iNSIDE SCOOP: Musings on 16th St.

INDIANAPOLIS – While it is a good thing to be home again, there are some worrisome happenings that can’t be good…at least for the moment.

Attendance is the first thing. Sitting here in the 4th Floor Media Room, I can see about 1,000 people in the stands. Of course, the Brickyard Grand Prix is under way (for Daytona Prototypes and assorted other road-racing machines) and that plays a role, but there weren’t that many more here during Cup practice.

It’s Friday, and those who do work are, presumably, working and not able to come out to the track. And those who aren’t usually spend their money carefully. Moot point. But last year’s crowd was estimated at 80,000, and that’s way down from the first five or seven Brickyard 400s.

Now, Indianapolis has a bunchaton of seats (305,000 at one point, less that that now), so you can lose 80,000 people here. 

 “Listen, we never want to see empty seats, a little or a lot, so that’s a given,” said NASCAR CEO Brian France.” (IMS has) obviously a huge amount of seats, so even if there’s a lot of empty ones, there’s still a big crowd.”

Exactly.

France did say, however, that while his patience is ongoing, it is not unlimited.

“I think you have to look at attendance across all sports and depending on which league you’re talking about, there are attendance challenges,” he said. “Virtually no one is (immune); you just don’t necessarily read about it because they’re private (companies) or they discount (tickets).

“With respect to Indy, I think you have to look at No. 1, there still will be a huge crowd; No. 2, they’ve gone through a tremendous amount of transition the past several years. All of that has an impact. So when they’re focused on Indy cars (and) management changes, which they’ve had a lot of, that takes the focus off the Brickyard. We expect them to get settled as an organization and have their focus and effort at a higher level as we go down the road.”

Here’s hoping for a good crowd on Sunday. By the way, if you want to come, there are plenty of good seats available. According to several ticket brokers, those with tickets looking to sell them are lucky to get face value this weekend. For the Indy 500, however, the value is much better in that regard.

Second, the points race is, while still compelling, settling down to a waiting game for the top eight or so and a mad scramble for the ninth-to-13th drivers. Really, it’s the top 20. If a driver not in the top 10 wins, there will be a three-way tie for the two wild-cards. Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart hold them right now, so if it’s a Paul Menard day on Sunday, it could get sticky for the next several weeks.

Third, we’ve begun the march to Miami. The first of 17 straight weekends of racing will take place here. To put that in perspective, baseball will have played the second half of its season, held three rounds of playoffs, crowned a champion and spent a month celebrating it before we’re done.

Think about that when someone tries to tell you that NASCAR isn’t a sport.