The dichotomy was front and center Saturday night at Iowa Speedway: great racing with another disappointing fan turnout.

That's the sad but true tale of oval tracks in the Verizon IndyCar Series. Once the pillar of the most popular form of motorsports in this country when USAC and CART were on top, ovals have become an endangered species. Other than Indianapolis, it's tough to draw anything resembling a crowd.

TMS IRL crowd in 2003.Texas Motor Speedway, once a stronghold that put 75,000-80,000 people in the stands to watch the Indy Racing League's version of Russian Roulette, has been sliding recently and withered down to 25,000 (at best) last month. After an encouraging return of an estimated 25,000 in 2013 following a 24-year absence, Pocono slumped to maybe 15,000 a couple weeks ago. Iowa, which packed the grandstands the first few races for IndyCar, looked about half full last Saturday evening. Fontana, a big ticket back in the late '90s when CART was cooking, went away after embarrassing crowd numbers for its IRL races and has struggled since returning to the schedule three years ago. Ticket sales are supposedly down for next month's finale.

Milwaukee, long the bastion of Indy cars prior to The Split and finally dropped when neither Champ Car or IRL could interest anybody, is trying to hang in there after coming back in 2012 but it's a tough sell.

And the conundrum for Hulman & Company CEO Mark Miles and IndyCar is that it needs ovals to retain its heritage, maintain its status as the most diverse series in the world and remind people why many of them fell for Indy car racing.

"We've got to keep ovals and we've got to have consistency," said Roger Penske, who owned Michigan International Speedway and Nazareth Speedway before building the California Speedway in Fontana in 1997 and then selling all of them to ISC. "It's great racing and it's part of what we are."

Michael Andretti, who stepped in to rescue The Milwaukee Mile, echoes The Captain's thoughts. "We can't ever stop running ovals," said the former CART champion who was a badass on the short ones as well as superspeedways. "It's what sets us apart from everybody else."

So what's happened to the culture that thrilled us with A.J., Parnelli, Mario, Ruby, Rutherford, Johncock, Mears and the Unsers? Why doesn't anybody care to attend anymore? What needs to change?

First and foremost, the oval-track model for IndyCar isn't working and hasn't for quite some time. Two-day shows are a waste of time and money for teams and promoters alike. There hasn't been a crowd for practice or qualifying since the late '90s at Milwaukee. The old refrain was that promoters needed an extra day to sell tickets, put ads in newspapers and generate interest with qualifying results.

BS. Other than Indy, every oval needs to be one day – practice, qualify and race just like the old days and besides saving money, it ramps up the intensity and maybe draws more interest. Pocono's Brandon Igdalsky, for instance, said he had no problem with that concept.

Secondly, ovals have got to change their approach. Texas, Pocono and Iowa had nothing on track except the Honda 2-seater and pace car rides prior to their IndyCar races. They've got to start giving the paying customers a lot more for their money – a la street races and road courses. There is always something going on at Long Beach, Detroit, Barber, Mid-Ohio, St. Pete and Toronto, be it Indy Lights, Pro Mazda, USF2000, drifting, TUDOR sports cars, Pirelli World Challenge or Robby Gordon's truck series.

Sure, eight Indy Lights cars (that's what they started at Pocono) is a joke of prelim and hopefully Dan Andersen's new car and enthusiasm will restore some depth, but Lights ALWAYS need to run prior to the IndyCar race. You can't start a race at 3 p.m. and give the fans NOTHING beforehand. That's ignorant and arrogant.

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