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Originally Posted by Jonerz
the European model of drivers bringing money has found its way to North America
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Auto racing in Europe is a white-collar sport, they race Porsches and BMWs. In North America it's a blue-collar sport, they race small-block Chevys and Fords. This is generalized of course but my history of watching the types of people that get into racing on both continents it's essentially the truth. Once Indycar removed itself from that blue-collar dynamic in the late '80s/early '90s that's why NASCAR became #1 in black and white to me in a nutshell. If you think it should've no longer been blue-collar, great, but part of doing that is you lessen your series' appeal to the people in the United States that like auto racing. On that being the way to go, if you read the lower formulae boards here even British F3 is dying because they've ran out of people willing to pay so much for the seats.
Now on the blue- and white-collar thng, sportscars are even more out of touch than Indycars are.
sportscar racing it's always going to have a bunch of rich guys with no business on the racetrack running around 5 seconds off the pace of the class leader, that's been the raceform's structure since the beginning of time; when you base your series around expensive cars and zero purse money and the odd factory entrant combined with little media coverage, you're only going to have a few that are out and out diehard racecar drivers that can swing it around a corner, the rest are going to a businessman with money to kill on a hobby otherwise the sport can't exist because that's the only way it can pay for itself.
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and someone who brings money is no longer assumed to be an amateur or "gentleman" driver.
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For people that know how everything works I think they do. I give James Jakes just as much respect as I did Milka Duno (who started out in sportscars by the way).