Wind Tunnel - 24.02.2008 (Champcar/IRL Merger)
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Wind Tunnel show from February 24th 2008 where Dave Despain is joined by Robin Miller to discuss the Champcar/IRL merger.
Includes interviews with Tony George, Kevin Kalkhoven, Mario Andretti & Jacques Villeneuve.
I miss SPEED Channel and Wind Tunnel so bad. Both Dave Despain and Robin Miller are awesome.
Watching Speed channel with my dad growing up in the early to mid 2000's was some of the greatest memories ill cherish.
who's here after Penske bought IMS and finally won the war
Me
Of course, that's a late delivered punch line!
@@fdzaviation Oh, the butthurt!
@@Ryeblue Indycar today needs more oval
@@matpk Milwaukee after Indy needs to happen again. Could even move the Road America date right after and have Wisconsin Fest.
RIP, Mr. Robin Miller.
Best show ever ! Miss wind tunnel
Dave Despain was a big part of my becoming interested in Motorsports. Robin Miller, God rest his soul, was a large part as well, but in fairness I found him through Dave.
And my interest has waned since WindTunnel went away. In truth I only clicked on this because I saw Dave in the thumbnail. Man, that was a great show.
Tony George, the man who killed open wheel in the US, just as it was gaining popularity world-wide.
RIP Robin Miller, this was his scoop
What a great show. A show that talked about all racing.
Miss Wind Tunnel. Even when it went to just Sunday night, it was a great way to recap all things racing.
Big Roy boy if wind tunnel was still on today Penske buying IMS would have been a huge show.
Two things I swear we never noticed
1) 43:04 Robin Miller predicted/called Danica's win at Motegi in April
2) Dave saying Ryan Newman won the Indy 500 when he won the Daytona 500 and Robin FAILED to correct him on it...
How ironic! I just watched a video talking about the specific weekend of the Motegi/Long Beach merger race weekend.
could you imagine if the masters or us open didn’t allow the golf pros from the PGA tour to compete at those Crown Jewels of golf ? What Tony George did in 1996 is like USGA or Augusta National Golf Club saying that their own in house golf amateurs are better than the pros that have massive popularity. Also remember Tony George saying that it would be “more american” and he wanted the little guys to run at USAC to showcase their midget and sprit car drivers which were going to NASCAR. The biggest one was Jeff Gordon from Indiana. That might have been a reason why he created the IRL to stop another Jeff Gordon from going to NASCAR. That didn’t work because Tony Stewart left to NASCAR in 1999. Tony George was a train wreck for indycar and they are still picking up the pieces from his shit in the 90s.
Could you imagine what might have been if CART hadn't been run by a bunch of Fat Cat elitists in the early 90s who only cared about enriching themselves at the expense of giving up some power that would have headed off the concerns of Tony George? Could you imagine what might have been if the Fat Cats like Carl Haas hadn't treated Tony George and the Speedway like they were just another ordinary racetrack and recognized the Speedway needed to have a greater say in matters? And that things had gotten out of hand with too much street racing and that costs were out of control and that too many superteams were dominating? I always find it funny how CART Kool-Aid drinkers of which Mr. Mush tops the list with his repetitive posts and his psycho-stalking obsession with TG, have within them this belief in the immaculate perfection and odor-freeness of CART. CART in 1994 was a shit series dominated by elite superteams loaded with boring street races and drivers who with the final retirements of the Old Guard who went back to the days when Indy Car racing was special, had zero charisma and appeal to American race fans. Tony George made some bad mistakes that didn't help, but spare me this shit about CART being so perfect in 1994 when it wasn't.
Except CART was the best until about 2001 when The Spilt finally lost almost all sponsorship money because a crybaby Tony George wanted to reset to an era that will never come back and refused to negotiate?
Greg Norman must have read that comment. He formed a rival a golf league.
RIP Robin Miller
Rodger Penske just bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway !
Wow. The merger was nearly nine years ago.
The whole split has garnered a lot of winners and losers in and around the racing world, and when you look at the starting lineup for the inaugural Indy 200 in 1996 and the lineups for the CART races that year, the racers in the two series followed divergent paths towards different destinies. Tony Stewart became a NASCAR legend, Scott Sharp won the 2016 24 Hours of Daytona, and Jeff Krosnoff, Michele Alboreto, Greg Moore, and Scott Brayton were killed. David Kudrave and Dennis Vitolo were gently ushered out of the top tier.
Same with the team owners; Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi, and Michael Andretti dominate the current podium. John Menard has moved over to NASCAR.
As for the tracks, some ovals have become major losers; no longer do they race at Milwaukee, Charlotte, New Hampshire, or Michigan, and Walt Disney World Speedway and Chicago Motor Speedway no longer exist. Great to see that the current series runs at Pocono.
There are also no longer any races in Europe (remember when they went to Brands Hatch?), South America, Vancouver, or Surfer's Paradise.
Al Mattei nearly 10 years now
Might as well add Edmonton to the mix now.
Al Mattei Dane forget about Tony Renna and Paul Dana
However Greg Moore was the Martyr of the split. He could have won a few INDY 500s and INDYCAR series championships by now if he didn’t tragically die in 1999.
It killed Paul Tracy's remaining senior years in Champ Car since Gerry Forsythe decided not to join. With that disappointment, it was a necessary evil to 'reunify'.
To me (as a British Indycar and f1 fan) indycar should be a 30% max street track 30%ish road track 30% oval( in roughly 10% thirds of 1 mile short/ 1.5 mile oval /2mile plus super speedways) series the last 10 % is the bit you can change a little bit each year and be creative with e.g give more of what fans want year to year either more ovals or road courses and also the mixed categories like the old Rio oval(r.i.p) /Cleveland airport/ a roval/ an oval that in wet weather changes into a roval race/ a dirt oval? With a 20 round championship you can do the math and realise what is missing …… and standing starts on all tracks ( even ovals if track is long (Indy) or pit lane is long enough for starting straight … that’s my 10 cents/pence worth!
I was always a cart fan because of the cars and drivers. By the end i could see the product wasn't the same. Since the merger I've tried to watch IndyCar but can't get into it. I find myself watching races from the 90s and enjoying them. And i went back to f1 more too. I really tried to give it a try but couldn't get into it
Jean Pepin to bad he had to wait before going bankrupt after nascar was not making shit tons of money at IMS after the 2008 tire mismanagement.
The irony is now in 2024 that indycar is currently everything Tony George broke away from in the first place!
If only Jacques Villenueve came back to IRL in 2007 instead of wasting time in Nascar. Could have been singed by Ganassi, Andretti or Penske. Won another Indy 500 and allot more races. By the time he came back in 2014 he was too old.
it would have been funny if he did that and ended up winning the 2008 indy 500 (both the win before the split and after the reunification)
I thought Jacques Villanueve had joined F1 at that point ....
@@jcngokai-76 By 2008 JV had already been to F1 and was over a year away from being fired by BMW (his last ride) after crashing at Hockenheim
My thoughts exactly. In 2007 he was still only 35 or 36 and still capable of winning. In 08 he finished 2nd at the 24 hours of Le Mans, only beaten by the dominant Audi R10 of Mcnish and Kristenson.
Oh, the irony when TG agrees that Indycar should aim to be like CART in its heyday! :(
MIKIEC71 someone should have told him that in 1994-96 but he was getting that NASCAR money thinking he hit gold and was the best auto racing executive in the world and F1 coming in was even better but quickly flopped. He should have stayed with CART no matter how much he disagreed and just formed a team with ALL Americans in CART which he easily could have afforded.
The comment about car counts @10:02 is an issue that has still not been resolved. And now, Vasser and Kalkhoven are gone from the series. It's nice to see Juncos stepping up, I hope they make it. The one good thing that the IRL had was cost control. Now we have lost teams like Treadway, Kelley, Panther, Conquest & PDM forever. Likewise, Dreyer & Reinbold only show up for Indy these days. People forget how big an impact the collapse of the Can-AM series in the early 1980's had on the growth of CART later that decade. I just don't see where the next influx of IndyCar teams will come from.
IMSA could possibly help if it continues to grow.
If NASCAR continues to drive itself into the ground face first, maybe
The Open Wheel Unification was first depicted in the February 24, 2008 episode of Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain which was aired every Monday Evenings at 10:00 P.M. on Net 25 and was later depicted during the February 28 episode of the Net 25 Sports Championship Television Magazine
CART rivaled F1, it was an incredible series, and they had to give in to Tony George, knowing that it wouldn't be what CART was, and fact is IRL and now Indycar have never come close to what CART was. You don't have F1 drivers leaving the series to come to Indycar, they come to Indycar because it's what they can get. You think Rossi wouldn't rather be in F1? Newgarden? Then you have people who probably couldn't cut it in F1 like Will Power and Dixon who drove me from watching Indycar. Penske domination...same. Watching Marco ride his last name around for decades, never winning anything...it's just not a great series. Good, not great. CART was great.
You have F1 teams coming over full time (cough McLaren). Rossi has said numerous times that he would rather be in IndyCar because he hates the politics of F1. Stop acting like CART wasn’t the same. Mansell came over to IndyCar because he didn’t want to race with Alain Prost as a teammate in Williams. Johannson? Mark Blundell? All those guys were also “F1 rejects”. What’s your point here
Mansell was fired because Prost didn't want him as a teammate, not the other way around.
@@danielhenderson8316 *refused to renew his contract
Champ car was a joke from 2002-2007
I miss Robin Miller,the fans voice for open wheel racing in the US.
Jacqueline villeneuve is my favorite indy cart driver
I miss wind tunnel.
Man, I miss Dave Despain having this show.
What did the split accomplish in the first place ?
Ego satisfaction
Also eliminating IndyCar as a competitor to NASCAR's success
TG wanted more USAC short trackers in the Indy 500, who weren't good enough to get in the traditional way. He made his own series so they could get in by default.
@@AlonsoRules with not one care about the tradition of the Indy 500 with the 25/8 rule.
Tony turned the 500 into a spec race and the IRL a spec series. Now the cars are uglier than ever and fans haven't come back.
Tony George had the leverage. Who does Kalkhoven think he is?
Boooo.
Just as with the Grand-Am-Alms merger the wrong series with the dumbed down cars assumed authority.
Imagine an amazing parellel universe where the current indycars were based on the lola/reynard heritage and the current TUSC series were based on p2s with a few p1s around instead of those ugly Dps
Kk, you said you could've funded this thing forever. There was really no need to sell out , the human sisters were so close to pulling the rug from under tg's ego.
*sigh* what might have been
+cdname47 I fucking hate the IRL and Tony George
IRL dumb down the series to have Americans win the Indy 500 and it was a embarrassment to Open Wheel racing, CART/Champ Car should of been the authority figure
Now indycar is improving these days but still fuck Tony George.
I also agree with you about ALMS-Grand Am, Grand Am taking over is the reason WEC will be superior to United Sportscar Series
cdname47 the last Champ cars were unsafe. Paul Tracy broke his back doing 35 because the nose didn't collapse, as well as being untested on ovals. The crapwagons were needed.
cdname47
And what do we have now... CART 2.0 with a predominantly road and street course schedule, 75% of a starting grid of foreign born drivers, and zero chance of the short track dirt kids to ever get a sniff at Bricks and Milk...
Michael McIntyre thank god yes I’m American but open wheel racing was so much better when CART was at INDY and there were good American drivers as well in CART and they won races and INDY 500s. Thank god Tony George doesn’t have control over the speedway and INDYCAR anymore.
Michael McIntyre No, it’s going geared for short track dirt kids. Hasn’t been for 40+ years. If a young person wants to run IndyCar they race karts and work up the ladder system.
Jam5zW too bad that is what Tony George thought. Went Jeff Gordon went to NASCAR that is when Tony George was starting to plot his takeover of the sport. Look now the dirt track drivers go straight to NASCAR.
More like 60% of foreign drivers, not 75. There were 9 full timers in a 21 car field last year, and three of them were highly sucessful, so do your math. There's gonna be 10 this year, so there's that. You're probably thinking about 2010, the low point of the series post-merger, with barely 3/4 americans full time (and neither competitive enough by then) in a 26 car grid with lots of ride-buyers in the second half of the grid.
The IRL offered the opportunity for short track dirt kids to get that Borg Warner sniff. Neither took it, because the likes of Stewart, Hamilton, Boat, Tyler, Durant, Michner, Kinser, Carlson, Beechler, Kite, Yeley, Hewitt, Steele (RIP), Reeves, Leffler, Erwin... all had their asses handed at Indy. Hell, even Team Menard passed on Dave Blaney because he wasn't fast enough.
With the best car in the grid and all the pole positions in the world, Billy Boat got schooled by a second year Swede driver coming from Formula 3000. Even at ovals, drivers with a road racing background took every Indy 500 under the IRL auspices, and all of the championships, bar Stewart's one (with one win in 10 races): Lazier, Luyendyk, Cheever, Ray, Sharp, Goodyear, Hornish... even Salazar! and all of that just before CART's invasion. They were the image on victory lane 95% of the time, not short track dirt kids.
And in the mean time, while those blue collar drivers were getting their chance at big time racing, fans flocked to NASCAR. That should be telling: people didn't care at all about those short track dirt kids.
maybe because the short track dirt kids aren't good enough or are too scared
0:53
Did fox sports really make a mess of this.
0:57 dave despain ha
6:45 Holy fuck, DW was exhibiting signs of early dementia back in 2008.
Tg totally f up American open wheel racing
What sucks is this "merger" turned. The IRL into.CART 2.0
the IRL was a flaming pile of minor league garbage
@@joeb7975 CART in 1994 was garbage. Anyone who thinks it was so wonderful to have all that elite domination on boring street races capped by the WORST Indy 500 I have ever been forced to watch (Penske's Mercedes was basically what we would have been forced to see if Grantelli's turbine had won in 1967) are the reason why I was glad to see someone stand up for what Indy used to represent and mean. He made a lot of mistakes, but if only CART hadn't gotten so lordly and Fat Cat and thumbing it's nose at the Speedway (Fittipaldi's refusal of the milk sums up why the CART image was rubbing people the wrong way) perhaps a compromise could have been reached. I'll be glad to say George made mistakes and maybe it's time the CART people acknowledge they weren't so perfect either.
Uniquely American? Hardly
Open wheel cars on a mixture of road courses and ovals isn't "uniquely American"? I'm sorry, do they do that somewhere else in the world?
Thomas Booth This guy had to have kissed Tony George’s ass during the IRL days. His mom never should have let him spent one penny on the horrible IRL it became.
Tony George thought he could develop and keep Aj Foyt like drivers and have a Jeff Gordon talent like driver stay for Americans to love because it was clear he hated the CART foreign drivers at Indy.
Notice in 1994 when he announced his IRL press release was when Jeff Gordon was starting to get hot and win a ton of races.
Thank God smart people are back running Indycar again. Not some rich asshole 3rd generation family Heir that Tony George was. By the way Brian France CEO of NASCAR is a 3rd generation Heir and look how he is ruining NASCAR.
Cars all the same? That sucks. Racing stinks and I quit watching. Everyone did.