The Indianapolis 500 needs a redneck
makeover to compete with NASCAR
By Howie Baker, THG Sports
30 May 2004
This morning I looked at the sports section of my local newspaper and saw an
article at the bottom of the front page about how Indy racing team owner Roger
Penske was shooting for his fourth straight win in what used to be the greatest
annual spectacle in auto racing.
This article caught me off guard because I didn’t even realize that the race was
today.
Have I been so busy lately that I have become out of touch with what is going on
in the world or sports? I didn’t think so, so I got online and started looking
up coverage of the race in various regional newspapers.
An interesting article by Indianapolis Star sports reporter Michael Pointer
caught my eye. This article is titled ‘National media loses interest in the
race’.
It seems that the Indy 500 has taken a backseat in recent years to its
beer-guzzling, flannel-wearing, redneck brothers on the NASCAR circuit when
money is limited and editors have to pick and choose which sporting events to
cover. The average American is far more interested in who wins Sunday’s
Coca-Cola 600 than the Indy 500.
Indianapolis 500 officials must be scratching their heads and asking themselves,
“What can we do to get back on top and rule racing once again?”
We’ll gentlemen, ol’ Howie Baker has the answers. Just take these two easy steps
and the Indy 500 will once again be the Kentucky Derby of auto racing:
1. Make the cars look more like cars normal people drive.
The reason motorheads love NASCAR is because the outside of the cars look like
something they could make in their garage. Like a muscle car on steroids. Indy
cars look more like a rocket or airplane, something middle and working class
folks aren’t ever going to be able to afford. All backyard mechanics love
working on their piece of crap cars while daydreaming about taking these hunks
of junk to Talladega to race. Build normal looking cars and you will bring the
people back in droves.
2. Ban foreign drivers and cars from competing.
The redneck racing fan (and most racing fans are rednecks) are not going to go
to their local watering hole wearing a Toyota racing shirt. This would be
grounds for getting their ass kicked. And it also doesn’t matter if Bruno
Junquiera wins 15 consecutive Indy 500s, no one is going to put a big number 36
on their pickup truck to show their love for this Brazilian native.
To show where the Indy 500 has gone wrong, this year only 17 of the 33 drivers
are Americans, and fans are going to have to look back into the fourth row at
the start to find an American car (driven by a South African, of course). It is
unrealistic to think that Joe Blow from Hickville, USA is going to get up early
on Sunday to get his yard cut and ice down a case of Busch Light so he can kick
back, turn on the tube, and cheer on a Mexican driving a Honda (Adrian
Fernandez, car number 5, row 2).
Hopefully some day Indy 500 officials will wake up and smell the coffee and
realize that only if they Americanize their race will they once again be the big
fish.
