What is Reddit's opinion of Indy Split: The Big Money Battle that Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing?

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Indy Split by John Oreovicz is really good if you’re interested in the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Indy-Split-Battle-Nearly-Destroyed/dp/1642340561/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=32KYTBYD5LI5J&keywords=indy+split&qid=1661345373&sprefix=indy+spl%2Caps%2C70&sr=8-1

There is a book that was literally just published. Indy Split: The Big Money Battle that Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing by John Oreovicz. The link is there if you just want the book and don't want spoilers, but I wrote a quick summary of the split below if you want.

>!The first warning signs of a split were in the late 70s when team owners, upset with IndyCar's sanctioning body, the United States Auto Club (USAC), for failing to provide expected revenues and putting too much emphasis the Indianapolis 500, rebelled to form their own sanctioning body called Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). But the owner and president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) refused to go along with it and stuck with USAC. What followed was 15 years of an awkward peace in which the championship series was sanctioned by one body controlled by the teams but the series' most popular and profitable race was sanctioned by a separate body. !<

>!Going into the 90s, the president of IMS, Tony George, is unhappy with the direction of IndyCar. He dislikes how the series has become dominated on and off the track by a handful of rich teams, in particular Team Penske owned by Roger Penske. He also dislikes how the majority of the series' races are on road courses, which he believes favors foreign drivers with experience in the Formula system at the expense of American drivers who typically come from short oval tracks and sprint races. He also just believes ovals are superior tracks that create faster and more exciting racing. When he proposes reforms to CART, they shoot him down. !<

>!So in 1995, he goes nuclear on IndyCar and announces that he's creating his own racing series called the Indy Racing League (IRL), which would be sanctioned by USAC as a rival series to CART and would be entirely on oval courses. He also does something unthinkable at the time. Traditionally the Indianapolis 500 has been an open race. So long as you submit a car that passes USAC's standards and post a qualifying lap in the top 33, it didn't matter what racing series you come from. You get to race in the Indy 500. But Tony George ends that, announcing the 25/8 rule. Twenty-five slots in the Indy 500 would be reserved for IRL drivers with only the remaining eight being open. This infuriates CART, who boycotts the race and creates their own race, the US 500, to take place on the exact same day at the exact same time. That pretty much set the tone for the relationship between the two series.!<

>!For the next 12 years, these two series would bicker, fight, sue and be sued, all while their popularity plummeted while NASCAR replaced IndyCar as the most popular form of autoracing in the United States. Eventually as CART has misstep after misstep, all the richest teams bail on CART in the early 2000s and join the IRL. CART goes bankrupt in 2004. The remaining CART teams would reorganize the competition as the ChampCar World Series, but only linger for another 4 years before being bought out by the IRL. The IRL's parent company was renamed IndyCar LLC., and the series was renamed simply the IndyCar Series, bringing the split to an end.!<

I know only a handful of people here know about this, but I've reading the book about the American open-wheel racing split, with the rather bland title &quot;Indy Split&quot;. While the book itself is going fine so far, I already knew a lot of things due to my own research over the years, some of the content and things in it are still rage-inducing.

Tony George is still super unsympathetic halfway through. Imagine being a rich kid in your early 30s, wanting things to revert to how they were when you were a kid and throwing a fit about it, ignoring the evolution over the past 30 years.

Seriously, pandering to nationalists and xenophobes, while being more dislikable than the other millionaire and billionaires you're fighting with is quite the feat.

And the fact that we just have a more niche version of what he was railing against today, just shows how pointless it seems. At least he did something decent, such as fund the SAFER barrier and was correct to be concerned about rising costs.

I wouldn't post this on r/indycar because that sub has had a weird uptick of people defending him and some hostile newer users.

A great book about the CART era is CART, The First 30 Years...( I actually have 2 copies of it, if you can't find one)

"Autocourse Official History: Cart: The First 20 Years, 1979-1998 (Hazleton History) by Rick Shaffer - Hardcover - July 1999 - from The Book Garden (SKU: 948824)" https://www.biblio.com/book/autocourse-official-history-cart-first-20/d/1449700388?aid=frg&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwzLCVBhD3ARIsAPKYTcSQFhHS-OK2Z6xN7jAGk4WDju6Mr4wcrmrUIAzNJt-VLkGxFGfUwOgaAkUAEALw_wcB

John Oreovicz wrote an excellent book about the CART/IRL split

"Indy Split: The Big Money Battle That Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing : Oreovicz, John: Books" https://www.amazon.ca/Indy-Split-Battle-Nearly-Destroyed/dp/1642340561/ref=asc_df_1642340561/?tag=googlemobshop-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=459418184330&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=10562319213091057900&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&...