Sean Wrona

And obviously, they put so little thought into everything that they didn't even have a tiebreaker, although I'm glad that even though he didn't deserve it, Scott Sharp got a title since he was a great driver and Buzz Calkins turned out not to be.

Correct. They wanted the Indy 500 to end the season for maximal drama. However, having watched that race, I'm pretty sure they never even mentioned the points championship or who won it in the broadcast, which might be one of the reasons they turned away from that.

If they had just adopted NASCAR's rules and officiating from 1993, I bet it would still exist.

They also should have looked for drivers who never really caught a break like Cole Whitt and Parker Kligerman IMO more than washed up stars, although I guess they did that a little with some of the guest grassroots drivers they had.

SRX needed to lean more into being pure racing. I think that's what people were looking for but then you introduce like "fun flags" and what's the difference except that you have a bunch of washed up/inexperienced drivers instead?

I was a member because one of my tournament Scrabble friends Andy Saunders was one of the people who started the J! Archive and he invited me. I played in like 2 rundles before I left 'cause I didn't wanna pay. Andy also ran some F1 thing called F1ngers.

Palou at least did outperform every single teammate in junior series and I'm sure there are other examples of that who didn't compete for titles. Lundgaard I really thought would bust after Pourchaire crushed him when he was a rookie and Lundgaard was in year 2.

Admittedly, I was always competing by myself and all other teams had multiple members. A few of them had like 6-8 members. I don't know what I would have done one-on-one.

I mean I went to that North Syracuse bar trivia group a bit and wasn't very good as my pop culture knowledge of anything post-streaming is really paltry, but what does trivia knowledge have to do with one's skill at a word game? I was a tournament Scrabble expert...

I don't even know what those are. Then again, I don't drink...

I felt for Ilott after the Juncos fracas and felt he deserved a second chance, but honestly, he should've stayed in his WEC ride.

I just think they're both mid to begin with. Ilott looked better than he was because his teammate was Canapino and that became clear when Daly of all people got the team's first podium only a few races after Canapino was fired.

I've never played but I'd be game if they wanted me. The new Scrabble game show expressed a little interest in me but never got back to me when I last contacted them...

Ilott and Shwartzman both seemed replacement-level this year, Indy 500 pole or not. Drivers progress weird and now Lundgaard is clearly the best of those even though he lost to Mazepin then.

I honestly didn't realize it still existed since they stopped inducting people years ago after the NASCAR Hall of Fame was introduced. I don't know, probably better to have a NASCAR HoF than an "international" one that is ridiculously biased towards NASCAR drivers.

Ditto.

♪ And he can't tell you their naaaaame ♪

I don't know, they probably wouldn't be any less deserving of a nomination than The Black Crowes, not that either deserves induction.

seanwrona.substack.com/p/2025-indyc...

And even both of them gimmicked it up with double-points finales a decade ago, although thankfully, they both gave up on that later.

I'm still convinced people only like playoffs in other sports because they existed before they became fans. When a new playoff system is introduced, it always gets tremendous backlash as the BCS did. I think one major problem here is NASCAR kept changing its championship formats too frequently.

Okay, I can see how Ericsson might be better for team morale, but is that really worth paying him 3X more or whatever? I don't think so. There had to be somebody better if you were all in on dumping Grosjean.

Especially considering one of the chief Grosjean critics was Graham Rahal, who admittedly USED TO BE better than Grosjean but wasn't by the time Grosjean was in the series.

What was Andretti's problem with Grosjean anyway? I knew based on past history that Ericsson would do worse when they hired him AND I'm almost certain they're paying him more... He's probably too old now, but he was fine? Really bothered me that it seems like the other drivers drove him off.

You sure Super Formula isn't more likely? It's easier to get a ride there, I think he'd do better, and Honda's loss of interest in IndyCar makes it seem like they're less likely to want to plant someone there than they were in the Sato days.

seanwrona.substack.com/p/2025-nasca...

I guess it was inevitable since Brian France created the truck series and GWC was always a thing there and I liked it when it was trucks only, but I eventually pivoted at some point after it was added to Cup and Busch as well.

I also think overtime is worse than playoffs. What still bothers me is that the GWC was introduced in reaction to fans throwing stuff on the track after the 2002 Pepsi 400/2004 spring Talladega race. Bob Jenkins called fans throwing stuff on the track "race idiots" and then NASCAR pandered to them?

I meant to say the gutter. I don't know why the dugger is what came out.

F1 and IndyCar always had way better points systems and I don't know why they haven't tried to copy either of those. Do that and you don't need the stupid patchwork that is stage points to compensate for the fact that a DNF hurts more than a good finish helps, which is not true of F1 or IndyCar.