Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

Here’s what’s wrong with the IRL.

Well, one of the things, there are a ton of things wrong with the IRL.  Bob Kravitz says for the Star on the matter of Danica Patrick jumping from Rahal/Letterman to AGR:

But back to George. He and the IRL didn’t want Patrick back; they needed her back. Their very existence depended on it. And it’s fair to assume, if Andretti Green’s stable of corporate sponsors had not come through with an offer to entice Patrick to stay, George would have reached deep into his pockets and found a way to keep his most important driver in the family.

Let’s be honest: Without Danica, the IRL was toast. And don’t tell me, “Well, they have lots of terrific drivers and Marco Andretti is going to be a star some day.’’ Simply stated, the IRL without Danica would have been the PGA without Tiger Woods. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t won a race, or that this season, she hadn’t even come close while driving the inferior Panoz chassis through the Indianapolis 500. If she had decided to bolt for NASCAR, George might as well have pulled up his stakes and turned the Speedway into the home of the world’s biggest flea market.

And he’s right.  The IRL NEEDS Danica Patrick, who has never even come close to winning a race.  She’s competent, but not as much a driver as she is a gimmick.  IRL can’t drum up any interest for itself on the basis of its product (which, if you like oval courses, is decent), so instead they try to prop her up as its hot superstar.  They have her unbuttoning her top for Honda, getting the windblown treatment for Secret, stripping down for FHM, and the IRL hopes that this will make someone pay attention to it.  So far they’ve been disappointed.  (That may have something to do with the fact that Patrick, while an attractive enough woman, is not exactly in demand at Victoria’s Secret for modeling jobs.) She’s pretty and personable, but people who don’t give a damn about open wheel racing aren’t going to start because it features a girl-next-door who isn’t winning.  It didn’t work when the girl was the slightly less glamorous Sarah Fisher (now relegated to an obscure NASCAR minor-league series) and it’s not going to work with the girl they’ve got now.  Even if she does someday manage to win a race, that might be good for a short-term bump.  A lot of people will watch the NEXT race, Patrick will get spun out by Ed Carpenter, and that’s the end of the story.

To fix this permanently is going to take the impossible.  Anton is going to have to swallow some pride, check some ego, get Kevin Kalkoven on the phone and ask him what it’s going to take to get this done.  Meanwhile, as George and Kalkoven sword fight over whose series is better, more and more manufacturers are getting involved in American LeMans:  Aston Martin, Porsche (with Penske), IRL driver Bryan Herta has asked to be moved into Andretti-Green’s new Acura ALMS entry, and Audi has brought over its turbo diesel R10 to up the ante.  ALMS features the manufacturers, about a dozen former Formula One, Champ Car and IRL drivers, far better and more sophisticated technology than either IRL or CCWS (nearly on a par with F1), women drivers who race without fanfare and actually win, and has an anchor race in LeMans with far more international visibility than the vastly diminished Indianapolis 500.  American sportscar racing is poised to overtake open wheel while George fiddles and IRL burns. 

But hey, they signed the girl for another three years.