2011 Indy Car Series Looks Alot Like 1995

With the schedule set to be announced for the 2012 Izod IndyCar Series in the coming weeks, I took a long, hard look at the rumored schedule.

If the schedule is accurate, there will be 11 road/street courses and only seven ovals.  That's pretty similar to this year in that there is 10 road/street courses and seven ovals.

There are also only seven American drivers racing full-time right now. With the announcement of Danica Patrick's departure, that makes just six for next season (unless more sign).

My question for all current and former IndyCar officials, teams, drivers and execs is why did you even split in 1995? 

Tony George made the ignorant move to split to his own series starting in 1996 and formed what was then called the IRL.  That left two major open-wheel series' in America.

Fans were outraged and felt a strong hate for IndyCar racing due to this.  They didn't like what George did, but wanted to follow the Indy 500 which he obviously took with him.  CART didn't have the 500, but they had the superior drivers and teams. 

Fans were confused by the two series, so they bailed to a more attractive up-and-coming popular series in NASCAR.

George split his own series for three reasons.  One was the domination of Penske and Ganassi, and he saw that they had too much control.  The second reason being there were too many road courses, and the third being there weren't enough American drivers competing.

The schedule in 1995 had 11 road/street courses and six ovals.  It also had 11 full-time American drivers on the series schedule.

Lets fast forward to the 2011 season.  I stated above that there's 10 road/street courses, seven ovals and seven full-time American drivers.  The dominance of Penske and Ganassi is greater than ever before.

What's the difference with this season and 1995's season? 

The only one I can see is the millions of fans who came to the races to watch IndyCar racing live or tuned in on TV are gone.

1995 opened the door for NASCAR's success and closed the door for many of those who bolted to IndyCar.