Open wheel split started by Tony George caused Toyota to look to NASCAR (Update)

UPDATE A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, Given the destruction to their bread and butter noted below, I am surprised the Hulman George family still allows Tony George in the paddock. Most families would have disowned him. Mordichai Rosen, Los Angeles, CA

03/22/14 Had the CART-IRL split of the mid-1990s never occurred, Toyota might still be racing open-wheelers instead of having a huge presence in NASCAR. But according to Toyota's U.S. racing boss, the split diluted the value of Indy car racing so badly that it ceased being of interest to the automaker.

"To demonstrate the lack of value … in 2003, we won the Indy 500, we won the race in Japan, we won 13 out of 16 races that year, and that fall, we still had to sell to our management to stay in the sport," said David Wilson, president and general manager of TRD, U.S.A., the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based racing arm of Toyota.

"As much as we loved it from an engineering standpoint, we also starting realizing that there were a lot of empty seats," said Wilson. "And open-wheel in the United States was not exactly catching fire, so that started our … relationship with NASCAR." Fox Sports

[Editor's Note: Bill France Jr. (along with AJ Foyt, John Barnes and others) encouraged Tony George to create the IRL and kill IndyCar racing. NASCAR then picked up Toyota and many former CART sponsors. Where are TV ratings now? Around 0.25. Enough said. France played Tony George like a fiddle and all those who supported Tony George have the blood of IndyCar Racing on their hands.]

Indy 500 TV Ratings – Look what Tony George did to his family's race (Share = % households tuned in)

The low is down 79% from the high set in the CART years