Winning: The Indy Racing League opens its eighth season with its best teams, sponsors, attendance and TV ratings.

• Author: McKimmie, Kathy
• Position: Cover Story

The Indianapolis 500 is racing-worldwide--and the Indy Racing League has capitalized on that preeminence to bring the excitement of good old American open-wheel racing to other oval tracks around the country.

"When I started out in '95 and '96 I thought we'd see this kind of success in the first three or four years," says Tony George, founder, president and CEO of the IRL and president and CEO of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. "For the most part, it's finally to the point in its maturity that I am starting to feel comfortable. It's been a long, tough building process. We've gone through a lot of troubled times, but 2003 is shaping up to be our best year yet. Our 'future is bright."

The IRL's trends are up in every major category, says Zak Brown, president of Just Marketing, an Indianapolis-based motorsports marketing firm. TV ratings, attendance figures and the quality of its teams are all looking good. Only the number of cars is down, and that's a sign of the times, not the quality of the series.

An exodus from the CART Champ Car Series began a couple years ago, says Brown, when Roger Penske moved to the IRL and others followed. Bobby Rahal, former Indy 500 champion and former CART president, now has afoot in both CART and the IRL, running cars in each. Six months ago some people didn't think CART could get 18 cars on the grid, which it needed to do contractually for its sponsors, Brown says, but it did. "It's in business, has a foundation laid, and needs to hustle."

"The Indy Racing League ... more or less began in desperation with ragamuffin teams, faceless drivers and one engine," notes Robin Miller, the popular and colorful former Indianapolis Star racing reporter, now covering the sport for ESPN.com. He says it is now "sporting a total makeover and a sizeable swagger. Nothing about the old IRE is recognizable and the new look is fast, familiar and formidable."

BEHIND THE SCENES

The business side of the IRL has seen steady, methodical growth, from five IRE employees at the start to a team of 52 who now work exclusively for the league, says Ken Ungar, senior vice president of business affairs. Everyone's working on a three-prong plan to move the organization ahead, he says: make every event a big event, improve the brand image and make drivers stars.

It's easy to see why the Indianapolis 500 is the biggest single-day sporting event in the world, says Ungar. It's not just a race, it's a spectacle that draws casual sports fans, not just...