Riverside doesn't become condos? Alright!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, I love that too. The irony is that the mall built there is mostly empty now. I wonder if anybody has had the idea of tearing it down and building a new racetrack there?
Now the $64 million question.. How does Riverside pay for all the bells and whistles that Bernie and Max will want?
Hulman's deep pockets, I would suspect. I'm guessing that after the failures in Las Vegas, Dallas and Phoenix, Bernie might be a little more willing to cut a deal, especially since Hulman would be a very successful promoter by then. Los Angeles is a massive market, and if F1 and Indycars can lock it up (they are the top racers out there right now IOTL) then the track will be able to really pack it in. There are twelve million people within one hundred miles of Riverside, surely you can get a good crowd from that.
Phoenix was poorly-attended, Vegas was a joke.
But Detroit was well-ran, well-attended (I went to two Detroit GPs and F1 owned the city, even when the Pistons were in the middle of an NBA Finals), the teams liked Detroit, the drivers liked it..The reason why Detroit went away was Mr. Eccelstone. He wanted a glamour city, and Detroit isn't a glamour town, even with the Ren Cen and the waterfront by the start-finish line. Motown just ain't Monte Carlo.
But many people in F1 saw Detroit the way they saw Adelaide. It wasn't the glamour town, but it was a well-organized event that was a pleasure to go to in a place where people truly welcomed the circus.
Detroit is a car town to the bone, which is why I find it sad that its fallen as far as it has. I also hope that one day its back to its old form, or at least some semblance of it. Today its starting to hold their heads high a little more, and that's overdue if you ask me. The circuit was a bit Mickey Mouse, but that could be fixed. (In my Indycar TL, Belle Isle lost the event back to Renaissance Center after it began being rebuilt in 1996, and stayed for good. Aryton Senna's first Indycar win in that TL was that first race back on the streets of Detroit in 1996.)
Either Bobby Hillin's that damn good or Rick Hendrick needs to stick to selling cars in downtown Charlotte. Tim Richmond was one of most spell-blinding talents I've ever seen.
But apparently in this timeline, he wasn't engaging in all-out skirt shooting.
Even the best team owners make some seriously stupid driver pickups. (Roger Penske at one point employed Tarso Marques in CART. Yes, really.) Hendrick would seriously regret losing Richmond to Indycars. Him and Dan Gurney would be a great fit, too. And yes, he ought to have stopped the skirt chasing.
Does that mean Mercedes will end their self-imposed exile from racing? GOOD!
But I don't see the 209i sneaking through the cracks early, especially with the CART/USAC drama being white hot in the 1980s.
The reason the Penske-Ilmor 209 came to be was an adjustment to the rules. USAC's formula for Indy allowed 209ci stock-blocks, but they had to be pushrod motors. This was done to allow the big-boost Buicks and Chevrolets to run in the 1980s. What happened is that Michael Greenfield showed up with a racing 209ci engine with pushrods in 1993, and USAC allowed him to run. Lots of blown engines later, he didn't run, but Penske found that out, and in the long tradition of him pushing the rulebook, worked with Ilmor and M-B to make the 209i. I can see such a stunt being adapted at Indy in 1983-84, Penske taking advantage of it, and the 209i arrives in 1985 or 1986. They own that year's race (perhaps have it be 1985 for Danny Sullivan keeps his Indy 500 win), and the other teams go bananas. The rules are adjusted for 1987 to allow the big-bangers to stay, but with the smaller 161ci engines getting a lot more boost, and knowing Hulman's affinity for the big engines, he pushes through a bigger NA engine formula, and people show up at Indy in 1987 with 427ci big-block V8s for power. The bigger boost might see the Miller-Drake design from the mid-70s work better, as it was a dog at lower boost levels.
A 1996 Indianapolis 500 with this kind of star power in it? HOT DAMN! Back home again, in Indiana! And its all very plausible. Especially If Senna made good on his threat to drive for Penske in 1994. He did test for the team..and that could have led to a serious influx of F1 drivers who were sick of the medieval politics of Grand Prix racing.
In my Indycar TL, I had Senna survive his crash at Imola in 1994, recover to run the last few rounds of 1994 and dice with Schumacher for the 1995 F1 championship. But Ecclestone's using Senna's recovery to get attention, as he surely would, enrages Senna. Emmo sees what an opportunity it is, and Penske signs Aryton to the 1996 "Superteam", made up of Ayrton Senna, Emerson Fittipaldi, Al Unser Jr. and Paul Tracy. Senna ran the 1996-1999 Indycar seasons, before returning to F1 for one last season in 2000 for Williams before retiring. In the process, Senna racks up 14 wins, 35 top-10s and 27 poles, and never finishes worse than sixth in the championship, and Emmo's last Indycar win, at Rio de Janiero in 1998, is a 1-2-3-4 for the Brazilians, made up of Emmo, Senna, Tony Kanaan and Andre Ribiero, and is regarded as one of the most-remembered moments in Brazilian sports history.
Mansell in my TL leaves McLaren's F1 squad in a huff midway through 1995 and finds his F1 career unceremoniously over. Humbled by that, he takes over from the injured Michael Andretti for the second half of the 1995 Indycar season. He does very well, winning a race and regularly scoring points. After making up with the Andrettis, Mansell runs the full seasons in 1996 and 1997, before heading back to England and a British Touring Car Championship ride at the request of his family in 1998. Mansell returns as the arrogant fool and leaves as an English gentleman, and goes home with honors. Mansell retires from racing after winning the 2001 BTCC title.
That is one thing I like about this timeline, the possible concept of North American-based racing truly stepping out as a bold alternative to Bernie Eccelstone.
I'm not writing this, but if I was, I'd be making a deal between Hulman and CART that they can live with, which leads to the schedule expanding to about 22 events by the end of the 1980s, keeping ovals and expanding road courses. The new engines I mentioned above arrive in 1987, and Richmond scores the first win by a non-turbocharged Indycar in 16 years at Long Beach. By 1990, Chevrolet, Buick and Ford Cosworth are joined in the series by Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Judd. Alfa Romeo arrives for 1991 but is an abysmal failures and yanks at the end of 1992. Honda arrives in 1993 but struggles at first, but they switch to the 161ci high-boost engine formula and starts winning.
As for Bernie, he's an excellent promoter and a smart guy, but a douchebag most of the time. Tony Hulman could be a douchebag, but didn't tend to be that way as Bernie is. If North American motorsport is this popular, you can bet that the top of the ladder (NASCAR, Indycars and IMSA) is the very best teams and drivers, and the levels below it (Indy Lights, NASCAR Busch, SCCA World Challenge, Trans-Am, et cetera) would be well supported and full of talented guys as well. The thought of it is salivating for this racing nut. My first Indy 500 was 1996, and while the event was fabulous, the field was ho-hum at best - that was the first year for the IRL, and thus the stars were not there. (Though hearing of the pace-lap wreck at the United States 500 at Michigan the same day caused most of the bloody grandstand to burst out laughing.) In this world, my first 500 would have had a field including the Andrettis, Little Al, Rahal, Foyt, Mears, Emmo, Senna, Mansell, Richmond, Gordon, Stewart, Tracy, Zanardi, Moore, Vasser, Sullivan, Herta....they might have to grow the field beyond 33 starters in this world just to get all the worthies in the field.
Oh by the way, I wonder what Robin Miller would be writing about in this timeline.
OK, that proves that you are very much a real diehard racing nut.
As for Miller, I'm thinking that Miller might continue his driving duties as a midget racer, and thus become good friends with Fox (a fellow Midget addict). Robin picks up mechanical knowledge along the way, and writes for the Indianapolis Star as well as being a driver on the weekends. He makes on attempt at qualifying for the 500 as a driver in the early 80s, but doesn't make it. He stays a writer to the present day, and eventually gets hired by ABC/ESPN as an analyst and pit reporter. (Him and Jack Arute would be effing priceless, though you'll probably wanna let Jack handle A.J. Foyt. Tex hates Miller.)
