Our Anonymous Hometown Hero
Most regular readers of this site know that I live in Nashville. I was born and raised in Tennessee, graduated from the University of Tennessee and have lived in Nashville since 2001. So it’s safe to say I am a native Tennessean. Not only do I know what’s going on in Nashville, I know what is being talked about – or in this case, what is not being talked about.
If you read this site, I am assuming you are a die-hard fan of the NTT IndyCar Series, and most likely the Indianapolis 500. Therefore you already know that Nashville area native Josef Newgarden won this year’s Indianapolis 500, just a little more than two months ago. Unfortunately, very few people in Nashville seem to know it.
The third annual Music City Grand Prix kicks off this weekend. The organizers of this event have done a phenomenal job promoting this year’s race. As far back as April, they started running continuous radio spots advertising the speed and sound associated with this weekend. They let listeners know there will be as many as nine races among all of the series running, and however many musical acts will be appearing on the various musical stages on the grounds near Nissan Stadium. One thing I’ve noticed they are not telling listeners is that local hero Josef Newgarden, who just won the Indianapolis 500, will be racing in his hometown this weekend.
I find that odd, because in the previous two years of this event, Newgarden and his local ties were featured prominently in their marketing campaign. I am assuming race promoters have been running similar spots on TV, but we watch so little local television these days I can’t recall seeing them except during IndyCar race broadcasts. Maybe there is a TV spot capitalizing on the fact that a local driver just won the biggest race in the world – but I don’t recall seeing it.
I listen to the same sports radio talk show each morning – the top-rated show in town – while getting ready for work. Like most people, they took off for Memorial Day; when we were driving back from Indianapolis after the race. Tuesday morning was their first day back after Newgarden had won the 500, and I listened continuously from 6:00 am until I got to work at 8:00 am. Not a word was mentioned about our local boy winning the biggest race in the world. The show was dominated with news tidbits of the offseason for the Tennessee Titans, the Tennessee Vols or the Nashville Predators. The Indianapolis 500 never got a mention.
Not to brag too much on where I live, but Nashville is a city where celebrities are common and locals are used to seeing them. Several years ago my good friend John McLallen (of One Take Only) always made a habit of going into Starbucks after dropping his son off at school. On multiple occasions, he would see Nicole Kidman and her husband, Keith Urban in line with no one bothering them. That is, until the day they happened to be in line right in front of him. They probably found another Starbucks after that.
Country music stars and professional athletes are not the only stars that live in Nashville. Many rock legends and movie stars also choose to live here, probably for that very reason – they can live a semi-normal life without people bothering them too much in public.
That point was driven home to me two years ago, in a story I’ve relayed here a couple of times. In the summer of 2021, Susan and I attended the SRX race at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville. When the event was over and we were leaving the stands, we ran into Newgarden and a buddy of his. He was wearing no Team Penske or IndyCar apparel – just jeans and a plain white T-shirt. We spoke briefly, and then we watched him as they walked through the crowd ahead of us, without a single person noticing him. Here was a two-time IndyCar champion milling through the Nashville racing crowd, and no one had a clue who he was – except us.
While Newgarden probably likes it that way, I can’t help but wonder what it means. Does he fall in with all of the other celebrities that roam about Nashville in peace? Does this speak to poor marketing by IndyCar, in a failure to make one of their biggest stars known in his own hometown? What I suspect is that very few people in Nashville really care about IndyCar. Sure, they’ll probably show up in droves again for the Music City Grand Prix, as they did for the previous two years. But I think it’s more that the locals are more interested in attending a big event, rather than actually following the series.
When IndyCar ran at Nashville Superspeedway from 2001 through 2008; it was always a huge crowd. Keep in mind, those stands only held around 25,000 – but it was usually sold out and always looked packed. I attended every one of those races and sat in the stands among the other attendees. I’m betting hardly anyone in those stands could name a single driver. But I do remember everyone around me booed when Gil de Ferran won the 2003 race (a couple of months after winning the Indianapolis 500) because he had a foreign name and had won over Scott Dixon, whom they had all assumed was an American driver. That’s how closely the locals follow IndyCar.
This is different. Newgarden not only makes his home in Nashville, he was born in Nashville. Even if they don’t fully know what it is, most everyone has at least heard of the Indianapolis 500. Why on earth does the Music City Grand Prix not try to capitalize on Newgarden winning it? Is it a legal thing? Best Buy and other TV stores always have sales just before the Super Bowl, but without paying an exorbitant fee – stores are not allowed to use the word Super Bowl in any commercials of promotions. That’s why they always use the term The Big Game.
Does IMS charge a fee for using the term Indianapolis 500 in a promotion? That would seem silly, since they are promoting a race that the same series competes in. But what do I know?
Most of my friends know I’m an IndyCar nut and that we go to a lot of races. For the past two months, I’ve asked them if they were aware that this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner was a home-grown Nashville product. Most of them had no clue, nor have they even heard the name of Josef Newgarden. If you live outside of I-465, it may be the same where you live. But chances are good that where you live has not had a native and resident who just won the Indianapolis 500. We have one this year in Nashville. I just wonder why no one here even knows about it.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
August 2, 2023 at 7:06 am
I do believe you have hit on a major failure of Indycar. Iam not sure how you go about fixing this. Josef Newgarden should be the perfect all American hero. I admit iam a big fan of his since before he came to Indycar. I don’t have the answer but the sport has to find that answer if it is to grow.
August 2, 2023 at 8:56 am
Interesting. If this was Cincinnati, EVERYONE would know about him, IndyCar fan or not. Maybe Nashville, being a “new” city just doesn’t have the sense of hometown like an “old” city like Cincinnati does? Idk.
August 2, 2023 at 10:29 am
While I don’t intend to excuse Indycar’s marketing issues, I do think it is quite hard in general these days to create a local celebrity out of a homegrown sports star in a large metro area that has major professional sports teams. It wasn’t like this at one time, but professional stick-and-ball sports rose to a position of dominance by the 1980s and crowd out most other sports in most of the media markets they have claimed.
I’m from Houston, a city that even today is quite proud of folks like AJ Foyt and George Foreman, locals who represented Houston as nationally-known sports stars. But the circumstances that allowed Foyt and Foreman to become the big names they were/are were so very different than today. The big 4 professional sports leagues began the 1960s, when both Foyt and Foreman rose to prominence, with only 43 teams total between them (51 if counting the AFL) and there were only 3 TV networks. In 1970 there were 78 big 4 pro teams, by 1980 that number was 98… and cable television was emerging. In Houston, specifically, Foyt and Foreman became local heroes competing for attention with a fledgling AFL team, a bad MLB team, and two colleges that were usually sports footnotes. Houston has had local sports heroes since, but none even close to as popular or well-known locally or nationally as Foyt or Foreman. It just doesn’t happen quite like it used to.
August 2, 2023 at 3:45 pm
Indycar is a niche sport and there
are not enough Niches in Nashville.
August 2, 2023 at 4:14 pm
It’s not just Nashville, it’s Indycar. I live in a town of 16,000 people not 45 minutes from Indy. I’d guess not one in twenty could tell you who won the 500 this year or who Joe Newgarten is.
August 2, 2023 at 6:12 pm
excellent post, George
August 2, 2023 at 7:46 pm
Just curious what our buddy John did…..ask for an autograph…..a photo op…. Or a special high five or fist bump? 😂
August 3, 2023 at 7:16 am
I remember reading about when you went to the SRX race at the fairgrounds there and no one recognized him. I find that baffling . How could no one there know who he was?. I agree with others that IndyCar has a huge problem and they don’t seem to want to fix it. It makes no sense that they are not capitalizing on Newgarden especially this year in marketing the Nashville race. There must be some legal restriction on him. What other explanation could there be? Could anyone be more marketable than JN? Side note: I was driving south on I-65 north of Louisville, KY and both the Andretti Autosport haulers passed me headed to Nashville. They look really nice out on the open road. By the way if you honk sometimes they honk back. I’m sure most people could care less but it brightened my day.
August 3, 2023 at 11:41 am
Thanks for sharing the story about John. That was fun to read. Here’s hoping he is doing fine. A “One Take Only” about the Nashville weekend and its future would be very much appreciated.
February 10, 2025 at 4:02 am
[…] changes here at Oilpressure.com. Many of you probably remember that in August of 2023, I wrote an article that incurred the wrath of IndyCar – well, one person in particular with IndyCar who will remain […]
February 11, 2025 at 3:29 pm
It was the “The Scowl vs the Smile” article you wrote years ago that pulled me in to becoming a regular reader to oilpressure dot com. It resonated with me closely, having never been a fan of the scowl that seemed to elevate coolness over happiness with lots of my peers, which is a really sad kind of pecking order on the palette of possible self-expression when you think about it.
Given what you have written in this here article about the party line / narrative, I wonder how that “The Scowl vs the Smile” would be received today by whoever it is that your writing has rubbed the wrong way, since that old posting was a direct criticism of promotional efforts by the Series.
Thank you for creating this blog and for all the great coverage throughout the years. It’s been a pleasure.
Here’s wishing you and Susan a happy retirement.
I’m glad that you are going to post again whenever you feel like you want to say something. I hope this does not mean the end to your annual article on buzz words. All of those have been very interesting for this non-native speaker. And I also hope that letting go of the posting schedule gives is going to free you time windows and ideas for further episodes of this site’s own video series, “One Take Only”. Be it a hot take or a slow take, it was always a lot of fun to see you and John banter a bit like the guys from The Honeymooners.
Thank you Susan for your trackside photography posts. They provided an angle and point of view rarely seen: that of a fan up close with their stars. It showed the Series in a light that made it obvious how welcoming it has been to its fans.
Of course, I will miss your trackside coverage, but I’m happy for you that you are going to visit some races this year.
In recent years, I have been getting the impression that the blogosphere of old where likeminded people from all walks of life could engage in interesting conversations about their favorite topics and even get good new ideas from the present swarm intelligence, seems to be on the way out, largely to be replaced by machine-curated and ultimately soul-less feeds of so-called social media site providers whose sole purpose is to lure its users into looking at more ad-space for longer periods of time. I kind of feel inclined to call those algorithms the smarm intelligence in comparison.
So, I’m glad that your blog is not going out but merely downshifting because the world sure could use some swarm intelligence at a time when the feeds are dishing up nonsense by the truckload. Thank you for speaking out in this article on how the upcoming changes have occurred.
All the best to both of you. And please feel free to give my regards to John.