EXOTERIC - Information Worth Sharing: ex·o·ter·ic
-adj
1. Not confined to an inner circle of disciples or initiates.
2. Comprehensible to or suited to the public; popular.
3. Of or relating to the outside; external.

Sun talks about being "Open" a lot. For those of you who don't know what "Open Wheel" racing is about, it is Indy Cars, Champ Cars, and Formula 1. Cars without fenders. Here in North America 12 years ago Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, split from CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) and created his own racing series called the IRL (Indy Racing League). What was once the dominant form of racing in the US (yes, this was before NASCAR was popular) and started a long downhill journey into irrelevance as the NASCAR juggernaut gained ground.

Several years ago CART went bankrupt and the CCWS (Champcar World Series) was created by Kevin Kalkoven, Gerry Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi. The cast of characters has changed every year, but the two series stayed separate. Several of the big name CART team owners (Penske, Ganassi, Andretti) jumped over to the IRL mainly due to their sponsors wanting to run in the only open wheel race that really matters, the Indy 500. This left the CCWS with just a couple of big teams (Newman/Hass, Walker, Forsythe) and their one big race, the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Both series have their supporters. IRL started out with GM and Infiniti engines, 2 different approved chassis, ran only oval tracks, and encouraged American drivers. Champcar originally had Ford, Toyota, Honda and Mercedes-Benz engines, 3 or 4 different chassis, ran short ovals, speedways, road courses and street courses, and had an all-star line up of world class drivers. Now 12 years later the IRL has just one chassis, Honda engines, runs ovals, road courses and street courses, and also has an international line up of drivers. Champcar went and bought Cosworth for their engines and last year went to a new Panoz spec chassis, they dropped running on ovals and had only two American drivers, Graham Rahal and Alex Figge.

My interest in watching CCWS and IRL racing over the past couple of years has gone to near zero. I'll watch Long Beach and the Indy 500 and maybe catch a couple of the other races during the year on Tivo. I always used to go to several races a season (Long Beach, Fontana, Laguna Seca), but the last 3 years I didn't go to any. It just wasn't good racing anymore. Both series were struggling to put just 16-18 cars on the grid. Compare this to NASCAR with 50+ cars trying to get one of 43 starting positions. There were only a few of the bigger budget teams that would ever win a race.

The big news this week is that the two series are finally going to reunify! It may take a year or two to get the series healthy, but at least Open Wheel racing is officially off of life support.

Start your engines! Let the racing begin again.