[nightdriver]

"The 1996 IRL-CART spat turned into the nastiest divorce since The Donald and Ivana split up Boardwalk and Park Place."

This split was a factor, all right, but only one.

The Indy also got passed up by technology. In the late '60s, Andy Granatelli brought forth a new concept - a car driven by a gas turbine engine. It had 4-wheel drive and a lot more power than anything else in the field. Insead of getting 2 miles to the gallon, it got more like 6 and the fuel was kerosene which was much safer than the alky fuels the other cars used.

Trouble was that, among other things, it didn't SOUND like a racer. You could hardly hear it going by, so they had to impose rules that restricted them so much that they were uncompeitive.

Later, they had to put restrictions on the regular engines too, so the race just doesn't have the interest and innovation that it could have.

I'm sorry to see the race fade.

[Billthedrill]

I agree with you - it was the restrictions that killed the race. But some of these were perfectly understandable - it is, after all, a very small oval by 250+mph standards and it's built on top of REAL bricks. Either you restrict the technology to keep it on the course - literally - or you change the course to keep up with the technology. To a degree that is what NASCAR has done.