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IndyCar
PRUETT: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Rodney King comes to mind when we delve into the growing miscommunication and mistrust between the IndyCar Series and its owners.
For a number of IndyCar owners, the stated costs, innovation and interest in the 2012 car are about as tangible as the hologram shown at the launch last month in Indianapolis. (LAT)
If you’re a fan of multiple personalities, you’ll love the IZOD IndyCar Series.
It’s hard to know which voice should be listened to at times – from the series and the paddock – because depending on the the situation, the results may vary.
Everyone wants a new car. Nobody wants to pay for a new car.
Most owners are sick and tired of Dallara and price gouging on spare parts. IndyCar signs Dallara to build the 2012 car.
Everyone says the series needs something new to attract better TV ratings and new fans. No one wants to support what the series picked as the vehicle to attract better TV ratings and new fans.
The need for an innovating and interesting car is considered common knowledge. A highly uninspiring car is chosen.
It’s amazing how far things are attempting to spin out of control just 44 days after the IZOD IndyCar Series revealed their plans for a new chassis and engine concept for 2012.
At the root of the problem is the feeling of mistrust and miscommunication directed at the series from many of the entrants.
The tidal wave of frustration that hit last weekend at Sonoma came as a complete surprise to IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard, who was informed his presence was not welcome at a meeting between team owners, principals and managers, and the 2012 car chief, Tony Cotman.
Getting to the bottom of the beef between the paddock and the series has proven to be a challenge; after nearly four hours of conversations, I was left with a seemingly endless path of gripes, bad blood, anger and disenchantment from the men and women who make up the 2010 IndyCar grid.
To complicate matters even more, the display of a near majority at Sonoma – where only A.J. Foyt and HVM’s Keith Wiggins did not attend – appears to diminishing. Four entrants who were in the Whine Country meeting changed their tune late this week, pledging newfound support for the 2012 car.
While the paddock's love/hate relationship with the 2012 car isn’t universal, with a few power brokers leading the fight, this isn’t a brief tantrum that will be forgotten about in a matter of days. Some have dug themselves deep trenches and have the resources to put up a long and ugly fight.
Whether you side with the entrants or the Series, both parties are convinced they are right and the other side is wrong. The longer they remain at loggerheads, the bloodier the fight will become, and the more negative publicity will emerge and eat away at whatever level of momentum IndyCar has achieved.
If you’re an old school open-wheel fan, yes, this feels like the same bad soap opera plot we’ve seen over and over again: Owners and USAC/CART/ChampCar/IRL/IndyCar are at odds…threats of a breakaway series surface…a change in leadership is called for…rinse, wash and repeat.
As much as I’d love to report that there’s a single problem that needs addressing, the touch points listed below represent only the high level items that divide the two parties. Grab yourself a Red Bull and buckle in...had I spent more time delving into the problems that exist, I'm sure the list would have doubled...
From the paddock:
1. There is a communication issue between the paddock and the series’ leadership.
2. There is a trust issue between the paddock and the series, and the perception of devious activities by the series in relation to the new car.
3. They don’t like how the ICONIC panel process was run and feel like the 2012 car isn’t what they asked for.
4. Teams are concerned about the real 2012 chassis costs, and most don’t trust Dallara whatsoever.
5. They want rules and costs now.
6. They want to know if the Series has a plan to help them get loans to buy 2012 cars.
7. This beef isn’t about the DeltaWing, but it is. Kind of.
8. It isn’t too late to make changes to the 2012 car.
9. Some would like to see Tony George placed back in control of the Series, and are actively trying to make that happen.
10. They want different things from the series than they are being offered.
1: Communication breakdown
As has been the case lately, none of the members of the paddock wanted to talk on the record about the more critical items they are troubled with. It’s something that Randy Bernard finds frustraitng, and an element of modern IndyCar culture I’d also love to see changed.
“It’s hard to have an honest conversation if people won’t put their names to their words, or if they won’t talk to me directly. Everything I’ve heard is what I’ve read or has been passed on by my staff. I’m not 100 percent sure what [the owners] want. I just learned about it last weekend, but I still don’t have a clear picture on what they are asking for. A delay on the new car? Maybe they want to keep the current one longer? A new chassis? I haven’t received anything firsthand from them so it’s hard to say.”
The disconnect still exists between the paddock and Bernard, with none of the entrants wanting to air their problems to the CEO directly, although Bernard said he was going to reach out to the owners to bridge whatever gap they have.
From the team side, and from almost every person I spoke with, they frequently mentioned how little they knew Bernard, and how the lack of a bond kept them from trusting IndyCar’s leader.
“I hardly know Randy,” said one of the major players in the paddock. “We’ve spoken plenty of times, but we’ve never shared a deep conversation about the 2012 car, what fits us best, what we need, or what our sponsors need. Or what I have told him, nothing was done about it. The opposite was done. How the hell you give the green light to build a new car and expect us to buy it without getting our approval first is just crazy. We’re the consumers here. You don’t tell us we have to spend a million plus on new cars and engines. You talk to us first to make sure what you’ve come up with is something we’re willing to buy. It’s completely backwards.”
Change a few words around, or add in some cursing, and this was a common refrain to most that I spoke with.
For Bernard, the belief that he’s unavailable or unapproachable is mystifying.
“Everyone has my number and my email. I’m always on the phone, always talking, or responding to email and go out of my way to be here for any of my owners to talk to. Communication is a two-way street, and I can’t force guys to pull me aside or to talk to me. It goes both ways and I do all I can to be there for them.”
Another senior member of the paddock – one who’s been in the sport for decades – said he was surprised by the like-minded message they delivered.
“I’ve been in a number of meetings like this over the years, and I’ve never seen the owners so united like they were last weekend. We hardly ever agree on things, frankly. Two representatives weren’t there, but for the rest of us, everyone seemed to be pulling hard in the same direction.”
One quote from Bernard that incensed everyone I spoke to – and I do mean everyone -- was when he told Robin Miller “We signed contracts with Honda and Dallara and we worked in good faith with the state of Indiana and we are not going backwards.”
“Telling us the ship has set sail is the wrong way to approach us,” one owner told me. “Instead of saying, let me get to the bottom of this, let me reach out to the owners to see what your issues are, he tells us contracts are signed, and basically, shut up and deal with it. He didn’t do his due diligence. He never called us together before they made their final decision on the chassis to ask if it’s something we wanted or would support. Now he thinks they can ram it down our throats and we’ll take it? Get real.”
You’ll read this many times throughout the rest of the story: I don’t know who’s right or wrong on this particular topic, but both sides need to sit down immediately and hash out their differences. Call Oprah if necessary; book some time on her couch if needed, but get together ASAP and find some common ground to build from.
2: Trust issues
The issues with trust between the paddock and series pre-date the 2012 car by more than a decade. There seems to be an inherent distrust in anything the IRL does, and based on history, it’s hard to fault the owners for casting a doubting eye on everything the series attempts to do.
In relation to the 2012 car, the handling of the July 14th announcement and subsequent meetings with Dallara have left many in the paddock with the feeling they’ve been duped – lied to – all along.
“The problem we have today -- what led to the owners' initiative meeting last week at Sonoma – is that we have no direction for the chassis decision they made, yet Dallara has a contract as Randy Bernard was quoted [in Robin Miller’s article], and they seem to have a very clear direction on what they are doing,” said a another veteran owner. “Dallara has met with the owners directly, and has told us what they are up to for 2012. How is that possible if they don’t have a set of rules already? How can Dallara sit and tell me, to my face, about the components they will use, the design concepts they have, and other items they have in mind when supposedly Tony Cotman has yet to write the first rule for them to start their drawings from? Someone isn’t being honest here.”
It’s the belief that Dallara either has a set of rules in hand, or that they’ve been allowed to come up with their own design – prior to Cotman’s hiring – that has many entrants up in arms.
“I don’t know where that’s coming from,” said Bernard. “Of course, Dallara has our RFQ (request for quote) that outlined a lot of things we wanted, so there was a framework established at the beginning of the new car process. It’s not like Dallara agreed to build a car without any specifics, or signed to create something without any guidance of what we expected. There are some specifics in there, and every chassis maker that bid on the 2012 car saw those. Tony [Cotman] has to create the rules, but it’s not like Dallara is sitting there with a blank sheet of paper waiting to be told how to draw the first line. The exact details are what Tony is working on. We are in control of this process, and no one else.”
The 2012 car announcement presentation is also a sore subject for some in the paddock.
“The 2012 car [announcement] was a farce," said one principal. "[The ICONIC panel] was seen rehearsing their Dallara acceptance speeches three days before the announcement! They contacted the State of Indiana ten days before the announcement, telling them they had selected a chassis. To their credit, they didn’t say which one, but they did say they’d made up their minds. Then they put on that dog and pony show where everyone supposedly voted 45 minutes before the presentation for Dallara? That decision was made long before the announcement. It was complete bull****.
“[The series] knew for at least 10 days which chassis they wanted, but instead of calling us in to talk about it – to float it past us – they didn’t. Before they signed contracts, they had a big window of opportunity to include us, but chose to keep us in the dark and then presented it to the public like it was a decision made the morning of the announcement. Do they honestly wonder why we are so upset?”
Conspiracy theories aside, it’s hard to imagine the series having a secret set of rules for Dallara, but like so many other aspects of this fight, perception and reality are wildly different depending on whom you speak with.
Regardless, the fact that the “the ship has set sail" tone has been established – while the paddock knows there was a prime opportunity to involve them in the final decision – is a sticking point I don’t foresee any of the upset entrants getting past.
It’s easy to blame them for having buyer’s remorse, or for being flaky and acting like they don’t know what they want, but the simple act of calling them in to get a head count on who did or didn’t want their choice of 2012 car could have averted this entire mess.
I understand the reasons for signing non-disclosure agreements. I've signed plenty myself. But in this case, they weren't taking about military secrets. This wasn't a panel discussing cutting-edge nuclear reactor technologies. They were forming the plans for a new racing car. Somewhere this rather humbling fact was overlooked.
3: This isn’t what we asked for
I call this the ‘Questionnaire Question.’ It piggy backs off of the last topic as the two are intertwined.
The greatest flaw in the entire 2012 project and process, in my estimation, is how the series chose to work with the owners on deciding what directions to take on the new car.
To quickly recap how it went down, Gil de Ferran was tabbed to serve on the ICONIC panel as the teams’ representative. Prior to officially joining the panel, de Ferran and his panel members assembled a detailed list of questions that was sent out to all of the entrants.
The owners’ answers to those questions, as the plan went, would serve as de Ferran’s map to navigate the 2012 creation process.
Where the train runs off of the tracks is when you look at how the ‘designed by committee’ process actually works.
A number of major decisions were made along the way – milestones in the 2012 car and engine concept that greatly influenced or changed the overall concept of the car – where the team owners needed to be included. Whether it was the choice to go with one chassis supplier rather than two or three or the conclusion that Dallara was their preferred constructor, the paddock should have been brought into the loop.
But because de Ferran had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the entrants heard absolutely nothing about the car or the choices until the series made the announcement on July 14th. If you’re keeping tabs on the biggest blunders in IndyCar history, this single move ranks right up there with the greats. It’s an absolute classic.
Imagine commissioning a custom hot rod. The builder asks you to fill out a list of all the things you want the car to contain. You fill it out with the basics of what you expect in return:
• V8 engine making at least 500 horsepower
• Seats four people
• Big brakes
• Lightweight
• 18” wheels
• 5-speed tranny
The builder tells you to come back in six months and not to call him until he’s done. You leave with visions of maybe 50’s hot rod, maybe a muscle car, or maybe something in-between.
What you get after six months, unfortunately, meets all of the criteria you outlined in the beginning, but the decisions made by the builder were wrong at every step of the process.
First, you have a 1000cc V8 with four turbos to make the power you want. It's too hot, overstressed and it doesn't have enough torque to beat a VW Bug off the line. Next, it seats four, but those seats are vertical – a skyscraper arrangement. The brakes are big – off a Sherman tank – so to keep the weight down, they molded the frame out of plastic. The wheels are 18”, but are off a bicycle, and the tranny does have five gears -- all reverse.
Yes, it’s an asinine scenario, but it further proves how the fill out our questionnaire and then we’re going into total radio silence until we’re done; hope you like what we’ve come up with then we announce it to you and the entire world at the same time routine was comically bad. Biblically bad.
Anyone who believed a questionnaire could sufficiently steer someone to deliver what the paddock wanted was simply dreaming. According to all those I spoke with about the questionnaire, and after hearing some of the questions that were sent out, it was a horrible error in judgment by the series to prevent de Ferran from talking to the paddock at the point where every major decision was being approached. It's easy to blame de Ferran, but the process, not the panel member, was at fault.
“They sent out a questionnaire that was made up of questions from a lot of different people," said one team principal. "Gil did the right thing after they were returned to him by going around to every team afterwards to get clarification on what they wanted. That was great. But from there, there was no communication whatsoever. Big things change. Different paths are followed. You have to be able to check with the owners to provide updates or to get changes from us on where we’d like to see things go. But they sat behind this veil called ‘confidentiality’ where they couldn't talk to anybody about the decisions they were making, or to get our opinions on those decisions. And here we are with a car most of us don’t want.”
Reaching back to the issues of trust, part of the reason for the owners being kept out of the ICONIC discussions was due to the concerns of a conflict of interest.
One influential series official (who, funnily enough, did not want to be quoted…) fired back at the owners.
“Nobody asks why the owners were kept out of the process once we embarked on the ICONIC meetings. Well, so many of them had involvements with the DeltaWing car, how could we? How could we have an impartial committee if we let the guys who are bankrolling or publicly supporting their own car into the discussions? I’m sorry if they feel like they were locked out, but we didn’t let Swift or Lola in on the meetings, or ask their opinion on our decisions. The same goes for DeltaWing, and it looked like about half of [the owners] were behind it. Nobody ever mentions the conflicts they had.”
It's another valid point that both sides disagree on. Maybe the series did need NDAs to keep the paddock from steering the 2012 process too heavily in one direction. Maybe it was more of a protective measure than one done out of self-importance. Maybe they could have been included on some major decisions, but not others. The possibilities are limitless.
This subject is ripe for another Oprah visit, but I don’t see anyone coming out of it feeling any better about the situation. Of all the issues at hand, this is one of very few that appears to have genuine animosity held by both parties.
It’s hard to know which voice should be listened to at times – from the series and the paddock – because depending on the the situation, the results may vary.
Everyone wants a new car. Nobody wants to pay for a new car.
Most owners are sick and tired of Dallara and price gouging on spare parts. IndyCar signs Dallara to build the 2012 car.
Everyone says the series needs something new to attract better TV ratings and new fans. No one wants to support what the series picked as the vehicle to attract better TV ratings and new fans.
The need for an innovating and interesting car is considered common knowledge. A highly uninspiring car is chosen.
It’s amazing how far things are attempting to spin out of control just 44 days after the IZOD IndyCar Series revealed their plans for a new chassis and engine concept for 2012.
At the root of the problem is the feeling of mistrust and miscommunication directed at the series from many of the entrants.
The tidal wave of frustration that hit last weekend at Sonoma came as a complete surprise to IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard, who was informed his presence was not welcome at a meeting between team owners, principals and managers, and the 2012 car chief, Tony Cotman.
Getting to the bottom of the beef between the paddock and the series has proven to be a challenge; after nearly four hours of conversations, I was left with a seemingly endless path of gripes, bad blood, anger and disenchantment from the men and women who make up the 2010 IndyCar grid.
To complicate matters even more, the display of a near majority at Sonoma – where only A.J. Foyt and HVM’s Keith Wiggins did not attend – appears to diminishing. Four entrants who were in the Whine Country meeting changed their tune late this week, pledging newfound support for the 2012 car.
While the paddock's love/hate relationship with the 2012 car isn’t universal, with a few power brokers leading the fight, this isn’t a brief tantrum that will be forgotten about in a matter of days. Some have dug themselves deep trenches and have the resources to put up a long and ugly fight.
Whether you side with the entrants or the Series, both parties are convinced they are right and the other side is wrong. The longer they remain at loggerheads, the bloodier the fight will become, and the more negative publicity will emerge and eat away at whatever level of momentum IndyCar has achieved.
If you’re an old school open-wheel fan, yes, this feels like the same bad soap opera plot we’ve seen over and over again: Owners and USAC/CART/ChampCar/IRL/IndyCar are at odds…threats of a breakaway series surface…a change in leadership is called for…rinse, wash and repeat.
As much as I’d love to report that there’s a single problem that needs addressing, the touch points listed below represent only the high level items that divide the two parties. Grab yourself a Red Bull and buckle in...had I spent more time delving into the problems that exist, I'm sure the list would have doubled...
From the paddock:
1. There is a communication issue between the paddock and the series’ leadership.
2. There is a trust issue between the paddock and the series, and the perception of devious activities by the series in relation to the new car.
3. They don’t like how the ICONIC panel process was run and feel like the 2012 car isn’t what they asked for.
4. Teams are concerned about the real 2012 chassis costs, and most don’t trust Dallara whatsoever.
5. They want rules and costs now.
6. They want to know if the Series has a plan to help them get loans to buy 2012 cars.
7. This beef isn’t about the DeltaWing, but it is. Kind of.
8. It isn’t too late to make changes to the 2012 car.
9. Some would like to see Tony George placed back in control of the Series, and are actively trying to make that happen.
10. They want different things from the series than they are being offered.
1: Communication breakdown
As has been the case lately, none of the members of the paddock wanted to talk on the record about the more critical items they are troubled with. It’s something that Randy Bernard finds frustraitng, and an element of modern IndyCar culture I’d also love to see changed.
“It’s hard to have an honest conversation if people won’t put their names to their words, or if they won’t talk to me directly. Everything I’ve heard is what I’ve read or has been passed on by my staff. I’m not 100 percent sure what [the owners] want. I just learned about it last weekend, but I still don’t have a clear picture on what they are asking for. A delay on the new car? Maybe they want to keep the current one longer? A new chassis? I haven’t received anything firsthand from them so it’s hard to say.”
The disconnect still exists between the paddock and Bernard, with none of the entrants wanting to air their problems to the CEO directly, although Bernard said he was going to reach out to the owners to bridge whatever gap they have.
From the team side, and from almost every person I spoke with, they frequently mentioned how little they knew Bernard, and how the lack of a bond kept them from trusting IndyCar’s leader.
“I hardly know Randy,” said one of the major players in the paddock. “We’ve spoken plenty of times, but we’ve never shared a deep conversation about the 2012 car, what fits us best, what we need, or what our sponsors need. Or what I have told him, nothing was done about it. The opposite was done. How the hell you give the green light to build a new car and expect us to buy it without getting our approval first is just crazy. We’re the consumers here. You don’t tell us we have to spend a million plus on new cars and engines. You talk to us first to make sure what you’ve come up with is something we’re willing to buy. It’s completely backwards.”
Change a few words around, or add in some cursing, and this was a common refrain to most that I spoke with.
For Bernard, the belief that he’s unavailable or unapproachable is mystifying.
“Everyone has my number and my email. I’m always on the phone, always talking, or responding to email and go out of my way to be here for any of my owners to talk to. Communication is a two-way street, and I can’t force guys to pull me aside or to talk to me. It goes both ways and I do all I can to be there for them.”
Another senior member of the paddock – one who’s been in the sport for decades – said he was surprised by the like-minded message they delivered.
“I’ve been in a number of meetings like this over the years, and I’ve never seen the owners so united like they were last weekend. We hardly ever agree on things, frankly. Two representatives weren’t there, but for the rest of us, everyone seemed to be pulling hard in the same direction.”
One quote from Bernard that incensed everyone I spoke to – and I do mean everyone -- was when he told Robin Miller “We signed contracts with Honda and Dallara and we worked in good faith with the state of Indiana and we are not going backwards.”
“Telling us the ship has set sail is the wrong way to approach us,” one owner told me. “Instead of saying, let me get to the bottom of this, let me reach out to the owners to see what your issues are, he tells us contracts are signed, and basically, shut up and deal with it. He didn’t do his due diligence. He never called us together before they made their final decision on the chassis to ask if it’s something we wanted or would support. Now he thinks they can ram it down our throats and we’ll take it? Get real.”
You’ll read this many times throughout the rest of the story: I don’t know who’s right or wrong on this particular topic, but both sides need to sit down immediately and hash out their differences. Call Oprah if necessary; book some time on her couch if needed, but get together ASAP and find some common ground to build from.
2: Trust issues
The issues with trust between the paddock and series pre-date the 2012 car by more than a decade. There seems to be an inherent distrust in anything the IRL does, and based on history, it’s hard to fault the owners for casting a doubting eye on everything the series attempts to do.
In relation to the 2012 car, the handling of the July 14th announcement and subsequent meetings with Dallara have left many in the paddock with the feeling they’ve been duped – lied to – all along.
“The problem we have today -- what led to the owners' initiative meeting last week at Sonoma – is that we have no direction for the chassis decision they made, yet Dallara has a contract as Randy Bernard was quoted [in Robin Miller’s article], and they seem to have a very clear direction on what they are doing,” said a another veteran owner. “Dallara has met with the owners directly, and has told us what they are up to for 2012. How is that possible if they don’t have a set of rules already? How can Dallara sit and tell me, to my face, about the components they will use, the design concepts they have, and other items they have in mind when supposedly Tony Cotman has yet to write the first rule for them to start their drawings from? Someone isn’t being honest here.”
It’s the belief that Dallara either has a set of rules in hand, or that they’ve been allowed to come up with their own design – prior to Cotman’s hiring – that has many entrants up in arms.
“I don’t know where that’s coming from,” said Bernard. “Of course, Dallara has our RFQ (request for quote) that outlined a lot of things we wanted, so there was a framework established at the beginning of the new car process. It’s not like Dallara agreed to build a car without any specifics, or signed to create something without any guidance of what we expected. There are some specifics in there, and every chassis maker that bid on the 2012 car saw those. Tony [Cotman] has to create the rules, but it’s not like Dallara is sitting there with a blank sheet of paper waiting to be told how to draw the first line. The exact details are what Tony is working on. We are in control of this process, and no one else.”
The 2012 car announcement presentation is also a sore subject for some in the paddock.
“The 2012 car [announcement] was a farce," said one principal. "[The ICONIC panel] was seen rehearsing their Dallara acceptance speeches three days before the announcement! They contacted the State of Indiana ten days before the announcement, telling them they had selected a chassis. To their credit, they didn’t say which one, but they did say they’d made up their minds. Then they put on that dog and pony show where everyone supposedly voted 45 minutes before the presentation for Dallara? That decision was made long before the announcement. It was complete bull****.
“[The series] knew for at least 10 days which chassis they wanted, but instead of calling us in to talk about it – to float it past us – they didn’t. Before they signed contracts, they had a big window of opportunity to include us, but chose to keep us in the dark and then presented it to the public like it was a decision made the morning of the announcement. Do they honestly wonder why we are so upset?”
Conspiracy theories aside, it’s hard to imagine the series having a secret set of rules for Dallara, but like so many other aspects of this fight, perception and reality are wildly different depending on whom you speak with.
Regardless, the fact that the “the ship has set sail" tone has been established – while the paddock knows there was a prime opportunity to involve them in the final decision – is a sticking point I don’t foresee any of the upset entrants getting past.
It’s easy to blame them for having buyer’s remorse, or for being flaky and acting like they don’t know what they want, but the simple act of calling them in to get a head count on who did or didn’t want their choice of 2012 car could have averted this entire mess.
I understand the reasons for signing non-disclosure agreements. I've signed plenty myself. But in this case, they weren't taking about military secrets. This wasn't a panel discussing cutting-edge nuclear reactor technologies. They were forming the plans for a new racing car. Somewhere this rather humbling fact was overlooked.
3: This isn’t what we asked for
I call this the ‘Questionnaire Question.’ It piggy backs off of the last topic as the two are intertwined.
The greatest flaw in the entire 2012 project and process, in my estimation, is how the series chose to work with the owners on deciding what directions to take on the new car.
To quickly recap how it went down, Gil de Ferran was tabbed to serve on the ICONIC panel as the teams’ representative. Prior to officially joining the panel, de Ferran and his panel members assembled a detailed list of questions that was sent out to all of the entrants.
The owners’ answers to those questions, as the plan went, would serve as de Ferran’s map to navigate the 2012 creation process.
Where the train runs off of the tracks is when you look at how the ‘designed by committee’ process actually works.
A number of major decisions were made along the way – milestones in the 2012 car and engine concept that greatly influenced or changed the overall concept of the car – where the team owners needed to be included. Whether it was the choice to go with one chassis supplier rather than two or three or the conclusion that Dallara was their preferred constructor, the paddock should have been brought into the loop.
But because de Ferran had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the entrants heard absolutely nothing about the car or the choices until the series made the announcement on July 14th. If you’re keeping tabs on the biggest blunders in IndyCar history, this single move ranks right up there with the greats. It’s an absolute classic.
Imagine commissioning a custom hot rod. The builder asks you to fill out a list of all the things you want the car to contain. You fill it out with the basics of what you expect in return:
• V8 engine making at least 500 horsepower
• Seats four people
• Big brakes
• Lightweight
• 18” wheels
• 5-speed tranny
The builder tells you to come back in six months and not to call him until he’s done. You leave with visions of maybe 50’s hot rod, maybe a muscle car, or maybe something in-between.
What you get after six months, unfortunately, meets all of the criteria you outlined in the beginning, but the decisions made by the builder were wrong at every step of the process.
First, you have a 1000cc V8 with four turbos to make the power you want. It's too hot, overstressed and it doesn't have enough torque to beat a VW Bug off the line. Next, it seats four, but those seats are vertical – a skyscraper arrangement. The brakes are big – off a Sherman tank – so to keep the weight down, they molded the frame out of plastic. The wheels are 18”, but are off a bicycle, and the tranny does have five gears -- all reverse.
Yes, it’s an asinine scenario, but it further proves how the fill out our questionnaire and then we’re going into total radio silence until we’re done; hope you like what we’ve come up with then we announce it to you and the entire world at the same time routine was comically bad. Biblically bad.
Anyone who believed a questionnaire could sufficiently steer someone to deliver what the paddock wanted was simply dreaming. According to all those I spoke with about the questionnaire, and after hearing some of the questions that were sent out, it was a horrible error in judgment by the series to prevent de Ferran from talking to the paddock at the point where every major decision was being approached. It's easy to blame de Ferran, but the process, not the panel member, was at fault.
“They sent out a questionnaire that was made up of questions from a lot of different people," said one team principal. "Gil did the right thing after they were returned to him by going around to every team afterwards to get clarification on what they wanted. That was great. But from there, there was no communication whatsoever. Big things change. Different paths are followed. You have to be able to check with the owners to provide updates or to get changes from us on where we’d like to see things go. But they sat behind this veil called ‘confidentiality’ where they couldn't talk to anybody about the decisions they were making, or to get our opinions on those decisions. And here we are with a car most of us don’t want.”
Reaching back to the issues of trust, part of the reason for the owners being kept out of the ICONIC discussions was due to the concerns of a conflict of interest.
One influential series official (who, funnily enough, did not want to be quoted…) fired back at the owners.
“Nobody asks why the owners were kept out of the process once we embarked on the ICONIC meetings. Well, so many of them had involvements with the DeltaWing car, how could we? How could we have an impartial committee if we let the guys who are bankrolling or publicly supporting their own car into the discussions? I’m sorry if they feel like they were locked out, but we didn’t let Swift or Lola in on the meetings, or ask their opinion on our decisions. The same goes for DeltaWing, and it looked like about half of [the owners] were behind it. Nobody ever mentions the conflicts they had.”
It's another valid point that both sides disagree on. Maybe the series did need NDAs to keep the paddock from steering the 2012 process too heavily in one direction. Maybe it was more of a protective measure than one done out of self-importance. Maybe they could have been included on some major decisions, but not others. The possibilities are limitless.
This subject is ripe for another Oprah visit, but I don’t see anyone coming out of it feeling any better about the situation. Of all the issues at hand, this is one of very few that appears to have genuine animosity held by both parties.
2013 INDY 500 Practice
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