George falls off IndyCar radar

[Blue_Tires]

Tony George is out. Completely out. The man who forever transformed Indy car racing, good or bad, is out of the sport.

In less than seven months, George went from the most powerful man in American open-wheel racing to just another guy on the street.

Racing royalty to serfdom in the blink of an eye.


Panther Racing co-owner John Barnes on Tony George, above: "Everyone who races in this league owes Tony a lot. I know I do. I owe him everything I've got."
Vision Racing, George's IndyCar Series team, shut its doors Thursday, suspending operations due to a lack of sponsorship.

The team was all he had left.

Some Indy car fans, still angry over the long open-wheel feud between two separate leagues, will gloat today at George's downfall, believing he got what was coming to him.

John Barnes, co-owner of the Panther Racing IndyCar team, is not among them.

"Anyone who feels that way, I feel sorry for them," Barnes said Thursday. "I think Tony is a true visionary with the things he's done at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Without him, that place would be a shopping center by now."

Not everyone agrees, including Indy car legend Mario Andretti.

"Tony's legacy is not a very good one from my standpoint," Andretti said Thursday. "His grandfather, Tony Hulman, did more for open-wheel racing than any other individual. Tony George did more to destroy it than any other individual.

"That's the only way you can put it. It is diminished today because he started the IRL."

Just last week, George resigned his position on the board of directors that oversees IMS and the family business, Hulman & Co.

But his power was lost last June when the board ousted him as CEO of the speedway in an ugly family feud that pitted George and his mother, Mary Hulman, against his sisters.

George resigned from his position as president of the Indy Racing League, which he founded in 1994.

The irony of all this is George finally got what he wanted two years ago when the IRL merged with Champ Car, what little was left of it, anyway.

But it was too late. Too late to bring Indy car racing back to its past glory and too late to save George from his family's wrath. His days of spending the family fortune were over.

Some reports estimate George spent more than $500 million to keep the IRL going through the split, but some of that money was spent on dramatic improvements at IMS to bring Formula One to the Brickyard. F1 left after the 2007 race at Indy.

George also was instrumental in bringing NASCAR to IMS, a huge success for the speedway and NASCAR. But Barnes sees a far more important contribution that George helped facilitate.

"Every driver who races today at a superspeedway should say a prayer for ," Barnes said. "He saved their lives with the SAFER wall and all the safety advancements of the last 10 years, and he spent a lot of his own money to do it.

"No one talks about that. I've been in racing for 42 years. No one before him ever came close to making the difference he has made."

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