Would the Indycar Series be healthier without Penske, Andretti, and Gannasi?

[Xpunk75]

First off I want to say I’m just playing devil’s advocate here and that I respect all three teams and owners because they know how to win, do everything it takes to win, and know how to setup their cars for the Oval and Road Courses better than anyone else in the series.

However I believe that these three teams may be holding the series back from growing due to their political power over the IRL management and their sheer dominance of almost every race. At this point I fail to see what these teams even gain by racing the entire season other than Indy besides the winner purses from each race. It’s like having 3 Great White Sharks in a tank of filled fat docile seals….it’s not contest.

Last season was probably the best racing we had in years because the car was new and all the teams were still coming to terms with that disaster. However I see things going back to the way they were before this season with the Big 3 dominating once again due to the spec series cars being identical to last season and they just being better at everything they do and having more money to do it with.

What are your thoughts 10 Tenths?

[Paradise City]

No. Doing without those teams is like doing without Ferrari or McLaren in F1. They all field multicar teams so there is variety and they are the ones who command the most stable budgets.

Roger moves between ruthlessness and sentiment but is sane. Both Andretti and Ganassi are unwise and shortsighted but their influence is inevitably high as the series executive is weak. Andretti shoulders some of the promotion of the events so that's more power to him. That's the political dynamics as far as I can discern it and that won't change until series executives are brought to order and they start to deliver. Team bosses should fall inline if they know their basic interests are being protected - albeit that's a principle that's easier for me to type than to see it in real time!

[HJJ]

Dump question. It's the spec car/package and the people who run it.

:AWOwheelfail:

[marcostraz]

Absolutly not...would NBA be healthier without Lakers, Celtics and Spurs? Would Premier League be healthier without Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool? Every series is great also thanks to its protagonists...

[Yannick]

No, I don't think so. Those teams and their other organisations are involved in quite a big way in the organisation of the series, acting also as race promoters for example.

One thing I like about US open wheel racing is that it's not always the same teams up front like in F1. Of course, during the glory years of the IRL you had the Big 3 and in the early part of the reunification, it was the "red cars" dominating the field, but up to the late 90s in CART, the number of teams which could score wins regularly was much bigger: Penske, Ganassi, Newman/Haas, Forsythe, Team Green (now Andretti), Rahal, Walker and the occasional win by others. Then again, none of those had 3 or 4 drivers regularly but just 2 at the most.

I think watching the racing would be much more fun if we could turn from a Big 3 of regular winning teams to a Big 6 or a Big 7 even. The new car is actually giving me hope for something like this because in its inaugural season, it's already been 5 different teams which have won races.

Yes, things could go either way in the car's 2nd season. Nevertheless, it's exciting to watch how it turns out. There is no need to worry about things maybe getting stale again now because they are not.

However, locking out racers like Michael Shank who have proven they can be successfull and want to dedicate themselves to IndyCar as full time entrants just cannot be good for competition or the series, especially given the number of teams which have left the series since the unification. But F1 has been doing that, too, a few years ago, and it didn't hurt the series.

I guess we have to wait and see how things are developing.

[NaBUru38]

I can only add one more thing: if Penske, Ganassi and Andretti left, other teams would take their place. I prefer having stable top teams, like marcostraz said.

[Paradise City]

It's a pity Shank didn't get in. He runs a stable operation but won't be do it if it's haphazard.