Still, some Indy-car races manage to sell out, and Denver's temporary road course is one of the more successful venues. In 2004, the race's third running, 130,000 fans showed up over three days. And despite some local rumblings about lagging sales of luxury suites, the race's Freudenberg insists that corporate support is strong. The city also is bullish. "We win," says Magner, who says that all the costs are underwritten by the organizers. And while he says that there's no way to directly calculate the economic benefit, the city does benefit.
Yet if Denver's hanging on, it's bucking a trend. Overall, TV viewership and the flow of sponsor dollars appear anemic, and most Champ Car Series races are not even carried by a network. At the same time, fans who were hoping for a surge of open-wheel interest thanks to the long-awaited return of Formula One racing to America, have suffered another major setback. On June 19, the newly revived United States Grand Prix was contested, more or less, at that holiest of shrines, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 2001, owner George had built a challenging new road course at the old Brickyard, where the regally bred, blood-red Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello could do battle with their rivals from BMW-Williams and McLaren-Mercedes. For the first two years, everything was fine, including the post-race champagne baths. But just before the start of this year's race, seven racing teams -- fourteen cars! -- withdrew from the field after their tire supplier, Michelin, warned them that the rubber they were running might shred on the high banking of Indy's famous turn one, a corner incorporated into the new F1 circuit. Only six cars competed, including the two winning Ferraris, while infuriated racing fans pelted Indy's venerable pavement with bottles and debris, shouted for refunds and generally tore up the joint. In the wake of the fiasco, the U.S. Grand Prix may once more be an extinct species -- at least in Indianapolis. And what's bad for Formula One in America is also bad for Indy Cars; they draw much of the same crowd. The natural beneficiary? NASCAR Nation.
Mark Manger
Fast lane: Danica Patrick finished fourth in 2004's
CENTRIX Financial Grand Prix of Denver.
Related Content
More About
Will there be a Grand Prix of Denver in 2006? Hard to tell. Magner says city workers typically meet with organizers about a month after the race to do a post-mortem and to begin planning next year's event. Should the organizers pull out, there's a nominal $59,250 penalty in the contract.
Will the Indy Racing League soon cherry-pick failing Champ Car's most lucrative racing sites and discontinue races at its own marginal ones, Pikes Peak included? No one knows. Will Sebastian Bourdais land a ride in F1 before Denver can buy him another glass of vin rouge? Your guess is as good as anyone's. Could Danica Patrick, Indy Car's glamour girl, wind up behind the wheel of a 750-horsepower Ford Taurus? You got me. Indy Car's previous female hope, Sarah Fisher, has already switched to Busch Series stock cars, and if she does well, the pressure will mount to promote her to the Nextel Cup. As the Indy Car teams roll on in uncertainty, only a couple of things seem clear. You can bet your last tablespoon of high test that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Michael Waltrip are basking in their rivals' disorder. At home in his race shop, the King, Richard Petty, has got to be grinning under his black cowboy hat. And every last man, woman and child from Mobile to the Carolinas has got to be thinking: Told you so. Told you we'd win this war. We even got a lot of you Yankees on our side this time around.
Nextel Cup in Denver, anyone?
