These team owners are killing me.
Moraes? Yeah, he’ll pack the seats in Richmond.
And next, Will Power?
Look, I’ve got nothing against either of these guys, they’re probably good people with more driving talent than I could ever have… but there is too much MARKETABLE TALENT currently out of work for team owners to be hiring drivers so utterly invisible to the public. Don’t sponsors want someone who can sell their product?
Oh, that’s right, the team owners spent the last 20 YEARS getting too damned lazy to drum up their own sponsors and have been living off pay drivers ever since.
And TWO aussies at Penske? Does Roger have some sort of deep-seated antipathy towards the northern hemisphere?
Here’s my REAL gripe, though. Attention Australia: Get your own series!
I am absolutely dead serious here, the numbers of refugee drivers from Australia and New Zealand lately has become nothing short of batshit insane. That is a LOT of talent who are driving in front of people who frankly don’t care very much who they are. Australia is a large, prosperous country: you’re telling me they can’t support their own open-wheel series?
Indycar as a brand has tried and failed miserably to go global. Here’s an alternative idea: Franchising. Separate series with common rules between them, sharing costs and suppliers. The North American series can run as normal, and the Aussies/Kiwis (or, alternately, a South American series as I’ve previously suggested) can run during our winter/their summer. More races, more seats available, more exposure, more markets to tap.
CLEARLY these winter series have commercial potential: Both A1GP and Speedcar attract interest beyond what their bizarre racing formats probably should. Keeping down costs seems to be the most important part, and an Indycar franchise model accomplishes this by sharing the exact same equipment with the North American series.
