2011: A Year’s Worth of Racing In Review

It’s a cliché but the 2011 racing season featured the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  The year featured shocking upset wins by Regan Smith, Trevor Bayne, Dan Wheldon, and Ed Carpenter.  At the same time it featured the twin tragedies of Marco Simoncelli and Dan Wheldon’s deaths.  2011 featured the continuation of Dario Franchitti’s Reign of Luck as fortunate race control rulings and random lucky breaks (RE: Beatriz taking Power out on pit road) led to another year of a NASCAR reject winning in Indycar.  NASCAR was more fortunate with Jimmie Johnson’s Reign of Terror being stopped dead in it’s tracks by Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards whose battle went down to the last lap.  Grand Prix Racing (Both in the MotoGP and F1 sense) was fairly dull.  Carlos Checa led his Ducati to the WSBK title despite Ducati’s factory pullout.  AMA Pro racing saw some stability return while Grand Am continued to be Grand Am (as in irrelevant to 99% of fans).ALMS/WEC/ILMC/24 Hours of Le Mans featured continued Audi/Peugeot domination.

Indycar and NASCAR both featured surprise winners.  NASCAR kicked off the season with Trevor Bayne winning the Daytona 500.  Bayne’s win brought the Wood Brothers back into victory lane.  Latter Regan Smith won Darlington with Furniture Row racing. Smith’s win was especially impressive as he had to hold off Carl Edwards on old tires at Darlington. Marcos Ambrose finally won his road race.  Last and least Paul Menard won the Brickyard 400 on fuel.  Indycar featured two islands of unpredictability in a sea of Red cars and Andretti domination.  The entire Month of May was a feast for fans of the underdogs.  Sam Schmitt Motorsports (and its partner teams that were not Dragon) broke into the Fast 9 qualifying along with Sarah Fisher Racing’s Ed Carpenter.  Tagliani won the pole.  During the race it appeared JR Hildebrand was about to win the 500 until he crashed.  Dan Wheldon managed to clear the wreck and reach the finish line winning for Bryan Herta.  It should be remembered that Sebastian Saadevra left Herta last year for Conquest because Herta didn’t give him enough of a chance to win races.  Fast forward to Kentucky where Ed Carpenter beat Dario Franchitti to get his first career win.  Kentucky has been good to Carpenter and its loss next year will be felt by fans who want to see underdog wins and non processional racing.

NASCAR was generally unpredictable.  Besides the aforementioned underdog wins we also saw the rise of a new star with Brad Keselowski winning 3 races and proving himself as a worthy successor to the Penske #2.  This is even more significant since he’s going to have to help lead the team with Kurt Busch’s departure. Keselowski also had to pay a secret fine to the NASCAR Police State because he dared to say EFI was not relevant, green, and amazing technology.  At least he wasn’t a Busch brother. They had a rough year with extra helpings of controversy.  In the end they’re the most hated drivers in NASCAR.  This is great as long as it doesn’t cost them their rides.  NASCAR would be much poorer for their loss.

Going into 2011 Jimmie Johnson had won 5 Chase’s in a row.  Thankfully he was stopped this year by a team of drivers including Kurt Busch, Tony Stewart, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth.  All of whom deserve credit for helping to end the reign of terror.  Stewart and Edwards took the title fight all the way to Homestead.  In the end Tony Stewart passed over half the field on his way to winning the race.  Carl Edwards finished 2^nd and in fact tied Stewart in the points.  Stewart won on a tiebreaker as he had 5 wins versus Edward’s 1.

In contrast to that the two Grand Prix series (F1 and MotoGP) were fairly dull.  MotoGP featured Casey Stoner Domination while Ducati struggled and Pedrossa, Lorenzo, and Spies injured themselves.  A few good races did appear including Valencia and Mugello to break up the monotony.  Although it wasn’t a good race Ben Spies dominated Assen to get his first career win.  F1 could be summed up with one statistic: 2011 featured a record low of drivers to finish on the podium (7).  The 2011 season saw the return of KERS and the addition of DRS but they failed to improve the racing.  Instead we saw the Red Bull parade become even more processional as Webber rarely challenged Vettel (likely by design).  Fans of “technical” racing, “pure” racing, or boring racing enjoyed it and that’s great for them.  For anyone else 2011 Formula One was hard to watch.

The American Le Mans Series fell off a cliff with no prototypes and no TV.  It was a pretty sad drop off after a fairly interesting 2010 season. While there are some defenders of the ESPN3 deal including ALMS’s CEO, and Triple League Racing co-writer Ross; for many more casual viewers (myself included) the combination of no TV and no prototypes spelled the end for our interest in the ALMS.  With the ALMS no longer on SpeedTV the coverage on SpeedTV.com thankfully continued. However they were more focused on the Grand Sham then ALMS.  The World Endurance Championship continues to hurt them.  Worse the Petit Le Mans is not even on the calendar!  Which means Petit will most likely not see Audi, Toyota, Aston Martin, or Peugeot show up.

WSBK continued to produce exciting racing and featured the resurgence of Ducati despite the official pullout of the factory Ducati team.  Carlos Checa was the only Ducati to win a race.  He also won the most races this year and the title.  Max Biaggi’s destructive personality returned and hurt his title chances.  A late season injury ended it.  Marco Melandri and Eugene Laverty were winners with Yamaha.  Sadly the announcement that Yamaha would pull out at the end of this year put a damper on that.  Kawasaki also got a win in the rain!  BMW continues to attempt to win a race and have announced Melandri as a replacement for Troy Corser.  Over in America Josh Hayes won the title against Blake Young.  Young won more races however.  For Hayes 2011 was slightly disappointing as his goal after winning last year was to win the most races and dominate in a Mladin esque fashion.  There is always next year.

In some surprising news Lotus Cars continued to exist throughout the year.  They bought into Renault F1 and expanded that partnership heading into 2012.  The Lotus engine program in Indycar continued.  They signed a few teams and are expected to sign more next year.  While an engine has been built they have not been put into a car and will not be seen on track until January.  Lotus also has some GT car programs and a strange track day F1 style car for track days (if you have multiple millions of dollars).  They made it through this year but will they be here next year?

Austin GP continued in turmoil.  Austin has bounced on and off the schedule while constriction continues to start and stop.  The announcement of the New Jersey Grand Prix for 2013 was another cause for concern.  On the plus side Austin announced a slate of races including a Australian Touring Car race in 2012 and the third US MotoGP in 2013.  Will Austin in the end happen?  We still don’t know.  At least they got the date moved back until November 2012 so that they have more time.  It also means the fans that go to the track won’t get backed by the summer heat in Texas.

Sponsorship struggles plagued all series.  The pullout of Suzuki from MotoGP, Yamaha from WSBK, and the continued withdraw of Renault in F1 (they continue to build engines but sold the team to Lotus) were the most obvious.  NASCAR also saw major sponsorship issues despite strong TV ratings and good attendance.  Their problems appear to be threefold.  NASCAR sponsorships that were made (or renewed) in the 05-07 timeframe were sold at a high priced based on the idea of NASCAR’s continued growth. Since NASCAR has shrunk in the last few years and only started to right the ship this year that cannot be helpful in getting new deals worked out.  NASCAR struggles demographically with younger fans, minority fans, and fans outside the Mid West/South East/Pennsylvania regions and that limits many sponsors (RE: Red Bull).  Finally some of the cannibalization of sponsors as well as smaller deals and Official Sponsorship Of NASCAR may have devalued the market. The combination of these issues has led to contraction at Roush and Childress as well as the complete pullout of Red Bull Racing.  It’s also prevented expansion of teams like Waltrip, Gibbs, and Stewart/Haas.

MotoGP’s struggles were just as worrying.  There were only 17 bikes this year.  Teams high and low cannot sign sponsorship deals.  The Yamaha team went the entire year without a title sponsor and late breaking news is that Petronas left them.  The shocking thing is MotoGP is the 2^nd most watched form of racing (behind F1) yet cannot get sponsorship deals as good as what NASCAR and even Indycar teams manage to sign.  A major push to sign sponsors is a must for next year or else they could be back to just 17 bikes before too long.  CRT’s will help bike count some but without funding they will be horribly uncompetitive. WSBK has many of the same issues although they have a few more sponsors and factories.  It’s not even worth talking about AMA.

Indycar is doing well with sponsorship considering they get .3 ratings.  Still when Newman Haas cannot get sponsorship things are not good.  There are still too many ride buyers and too few real, activating, sponsors.  Track title sponsorship is an especially troubling issue and one of the reasons for the horrific 2012 schedule.  On the other side of open wheel F1 continues to do okay although more and more ride buyers are creeping in.  ALMS is not doing very well.  Without TV what do you expect?  Factory support remains in GT2 and that is vital for them.  Most sponsors in ALMS right now are brought by the driver or the team owner’s business (RE: Muscle Milk).

The leadership in racing continued to make questionable decisions.  Bernie Eccolstone and the FIA’s love of Middle Eastern dictators backfired with the protests in Bahrain.  Despite this they are obsessed with racing in that nation and have scheduled a return in 2012 and nearly went through with a race in 2011.  Randy Bernard opened 2011 with big promises and big idea’s only to end it with the worst schedule in years and a growing number of problems. Brian France continued to say what he wanted to be true rather than what was true.  Dorna’s CEO (owners of MotoGP) recognized what was wrong in GP (only 2 winning teams, 17 bikes).  The problem is his war on the factory teams could make things much worse.  If the factory Ducati, Honda, and Yamaha teams pull out who will pay for the USGP’s and SpeedTV deal?

Sadly a wrap up of 2011 is not complete without discussing the tragedy that struck towards the end of the year.  Dan Wheldon’s death at Vegas shocked the racing community both in America and worldwide.  In the wake of this tragedy Graham Rahal organized the Dan Wheldon Charity Auction for Wheldon’s kid’s and wife.  The amount of participation among drivers worldwide was impressive.  It brought together people from F1, NASCAR, Indycar, and even a few MotoGP riders put stuff into the auction.  The tragedy created some controversy with many people wanting to find someone or something to blame.  Car count, “inexperienced drivers,” ovals, or the Vegas 5 Million Dollar Challenge were popular scapegoats.  In reality his death was due to, as the Vegas accident report said, a “perfect storm” of events.  Still it motivated a group of oval haters that are a combination of F1 and Champcar fans, drivers, and journalists.  Just a week after Wheldon’s death at Vegas another tragedy struck the MotoGP in Malaysia.  Marco Simoncelli was killed after crashing his bike and being hit by oncoming traffic.  Coming so close after Wheldon’s death was especially shocking.  The MotoGP community held a massive celebration of Simoncelli’s life at Valencia which included a “moment of noise” from the Moto2 bikes as a fitting tribute to the “Mad Fro Man.”  In the MotoGP community there was a lot less effort to look for someone to blame and more acceptance of the “perfect storm” view.

As long as there’s not a second economic collapse 2012 is looking like a better year for racing.  Assuming NASCAR is able to figure out the sponsorship crisis 2012 should build on 2011 and prepare for the “new” new car in 2013 that will hopefully produce better racing on the 1.5 mile ovals.  F1 is still boring but maybe revised rules will help?  WSBK should continue along as it is and be some of the best racing in the world.  However MotoGP, Indycar, and ALMS are in a lot more peril.  GP will live and die by what goes on with the CRT’s and factory teams.  Should the factories pull out then who will pay for races and television?  If the CRT’s are awful will anyone want to sponsor them in 2013?  Indycar has a horrific 2012 schedule that has only 15 confirmed races (one of which may disappear).  Indycar will not have a star driver in 2012 with Danica’s move to NASCAR.  What driver does Indycar have that will attract casual fans?  I’m pretty sure 99% of American’s could care less about Dixon or Dario.  The 2012 car is not turning out as expected either.  Hope seems to rest on the potential for Ford or Fiat/Ferrari/Alfa Romeo entering in 2013.  As for ALMS much will depend on who really shows up next year.  Does Robertson’s Ford GT and Risi’s Ferrari return?  Will Newman Haas and Level 5 show up in LMP2?  And will there be more than 3 LMP1 cars?