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I read a social media post this week where some claim that if much more is trimmed off of the NTT IndyCar Series season for 2020, that the championship should have an asterisk by it. I know that this is a word that is often mispronounced (astrix and astersk come to mind), but even the spellings in this post were way off. I know I’m guilty of some occasional typos or misspellings, but when the main word is essential to the message of your post is misspelled – it sort of undermines the credibility of what you are saying.

However they spell it or pronounce it, I don’t buy their argument. In my opinion, the 2020 IndyCar champion should have no asterisk by their name. Period.

Whenever the IndyCar season starts, whether it is June 6 at Texas, two weeks later at Road America or perhaps not until the Indianapolis 500 on August 23 – the champion will be a true champion because he ran in as many races as possible against all the other drivers. It is not the fault of any driver that the season has been shortened. All the shortened season does is make each race that much more important, because it creates few opportunities to make up for a bad weekend.

In 1981, Major League Baseball went on strike on June 12. They did not resume play until August 10, one day after the All-Star game. Thirty-eight percent of the major league schedule was lost, but they held a classic World Series in October between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New Your Yankees; with the Dodgers winning four games to two. There was a strange twist to the season – they split the season into two halves, with each divisional winner advancing to the playoffs. There were only two divisions in those days. The Cardinals and Reds both had the best overall records over both halves of the season, yet they both failed to make the playoffs under this one-time format. With all of those oddities, do you think the Dodgers have an asterisk or anything to denote that they won under unusual circumstances? No. They are simply shown as the 1981 World Series Champions.

The following year, the NFL did the same thing. They went on strike after only two games and ended up playing only a nine-game season. Their playoff format was heavily modified, with the Browns making the playoffs with a 4-5 record. The Washington Redskins ended up beating the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII by a score of 27-17, benefiting from an epic performance by running back John Riggins. After losing almost forty-four percent of the season, the record books show no asterisk beside the Redskins name. They were simply the Super Bowl champions of the 1982 season.

From 1911 until 1973, the Indianapolis 500 had been shortened by rain twice. The first was in 1926, when Frank Lockhart was declared the winner after 160 laps had run. In 1950, Johnnie Parsons won a rain-shortened race after 138 laps. Are they considered partial winners? No. After two rain-shortened events in fifty-six races, the seventies produced three rain-shortened races over a four-year stretch.

Gordon Johncock won a tragedy-marred, rain-shortened race that stretched over a few days. Although he personally felt cheated that his win felt cursed, Gordy was still an Indianapolis 500 champion. Fortunately, he won an unforgettable Indianapolis 500 against Rick Mears, nine years later to make him feel validated. Two years after Johncock’s 1973 win, Bobby Unser was flagged as the winner in a total downpour on Lap 174. The following year Johnny Rutherford was finally declared the winner in 1976 after just 102 laps.

Johncock is listed as a two-time winner, while Unser and Rutherford are three-time winners of the Indianapolis 500. Nowhere is there an asterisk or any type of disclaimer to suggest that some of their wins should not count as much because of factors outside of their control.

Bobby Unser’s third Indianapolis 500 win in 1981 was immediately disputed and handed to Mario Andretti the very next day. More than four months later, Unser was reinstated as the winner. Although the whole ordeal disrupted the friendship between the two drivers for about thirty years before they patched things up – the 1981 win is considered a full-fledged win for Unser.

In 2002, there was a huge debate whether Paul Tracy had completed a late-race pass on Helio Castroneves just before the yellow came out. It’s a close call either way, when you look at it, but Castroneves was eventually declared the winner. I’m not here to tell you who was right and who was wrong, but it was Helio who had his face placed on the Borg-Warner trophy for the second year in a row. Just as in the previous year when Helio won, there is no asterisk or inscription to indicate that his win came under question that day. That win counts as much toward his total of three Indianapolis 500 wins as any of the other two.

And if you are talking about if a shorter racing season counts as a championship – you need not look any further than the NTT IndyCar Series. The inaugural season for the Indy Racing League was in 1996 and was comprised of only three races – Walt Disney World, Phoenix and the Indianapolis 500. The 1997 season was supposed to commence with the True Value 200 in August of 1996 and was originally supposed to end at the 1997 Indianapolis 500. Whoever thought that was a good idea was sadly mistaken, and cooler heads intervened over the winter. They decided that the 1997 season would include the races after the 1996 Indianapolis 500, but would conclude with the final race in the calendar year of 1997.

They apparently had no tie-breakers in place because that inaugural three race season ended up with two co-champions, Buzz Calkins and Scott Sharp. Calkins won only one race in his entire IndyCar career – the series opener at Walt Disney World Speedway. Yet it was enough to give him the right to say he is an IndyCar Series champion, with no strings or asterisk attached. In my mind, if any race or season deserved any type of an asterisk, the inaugural three-race IRL season of 1996 is the one to deserve it. But the record books don’t show that and Buzz Calkins is a legitimate IndyCar champion.

None of us know what the coming weeks and months hold for us. I tend to think that the Texas race is looking a little iffy at the moment. I’m also growing a little uneasy about the race we plan to attend later in June at Road America. They may be whittled off of the schedule just like Barber, Long Beach, COTA and Belle Isle; or they could be re-scheduled onto the back end of the schedule in October or November.

Now, if a single wheel does not turn in 2020, then an asterisk will be appropriate for the season and the Indianapolis 500 – just like the war years of 1917-18 and 1942-45. But whether we get one, three, eight or all fourteen races currently on the schedule – whoever has the most points at the end of the shortened schedule is the legitimate champion, with no asterisks, qualifiers or disclaimers over to the side of their name for the remainder of time. History has proven that historians will always recognize them as a series champion. We should too.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 17, 2020 at 4:05 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.