Debating where IndyCar goes next

It has been roughly a year since Randy Bernard stepped aside as CEO of IndyCar, and with the hand of Mark Miles now on the wheel - Miles being CEO of Hulman & Co, parent company of IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - the series' new direction is beginning to take shape.

Many of the changes have taken place behind the scenes, with a managerial restructure having recently been completed by the appointment of two experienced marketing executives.

But in competition terms, IndyCar is preparing for a self-described 'transitional year' in 2014.

Cynics may argue that it has been in a state of transition for a while, but this time there is some sort of road map. The 2014 calendar will be squashed into five months as part of a plan to make the schedule more clearly defined for casual fans, and a winter series (which may or may not be international) is in the works for 2015 to help fill some of the downtime. Also, the Indy road course will be used for the first time in 2014.

Some team owners, such as Bobby Rahal, have given Miles their full backing. Many harbour private concerns, but are staying publicly quiet in the interests of promoting intra-series harmony.

Several drivers have spoken of fears that the Indy road course race will harm the Indy 500; many teams are worried about job security for crew members when they face so many months with no racing, or by the difficulty in convincing sponsors to part with the same amount of money for a short season - after all, the costs of running 18 races a year hasn't changed.

US racing legend Mario Andretti and Miles stand at opposite sides of many of the arguments, so here AUTOSPORT has brought them head-to-head.

Note: A small part of the Andretti interview was included in a recent Inside Line column, but is used again here to provide context.

MARIO ANDRETTI

What is your take on next year's race on the Indy road course?

I think it's a risk. It seems like the new man in change, Mark Miles, takes a lot of advice from the Boston Consulting Group, who haven't got a clue, in my opinion, about our sport.

Mario Andretti © LAT

No one loves road racing more than I do, so from the standpoint of having more road races, fine. But for me, it diminishes the mystique of the main event.

I'm on the record with him that I totally disagree, and he looks at me like I'm a naysayer.

You know what? I've lived in the business all my life. He comes from tennis, or whatever. Why doesn't he pay attention to some of the things that actually have worked? The facts that we are actually facing?

I raced at the first and second Daytona 24 Hours. Ferrari, Porsche, all the main teams were there. There was nobody around. Today, you have the main NASCAR stars turn up, IndyCar stars... nobody there [in the stands].

You go to Sebring, and it's elbow-to-elbow. Why? No ambience [at Daytona]. There is not a single road-racing circuit inside an oval anywhere on this planet that draws [a crowd]. The Lausitzring: DTM has its smallest crowd there, because nobody wants to go there.

So why does he think that by changing some of the layout at Indianapolis, it's going to make a difference? If F1 can't make it work on the road course, nothing will. So it's not that I'm a naysayer. I'm just trying to talk sense based on what we know.

You sound disappointed with Miles.

He has his own way, and he has this Boston group which he hired when he was on the board, and that's what he takes all his advice from.

For him to end the IndyCar season at the end of August is criminal to IndyCar. He's saying, 'Even NASCAR has a heavy TV ratings fall during the Chase.' That's bullshit. NASCAR is 20 per cent up on last year.

It is presence. Who is your competition? NASCAR, Formula 1 and IndyCar are the three big series on the globe.

NASCAR starts its season in February and ends in the middle of November. Formula 1 starts in March and ends at the same time as NASCAR. And we are out of sight and out of mind for two months before that, and you think you're doing the series a service? Give me a break.

IndyCar plans to fill some of the gap with a Winter Series...

There's going to be no Winter Series. Where the hell is he going to go? We just lost Brazil. When you have the awareness that we used to have, all of a sudden [countries like] Australia want IndyCar. There was no commercial reason to go there, but the sanction fee was good.

The only way you're going to go to Japan, or South Korea, or China, or anywhere in Europe, is if you get a sanction fee that makes sense. And nobody's going to pay it.

It's not going to happen. That's the reality of it.

If he'd said, 'OK, I'm going to announce that the series will end at the end of August, but here's what we have already in place', then that's OK. Now, he says, 'that's to be determined'. Well, good luck, my friend. That's all I can say.

MARK MILES

Mario Andretti said that he has been complaining to you all year about what he considers to be wrong with IndyCar, and he puts a lot of the blame on the fact that you don't have a background in the sport.

Scott Dixon with Mark Miles © LAT

I understand that I didn't come to the sport 10 months ago as an insider with all the history and perspective that that might give me. Whether that is an advantage or not, time will tell. But it is what it is.

I've worked this year to make sure that I don't make rash judgements about where we have to be going, and I understand well the different perspectives and underlying data, and will take in the perspective and the knowledge of the folks who have been around a long time before we try to set a course.

How difficult is it to balance all the different viewpoints?

It isn't a popularity contest. It's trying to set the course for growth. And the first thing is just understanding all the perspectives, and not being arrogant enough to think that my instincts are necessarily right.

Take the Indy road course as an example. I knew from the beginning that some people would think that it was some form of heresy on some rhetorical level.

But beyond that there was a concern - and Mario was one of those who expressed it - that it might affect the Indy 500 if we had a road course at the beginning of May.

So we took that very seriously, and thought a lot about it, and got a lot of feedback from every imaginable stakeholder, broadcasters, some market study work, and lots of the team owners and drivers.

And I think it's telling that you haven't heard an ongoing, strong chorus from folk who thought this was a bad idea.

Many teams believe that the compressed 2014 calendar will make it harder to retain staff. Is that a concern?

It is a concern. It is something that we believe we'll deal with in 2015 when we can get back to the kind of expansion and international elements that we talked about [when the calendar was announced].

I don't know any other way to address it. We've got to keep our eye on the ball in terms of what we're trying to accomplish, and the first step is to come up with a schedule that is more follow-able.

Motorsport has historically found it very difficult to get new races in emerging markets off the ground, and make them sustainable for more than a year or two - IndyCar experienced this with the cancelled Qingdao race last year. If it's hard to get one race up and running, why are you confident that you can do several?

I think we would be looking at - and we'll do this to some extent anyway - whether there are ways to develop other markets in North America.

But that's not easy, given just the weather and the climate, with how few places you can race in February. There really aren't a lot of choices.