NASCAR Or Open Wheel?
                 IndyCar Series Gained At Least One Fan This Week

May 31, 2012

By Nicholas Schwartz

Nicholas Schwartz

The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend is always a smorgasbord of racing action, and this year I took the time to watch every lap of each of the three big races of the day -- the tension-filled Grand Prix of Monaco at the crack of dawn, the thrilling Indianapolis 500 in the afternoon and the monotonous Coca-Cola 600 that night.

Until this year, I had never watched the Indianapolis 500, or any IZOD IndyCar Series event for that matter, from beginning to end. Sure, I had seen the highlights each week and the odd 20-laps here and there, but I had never given the sport a real chance to compete for my attention over NASCAR or Formula 1.

As such, I spent the majority of Saturday afternoon wide-eyed, gaping at the compelling scenes on the television. For three hours, I didn’t leave the couch in my apartment once. I was hooked.

From the pageantry of Jim Nabors’ rendition of “My Indiana Home” echoing across the track to the breathtaking three-wide start to the never-dull 200 laps of racing, the Indianapolis 500 was for me, a fan experience that you rarely get in sports. It was on the same level with the World Cup, the Olympics, the Super Bowl. It was NBA Finals game 7 with your favorite team playing.

Part of the draw, of course, is that the Indianapolis 500 is the IndyCar Series’ marquee event. This is their Daytona 500, so of course the event will have a remarkable buildup and presentation on television, and I don’t expect the upcoming race in Detroit this weekend to rival it. But beneath that lies another truth.

Up until Saturday, I had let my NASCAR bias prevent me from diving into the IndyCar Series. But after one of the best races I’ve ever seen in any series on Earth, I’m never going to miss another Indy 500. And I’m going to tune in on Sunday to catch the race at Belle Isle.

Why? Because the Indy 500 was the exact opposite of the race that followed it a few hours later that night in Charlotte. It was gripping, closely contested throughout the 200 laps and comprehensively interesting.

The Coca-Cola 600, by design, was none of these things. And that isn’t a slight -- the Coca-Cola 600 isn’t meant to be the same type of race. It’s a marathon, meant to test a driver’s endurance and the car’s mettle. The problem with marathon racing, though, is that it’s just not fun to watch.

There were long, long segments at Charlotte that, as a fan, you could have totally tuned out without losing the plot.

Once the field gets strung out across that iconic oval, the main storyline quickly becomes “just how many cars can the leader put a lap down?” and, consequently, “can my favorite driver overcome being lapped to record a good finish in four hours?”

It’s pure racing and there’s little doubt that the best car won in Charlotte, but even ESPN’s Marty Smith called the race “boring” after he sat in the stands amongst the fans to watch it.

NASCAR is undoubtedly the premier racing series in America with a huge established fanbase, so the fact that both the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 earned a 4.1 overnight Nielsen rating shouldn’t come as a surprise.

People like me will still watch NASCAR each and every week, even for the boring races like Charlotte. But perhaps the fact that for one week, at least, the IZOD IndyCar Series matched NASCAR viewer-for-viewer is a sign of good things to come for open-wheel racing.

If you would like to learn more about Nicholas, please check out his web site at Sports By Schwartz. Nicholas is a Managing editor and sportswriter for The Duke Chronicle at Duke University.

You can contact Nicholas Schwartz at .. Insider Racing News

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.