NASCAR please buy IndyCar

UPDATE #2 Another article that mentions AR1's original idea of NASCAR buying IndyCar. Having studied the sport closely for 50 years, and given where it is now after Tony George destroyed it, the only hope for the sport is for NASCAR to buy it. There is no other way out of the hole Tony George put the sport in.

10/30/12 Nate Ryan must read AR1.com (see USA Today article) as he too believes there is real merit in NASCAR buying IndyCar, thereby putting it in the hands of the France Family and getting it out of the hands of the dysfunctional Hulman-George family where it has floundered for years.

10/29/12 A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, Back on October 5th when you published the article "Is NASCAR the only viable savior for IndyCar" I thought you were nuts – the arch-enemy of open wheel racing would simply kill it off. Now some three weeks later I think maybe you were right.

In IndyCar, owners think they are the show and should set policy. That's unlike Formula One and NASCAR, which are ruled by essentially one person who doesn't have to answer to a board or a group of egotistical car owners who think they know best. Not coincidently, both F1 and NASCAR have flourished while IndyCar continues to fall further and further behind both economically and in terms of popularity prior to Randy Bernard's arrival. Finally, after years of failed leadership, it appeared IndyCar had learned the err of its ways and recognized it needed a shakeup – gone was Tony George, the person most responsible for the destruction of the sport.

So what does the dysfunctional Hulman & Co. board do? They fire Bernard. It proved to me that the Hulman & George family have no business owning or running IndyCar racing. They simply are not capable. Period. This has been proven time and time again. And neither are the current crop of team owners. This sport needs a dictatorship running it and NASCAR is already a dictatorship. Sure they have been the #1 enemy of IndyCar Racing, but that is because they didn't own it. They could not make a buck from it. As your article rightly points out, if there is something in it for the France Family, they will make it work.

So what would they do with IndyCar as a product? As AR1.com has pointed out in many articles over the years, IndyCar cannot compete against stock car's monopoly of American motorsports, and the France family will never jeopardize that. But I know they would like a product they could market as a global product (they tried with stock cars but the world rejected them) and that is where IndyCar comes in. It already has some global recognition, and because they kind of look like F1 cars, the product, if marketed properly, can be sold around the world as an alternate to F1. F1 can only race in about 20 countries a year. On last count there are 196 countries in the world. A lower cost alternative to F1 is something the France family should try to do.

So I say to the France family, please buy the IndyCar series and save it from its certain self destruction at the hands of the Hulman George family. Dan Taylor, Chicago