[Maelochs]

One thing about capturing the ADD generation--they can forget about your event pretty quickly just like they forget everything else.

The NFL hasn't gone to one down per series, five-minute quarters, or flaming yard lines. MLB hasn't adopted one-strike, you're out or three-inning games.

Shoot, look how much money Golf makes ... Somehow those sports attract new fans.

I agree that proper promotion, good series management, and event-packed weekends are the way to go. Every day of a race weekend should feature racing all day, and musical acts or stunt acts in all the breaks and a concert each evening (they can be a lineup of local or regional bands most of the time--and national acts for the biggest events.)

Of course, F1 doesn't do any of that ... obviously there are other ways.

Presentation of the event live and on TV are really important. At the track, more jumbotrons and better PA systems (nothing beats the excitement of trying to figure out who is leading after a round of pit stops while trying to decipher the sounds from fifteen out-of-phase, echoing loudspeakers, all conveniently placed just far away from everything that no one can hear.)

TV---pay the money to buy the time on channels people actually watch, and advertise on every major channel. Hire announcers who know racing, and directors who know even more about racing.

Shoot directors who cut away from action or cameramen who don't follow action--well, at least fire them. Avoid stupid pandering explanations of racing specifics---cheese on a cheese grater, erasers on the track? People can understand tire wear, idiots! We all drive cars and wear out tires.

I too suggest looking to NASCAR for tips. Regardless of any slight dips in ratings from time to time, NASCAR has built a national fanbase and maintained it for a couple decades. And they did it without relying on too many gimmicks.

Rallycross is fine for filling in dead time between races, or maybe for post -practice and -qualifying filler on Saturday when the main race is Sunday.

"Do the same with GT-cars and you have a smash hit with the Playstation Generation - they already know the cars, put them into the right package and they'll be hooked.

"But you'd probably lose the traditional fans in the process - I'll leave it to you to decide if that would be a good trade off."

What you would lose would be racing. What you suggest here is giving up on racing and inventing a new sport. That's fine; maybe racing as we know it is over, and after another decade of trying everyone will just walk away and forget it.

But what you suggest here is not racing, it is a childish game-show sort of spectacle. There is nothing wrong with monster truck "racing" and the "sport" is quite popular—I don't want it to replace traditional sports car and endurance racing, though.

Basically I am saying the answer to how to save racing isn't to kill it. If it dies, I don't much care what else the kids like. The answer to "How can we save racing" is more along the lines of don't waste money, sponsors and fans by having competing series (ALMS/Grand Am or Cart/IRL--it always seems to fail mightily, so let's try it again!)

Don't be cheap when it comes to promotion. Better to go into debt now and make it back over five years than to go broke slowly over five years, only to realize after filing bankruptcy that a real promotional push might have saved the series.

Don't pollute the TV product with more feature-length commercials than there are minutes of actual racing action.

Make your New Media programs work. The ADD generation expects what it wants to see to be on smartphones, tablets, PCs, and TV. Right now a certain series cannot even master the basics of Internet streaming. How many new fans do you hope to create with a non-stop series of error messages and buffering animations?

I have been watching the USA Pro Challenge cycling race and those guys get better pictures from a camera on a motorcycle in a rainstorm in a forest on a mountain than a certain series can get from a track where it has set up for several days, on a platform it has used for a couple years.

Also, end schizophrenic sponsor appeal drives. "Green Racing" is a great idea, but it isn't a sellable idea---it doesn't attract fans, factories, or sponsors. Pretending to be exclusively high-class is great, because it excludes a huge number of potential fans and sponsors—isn’t that the goal of advertising, to drive folks away?

It is fine to be a niche sport--in time almost every sport will be. But it is dumb to force yourself into a niche where you might not fit, or to try to invent a niche (say, as a high-dollar-exclusive, golf-crowd social elites sport) and then move into it. If the niche doesn't fit you tear up your series trying to force it. Maybe you want to be the racing series of champagne sippers, but if the Majority of your fans prefer beer (or Coca-Cola?????) service them.

Anyway, I am tired and I have produced a load of ********.... now I am par with the guy with the idea for a GT Shootout.