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Emmcee

Max Chilton Joins Indy Car.

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Max Chilton has signed with Chip Ganassi racing for this common Indy car season. What's people's take on Indycar? Me personally it was an awesome series when it was Champ car but now it's nothing but a refugee camp for formula one drivers who simply weren't quick enough.

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For me it's always been a place for F1 rejects. Drivers who flop in F1 do a lot better in Indycar. And most indycar drivers who come the opposite way fail to make any impact in f1.

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Yeah look at Alex zanardi for example. Dominated champ car in 97/98 and couldn't get anywhere near ralf Schumacher in 1999. The only champ car driver who has proved himself in more than one car was Montoya, I've seen him as the best transfer from champ car to f1 to date and yes even better than Villeneuve.

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I think IndyCar's field of drivers is no worse now than it was in the so-called "glory days" of the early 90s.

The aged-out-of-F1 crowd's still there. Fittipaldi then, Montoya now. The mediocre at F1 but great in America group. Michael Andretti then, Bourdais now. The very talented, but never on the F1 ladder outside of testing not-that-impressively with Williams. Unser, Jr., then, Dixon now.

Ultimately, the drivers who are very good at IndyCar are perfectly fine. Le Mans is full of guys of IndyCar caliber, who either never made it to F1 or were booted out, and I don't think anyone sees it as a knock on the prestige. Heck, F1 has a lot of drivers on the grid who are plainly not very good.

IndyCar's bigger problem, and you may laugh at this, is not that it can't get drivers as good as those in F1, but rather that it can't get drivers as good as those in NASCAR. The RoC is a bad way to assess talent, but Jeff Gordon did beat Fernando Alonso and Sébastien Bourdais. Carl Edwards beat Michael Schumacher. Jimmie Johnson came within a tenth of Loeb back when there was a dirty rally stage. Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson are dynamite in sports cars, as was Tony Stewart. And while Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya, and more got their asses handed to them in NASCAR, Kurt Busch, having never driven any kind of open-wheel car (except for a promotional thing for Ford in a Rahal Champ Car), was fast all month at Indy and took P6 as a rookie.

The fact remains that the best drivers in America are all in NASCAR. NASCAR has a Rick Mears, an A. J. Foyt, a Michael Andretti, and so forth. All the modern-day equivalents of the big names of Indy racing are in NASCAR. NASCAR kind of sucks to watch these days (used to be great, but their rules are awful now), but there's no doubt in my mind that NASCAR has an incredible field of drivers that IndyCar cannot come anywhere close to duplicating.

As for Max Chilton, the bigger disappointment in him getting a ride isn't his poor F1 performance, but his poor Indy Lights performance. Here's a guy who raced F1 now running the decimated (there's like 9 cars) feeder series to the not-that-great IndyCar series, driving for a team known to be bending the rules, and he gets crushed by his teammate, a kid who had only ever run some F3. He took a mediocre one win. Of the real stars of Indy Lights last year, Pigot, Harvey, and Rayhall, only Pigot has a ride, and it's just for three races. That's annoying.

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I think IndyCar's field of drivers is no worse now than it was in the so-called "glory days" of the early 90s.

The aged-out-of-F1 crowd's still there. Fittipaldi then, Montoya now. The mediocre at F1 but great in America group. Michael Andretti then, Bourdais now. The very talented, but never on the F1 ladder outside of testing not-that-impressively with Williams. Unser, Jr., then, Dixon now.

Ultimately, the drivers who are very good at IndyCar are perfectly fine. Le Mans is full of guys of IndyCar caliber, who either never made it to F1 or were booted out, and I don't think anyone sees it as a knock on the prestige. Heck, F1 has a lot of drivers on the grid who are plainly not very good.

IndyCar's bigger problem, and you may laugh at this, is not that it can't get drivers as good as those in F1, but rather that it can't get drivers as good as those in NASCAR. The RoC is a bad way to assess talent, but Jeff Gordon did beat Fernando Alonso and Sébastien Bourdais. Carl Edwards beat Michael Schumacher. Jimmie Johnson came within a tenth of Loeb back when there was a dirty rally stage. Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson are dynamite in sports cars, as was Tony Stewart. And while Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya, and more got their asses handed to them in NASCAR, Kurt Busch, having never driven any kind of open-wheel car (except for a promotional thing for Ford in a Rahal Champ Car), was fast all month at Indy and took P6 as a rookie.

The fact remains that the best drivers in America are all in NASCAR. NASCAR has a Rick Mears, an A. J. Foyt, a Michael Andretti, and so forth. All the modern-day equivalents of the big names of Indy racing are in NASCAR. NASCAR kind of sucks to watch these days (used to be great, but their rules are awful now), but there's no doubt in my mind that NASCAR has an incredible field of drivers that IndyCar cannot come anywhere close to duplicating.

As for Max Chilton, the bigger disappointment in him getting a ride isn't his poor F1 performance, but his poor Indy Lights performance. Here's a guy who raced F1 now running the decimated (there's like 9 cars) feeder series to the not-that-great IndyCar series, driving for a team known to be bending the rules, and he gets crushed by his teammate, a kid who had only ever run some F3. He took a mediocre one win. Of the real stars of Indy Lights last year, Pigot, Harvey, and Rayhall, only Pigot has a ride, and it's just for three races. That's annoying.

Yep, very good point and I agree 100%

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