[johntt]

Originally Posted by Leighton Irwin

The IRL may be facing problems but open wheel racing is not, just TG's bunch.
The sprint car and midget scene are both doing fine. The WoO had more full time regulars than ever and always had full fields. The Knoxville Nationals had over 120, yes 120, cars vying for 24 starts in the A Main. Fields of more than 40 cars trying for the 24 A main spots were not uncommon. On occasion the WoO regulars would get beaten. Rarely but then almost always by a member of the Pennsysvania Posse, many of whom are former WoO drivers. The WoO is a tough grind with 80 races planned for 2009 all over NA. Quite a few drivers last only a few years before going back to circuits with less races and travel.
The various groups at least semi cooperate and drivers with say the All Stars can run in WoO races with no penalties. Some of the WoO drivers will run with other organizations on occassion.

The 360 Sprint cars are getting more and more starters.
Even the 'living 30 years behind the times' USAC is beginning to look good with their new 'Gold Crown' cars after the total disaster with their 'new Silver Crown' cars.
Hopefully they will have lost some of their arrogance that enabled the WoO and the All Stars to become so popular.

It is great to see that kind of open wheel doing well, we don't get any coverage of it over here (beyond highlights on Speed TV's podcasts) but its on my 'too see' list in terms of motorsport.

The problem is these cars lost all relevence to Indycars as soon as the rear engined revolution had swept through Indycar, these championships became Nascar feeders because of their front engined, big V8 configuration.