No IRL for me.

Dan Wheldon (1978-2011)

Readers might have noticed that, here at FulTrot, the Indycar Racing League (IRL) is not covered. The reasons are many, like last year's tragic accident of Dan Wheldon at the oval track at Las Vegas, which was designed and build for Nascar, not for open-wheel racing. For this race, IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard offered $5 million to any driver who could go from last to first. Dan Wheldon, who was without a ride that year, took him up on the offer and indirectly set off on a path of excessive risk taking, and for what, better ratings? The death of Dan Wheldon shows no respect for life.

Another reason is the sheer mediocrity of IRL's management, which was apparent once more in Sunday's running of the Detroit race on Belle Isle, after a 4 year absence. The race was red flagged after a piece of track surface came apart and caused James Hinchcliffe to crash. I am not going to get into the reasons or who is to blame, however, we don't see this type of mistakes in any other form of motor racing. Anywhere.

The video below shows what happened:



"The fucking track just came up. They leave that big piece of track just sitting there. What the fuck?" Hinchcliffe screamed after plowing into the rubber. Obviously, the driver was quite pissed off about it, and dropped a few F-bombs, and unlike Kurt Busch, these ones were justifiable.

I am afraid that the days of Indy car drivers (formerly called Champ cars), such as Jacques Villeneuve, crossing the pond and taking Formula One by storm are long gone, partly due to America's inability to create and maintain a competitive open wheel racing series.

Thanks for reading.

Source: Jalopnik, LifeNews.com, Wikipedia