Tony George: “Oval drivers wouldn’t do well on road courses.”
Jeff Gordon: *proceeds to become winningest road course driver in NASCAR*
Tony George: surprised Pikachu face

Edit: Might not last long as SVG is tearing up the road courses

George in 1994: We need more ovals.
IRL in 2005: We need road courses.

The late 90's CART racing was my favorite.  It had 4 different chassis  and 4 different engines to choose from. And the schedule was fantastic.

Finally. The true story of the Indy Split. Good job Brock

The things that were said and ultimately happened. Notably, Pat Patrick's comments. 😬

"Everytime a driver turns right I lose money. So I want American drivers to only be able to turn left."-- Tony George

18:48 - And now, nearly 30 years later, Penske owns not only the Indy Car Series, but Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

1998 CART Championship.
19 Races across the US and Canada including a race in Japan, Brazil and Australia. Comprising of 8 ovals and 11 road and street courses.
16 Teams with 29 drivers from 10 countries competed. With 7 different winners!
5 Chassis manufacturers in Eagle, Swift, Lola, Reynard and Penske!
4 Engine manufacturers in Ford, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota.!
2 Tyre manufacturers in Goodyear and Firestone!
Does it get much better than that? EX F1 and Future F1 drivers too

Tony George gets all the blame but in reality both sides were to blame

Well, as a foreign fan of IndyCar history, it's the first time i heard the both sides of the story.

And with this, i think the both sides are in some parts right. Tony was right in complain about the lack of new American drivers in the CART, the cost for teams which was rising more and more but i don't agree with the IndyCar being a oval-only series. Particularly, the one of the things what attracted me to IndyCar it was this road-course-oval mix, to see the same car running two types of tracks.

But CART leaders was right about the expansion of the CART around the world, the series was gaining more and more exposition with foreign drivers influx in the series, making the series a contender with the Formula One.

But after all, when the egos starts to clash, bad things happens. And that's what happened with the American open-wheel universe. CART was starting to being the thing they most complained about USAC, a series which not all teams were fully represented, and worse, believing they're biggest than the Indianapolis 500, the race which was the reason why they were called the IndyCar. But George wasn't too far, believing the IndyCar needed to be more ''American", after all the series was growing up around the world and doing a move, closing more the series more in the America would be a great mistake.

In the end, this split was the biggest blow in the IndyCar legacy, a wound i think would never being fully healed.

Imagine Senna vs Earnhardt. That would of been insane!

It just blows my mind how I heard so many things in this video that I hear in NASCAR today.

"We need to get out of these markets and go bigger."
"This series is filled with nothing but a bunch of rich kids."
"They went too far away from their roots."
"Costs are way too high."

You can't help but be concerned about NASCAR's future after watching this video, but they seem to be catching on to some of these pressing issues. Hopefully they don't meat a similar fate to the one their open-wheel counterparts experienced back in the 90s.

the sad result of the split that for 20 years until recently the IndyCar series has had to recover from...

That KFC Racing hat is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a minute.

as someone who lives in europe (uk) i can assure you that if indycar had events in europe fans would flock to watch, us europeans live our open wheel racing !!

You are way, wayyyy to good at this. Your documentaries could be mistaken for big network, and big budget stuff

It was both interesting and frustrating to be part of the CART circus at the time of the split.

As a sprint car fan it was cool to see jack hewitt and steve kinser get to run in the indy 500.

If there's one constant in any sport, it's that if you got owners making the rules, they'll screw everyone over to get their pockets lined. My favorite stories from racing have to be those lovely lunatics at Hesketh racing in the 1970sand Alan Kulwicki winning the 1992 Winston Cup as an independent. That's what I always thought racing should be.

This was fantastic!!!  Perfect use of the older footage and the commentary was excellent!  Getting ready to start part 2.