, he would have gained enough experience to not be afraid of future racing on the track where it happened. You should get on Twitter and let him know.
I offered a sound engineering solution, raising the SAFER j
ob barriers to the height of the catch fence would make any superspeedway safer for any race car.
Great. IRL can look into returning to the track
after it is done, along with changes to get better medical team response times, elimination of the sections of wall that are still just concrete, and the garbage decrepit catch fencing that wouldn't be covered with SAFER barrier.
All you have you have to do is look at all the ovals IndyCar has lost in the past 20 years. Even NASCAR is dealing with falling attendance at ovals.
Yeah, that's not proof that a circuit would rather not have an event
at all than have an IRL race.
On that note:
Why wouldn't Pocono Raceway want to make safety improvements to keep their IndyCar race?
So it's in Pocono's best interest to have an IRL race instead of nothing, but not all those other tracks across the US that are capable of hosting a race to replace it (even in the short term, and even if they don't need to do anything to be up to snuff in that way)?
It's in their best interest to do so.
Great. IRL can look into returning to the track
after it is done, along with changes to get better medical team response times, elimination of the sections of wall that are still just concrete, and the garbage decrepit catch fencing that wouldn't be covered with SAFER barrier.
First of all, it's hasn't been called the IRL since 2002.
It says a lot that you think this is important enough to make specific note of in a discussion about track/driver safety; as if it was something I wasn't somehow aware of in a thread where the current series title is in the title.
Secondly, Pocono Raceway, IndyCar, ABC Supply, NASCAR, and Gander RV could all pitch in for track improvements that could be completed in time for next year's races. Once again, it's in everyone's best interest to do so.
Great. IRL can look into returning to the track
after it is done, along with changes to get better medical team response times, elimination of the sections of wall that are still just concrete, and the garbage decrepit catch fencing that wouldn't be covered with SAFER barrier.
You getting the theme yet, or are you going to post more about how the series should automatically commit to a return to the track before any improvements are actually made (since ticket sales are good and it makes money, I guess)?
Which superspeedways are actively trying to host an IndyCar race?
I don't know. You were the one essentially claiming that non-Pocono tracks would rather have no event at all than host a race to potentially replace the one at Pocono. It's not my job to prove otherwise; and certainly not so when IRL hasn't committed to returning to Pocono
or working to find a new venue.
I'm curious why you think I should care about
this either, though, since I already said that I'm not particularly bothered by two superspeedways on the schedule if (somehow) the only track in the entire country that is willing to host a third superspeedway race is Pocono as the track is now.
And how exactly do you hope to convince another superspeedway to host an IndyCar race when you're willing to dump a superspeedway with a race sponsor and attendance that has grown every single year?
A contract ran out in a race that has had headlining, horrifically-bad-optics wrecks for three out of the last four years. Some drivers, regardless of how much you want to downplay their opinions as being irrelevant because they're just inexperienced cowards, have publicly commented that they would rather the series not go back there. You type in... let's see... NTT
™ IndyCar
™ Series
™, and at the top of the page are articles and editorials about how bad the wreck was, whether the track is too dangerous to race on in those cars, calls for the track to be abandoned by the series, and how drivers are divided for whether the series should continue racing there. That's after the entirety of yesterday and Sunday where there were nothing but tweets about how they zip-tied a gate from a dog kennel to the damaged area and that it took over two minutes for anyone to check on Felix. That's on top of the usual constant hum about how ovals are inherently too unsafe for open wheel cars, which is something I already said I don't agree with.
It probably wouldn't be difficult to justify why the series moved on when searching for a new track to host a race; and the series may even come out of it looking better than before.
One more thing:
And why should your illogical discomfort
[MOD Edit]I'm not some whiny prick on Jalopnik who only brings up the series when writing articles about how IRL is hopelessly dangerous because they haven't grafted hideous goiters onto their cars like F1 and they are needlessly risking driver's lives by racing on ovals at all. I don't like this specific track. I never liked this specific track. I think the design of this specific track and the accident history of this specific track merits the powers that be not saying they are returning at least until
after things about this specific track are changed.
I don't like it in NASCAR, where I've seen wrecks so violent that it ripped engine blocks off of cars and hurled them a hundred yards away, so bad that the driver got on the radio and breathed a sigh of relief that he lived through it, and where cars flew into the inside fencing so violently that the race was delayed for over an hour and shortened while they fixed the
highway guardrail that still lined the infield of the track at the time
I don't like it in IRL, where in the span of three years one driver was killed and one driver was paralyzed from the waist down; and the cars themselves seem way too fast (even when the cars have been relatively slow and are set to be much faster next year) and aero-dependant to not cause violent wrecks where cars fling up in the air before landing upside down on fire to also add "very difficult to set up" on top of it.
I don't really like it period, when it's main selling point has always been how it's hard to get cars tuned right for it and to drive it, how most of the track is laid out so you can run 3 wide except the turn where the crash happened Sunday, how seemingly any wreck is going to be a hard one because the runoff is limited and the banks are all shallow, where red flags due to accidents seem as common as regular caution periods, and how the track has always had a lackadaisical attitude towards safety that only started changing when the original owner of it died.
I would be willing to overlook it once it was brought up to the standards similar to that of IMS, even if I still don't like the track's design or the racing it promotes. They installed significantly more SAFER barrier I believe last year, which is absolutely a step forward (especially since it was a proactive change this time), but it still has the same problems with 🤬 catch fencing. It still has the same problems with terrible sightlines for race spotters. Now we can seemingly add awful response times from medical staff to horrific looking accidents.
No amount of "well a lot of people want to go see it in person," "it makes money," or "this premiere nationally televised open wheel racing series somehow couldn't possibly find another oval venue for a race in their schedule in a country that has dozens of oval tracks and has previously raced ovals internationally and two superspeedways isn't enough" is going to change my feelings on whether they should race there as the track is now, and you can take your posturing that it should and shove it. I'd be more receptive to arguments from the drivers for its future, but you blew any chance of that argument being taken seriously when you contextualized it as if any driver expressing preference to not return to Pocono was merely cowardice.
