MVN - Most Valuable Network

New Loudon GM wants IndyCar date in 2009

New Hampshire Motor Speedway vice president and general manager Jerry Gappens is out to impress IndyCar Series officials this month down in Indy — enough to give him a race date for the 2009 campaign.

The open-wheel split ended the Loudon, N.H. track’s association with the sport following the 1998 season, but IRL commercial division boss Terry Angstadt has told the New Hampshire Union Leader that he’d be interested in talking to Gappens.

While he’s not too fond of the potential weather that can dampen a New England-based event, Angstadt noted that potential new ovals are in short supply following the death of the road and street course-based Champ Car. He told the Union Leader’s Kevin Provencher:

“Ovals are a bit of a scarcity. With the Champ schedule being all roads and street courses, those have been more plentiful. The fact [that New Hampshire is] an oval is an absolute plus.”

New England carries a long open-wheel heritage through the modifieds, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that an IndyCar event can sell some tickets up here with some good marketing and promotion. Considering that Gappens is a native of Indiana and knows the lore behind the Indy 500 and Indy racing, that’s a good thing to have in your corner if you’re Loudon.

Also, Speedway Motorsports (the track’s parent company) has shown that while NASCAR races are their bread and butter, they can put on quality open-wheel events as well (i.e. the night race at Texas in June). They actually seem to care about giving a decent effort in pushing IRL events, unlike their major track rival, the France-family owned International Speedway Corporation.

One thing bothers me, though. Why did Provenich decide to use Gordon Kirby, a member of the infamous “Gang of Four” that repeatedly destroyed Tony George and the fledgling IRL at every opportunity in the press? With his input, the piece sets up George as the true villain in this open-wheel war.  We all know that many other people also are to blame for the calamity.

John Oreovicz is now rattling off critiques of the IRL for ESPN — a job he’s gotten better at over the years. David Phillips is now on SPEED’s dime. Same goes for Robin Miller, who’s become an equal-opportunity bomb thrower. But Kirby? He doesn’t seem to want to let go of the good old days.

They were very good days. But one can’t focus on bringing them back for a new generation of race fans if one continues to raise ghosts of the past. Kirby is a great writer and is an awesome source for knowledge of the sport’s golden age, but he clearly has a bias toward one side on this argument — which, by the way, became null and void when open-wheel became unified in February.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 6:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.