IndyCar race fans prefer street and road courses

UPDATE A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, Could not agree more. Oval track races should comprise 25% of the schedule, not 50%. I would not want IndyCar to abandon ovals completely, but when you come off looking like a loser, it's time to face reality. They are giving away thousands of free tickets for the Las Vegas season finale just to save face. If people had to buy tickets for the race it would be a complete embarrassment. That race that needs to move to 'The Strip' or adjacent to it. If IndyCar eventually gets to a 20-race schedule, no more than 5 races (25%) should be on ovals. And besides the Indy 500, what are the other 4 oval races that can avoid IndyCar's embarrassment of empty grandstands? Maybe IndyCar should consider two races a year on the Indy oval. The Indy 500 Mile race and an Indy 500 Kilometer race. Lloyd Davidson

09/05/11 Contrast and compare attendance at IndyCar oval tracks (Indy excluded) with road and street courses and it's easy to see that IndyCar fans prefer road and street races. This idea that the series has to maintain a 50/50 split of ovals vs. road and street races is utter nonsense.

Racing on ovals with grandstands built for NASCAR results in IndyCar looking like a complete loser series because of all the empty seats. If IndyCar fans like oval races so much how come they are not buying tickets to the races in mass? Answer – Because the 50/50 split is a fallacy left over from the old-timers who cannot get over the fact that NASCAR monopolizes and signifies oval racing in America and IndyCar will always be a third cousin.

Even on TV, IndyCar fans prefer the road and street events. Versus told Baltimore race organizers that Sunday's event was its highest-rated IndyCar event, topping previous broadcasts by 59 percent and boosting the season's IndyCar ratings by 25 percent.