What has killed a crucial IndyCar talent pool?

Remember when it seemed every second or third driver in American single-seater racing was Brazilian? Remember, too, how many of them were good, potential race winners?

Look at the annals of Indycar racing stretching back to 1905 - covering all its form from USAC to CART/Champ Car and what is now known as IndyCar. Inevitably, American drivers take far and away the lion's share of wins - 1143 victories spread among 227 drivers. Second, though, is Brazil, with 109 wins from 11 drivers - comfortably ahead of Great Britain (80/10) and Canada (60/10).

Well, the boys from Brazil have become old men (in purely racing terms) and there are now just two left on the IndyCar grid. Typical of the stats, they're two aces: three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, the championship runner-up in 2002, '08, '13 and '14; and 2004 IndyCar champion and '13 Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan.

But Castroneves turns 42 next month, Kanaan is already at that mark, and while both are regular contenders for victory and are probably as good as they've ever been, the merciless stat book reveals that neither has made his way to Victory Lane since 2014, despite driving for the two best teams in the series.

More troubling for Brazilian motorsport fans who love open-wheel racing is the fact that there aren't many of their drivers in the junior categories ready to step in when Castroneves is switched to a sportscar and Indy 500 programme with Penske, and Kanaan finally succumbs to the inevitable and becomes Vin Diesel's stunt double.

Looking at the Mazda Road To Indy ranks, there's Matheus Leist in Indy Lights with Carlin, who looks OK so far - as he should, being BRDC Formula 3 champion - but he'll need a couple of years on the nursery slopes. Victor Franzoni in Pro Mazda is smart and promising, as is Lucas Kohl in USF2000, but their IndyCar debuts are at least a couple of years away. In Europe, in Formula 2, Sergio Sette Camara has shown flashes of promise at Formula 3 level but was dropped by Red Bull recently.

So, despite the awkwardness of approaching veterans and reminding them they're old, it's time to ask Kanaan, Castroneves and Gil de Ferran - another Indy legend - why the Brazilian well has dried up.

TONY KANAAN
IndyCar champion and Indianapolis 500 winner
Wins: 17

The number-one problem is the rise of Stock Car Brazil. That series used to be for guys like us - ex-open-wheel guys who are retiring - and there are still plenty of guys like that who do well, Rubens [Barrichello] being a great example. But now it has become very popular with kids too.

The second problem is that we used to be sponsored by cigarettes and beer. There was the Marlboro Brazilian team - 12 guys sponsored by Phillip Morris! That all went away.

Thirdly, the amount of opportunities in racing series has gone down. After go-karting, you don't have enough junior open-wheel championships. After karting, I did Brazilian Formula Ford, I did Formula Chevrolet, and they're gone.

Karting is so expensive that if a kid or his parents see the opportunity to get a funded deal in touring cars, that's what they do. Even here now, there's a Brazilian kid, Rodrigo Baptista, who has come to America and has decided to go to the Pirelli World Challenge. And another guy who I think could be at the same level as me and Helio is Pipo Derani, and he's ended up in sportscars.

I think the biggest hit that IndyCar took was when we stopped racing in Brazil, although I see the problem as the other way around; if there were more Brazilian drivers in the series, it would help get the right people interested in holding a Brazilian race.

IndyCar is still shown live there on TV and I believe it's popular enough that we don't need to look at it as if we're taking it to a country that doesn't know what IndyCar is all about. Emerson [Fittipaldi] opened the door, then Andre Ribeiro, Gil de Ferran, myself and Helio... people know what IndyCar is.

It's not a matter of popularity, the biggest issue now is I honestly think kids see it as too difficult to make it. When I was 16, I was still racing in Brazil. Now, because of that lack of formula racing, if you want to be racing open-wheel at the age of 16, you've got to leave the country. As a parent, you're going to think that's a huge deal, and what if your kid doesn't make it?

That's the problem; I think you need more ladder series in Brazil, like the Mazda Road To Indy here in the States, to create and develop these talents and keep them in open-wheel racing for longer, instead of just going to touring cars, stock cars.

What should be a big concern to all of us is that the further away we get from having strong Brazilian drivers here in IndyCar or from having a race in Brazil, it gets more and more difficult to start it all up again.

Formula 1 is hurting big-time in Brazil, and honestly I'd say F1 got lucky that Felipe Massa had to come back to Williams. If that goes away, fans find another option, and it's very difficult to then win them back. A couple of years later, they're going to be watching the racing that is only Brazilians - which is Stock Cars.

So that's sad because since Ayrton Senna died, IndyCar is the only top series that gave Brazil titles and big wins. Gil, Helio, me. I'd hate to see that history kind of just stop.

GIL DE FERRAN
Double IndyCar champion, 2003 Indy 500 winner
Wins: 12

There are a number of factors, and trying to pinpoint one of them is hard because a lot of them are interrelated, but you have to look at them separately too. You could almost write a book on it because it's so complex.

Since I was trying to get to the top in F1 [de Ferran was British F3 champion in 1992, and finished fourth and third in his two Formula 3000 campaigns], a lot has changed, particularly in the economy, and I don't mean Brazil's economy. I mean the economics of racing.

The investment necessary to even go through the lower formulas was much less than it is today, if you were going to rely on your own sponsors to help you make it to Formula 1 or IndyCar. On the other hand the funding method has also changed, so nowadays you have many more scholarship-type support systems, which you didn't have before.

There is also the aspirational aspect to consider, because I truly think that has changed. For me it was huge because in F1 we had a decade of Emerson Fittipaldi quickly followed by Nelson Piquet quickly followed by and overlapped by Ayrton Senna. And at that same time Emerson had started all over again in Indycars and was doing really great.

You're talking about more than 25 years of Brazilians being frontrunners in the two top international motorsport series in the world. So when I looked at them and the risk versus reward to do something I loved, I decided that the risk of putting myself through all the pain of trying to build this career for myself was somewhat manageable and worth the rewards, which my heroes had proved could be enormous.

So although I would say having a race in your country is desirable but not necessary for the success of the sport in that country, I'd say it was and is absolutely essential to the sport's growth to have a countryman doing well.

The popularity of the sport in any given country has ebbed and flowed according to how well its best driver or drivers were doing. You've seen that in Spain and Italy with MotoGP. I think in F1, you've seen it in Britain and France and Germany, and you've seen it in Brazil with IndyCar.

The sport was big there when I, or Helio or Tony was doing well. And when it's big, that's when it becomes aspirational for the kids; they start seeing the risk-versus-reward equation on the international stage in the same way I did.

Now once you reach that level the risk is about performing, right? I mean, you can't fabricate talent or results. You're up against the best drivers from several countries, and the numbers are against you. So you have to perform for a sponsor to continue to put the money in and make sure your career continues to have momentum.

Now, that's a big risk because a sponsor can control even the training a young driver receives, in terms of how much he provides to put the driver in the right team or situation to do well. But he can't control the raw materials - the driver!

There's a difference between being a participant and being a contender. And I would say that there are fewer Brazilian companies ready to take that risk on drivers right now, internationally.

HELIO CASTRONEVES
Three-time Indy 500 winner
Wins: 29

Economy is one problem. Stock Cars is becoming pretty big and instead of drivers leaving their country and converting their reals into dollars or pounds, they can make their living in Brazil as racecar drivers. It's not an open-wheel car, but it's a form of racing that drivers can make into reasonable careers.

A lot of friends who had the potential to come over here decided to stay and make a career in stock cars. It's exactly like over here, drivers going from sprint cars into regional NASCAR series and then trying to make it to Trucks, Xfinity and finally Cup.

In Brazil, there are Stock Cars, there's Stock Car Lites, there's Porsche Cup - lots of touring car series - and they don't have to bring the astronomic amount of money that they would need to bring if they were going to try to go abroad to England or Europe or America and live there and race there.

Add to that the fluctuation of the Brazilian currency, which is weak and has been like that for some time, and the safer decision by kids and their parents is to stay at home.

Another thing that hurt was TV rights. There used to be a lot of TV channels to give people knowledge about racing, from all around the world.

But from 2004 to '08, I think, they didn't broadcast IndyCar, and so we went through this phase where, except for the big fans who bought racing magazines and went to racing websites, no one knew what was going on. And if you lose the general public, you lose all the people who might become big fans eventually, and you lose the interest of the Brazilian companies who might want to market their products in open-wheel racing.

If you were a sponsor, a potential sponsor, and you cannot use IndyCar drivers to do marketing of your brand to your own people - and the domestic market may be your only market - then obviously you're not going to be interested. So now add to that Stock Cars becoming more popular, they're being carried by a major television network, the sponsorship money costs less, and what are you going to do? Stock Cars.

That hurt a lot. Then TV came back and Brazil had coverage of IndyCar in 2009, so they saw me win Indy that year, and that helped gain interest again, but the world economy was bad by then and there weren't enough spaces in IndyCar for the Brazilian drivers who tried to make it around that time. Teams needed more money than ever before and most of these kids didn't have it.

I would love to help be an ambassador to try to get a race back to Brazil. Unfortunately there was that race that disappeared very late [a proposed event on the Brasilia road course in 2015, which was set for early March and only got canned in late January]. That left a bad taste for a lot of IndyCar management. And now there is a lot of change that is having to happen in government, too, after some scandals and corruption; it's been a rough time.

So I think it may be five years before the system is restructured, where they can make big sports decisions like having a permanent race. I don't think anyone wants to see a race that just lasts one or two years and then is gone again. That doesn't help anyone - not the series, not the country, not the young drivers.

I honestly feel honoured to be in this position within our series, and at a great team, and in a situation where maybe I can inspire kids like Emerson and Ayrton and Nelson Piquet did for me.

I hope that Tony and I still have that effect and we see young Brazilians in IndyCar again. Maybe Tony and I can start a team!