IndyCar would be wise to emulate Ryan Briscoe — who made a cataclysmic gaffe that may ultimately ruin his season … and then quickly manned up & took ownership of it. Because admitting to the mistake is the first step toward learning from it.
“I just gassed it too much leaving my box and the car spun,” Briscoe said. “I hit the wall.”
And there it is. Lesson learned. He blamed nobody else and took full responsibility. It was refreshing, and precisely how Teddy Roosevelt would’ve handled the situation. (Of course, Teddy would’ve then gone and punched a buffalo in the face or got naked and jumped into the Potomac, mainly because he was a winner. He was a man’s man alright — all mustache & machismo. Maybe Briscoe is too. It would appear so.)
For better or worse, that is how this race will be remembered. For a costly mistake. There’s nothing else even remotely worth discussing. Except, maybe, for IndyCar’s equally costly mistake. You know, through their very presence in Motegi. And more specifically, its crucial placement in the season schedule. Because this notoriously non-descript, scarcely-watched event is the lone bridge connecting the Great Chicago/Miami Divide — an alarmingly vast chasm of IndyCar nothingness & despair which spans 43 days.
[thumps forehead]
Consider this: from the time the checkered flag dropped in Chicago to when the green flag drops in Homestead, the first four weeks of the NFL season will have come & gone. As will the first six of college football. The heated pennant chase in Major League Baseball will have taken place, as will the first round of their Divisional Series playoffs. The U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows will have been completed. The four PGA Tour ”FedEx Cup” playoff tournaments will have been decided, as will the Presidents Cup. There will have been a highly anticipated championship fight, and the first three races of NASCAR’s “Chase for the Cup.” And the list goes on & on.
During that exact same time period, IndyCar will have ran three forgettable hours of midnight racing that was watched live in 28 American households. That’s how the Homestead table has been set: with paper plates made of obscurity, and napkins made of poorly woven irrelevance.
It’s borderline comical, really. Except not really. It’s too frustrating to be comical. In fact, it’s an act so utterly bereft of foresight & strategy that it almost seems intentional. As if it was a very conscious, very calculated move to ensure that nobody watches to the season finale. Or at the very least, that it’s kept buried in an unmarked grave behind a boarded up Denny’s in Fort Wayne, where the national spotlight can never reach it. And where nobody knows it’s there.
Sure, you can say that “scheduling is difficult.” And you probably wouldn’t be wrong. Or you can say that “there will never be a perfect season schedule.” Or that “Motegi is crucial for business purposes.” Or that “at least it wasn’t Edmonton.” You can say any of the 4,000 excuses which attempt to explain it away, but the absolute bottom line remains the same. And the absolute bottom line, I’m afraid, is this:
The IndyCar Express will putter into Homestead with all the momentum of a sad trumpet’s mockery:
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Which is to say, it will have no momentum at all.
Nor will it next year. Nor the year after that, presumably. Nor the year after that … and so forth and so on, until somebody Briscoes up & takes ownership of it.
Because IndyCar will never learn from the mistake until they first admit to it.
By Brian, September 21, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Can I get an Amen? I’m always suprised to hear the people that talk about being excited about Motegi. Asside from the once-per-year that we get a few Japanese drivers in the race… it doesn’t even do much to benefit Honda. I’m interested to see how many paying fans were there in person. We can only hope another manufacturer steps in so we can stop going there.
By Carrie, September 21, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
Will your spell-check man up and admit it didn’t catch that you spelled emulate incorrectly?
But, um, yeah… the highlight of Motegi was getting to point at Briscoe and laugh like Nelson from The Simpsons. Ha! Ha!
By P Daddy, September 21, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
I thought the midnight race was just a dream…it was actually real?
By pressdog, September 21, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
No, no. It’s actually innovative to end the year with your two worst ovals. They mocked Einstein too.
By Don Crossman, September 21, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
Oh man, what he said. Well written, Willy.
By chris, September 21, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
I don’t mind Motegi, but I think the season needs a few more races. A couple of road courses put in towards the end would shake things up. At least 3 more races should be added to the season
By Boo Boo, September 21, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
Motegi isn’t one of the worst ovals, and the fact that “pressdog” says it is proves my point. Of course, if they keep dropping worse ovals like Nashville, Richmond, Homestead (every man needs a dream)… then eventually it will be the worst oval.
But it’ll still be better than Edmonton.
Back in the old days stock car drivers used to trade positions on the track to take turns running in clean air. If they didn’t do this their car might overheat. Ignorant fans would begin cheering because they thought they were seeing passing. That’s all those knuckle-heads wanted; to see one car go by another. Hey, it’s a lead change, right?
Those of you that have been whining about Motegi (or, uh… KNOBS), I put you in the same category of fan. Honestly, I don’t even know why you bother watching the sport. Maybe y’all just like to complain. Really wears thin.
Motegi was a decent race; a lot better than Edmonton, that’s for sure.
By BP, September 21, 2009 @ 7:13 pm
“Scheduling is tough.”
“We can’t go to ovals [even if the track president was/is begging for a race] that have two NASCAR races [unless it's Texas].”
Enough with the excuses already – just find a way to fix it.
By Mark Bolster, September 21, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
Wow…I’ll give you an AMEN and raise you. One of the best written pieces I’ve read in a very long time that cuts right to the matter. If INDY wants to be big time, they need to treat the business and sport appropriately. Motegi stands looked quite empty to me.
I get that Honda is pulling the strings, so I don’t object to a race in Japan. But hold it at a time when the Championship isn’t coming to an end and get some tracks to hold events between then and Homestead.
By dylan, September 21, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
Boo Boo, um, how was Montegi good?
By CurlingRacer, September 21, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
While I CONTINUE to blather away in the minority that ANY Indy Car race is a good race compared to the N***** crap, the thing that shocked me about Motegi was the lack of fans as stated above. If this race is so important to Honda, why aren’t the stands packed? I watched online because of the DirecTV / Versus size of manhood contest, but there really didn’t look to be a big crowd. If it is that important, give the tickets away. It’s happened here before. Ask Roger Penske. If not, don’t go there. You better believe that if Brazil, whatever venue is selected, is not full, it will be ripped off the schedule as soon as the contract is up.
By Brian McKay, September 21, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
This was a very good Willy T. Ribbs report. Very good, sober commentary. Maybe henceforth, with new management of the IndyCar series and constructive criticism from fans, we can see useful changes in the sport and business.
By pressdog, September 21, 2009 @ 10:32 pm
Kiss-kiss, love you too, “Boo Boo.” While “take it or leave it” is certainly one approach to building a business, most enterprises are very interested in what their customers think of their products and services, because those opinions often give insights into improvements that attracting and retaining more customers and, hence, making more the company more money. In fact, many companies invest massive money in collecting customers feedback. So, by giving the IndyCar business our feedback, many of us are actually hoping to help IndyCar make their enterprise better and more successful. If we didn’t care about it, we’d just silently stop watching, which many former IndyCar customers already have.
By Loose lugnut, September 22, 2009 @ 9:00 am
The mere fact that Motegi is quite the most odd shaped racetrack in the world just makes it that so much more challenging. Also quite the worst scheduled race on the entire universe. Back on task, I bet Roger Pensk proabaly dropped an f bomb right after he calculated Briscoes new Reynolds coefficients on his front wing adjustments, just goes without saying that while Indy does not have the lucky dog pass we do have the lucky bastards who seem clairvoyant to see a crash.
I feel that this not time to be bash Indy, it’s time to embrace one hellova tight points championship, and be pimping Miami.
By Bob, September 22, 2009 @ 10:33 am
It does seem rather odd that the season’s races are so spread out. I second all those that say to get the season completed before college football, NFL, and the cup chase. Wouldn’t viewers stay more interested/informed if they knew that (almost) every weekend from April to August there was an Indycar race taking place? Imagine that person who enjoyed the Chicago race looking at the tv schedule or indycar schedule and noticing… “Well crap, there isn’t another race for a month! It is also in Japan and starts at 10:30pm?” That person could instead look to next week or maybe the week after. Start it in late April and end it in August. If you can’t fill that schedule… just end it in July. If ratings go up, you’ve left people wanting more. If you have one race per month, people forget about you.
By Ken, September 22, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
It isn’t really the race tracks folks. What is the common denominator here? Could it be the equipment and the teams preparing the equipment. Small V-8′s spinning at 10,300 rpm, 10,500 with the “overtake button”…. Those mills are spooled to the rev limiter on every oval and they don’t have a whole lot of low end torque so they are not exactly awe inspiring on road and street courses either. They need to move away somewhat from the spec. series this league has turned into. They also need to put some race car drivers into those seats.
By SkipinSC, September 22, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
When I first looked at this year’s schedule, I thought that maybe moving Motegi to the end of the schedule was a good idea. It requires at least an extra week of travel and logistics to get everyone situated there. Plus, the history of weather with the spring races there was not exactly sterling.
I’d really love to see the ICS do some post-Labor Day racing in the south, at Charlotte, Darlington, Atlanta, or even (gasp) Talladega. It could be done by simply running opposite NASCAR, either on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, whichever spot NASCAR isn’t using.
Particularly in the metro areas, (Charlotte and, to a lesser extent, Atlanta) the emphasis on college football is somewhat less, and with some creative Saturday night scheduling, you could be reaching a whole other group of fans.
And, to be perfectly truthful, ICS has got to do something to please the fan base it has, even more than growing that fan base. The predominance of road/street courses, at least according to everyone I read, is an idea that flies in the face of what the majority of fans want, yet when Loudon is practically begging for a race, ICS is considering a street course in Baltimore. Having lost Milwaukee (at least temporarily,) the series should be talking to Elkhart Lake, but instead, they’re hanging out on a race or two in Brazil at an as yet undetermined location.
I keep hoping that someone out there is listening, but I am becoming unsure.
By Young Harold, September 22, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Briscoe is a hero for admitting he ran his car into the pit wall and throwing the race away? Who else was he going to blame? If #7 had been the green cone he would have blamed Danica for not getting out of his way after he careened off the wall – just like Indy a year ago. We do remember Indy a year ago, yes? Briscoe looses it lighting up his tires and won’t admit to anything other than “its just a racing accident.” Still a brat-face in my book, with a high propensity for wrecking cars. He does drive well however – if he could just get this “driving out of the pits” thingy under control. LMAO – Briscoe “owning up;” like he had a choice.
By Roy Hobbson, September 22, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
Briscoe is a hero for admitting he ran his car into the pit wall and throwing the race away?
Well, “hero” may be bit a strong. It’s not like put out a forest fire or locked Godzilla in a chokehold. But yeah — I like what he did.
Who else was he going to blame?
I don’t know. He could’ve blamed it on a muscle cramp. Or a puddle of Gatorade on the track, perhaps. Or a mini-seizure. Or maybe he could’ve just labeled it something innocuous like, pffffft — I don’t know — “just a racing accident” or something lame like that. Anything to avoid accepting responsibility for it. But he didn’t.
We do remember Indy a year ago, yes?
Not really. But go ahead.
Briscoe looses it lighting up his tires and won’t admit to anything other than “its just a racing accident.”
**stunned silence**
Why don’t you sit the next few plays out, Mittens. Stop talking for awhile.
By Heit Harrelson, September 22, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
I’m pretty sure IndyCar does listen to the fans. The fact that they endorse The Pagoda on their own website should be true to that. I have to give those guys ‘the benefit of the doubt’ when it comes to putting things together. No one will ever admit that trading Nashville (12,000 fans in the middle of Cracker Barrel’s birthplace) for Toronto (75,000 fans over 3 days) was a good trade. Never. I love the ovals too…more than the road courses. But IndyCar defined the oval track standard and they’re staring to define the road course standard. Really they are. In the “hay days” of the early 90′s never did you see cars run side-by-side like Kentucky or Chicago. I’m pretty sure they’ll do it again in Miami. Actually, look up the stats from the 90′s…having 10 cars finish and more than 2 on the lead lap was a pretty good race. But the balance to build a schedule has to be complicated. Have any of you ever packed up airplanes to ship all that equipment to Japan? I would have to guess it’s tough, but who am I? Just 40 year old virgin babbling on a dot com. So running a week before Japan or after is probably out of the question…probably. I looked up the 2010 calendar and Miami is one week closer than 2009. So they did adjust accordingly. The series needs fans. Keep supporting. Next year they’re adding a racetrack near Atlanta that had 20,000 people attend a TEST. Pretty stupid decision by my math. Let’s get ‘em to go back to ISC ‘promoted’ ovals where the parent company of NASCAR can keep pushing empty grandstands. That’s like if Toyota owned Honda showrooms and didn’t turn the lights on. That would be good for their business too…