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Danica Patrick vs. Eddie Gossage

IndyCar star, Texas promoter trade barbs over scheduling

Apparently, Danica Patrick has been bored so far this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.

Even though the IndyCar Series is sharing the track with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, which is running a 400-kilometer race this evening, Patrick decided to take shots at TMS yesterday over what she sees as a lack of practice time over the three-day event span. She told the assembled media:

“This is definitely the track that we spend the most amount of time doing nothing at…I mean, let’s face it. We are here…we’re on-track for an hour and a half [Thursday night], [Friday] we’re on-track midday and then we race the night after that. And I’ve been here since noon [Wednesday].”

On top of that — and perhaps more egregious to track GM Eddie Gossage — she said that the IRL needs to keep going to the Milwaukee Mile following the Indy 500. Gossage has been fighting for several seasons to make Texas the first post-Indy stop on the schedule once again.

For much of the IRL’s existence, protocol saw the series take a week off after the “500″ and then head to Fort Worth. That changed in 2006, when Watkins Glen International took over the spot. One year later, the “Indy-then-Milwaukee” tradition was restored, much to the delight of the older fan base.

Meanwhile, Gossage has seen his race’s attendance dip as a result; crowds peaked at 105,000 for Tomas Scheckter’s victory in 2005, but has since fallen to around 80 to 90 thousand after Milwaukee usurped their coveted position on the schedule.

When he caught wind of Danica’s comments, Gossage took a shot of his own and then made a very interesting point:

“It’s interesting to hear race car drivers talk about marketing matters. It’s almost as interesting as hearing someone like me, a marketer, talk about racecar driving matters…

“If Danica and the league are happy running in front of 28,000 people in the 38th-largest market [by population] in the country, instead of running in front of 90,000 people in the fourth-largest market in the country, then they’re absolutely making the right decision to do that.”

If you recall, I wrote an article a few days ago where I argued for the inclusion of Milwaukee on future league schedules. One of my points went for the “Indy-Milwaukee” swing — while I said that it could be messed with, it shouldn’t be for the sake of tradition.

I still have that stance. But Eddie’s got a good point too. Why do you think I said it could be changed?

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Materials/information from The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram were used in this article.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 10:46 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.