Iowa/Cleaveland Head to Head

[RGM Fan]

For the first time this season we had a Champ Car race and an IRL head to head at the same time. We'll have comparable ratings numbers and attendance figures, but I think its clear one series put on a superior show today and I wondered what the rest of you thought.

The idea is we talk about racing for a change and no politics.

[Andrewmcm]

I watched the races side-by-side on my computer through internet streams, and my attention was drawn to the race in Iowa for the majority of the time.

[Chris R]

I flipped between both for about a half-hour before heading out to the garden with the kids.... I think I gave both about the same time. The IRL race actually looked al ittle better on TV because the oval leands itself to better camera positions. I alos noticed thath the Cleveland race was very "bright" - hard to see the cars.... I think Champcar needs to find a proper production group and get more cars on the track so there is more action to follow...

Overall I would say it was a wash between the two from the small bit I saw.....

[gm99]

I only followed the Iowa race through live timing as long as the Cleveland race was on and by the time I switched to the IRL (about thirty laps from the end or so), there were hardly any cars left (at least on the lead lap). The final laps with the Dario-Marco battle were quite fun to watch, but to me, not quite as exciting as the final laps of Cleveland, where Paul Tracy really had his work cut out trying to keep Doornbos (and earlier Rahal) behind him while making his fuel last until the end. Then again, I'm probably biased as Cleveland is one of my favorite tracks and PT one of my favorite drivers ;)

[RGM Fan]

I have to say I thought the Ceveland race was superior from start to finish. The standing start was exciting while the IRL didn't get out of the first turn without losing two cars.

I watched the Ceveland race primarily and every time I flipped the channel another IRL driver made a bad move and took a few people with them. Helio stalling the car leaving the pits is a bush league mistake. Only five cars finished on the lead lap. Scott Dixon was 77 laps down and got a top 10, totally amaturish.

Even Scott Sharp, who I believe had his best run of the year, said "It wasn't much of a race," when ABC interviewed him. Of course by then the crowd had thinned a good bit because no one wanted to stand around.

I thought the race was a disaster for the IRL, three of their top five in points took themselves out simple mistakes, another had to park his car and Milka was effectively blackflagged for going to slow. The ending was sapped of drama because of team orders and no one could pass.

The bright spots for me was Danica blaming three other drivers, Firestone, track design and the weather for an accident she could have adverted by letting off the gas and losing a few positions. Rusty Wallace explaining how they had designed the track primarily for stock cars. Although I do think they missed a great opportunity ask about putting in a rolling chicane because as Rusty was talking Milka was being lapped for the third time in 40 laps.

Meanwhile the CC race was close, had a lot of drama at the end, twice as many cars running on the lead lap and ran almost as many miles on a road course in a shorter period of time as the IRL did on an oval.

[KK3869]

I watched the IRL race and I was pretty entertained, Champcar lately hasn't been that really good, but I taped the race anyway since I love Cleveland.

[Hoss Ghoul]

Both races had a lot of drama with top drivers and championship contenders having problems and dropping out.

I flipped pretty equally between the two, focusing on the final 15 minutes of the CC race. Really, with all the cautions both races had it was easy to watch both and not miss much-especially with commercials and side by side on ABC.

[booger]

I already posted this on the cc site, but who were the morons who scheduled these two events head-to-head? Neither one of these series can draw flies to their tv b'casts, and now they get to split what will undoubtedly be another afternoon of terrible ratings? They must be sharing their "stupid" pills again and I'll bet the sponsors on both sides will be real happy with this one. I'll make a bet. I'm watching the N'Car race right now on TNT and they'll kill both of the open wheeler races on two national nets combined and laugh like hell at whoever had the non-common sense to schedule these 2 events at the same time.

[RGM Fan]

Well the box scores are out. I found some interesting stats.

Cautions
IRL 6 cautions for 67 laps, 26.8 percent of the total laps. One caution alone was 22 laps and lasted more than 20 minutes.
CC 4 for 17 laps, 19.1 percent of the total laps

Average speed:
IRL 123.886 on a high speed, high banked oval
CC 106.921 on a flat road course more than twice as long

Total elapse time
IRL 225 miles in 1:48:14
CC 187 miles in 1:45:10
In other words CC covered almost as much ground in the same amount of time on a road course that the IRL did on a high speed oval.

Cars on the lead lap
IRL 5
CC 10

Number of laps down of the 11th place car
IRL 105 laps
CC 1 lap

Ending:
IRL Team orders prohibt racing for fear of yet another accident.
CC Robert Dorboss comes up half a second short after a round of pit stops in a thrilling comeback win for Paul Tracy.

Anyway you look at Champ Car put on a superior show. The IRL couldn't have picked a worse event, other than Motegi, Kansas, Milwaukee, or St Pete to go head to head with Champ car with.

[NickFalzone]

RGM you make some good points and some not-so-good ones:


Well the box scores are out. I found some interesting stats.

Cautions
IRL 6 cautions for 67 laps, 26.8 percent of the total laps. One caution alone was 22 laps and lasted more than 20 minutes.
CC 4 for 17 laps, 19.1 percent of the total laps

-- Agreed the cautions dragged down a good deal of the racing - however many tv viewers watch for the "show" which includes accidents, unexpected car failures, etc. IRL put on a better "show" in this respect, whether it makes for good racing or not. NASCAR gets the best ratings of all and has the most cautions.

Average speed:
IRL 123.886 on a high speed, high banked oval
CC 106.921 on a flat road course more than twice as long

-- So? I don't buy that that was the avg speed for IRL unless you're counting all the caution periods.

Total elapse time
IRL 225 miles in 1:48:14
CC 187 miles in 1:45:10
In other words CC covered almost as much ground in the same amount of time on a road course that the IRL did on a high speed oval.

-- again, cautions.

Cars on the lead lap
IRL 5
CC 10

-- fair enough, but this isn't always the key factor - how many drastic order changes were there at Iowa? You had backmarkers up front. Not necessarily great racing, but entertaining tv.

Ending:
IRL Team orders prohibt racing for fear of yet another accident.
CC Robert Dorboss comes up half a second short after a round of pit stops in a thrilling comeback win for Paul Tracy.

-- This is true, and the end of the race for tv viewers was probably less exciting than for those in the stands where it seemed like Marco was trying to get past Dario. He clearly wasn't, but he was putting on a "show" of it.

Anyway you look at Champ Car put on a superior show. The IRL couldn't have picked a worse event, other than Motegi, Kansas, Milwaukee, or St Pete to go head to head with Champ car with.

I like them both, but would put money on the Iowa race being the ratings winner.

[Alexamateo]

Cars on the lead lap
IRL 5
CC 10



RGM, you're just a ray of sunshine, but how can you compare a track with sub 18 second laps to a track with 1 minute 45 second laps!?

Just wonderin'

[Alexamateo]

FWIW I watched both and really enjoyed both, glad to see PT win. I admit I got more engrossed in Iowa, because I flipped back and never saw what happened to Bordais. I thought it was really intriguing in the end when they were showing how much "push to pass" Doornbos had and was looking foward to an exciting last lap, but did Doornbos even use it? If not, did he say why? Somewhat disappointing in that regard but still good.

The Iowa race was really intriguing, and I thought it was maybe going to play into Danica's hand possibly when she wrecked. Then I thought it was possibly Vitor's day finally, but he had suspension failure. I don't know where anyone would see team orders in the finish. If Dario protected the bottom, and he did, there was no way Marco gets around him. Still it was exciting in the end, and I enjoyed the race.

Call me crazy but I just like car racing.

[NickFalzone]

It was said by the announcers that AGR decided to tell Marco not to pass. Announcers have been wrong before though, and I didn't hear anyone mention this in the post-race interviews.

Marco did seem to have the faster car (could have been the tow), but agreed that even if he was a couple mph faster than Dario, he wouldn't have been able to pass without the inside line. So the "team" decision was probably redundant. In fact that was the problem all day, the drivers were rushing to pass on starts because with similar equipment it was very challenging to pass at racing speeds.


FWIW I watched both and really enjoyed both, glad to see PT win. I admit I got more engrossed in Iowa, because I flipped back and never saw what happened to Bordais. I thought it was really intriguing in the end when they were showing how much "push to pass" Doornbos had and was looking foward to an exciting last lap, but did Doornbos even use it? If not, did he say why? Somewhat disappointing in that regard but still good.

The Iowa race was really intriguing, and I thought it was maybe going to play into Danica's hand possibly when she wrecked. Then I thought it was possibly Vitor's day finally, but he had suspension failure. I don't know where anyone would see team orders in the finish. If Dario protected the bottom, and he did, there was no way Marco gets around him. Still it was exciting in the end, and I enjoyed the race.

Call me crazy but I just like car racing.

[Skid Marx]

RGM, you're just a ray of sunshine, but how can you compare a track with sub 18 second laps to a track with 1 minute 45 second laps!?

Just wonderin'

Huh? Where the H@ll do you get 1 min. 45 sec. laps from? They qualified at Cleveland between 56 and 58 seconds a lap. Even the average lap time for the race was well below 1:45, including slow laps run under caution. The average lap time for the winning driver today (for 89 laps run in one hour and 45 minutes) was just over 1 minute, 10 seconds.

[Alexamateo]

Huh? Where the H@ll do you get 1 min. 45 sec. laps from? They qualified at Cleveland between 56 and 58 seconds a lap. Even the average lap time for the race was well below 1:45, including slow laps run under caution. The average lap time for the winning driver today (for 89 laps run in one hour and 45 minutes) was just over 1 minute, 10 seconds.

My apologies for the incorrect data. The original premise still stands though.

[RGM Fan]

RGM, you're just a ray of sunshine, but how can you compare a track with sub 18 second laps to a track with 1 minute 45 second laps!?

Just wonderin'

I'm trying to get away from talking about split politics and which series is better so we might as well compare racing. I think it speaks volumes that there was more passing on a road course then there was on an oval.

I thought today the IRL showed that most of its top drivers make a lot of simple mistakes, are massively over-aggressive (ie four wide on a narrow short oval) and can't pass under green flag conditions. The guy who won won because he stayed on the track longer than all the faster cars. He also had a teammate behind him ordered not to pass and block for him. All and all I would say it was a disaster, although an entertaining disaster to watch. I don't know if I've ever laughed so much at one race.

I felt CC showed a great sense of history, lots of passing, a come from behind victory and that it has a number of talented drivers and teams that can win on any given Sunday. The crowd was stronger than the past couple years. It had some great story lines and only one multi-car accident.

I think the big difference was CC put on an entertaining, professional show, where if you weren't competitive you didn't get a good finish. I think the IRL raced on a track that clearly wasn't suited to their kind of racing and showed in the IRL if you just show up you can get a top 10, or finish third with a medicore car.

[Hoss Ghoul]

I wouldn't call Iowa high banked at 12-14 degrees...

I wouldn't say 38 miles less(20% more distance) is anywhere close to covering as much ground, much less "almost".

Some of your other points are pretty irrelevant too, IMO, and don't dictate what makes a race/show better, other than as you or someone else see's fit to back up their predetermined point of view.

In the final analysis NASCAR put on the best race of the day by far, and CC and the IRL's ratings combined and multplied by 2, won't likely equal them. That's probably more relevant and important to AOWR than comparing Cleveland and Iowa races.

[F1boat]

Both races were super cool.

[ACTF_ZETT]

Horrible biased comparison RGM Fan, I dont need to explain why. I know numbers speak for themselves but we are not compairing apples to apples here. There are a great many factors you are choosing to ignore.

[libra65]

I flipped back and forth between both races all afternoon. When it came down to the last 10 laps or so of Cleveland, I stayed with it thru to the end to see if Doornbos with all his P2P would pull of a pass on the fuel deprived Tracy. There was no way I was leaving that or the post race interviews. Then when it was over, I went back to Iowa and watched the best part of that race- Dario & Marco going head to head. I don't recall hearing that Marco was told not to pass-may have been while I was still with CC. I did hear them say (I think it was Arute) that when AGR was asked about if there was team orders, they bluntly answered "NO!"

Oops, I almost forgot to mention, I enjoyed both races but I think I enjoyed CC more. After all of this open wheel racing, I went over to Sonoma. I enjoyed the end of that race as well watching Montoya (a CC product & Indy 500 winner) nurse his fuel deprived car to a win when he was supposed to run out of fuel with a lap or 2left.

[Old3Fan]

I watched both races and Nascar too as I always do. Nascar and CC were both superior to the IRL yesterday. That track engineered by Rusty Wallace is a disaster and I predict will not be on the IRL schedule next year. No passing, too dangerous and too costly in repairs to cars. A good place to hold a Demolition Derby with $100 junk cars, but that is about it for me.

[RGM Fan]

Horrible biased comparison RGM Fan, I dont need to explain why. I know numbers speak for themselves but we are not compairing apples to apples here. There are a great many factors you are choosing to ignore.

Well the most basic comparasion is the IRL put on a demolition derby while the Champ Car held a race.

[Alexamateo]

Well the most basic comparasion is the IRL put on a demolition derby while the Champ Car held a race.

Yeah, kind of like last year in Cleveland when 6 cars wrecked out :p :

[Chris R]

I hate to say it, but the NASCAR race yesterday was the most entertaining of the three and the backstory was really good (Montoya winning, coming from the back and being only the 3 guy to win in AOWR, NASCAR and F-1...)

We can argue all day about what was the better race etc. The fact is both open wheel series are putting out a very similar product and on any given weekend either series can produce a great race or a dud. It sounds like Cleveland was the better race of the two but I think the IRL had a better presentation on the TV.

And so us fans trudge on hoping the light at the end of the tunnel is the sun and not a train....

[luvracin]

Well the most basic comparasion is the IRL put on a demolition derby while the Champ Car held a race.

uh-huh... so Paul Tracy punting 2 people off track is racing??

[Mark in Oshawa]

I think as someone who didn't find the Champ Car race on his Satellite Menu (it must have been on, but when programming my VCR, I couldn't go on a maybe), I watched only the Iowa event. Would I have liked to have had both? You bet, I would have watched Cleveland live if I had a choice, but realistically I had to pick one to tape. That said, I ended up watching some of Iowa live. Interesting track, I like short ovals, I like the furious laps but for drama, the Cleveland race had a little of everything. ABC/ESPN does a good job with the IRL events for pushing the broadcast and they do the hype thing well, but for the most part, the racing does NOT always match the hype. The truth is I enjoyed the NASCAR boys at Infineon probably as much if notmore than any OW race I have watched this year. If NASCAR ran 10 or 15 road courses a year, I would likely barely notice OW racing any more because 43 guys scratching and clawing at each other makes for great visuals, and big ugly race cars turning left and right against their will is always fun.

Lets face facts, some weeks the IRL puts on a better show, and other ones the CCWS boys put on a great show. This weekend, it sounds like Cleveland was. Put 30 strong cars out there in either series, and we are not talking about this nonsense on which series is best, because there would be one series with a lot more interest and intrigue.

Til we get one decent series with all the players, then we really are arguing over which tag team partner is going to be pinned by the champion......

[EagleEye]

Lets face facts, some weeks the IRL puts on a better show, and other ones the CCWS boys put on a great show. This weekend, it sounds like Cleveland was. Put 30 strong cars out there in either series, and we are not talking about this nonsense on which series is best, because there would be one series with a lot more interest and intrigue.

Til we get one decent series with all the players, then we really are arguing over which tag team partner is going to be pinned by the champion......

Amen.

[ChicagocrewIRL]

Overnight ratings: IRL drew a 1.2 on ABC, Champ Car a 0.7 on CBS.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Combine the two to get almost a 2.0 and maybe, just maybe, you've got something to talk about.

This has been my point all along, and yet people like me who say a merger is the only way OW racing survives to any sort of level we recognize are lampooned by the die hards on here.

IT has to be a merger of equals to make people happy, but make no mistake, it has to happen. If CCWS just collapsed, I wouldn't watch the IRL likely for I don't like the directions it has taken, and the whole ethos in which it was formed, but at the same time, I realize the role Tony will always play because of the race he runs and controls, and he has the greatest facility in North America. Neither side can be ignored, nor wiped out. The problem is neither side is ready to giveup anything to make it happen. I guess losing money is fun...

[FerrrariF1]

I watched the Champcar race and not the IRL race (no desire to) but I saw the reviews on ESPN and Speed Channel and I know I made the right choice. I don't watch races to see them go in circles (A can always watch NASCAR for roundy round)

[luvracin]

I guess losing money is fun...

The funny thing about losing money is that at some point. The money WILL run out.

The side to run out of money first loses.

The chances of both running out at the same time are remote.

I give the whole debarcle two more years before someone "runs out" of money.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Luvracin....I thought that in 97 when the IRL's biggest draw was Tony Stewart and no one else really was on the radar screen. The IRL just was not working in those early days, but of course, Tony had/has money that he could toss at the IRL. Here we are in 2007 and CCWS is fighting for life, and the IRL apparently isn't really viable (of course, compared to 97, they are VERY viable) without Honda's help, so who knows what the future brings?

I do know some weeks, the IRL show is better than the CCWS show, and this weekend, it was the opposite. The fact there is no great race every weekend in OW is distressing. The fact there isn't one partially by design is disgusting....

[ChampUSfan]

I watched the races side-by-side on my computer through internet streams, and my attention was drawn to the race in Iowa for the majority of the time.

The same for me...but both were good races.

[JPMfan]

Well got to admit that the nascar race was the most exiting one, but champcar put up a real good show as well.

As for the Iowa race, you have to admit that it really looked amateurish, especially on the restarts.
Nice race if you like to see multiple car crashes, but it never was a real race.

Personally I like all kinds of racing, whether it be on an oval or road-course.
This year I put some extra interest in the IRL, but of all the oval races they ran, no race stands out in particular in my opinion.

Open-wheel racing on ovals is only exiting to watch when the cars have less downforce than that they now have.

When oval racing is the IRL's primary product, they'd better do something about it, because it ain't how it used to be.

[pits4me]

uh-huh... so Paul Tracy punting 2 people off track is racing??

The first one with Rahal was not really avoidable. Its amazing both DP01's survived that. The punting of Bruno was typical checking up in turn 1 Tracy could have avoided but last year it was Bourdais. Racing is what causes the problems. Some great passing. The one Doornboss put on Rahal was brilliant. The Gummybear into Heylen was amazing. Who'd have thought hitting a manhole cover in the grass would launch a car like that?

At least CC doesn't have Danica trying three or four wide and complaining because she's too stupid to lift up and save her race. There was plenty of time left. Meanwhile Milka is a class act. Hopefully she'll improve with time.

JPM made the last 22 laps at Sonoma an interesting watch.