Thank God! Trump Saves The Indy 500!

Op-Ed By Rick Carlton

This morning, I got a heads up message from an automotive colleague at The Auto Channel, regarding an apparent Facebook effort calling for the removal of Donald Trump as the honorary pace car driver for this year's Indy 500.

After an immediate "why should I care" moment, and before I had my morning coffee, I decided to follow up on the lead. So, after reading articles from USA Today and The Indianapolis Star, followed by working through the more rational postings on the social network's "Dump Trump," page, I finally managed to reach a series of conclusions.

In short; good for Trump, because he's an F-ing, dyed in the wool American, and will be happy to tell you that to your face. Good for Randy Bernard. Good for the Indianapolis 500, and ultimately good for a formerly important international motorsports event, that has been mired in "Big Brother" political correctness since 1996.

Regardless of the make or model of a particular pre-event promotion, one of the most important things one can do is cause people to talk about what is about to happen. This gets everyone all juiced up and ready to buy over-priced tickets and concessions, in addition to the potential level of collaborative booty created throughout a local event economy.

However, over the last 15 years the May "spectacle" has become a revenue loss-leader that regularly produced lousy TV ratings, and has generally offered a snore-fest as a racing competition. So, if "The Donald" can add some balls to this month's proceedings, while all the time proclaiming loudly that Indy is an ALL-AMERICAN motorsports event worth paying attention too again, so be it.

Indy used to be about guts, technical innovation, risk-management and winning at all costs. Today, however, we concern ourselves with cookie-cutter engineering, safety first and foremost, and deciding event results on the basis of "avoidable accidents." In my view, this is a damn shame, in the same way that our country has begun to behave like a bunch of bitchy little girls. Conversely, however, Trump flies in the face of all of this obvious weakness, and that's what probably has the weiners on Facebook entirely wrapped around the axle.

Say what you will, but Trump is self-made, he walks his own talk, and is uncompromising in his love for his country. So, whether you like him as a personality or not, or whether you understand the difference between the "truth" of a thing, as opposed to simply attempting to suck the air out of a competitor as a business tactic, I think that he's the perfect person to represent, and help begin, to retrench the Indianapolis 500. Because in the end of the day, the annual May rite used to be about balls-to-the-wall racing competition executed by hard-bitten competitors, who clearly understood the difference between a risk all, big win effort, as opposed to today's faint memory of "what used to be."