Formula One race ‘a global joke’

You’re looking at the first week of NUVO’s first-ever sports page. It’s a modest launch to a project many years in the making. Here you’ll find opinion, interviews, event listings and whatever interesting stuff our staff can come up with on a given week.

Michael Schumacher's F1 victory was hollow.

In the weeks to come, you’ll see articles from some of the best sportswriters in Indiana, some of whom used to write for The Indianapolis Star before that newspaper purged its sports staff of all locals.

You’ll hear from the newsmakers and innovators in sports, from athletes to executives and fans as well. In an increasingly globalized marketplace for sports, it’s the fans who’ve been forgotten while the athletes and execs get richer.

We’ll follow the professional teams, too — but we’ll also emphasize amateur and participatory sports and even fitness, something most sports editors (including this one) could use themselves.

We’ll be looking at sports through the eyes of the average fan. There’s nothing about being a sportswriter that automatically makes you smarter than the passionate fan in the stands. Pro sportswriters have learned how to beat the system and figure out a way to get into games free; that’s the chief advantage they have over the paying fans.

From time to time, we’ll look at breaking news in the sports world. Other times, we’ll take a step back and try to analyze the bigger picture. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this new addition to NUVO.

Of course, reader feedback is welcomed, as are event listings for amateur sports. Drop an e-mail to sports@nuvo.net to reach out to us, or visit www.nuvo.net/forums to make your opinion known.

Our sports section launches just days after one of the biggest debacles in international sports history. What occurred at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday was unprecedented in the history of motor sports, or any other sport for that matter.

Even the Associated Press, which strives for objectivity, began its first story on the F1 race this way: “Formula One’s bid to capture the American audience was crippled Sunday when only six cars participated in the United States Grand Prix.”

The European press was even angrier: “F1’s dead in the States,” read the headline in the Sun of London.

Columnist Stan Piecha began his piece, “Formula One became a global joke Sunday.” The Indianapolis race has been one of the highest-rated races in Europe due to its prime-time slot on European TV. It was the sixth — and possibly the last — Formula One race at Indy.

One thing which most seem to agree upon is that Tony George is blameless in the situation, although there were rumblings about bad karma and payback from some. It was a power struggle between Michelin, Bridgestone and Formula One leadership. It was like watching the European Union dissolve in front of our eyes.

FIA chief Bernie Ecclestone, looking very much like Malcolm McLaren of Sex Pistols fame, walked as quickly as he could to his black helicopter to escape the angry fans and media. “I feel sorry for them [the fans],” he said over his shoulder to a local TV reporter. “They’ve been cheated.”

If Formula One is indeed dead in Indianapolis, it’s a financial blow more than anything else. For once, Bob Kravitz of The Star was right when he told F1 to go to hell and to not let the door hit Ecclestone on his way out of town.

F1 racing, while extremely popular in video games, has never really caught on in the States. While European fans queue for days to get tickets to races, in Indianapolis, just about every radio station in town was giving away a pair of tickets every hour for two weeks.

As far as Hoosiers are concerned, the race would have been much more fun if it started at Monument Circle and zigzagged through the hood to Meridian and Fall Creek. The drivers would then head east to Keystone Avenue, north to Carmel and then back downtown. That would have been exciting to watch.

Maybe Americans will never learn to love Formula One racing. In a sport as competitive and as fast-paced as racing, maybe we prefer to be nationalists, supporting only Americans. The high-tech and funny accents of F1 don’t match the blue-collar pathos of NASCAR for most of us.

Where F1 cars have to run on one set of tires — or “tyres,” as the Brits call them — NASCAR drivers go through a set every 15 minutes, making Sunday’s flap even more incomprehensible to U.S. fans.

The real losers were the people who drove and flew hundreds or thousands of miles to see an exciting Father’s Day race. See the theme? The fan gets screwed once again.

And that’s why we’re launching this sports page, to give the average fan more of a sense of empowerment over a sports culture gone awry. We hope you’ll let us know what you think works and what doesn’t. We’ll be listening.
And please stay tuned.