If anyone ever needed any proof the Indy Racing Series television partner is actively trying to kill the brand, look no further than the latest ramblings of Ed Hinton, now no longer employed at Tribune but by ESPN. I get a kick from hearing him pontificate about a variety of topics that are mostly NASCAR related. Robin Miller used to work for a respectable entity as well before he was fired several times. Let us review just a taste of the word crafting magic of Mr. Hinton:
“George spoke of his concerns in June 1992, standing behind the Williams pits at the Canadian Grand Prix, where he was flirting with yet another of his tradition-trampling notions: bringing Formula One to Indy.”
Tradition trampling? Excuse me? There is not a person alive who respects that place more than he does. I have been walking through the gates since 1959, and remain utterly amazed at the way the place gets transformed every single year. It always gets better in some way. It is 2008. Not 1965. Having one race at that track in this day and age is well beyond stupid to anyone except flat-earthers.
“Already he had stirred an outcry from traditionalists. Never, since the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, had any type of race cars other than Indy cars been allowed at the place known worldwide simply as “The Speedway.”
Traditionalists should come to grips with the fact the earth is round.
“Not until 1979 did I hear anyone even imagine putting stock cars onto Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was on a cross-country trip with a young NASCAR driver so underfunded he drove his own truck, hauling his No. 3 Chevrolet on a trailer.
Richard Childress and I were bound from Riverside, Calif., up to Michigan when we hit Interstate 465, the beltway around Indianapolis. Suddenly he sat up straight in the cab, with a notion: “Hey! You know how to get to The Speedway? Man, I’d love to see that place.” “Sure. Take the Crawfordsville Road exit, up about a mile, and I’ll show you from there.” He parked his battered rig on Georgetown Road, where we found an open gate. He virtually sprinted inside, speechless at the sight of the most massive grandstands on the face of the Earth.
Then he began to survey the old track, following it with his eyes from the fourth turn down the front stretch and into the first turn. “We could do it,” he said. “What? You mean race stock cars, here?” “Oh, hell, yeah,” he said. “It’s just like Ontario.”
Coincidentally, I happened to locate a picture of the precise moment Childress and Hinton had together in that truck parked along Georgetown Road.
“And they have come back … and come back … and come back … annually electrified to their satisfaction by what little of the old track they can see. In the economy of recent years, there have been a few gaps in the grandstands, but not as wide as those for the Indy 500 itself. The 400 remains NASCAR’s best-attended race, with crowds of more than 250,000 even in off years.”
Why do columnists feel compelled to so shamelessly lie? Hinton’s dishonesty in that paragraph is stunning. What else, however, could be expected from an ESPN stringer with his nose so far up the France family hind end that all traces of objectivity simply vanish?
“The grandest grandstands anywhere get filled up when NASCAR visits Indy.”
No, Ed, they do not. Not anymore. If they did I would not be receiving recorded spam messages on my home telephone from Jeff Gordon urging me to buy tickets a few days before the race along with e-mails every day asking me to purchase.
“But the success of this marriage has aided and abetted the devastation of the lovely old American institution called the Indianapolis 500.”
See? This type of dishonesty is precisely what proves Hinton to be so ruthlessly gutless. The Indianapolis 500 has been around twice as long as NASCAR, and the 500 has remained the top draw for decades. It is OK that Hinton can lie to himself, but for ESPN.com to allow him to lie to their audience is devoid of any ethics.
“Emboldened by the enormous revenues from his NASCAR race, George could afford to found the Indy Racing League and go to war with CART, to return control of Indy car racing to Indy. A few years ago, as CART teams began defecting to the IRL, George indicated to me that he’d poured about $250 million of the Hulman-George family fortune into subsidizing the IRL, and that without question, the huge profits of bringing NASCAR to Indy had enabled him to fight.”
Ed, I thought the column was supposed to be about the Brickyard 400. Why on earth are you still stuck on ‘split’ talking points? That ended, Ed. So your best buddy Anton indicated that is where the early funding for the IRL originated? Liar. Cowardly liar. Have you ever gotten over having your press credentials temporarily held up after the SI hatchet job following Charlotte? Why/how on earth would Anton ever share such closely guarded data with the likes of you? The answer is that he would never do that.
“Then just this spring, after George had won his war and surveyed the barren outcome, IndyCar racing was reunified. No telling when, if ever, the 500’s original prestige might be restored.”
For a column supposedly about the Brickyard 400, Hinton certainly spends an inordinate amount of time bashing the one institution that gave NASCAR legitimacy in the first place. Hinton’s delinquency is inexcusable, unwarranted and childish. What a sick joke, sort of like my illustrations, only he is serious.
Thanks, ‘partner.’ Keep up the stellar work.
Defender of IndyCar 
Let me guess: Ed’s the one that’s just been caught, once again, texting his buddies on crapwagon.com with Daddy’s cel phone.
Such a bad little boy!
I’d swear Childress bears a resemblance to Clint Eastwood!
…I’ve been to every NASCAR BY/Allstate 400, the past couple of years almost reluctantly. For 10 of the 15 races I’ve sat in Stand-J. Over the past three to four years there have been steadily increasing ‘areas’ of bare aluminum noticeably visible all through the third turn, north chute and into the 4th turn where i sit. I expect to see more of the same this coming Sunday.
Defender,
This is the first time that I’ve posted on your blog, and I have to agree with you on Ed Hinton. He’s devolved into a talentless hack who never misses a chance in print to stick the shiv into Tony George or the IRL. Oddly enough, I have a copy of Sports Illustrated from 1996 (You could probably find it online at the SI Vault site) where he praises Tony George and ridicules CART in an article about the 1996 Indy 500/US 500. But then he stuck his fat finger into the wind and joined the chorus of nay-sayers and rumor-mongers and sprinkled his stories with snide little asides about the IRL. A telling anecdote about Ed: A few seasons back he appeared on WindTunnel as a guest with Dave Despain. He gets on and starts whining about the fact that Dave referred to him and Robin Miller as “haters”. He requested Dave apologize to him. Dave did! I lost A LOT of respect for Dave Despain that night. And it showed Ed was a snivelling coward who could dish it out but not take it. Hey Ed: why don’t you toughen up those acres of fat skin you have?
As for the Brickyard 400: I only attended once in 2003 because friends of ours wanted to see a NASCAR race. We bought tickets online from the Speedway A WEEK before the race. And the race didn’t sell out that year either. Over the intervening years, I’ve noticed that indyracefan is right. On TV shots of the stands, there are visible areas of empty seats. So that means they’re not getting a crowd of 250K+, since the speedway HOLDS 257K+ seats.
Great post, Defender. You are dead on.
1.) I’d love to see some evidence that the 400 is outdrawing The Race this decade. Not buying it.
2.) He’s implying that the IRL is running a $250,000,000 deficit since its creation. Tony George is a business man first and a conservative one at that. There is no way in hell Tony George has sunk a quarter of a BILLION dollars into the IRL without getting a ROI. And the best proof Hinton has is an offhand remark by George? That’s BS.
3.) Why doesn’t Hinton mention the fact that the Brickyard is clunky and boring compared to the 500?
“Indicated”
What’s with the weasel word. If somebody told you something, you would say, “So and so told me that thus and such…” So what the hell does “indicated” mean? Did he wink? Wiggle his eyebrows? Touch the side of his nose with his forefinger?
HINTON: “Tony, rumor has it that you have sunk 250 mil of your own money into this operation.”
GEORGE: “Hard to believe, eh? Security! Get this bum out of here!”