INDYCAR: "We Want Clean Racing At Edmonton"

IndyCar

INDYCAR: “We Want Clean Racing At Edmonton” - Bernard

"That’s what our drivers will be told this weekend," said IndyCar's CEO. "I don’t think anybody hit anybody on purpose [at Toronto], unless you ask Will [Power]…"

Marshall Pruett | Posted July 19, 2011 Fremont, CA

IndyCar Series CEO Randy Bernard, left, has clear expectations for his drivers this weekend, but won't get involved in the decisions made by Brian Barnhart, right, or the rest of the Race Control team. (LAT)

With plenty of time for tempers to subside and bruised egos to heal after the contact-filled race at Toronto, sanity could be restored at this weekend’s Edmonton Indy event.

‘Could be restored’ and ‘will be restored,’ however, are two entirely different scenarios. After the windfall of attention the IZOD IndyCar Series received on the streets of Toronto, series CEO Randy Bernard says he’s been impressed by how energized the series' fanbase remains.

“There’s been more talk on Twitter, on forums and on Facebook that you can image,” he said. “More than a week after the race, and for there to still be debates going on about Toronto, what was right, who was at fault for the crashes, what was wrong and everything else that happened, it tells me people are paying attention.

"It tells me people are still as passionate about IndyCar racing as they’ve ever been, and from what some of the guys in the paddock who've been around a while have told me, this is the kind lively debate that used to go on all the time. Dario [Franchitti] sent me a text after Toronto that said: ‘You said you wanted drama…’” Bernard said while laughing. “I replied back with: ‘Yeah, but I didn’t want it all in one race…’”

While he appreciates the boost to TV ratings that Toronto delivered, Bernard said he’s still looking for clarity on what fans want from the normally reserved open-wheel series.

“I don’t think that anybody set out to wreck cars, but the arguments and controversy that came from it all showed how much fire our drivers have, and I think we’ve seen how much our fans connect to that. It’s great when everything goes smoothly and everybody is happy, but I think we’ve also seen that when our drivers and fans get their emotions up, it makes for a very memorable event.

“On my Facebook page, the purists said it was the worst race in the world—an embarrassment. Then you had the newer fans, like my mom, actually, who just started watching the series and they said it was the best race they’d ever seen. The different perceptions the old and new fans had really stood out to me, but I’m still trying to gauge whether people actually want to see more races like we had at Toronto.”

According to SPEED.com’s poll last week, readers are split almost evenly on the more contact/less contact debate.

“That’s the thing about our sport,” Bernard continued. “As we have different circuits where we race, you really get a lot of the complexities that appear. Not every race is an oval, or the same thing week after week. You can’t really have that kind of contact on an oval for obvious reasons, but sometimes you have an event like Toronto that’s so far out of left field with the results and what happened from start to finish, you have an air of unpredictability.

"From that standpoint, I think we might have gained some new fans because now they want to some back and see if everyone’s going to be on their best behavior at Edmonton, or if our drivers haven’t learned their lessons.”

Edmonton offers more hairpin corners than Toronto, increasing the odds of the event turning into a second consecutive crash-fest, but Bernard says his INDYCAR staff will make their expectations clear on what's expected during the driver’s meetings.

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