Quote:
Originally posted by cybersdorf
That's a question about the son!
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To Fab:
Seriously,
There has been a TON of flak over Michael, after becoming a team owner in open-wheeled racing, moving his team and operations from Champ Cars (CART) to the Indy Racing League....
and add to that Michael's "less than positive comments about CART after he left when it was the Series that really put him on the map (on his merits as a driver, without riding the coatails of his last name)...."
followed by a nice layer of Mario's views from the very beginning of the "Open-Wheel Feud" concerning the impact of Tony Geoerge and the IRL would and has had on the future of open-wheeled racing (Mario has been very public and very critical of TG and the IRL)....when in many people's eyes, Champ Cars was just fine as one series in 1994 and 1995....the "new league' was divisive and was going to kill the sport...
Thus you can see why he doesn't want to get into it....Mario's views on the IRL are well-known, and his son immediately jumped to the racing series that his father is so critical of when he became a team owner.....
Then to Cap it all Off:
These "diverse opinions within the Andretti family" (how diplomatic is that?) have been hashed, re-hashed, reheated, and overcooked for the past 20 months by every journalist who either follows auto racing, or is just an "Entertainment Tonight" type who doesn't have a clue , but "read something somewhere" about it so it is the first question they ask Mario when they talk to him....whther the interview was about him as a person, his winery business, or anything else....
Mario is probably sick and tired of giving the same answers to the same question that has been out there for nearly two years now....
I don't blame him....
Mario is his own man....
Michael is his own man...and Michael did what he thought was best for his business...after all, the team he bought into had a long-standing relationship with Honda when he bought it....Honda didn't stay in CART...it went to the IRL...that was one of many reasons why the "prodigal son" left the series where he made his bones....
Sorry for the long explanation, Fab, but the whole open-wheel thing in the U.S. reads like a cheap soap opera....
And Mario is probably as tired of talking about it as racing fans are of reading about it....
Hope that helps to answer your question...