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November 9, 2009

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Letter: Indy tradition left when IRL arrived

Thursday, May 19, 2005 | 10:09 a.m.

Our family went to Indy for 30 years (1965-95), and when I moved to California I always flew back to be part of it all. That tradition stopped with the birth of the IRL.

I haven't bothered to watch Indy on TV since then, as everything about it has slid backward.

Where CART and Indy provided a great synergy because CART was successfully marketing a series, giving visibility to the "guys who race at Indy," the IRL has taken us back to the pre-CART days when Indy more or less marketed itself, and the series was invisible.

The return of a lot of old CART teams also seems to be about huge sums of money from Toyota or Honda, rather than the aesthetic of preferring all-oval racing, or finding galvanizing and visionary leadership under Tony George.

STERLING SMITH

Los Angeles

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