More on Mexico
All in all, the Telcel-Motorola 200 (a.k.a. Sunday's Busch race) was a pretty good race. My guy (Martin Truex Jr.) won, the fans seemed pretty into it and the Mexican drivers didn't embarrass themselves. (Except maybe for polesitter Jorge Goeters - he was running away from the field for the first 24 laps, then had one of the worst pit stops in recent memory. He'll learn.)
I liked the fact that the opening ceremonies were done in Spanish -- that really gave you the flavor of the place, and you didn't need to know a word of Spanish to realize there was a pre-race prayer, just like they have in all of the U.S. races. Plus I loved saying Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
So what are other people saying?
The NASCAR folks are leaning toward coming back next year. "This could become the marquee event for (the Busch) Series," said Robbie Weiss, who oversees NASCAR's international operations.
The Charlotte Observer's David Poole hated it. "You know I despise road courses in general and Watkins Glen in particular. But as bad as the Glen is, I wouldn't even trade the Cup date there for one in Mexico City -- or for one in Montreal, either, for that matter." Poole pokes the race with a stick some more before concluding that NASCAR will be back next year.
In the Winston-Salem Journal, Mike Mulhern gives over space in his Monday notebook to this once-source NASCAR trial balloon:
*This Mexico City weekend becomes a full Cup race, probably Sunday March 5, 2006.
* The June Pocono Cup race is killed, replaced by the Watkins Glen Cup race, currently held in early August.
* On the newly opened August 2006 weekend, the Busch series -- with any interested Cup stars -- will run in Montreal on the Gilles Villeneuve Formula One course on the island of Notre Dame, in the heart of the city of 3.5 million.
*And NASCAR's Truck series enters the Mexico market by running a companion event at Monterrey -- the city of three million 600 miles up the road from here, 21/2 hours from the U.S. border, a city called Mexico's richest town -- with CART's Indy-car tour in April 2006.
It may not work out that way, but the betting is it will.
Larry McReynolds, one of the Fox broadcasters, is a convert: "After going to Mexico, my whole outlook on racing outside the United States has changed." And NASCAR.com's Marty Smith called the big picture "a smashing success."
So the big question: Will the Cup series venture south anytime soon?
My response: Why would it?
The crowds were huge -- about 90,000 or so, according to most estimates -- and I can't imagine a Cup race would draw that many more.
Poole's sniping aside, the ratings were pretty good. Sure, the race was beaten in TV land by a great Tiger-Lefty golf showdown and a thrilling UNC-Duke game. But it was Fox's second-best showing ever for a Busch race. And it was a Busch race. Could a Cup race have done much better?
Finally, NASCAR is still trying to figure out how to lighten the load on the Cup teams. It's about 2,000 miles from Charlotte to Mexico City along unfamiliar roads -- that's shorter than Charlotte to LA (2,400 miles). But putting what amounts to another West Coast race on the schedule isn't exactly going to win too many friends in the Cup garage.
And if the Cup series go south, fewer Mexican drivers will make it into the race. There are too many Cup teams (and too many Cup sponsors) who have too much invested in NASCAR's big league series to turn over their rides to an unknown driver who's liable to wreck the car or pull into the wrong pit stall.
All of this is a long way of saying that Busch probably will be back, but the Cup guys aren't likely to go south of Texas Motor Speedway any time soon. What do y'all think?
March 10 update: NASCAR.com's Marty Smith reports that Robby Gordon says that, despite the extra expense, NASCAR should stage a Nextel Cup points race outside the U.S. Sure, it's one driver's perspective, and that driver is Robby Gordon, but it's still an interesting take. Go read.