David Phillips - Lessons from the USGP
At the risk of kicking the Speedway when it's down, right now several million disenfranchised fans of American open-wheel racing are probably thinking, if not saying aloud, "How does it feel?"
After all, a fair number of them probably felt "victimized" when they showed up at Phoenix and Indianapolis in 1996 expecting to see Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr. and Bobby Rahal race, and, instead, found they'd paid good money to watch Paul Durant, Fermin Velez and Jim Guthrie do battle in quest of the inaugural Indy Racing League title.
Phillips goes on to smack around everyone in open wheel racing in America but the above is not something I'd thought about. I was actually starting to feel sorry for the folks at IMS but not anymore. I still feel horrible for people that made the treck to IMS for the USGP, including a friend at work, but this should be a great lesson for the IRL folks and a great taste of the medicine they dished out. Egos and pride have destroyed open wheel racing in America. Let's see if this hard lesson will help fix the problem.
Posted by Tim at June 22, 2005 06:13 AM
