IndyCar Fans, Get Ready For The ‘Wall Of Smack’ At World Wide Technology Raceway

When Josef Newgarden of Team Penske punted Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport off the track in the closing laps of last Sunday’s race in Nashville, then brazenly said, “Welcome to IndyCar,” it created a promoter’s dream.

That promoter is World Wide Technology Raceway Vice President and General Manager Chris Blair as he prepares for Saturday’s next NTT IndyCar Series contest.

It’s the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at WWTR, a 1.25-mile short oval in Madison, Illinois, near the banks of the Mississippi River and in the shadows of the famed Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

I had an exclusive interview with Blair, who has become a promoter extraordinaire in the tradition of Humpy Wheeler at Eddie Gossage.

Wheeler was decades ahead of his time when he was the promoter of Charlotte Motor Speedway from the 1970s through 2008. Gossage was a Wheeler protégé who had his own flair for the dramatic as the President and General Manager of Texas Motor Speedway from 1996 to 2021.

Both of those tracks are part of Speedway Motorsports, Inc. (SMI). Blair was previously the Vice President of Racing Operations at Las Vegas Motor Speedway from July 2001 to September 2012 and is another SMI track.

Blair helped revive the former Gateway Motorsports Park when he arrived in 2013 and the facility has become a popular venue on the NTT IndyCar Series schedule when it returned in 2017.

On June 6, WWTR hosted the Nascar Cup Series for the first time in its history.

Just as Wheeler and Gossage recognized the value of a good, old fashioned feud between race drivers, Blair was quick to capitalize heading into Saturday night’s IndyCar Series race.

“The only thing I can say is, ‘Thank you, Josef,’ Blair told me after seeing the incident between Newgarden and Grosjean in the August 7 Big Machine Music City Grand Prix and the ensuring words that have been used since. “In this sport, everyone is too damn nice. That’s the way I look at it. We need a little bit of drama; we need some storylines. It’s something we can get out there and promote with these drivers and some rivalries of that magnitude, I’m all for it.

“I’ve always said we need to be showcasing the drama that goes on behind the wheel and the intensity.”

Newgarden and Grosjean had been racing each other hard throughout the street race in Nashville. Finally, with four laps remaining, Newgarden took care of Grosjean by sending his No. 28 DHL Honda into the Turn 9 barrier.

The race was stopped because of a Red Flag while track crews cleaned up Grosjean’s crash.

“Welcome to IndyCar,” Newgarden said after the race when asked if he was sending a message to Grosjean. “It gets tight. He’s been on a worse end of that. I don’t know what to tell him.

“Good thing I was ahead. That’s the biggest thing. You’re going to want to be ahead of this guy at this type of moment, but yep, it’s tight street course racing.”

The list of drivers who have had issues with Grosjean this season is a long one. Although the former driver from Formula One was popular with the fans during his rookie season in 2021, he made the move from Dale Coyne Racing with RWRRWR
over the offseason to Andretti Autosport.

Now that Grosjean is in a faster car, several IndyCar drivers have told me he is a “weapon behind the wheel.”

“Let me tell you what, I about got taken out six times myself,” Newgarden continued. “I probably need to have some discussion with some of the younger guys, but they’re aggressive. They’re very aggressive and if you’re not aggressive back, then you get run over.

“That’s IndyCar racing. You’ve got to learn that pretty quick. I don’t like it, but that’s the game that we’re in.

“Ultimately, we had a big fight back with the PPG PPG
car and Team Chevy. That’s all I can say. This has been a really frustrating year in a lot of ways and the way it’s built.”

The ideas started running through Blair’s mind. He wanted to showcase and highlight the intensity of this rivalry to spark interest in the ticket buyers for his race.

“After Josef did that the other day, we got our crew together,” Blair told me. “Coming off Turn 2, we now have the ‘Wall of Smack’ where we have all of these quotes where people are doing ‘Smack Talk’ and all kinds of interesting things. We are going to be debuting that on social media leading up to the race.

“Hey, let’s tell everybody what the intensity level is like. Let’s crank this up to 11 and quit hiding the emotion of IndyCar.

“I’ll tell you what, AJ Foyt never hid his emotions and Mario Andretti never hid his emotions in the hey days of the sport. We need to be cranking these personalities up.

“If no one else is going to do it, then it’s going to be up being the promoters that will have to do it. I’ve decided let’s have some fun with this. Let’s play up on it and make a little more out of it than it actually is. If that is what it takes to get more people excited about this sport and get more people buying tickets, that is what we have to do.

“We have a lot to compete with. Take a look at what happens in those other series, like it’s the end of a NASCAR race, it gets people talking all week. I want our IndyCar fans to be talking about racing until the next race. Always look ahead.

“If we are going to throw a little gas on the fire, we are going to throw a little gas on the fire.”

Blair also laughed when he realized Newgarden was involved in the latest feud that has developed with Grosjean. Newgarden is one of his favorite drivers and is a three-time winner in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

“Josef did some squeezing on a teammate here in that first race that he won in back in 2017 when he squeezed Simon Pagenaud a little bit to take the lead which ultimately decided the championship,” Blair recalled. “That is what we need. We need to see these guys not crashing each other but telling us what they really think so we can show the emotion and the intensity.

“That is one of the things I’ve always loved about Will Power. Will is not afraid to let it hang out there a little bit every once in a while.

“That is what we need to be promoting. A lot of people like to sweep this stuff under the rug and make everybody too Vanilla.”

This has been quite a season for IndyCar when it comes to controversy, and the biggest flair-up has come off the track.

It’s a contract dispute between 2021 NTT IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou and his current team owner Chip Ganassi.

The team owner picked up the option on Palou for 2023, per his contract. But Palou has signed a contract to race for McLaren in a “yet to be determined” series for next season.

Ganassi has taken Palou to court, and the case is expected to be heard when the current season concludes.

“What I love about this is the contract disputes started in IndyCar before Formula One, so Formula One is copying IndyCar on this one,” Blair said. “I think it’s fantastic to see this.

“A lot of people don’t understand the business behind racing. The talented drivers being sought after, that’s great for business and the sport. If we can get some team rivalries up and generated, that’s great.

“Zak Brown (McLaren CEO) is stirring up stuff in a couple different series, which is fantastic. I think it’s good for it. That’s great. You have to go to social media to see what is happening each day because some of this is happening so quick and denying it and putting out releases. I’ve never had as much fun in driver contracts and have never seen anything like this before. It’s fun and exciting.

“Chip Ganassi and Alex Palou didn’t even talk to each other until they were on the podium at Nashville. How does that even happen? This is like a Soap Opera and that is great.”

Interest was already quite high in Saturday’s race because it the final time IndyCar competes on an oval. Also, the track is within easy driving distance of IndyCar’s homebase of fans in Indianapolis. All they have to do is hop on Interstate 70 and head west for a three-hour driver.

According to Bommarito Automotive Group President John Bommarito, ticket sales are trending to make this the best attending IndyCar race at WWTR since the series returned to a sellout crowd in 2017.

The track is owned by Curtis Francois and enjoy a great partnership with Bommarito, the largest Chevrolet dealer in Missouri who sells cars nationwide through Bommarito.com.

When asked about Blair’s flair for promotion, Bommarito gave enthusiastic praise.

“Chris has been there since the inception and you always want to team up with people like that,” Bommarito told me. “I have an Executive VP, Chuck Wallis. Him and Chris work hand-in-hand to make sure everything executes properly around the Bommarito Automotive Group 500. They have since the start. He is absolutely amazing.

“Chris came from Las Vegas Motor Speedway and in Las Vegas, they do things big. He brought some of that Vegas flair with him and he has absolutely been amazing. His knowledge of racing and how a fan experience should be done is phenomenal.

“Every time I’m around him, I learn from Chris.”

Interest is so high, WWTR has had to create more ways to help fans enjoy a premium experience this weekend.

“Because we sold out of all of our hospitality and party suites, we added an additional opportunity if somebody wants a premium experience, we’ve added on to our Turn 4 Club,” Blair said. “There are limited tickets there. We also have tickets available at all price levels.

“Friday will be spectacular. After some conversations with IndyCar President Jay Frye, we’re going to have practice, then qualifying, then come back with a 30-minute upper-groove session like they did at Texas Motor Speedway in March followed by an all-out test session before the Silver Crown race. Everybody will be back out, flat-out, in race mode. People can see the cars in race performance, peak performance, on Friday.

“We are starting Saturday’s IndyCar race earlier with the green flag at 5:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m. Eastern Time). to accommodate the TV window. A lot of the fans, even in Indianapolis, the race should be over by 7:45 (Central Time) and that is still plenty of time to hop in the car and be home in your own bed relatively easy. It’s a great day for a road trip and we’ve got your tickets.

“It’s finally here, so let’s have some fun this week.”

With the “Wall of Smack” and some of his other promotional ideas, Blair has already had a blast promoting this year’s IndyCar weekend.