MotoGP | 2019 | Round 3 | USA | April 12 -14

Total amount is irrelevant.

It’s the total of spectators close by and the ones that are willing to drive/ride/fly as convenient as possible.

 

It always baffled me why only 60k people showed up in Indy to watch the GP races. The city is a great host, doesn't rape people on hotels rooms, everything is close by, and had awesome reviews. The area has quite a few major cites close by, Chicago, Cincy, Louisville, Detroit, Columbus.

I think the promotion end of it was to blame. People just didn't hear about it. Kind of sad a BBQ event downtown would attract a larger crowd than the best racers on the planet, at the most well known track on the planet. Now Indy is about to spend 3-400 million on a new soccer stadium

 

What's new is that Suzuki finally has a motogp test team. I guess Guintoli will take part in 2 or 3 races this year, too.

They need to take the next step and run a satellite team,though

 

I get the impression he's a host for transitions for all their stuff, which is mostly soccer. He sure isn't into motorcycle racing.

 

yeah but does the midwest in general have as much of a bike culture as california? population numbers are irrelevant if said population generally doesn’t care about fast bikes going around a racetrack.

 

Perhaps it’s that when Indy was on there was another US scheduled race that year that split the audience somewhat?

I know I loved Indy and was sad to see it go as I could drive to it comfortably in a day.

 

And with that "bike culture", how much support did Laguna Seca MotoGP really get? After the first couple years, attendance falls off pretty quickly. From what I recall.
I'd say the midwestern motorcycle riders will actually travel distance to support events. There are groups of St Louis area riders who would either car pool, or ride, day of, to Indy GP. Watch the races, and then come back home. 243 miles, each way.

 

Sounds like not enough of them did that however.

 

I lived in Indy and where i live now is less than an hour away. The problem is threefold, I was told by an owner of a car racing team the daughters the are running the business of the track have becone greedy and are squeezing the teams too much. The second problem was mentioned earlier by someone a out the costs Dorna wanted the tracks to pay for the transportation. It was too much for Indy so they opted out. The last year it was held was the highest in attendance but i could see it but the place still looked empty because its so damn huge! The last thing is culture, most Americans are simply not interested in road racing not to mention two wheel road racing. For some reason oval racing is what our countrymen love.

I heard radio ads all of the time and seen the commercials on TV. The commercials never did show any excitement like low leaning passes. I dont know if they were restricted by Dorna or not. I know know adorna is very protective of their videos but I would think the hosting track would be able to use them to promote the race. I dunno I miss going, it was a damn good venue....

 

Finally got a chance to watch that video. I thought I lacked focus and got easily distracted but Guy makes me feel better about myself. He is pretty much a walking ad for Adderall...He looked like a little kid that got to go to Toys R Us for the first time! Or Metalhead at a PBR sponsored wet tshirt competition!

 

LaGuna is just a pain in the arse to get in to and out of in every way. Great track but arse ache. Not to mention the hotel prices, cost of food and just a weird feeling that even if the track was happy to have you there and were awesome, the locals barely tolerated you (thanks for your money, now get out).

 

The last Indy race had the highest attendance in 4 years (67K) but that was about half of what the first race there had.

 

The Cancelation of the F1 race years ago put a bad stain on Indy for the general public.. I would go back over and over again if it were back....















Just for the Lot 2 shenanigans

 

The Hurricane didn’t help... Especially for the 2 stroke fans that never got to see a race...

 

Pretty sure we got to see the 125 race, Nico Terol won.

 

Yes forgot about those... I was referring g to the 250’s

 

Yeah, I lived in Monterey for a few years. It's a weird place. Some of the most unfriendly people I've ever encountered.

 

I blame the track layout itself. When I lived in OH I used to go to all the F1 races at Indy and while I was excited to see Schumi et al, the track layout was pretty shit compared to a proper GP track. The layout just sucks.

 

No way those numbers are close to being correct. Within 100 miles of Austin, you have Austin which is 2 million metro and San antonio which is another 2million metro population. Then you have all the other smaller metros like Waco, Temple/Killeen, etc

In the 250 mile your listing the same 3.9 million. Houston metro is 180 miles and has over 6million just on it's own. DFW is 200ish miles and has another 6 million, plus the 4 million from San Antion/Austin. and 400 miles is most of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas

Where ever you got those numbers, they're completely off; the numbers should be closer to 6, 25, and 35 million for those distances from Austin. I don't know much about the other areas but I do know 400 miles from Monterrey is the entire state of California which is 40 million on it's own and that probably extends into Vegas as well so just over 40 mil