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ANY 2012 SCHEDULE INFO

Anyone know yet if Chicago will be added to the 2012 IRL schedule? Also will Milwaukee be on next years schedule as well?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Eugene Johnson on November 11, 2011 at 5:18pm

I have been a fan since the early seventies. I think alot of people base what they see, both attendance, and TV view on both NASCAR in the last 15 years and CART in the early nineties. If you go back to the late seventies and early eighties, Indy car racing attendance was not that much better than it is now: for example the first CART sanctioned race at Phoenix International Raceway drew an estimated (according to racer magazine) 18,000 fans. This was considered a respectable attendance figure at the time. If you want to see some of the races (and crowds) from this era, look at youtube and type in Phoenix 150, Texas 200 (college station, TX 2 mile track), trenton 200.

My only point is that Indy (RACE and when pole day used to draw 200,000) probably had bigger attendance than all the other races on the schedule put together. The Pocono and California (Ontario Motor Speedway) 500's drew between 60,000 and 80,000. The reason CART began doing alot of Road and Street circuits was because of having trouble drawing alot of people on the ovals. From 1971 to 1976 Indy Car (under USAC) ran all ovals (13 race schedule in the mid to late seventies.

I don't see any reason that you can't make a profit with 25,000 people. Also at that time (mid seventies) there were a grand total of (prior to 1977 when USAC reintroduced Indy Car road racing)6 Indy car tracks. There were also only about 4 races that were on TV, plus highlights of Indy Pole day qualifying.

My only point is I am not pessimistic at all about the future of IndyCar racing and The Indianapolis 500.