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Based off of what I’ve seen on social media over the past week, this has the potential to be a very unpopular (and long) post. Those of you that have been longtime readers of this site will not be surprised by my stance on this topic. My stance has not changed over the years, but newer readers may be a little surprised by my take. I don’t consider my stance to be controversial, but in this day and age – who knows?

The emotional scab for the majority of IndyCar fans has been scratched off in the past week, with the release of The Lionheart, an HBO Original Film that was released on HBO and MAX last Tuesday. Most fans can tell by the title that the late Dan Wheldon is the subject of the documentary.

Overall, the producers did a great job on this. I have recommended it to several of my non-racing friends, hoping it will give them a glimpse into why this sport is so special to so many of us.

This is not a review of the film. Many people have already given their take on the project, with mostly positive reviews. I’ll just say that if you have HBO or MAX, I would highly recommend that you watch it.

It’s the aftermath of the film that I have a problem with. While watching it, I noticed that former IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard was not painted in the best light during the film. Michael Andretti, specifically, went out of his way in the film to criticize Bernard for creating the $5 Million Go-Daddy Challenge for the 2011 season-finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

For newer fans, or those that need a refresher – Randy Bernard was hired as CEO in 2010. In the summer of 2009, the Hulman-George family had ousted CEO Tony George from controlling the series that he founded in 1996. Jeff Belskus, CEO of Hulman & Company, served as IndyCar CEO in an interim capacity, until Bernard was hired prior to the 2010 season.

Randy Bernard was an intelligent businessman and a natural-born promoter. He came from Professional Bull Riding (PBR), an obscure rodeo circuit that he led into a prominent sports organization as their CEO. The growth of PBR under Bernard became the envy of the sports world. He was hired away by Belskus to do the same for IndyCar.

Many fans today forget the doldrums that IndyCar was in after the 2000s. TV ratings were abysmal, attendance at races were bad and declining. The racing was good, but no one knew about it. Those are kind of the same complaints we are hearing today, but things were far worse then, than now. The most significant off-track memory from that time period was the infamous creation of Gene Simmons – I am Indy.

Belskus saw what Bernard had done for PBR and figured he could do the same for IndyCar. I always said that Randy Bernard was like NASCAR promoter Humpy Wheeler, except with taste. He did not have a racing background, but he learned quickly. He understood the century-long history of our sport and how important that history was to a lot of people.

It was Randy Bernard who combined the record books of AAA, USAC, CART and the IRL. He understood things like when Sarah Fisher was lauded as the first woman to drive in IndyCar, it excluded Janet Guthrie and Lyn St. James simply over the politics the sport had gone through. That is just one of many wrongs that combining the record books corrected.

Best of all, Randy Bernard was a man of the people. He understood that the fans were the most important component in restoring the once proud fan-base of our sport.

Randy Bernard listened to the fans concerns on the direction the sport was headed. Fans were irate that from 2008 to 2010, as many as six ovals had fallen off the schedule. Homestead, Motegi, Milwaukee, Kansas, Nashville and Chicago had all dropped off and everyone knew Kentucky would soon be next. He brought back New Hampshire, which was a one-and-done rain-filled disaster – but it did give us the Will Power double-bird. Bernard was trying to reverse that trend of losing ovals, when he also added Las Vegas to the 2011 schedule.

Bernard had many connections in Las Vegas and tried using them all as he attempted to pull out all the stops for the 2011 season-finale. It was a very unique situation that the reigning Indianapolis 500 champion, Dan Wheldon, did not appear in another IndyCar race for the rest of that season. He had no regular season ride, and signed with Bryan Herta as a one-off for May, that saw him as an improbable winner. Bernard wanted to capitalize on the star-power that the most recent 500 winner brought, so he came up with the $5 Million Go-Daddy Challenge; where Wheldon would start at the back of the field. If he won the race, he and a random fan (Ann Babenco) chosen through a drawing, would split the $5 Million.

Some called it a gimmick, and it was. That’s what promoters do. They come up with different ideas to drum up interest for an event. I would rather see gimmicks on the side for a race, than using three red-flags during the last ten laps of a race – but I digress.

Yes, there was scoffing from pure race fans that were incensed by any gimmicks. Bernard’s detractors liked to call him Ropin’ Randy, alluding to his PBR days. Many thought he was out of his league, but others applauded the move. This was a Hail, Mary in some ways. With title-sponsorship from IZOD, and a very memorable Centennial Running of the Indianapolis 500 that saw Wheldon win his second 500 in dramatic fashion – this was a way to really capitalize on the momentum that IndyCar had gained over the past year. With the new Dallara set to debut the next spring, with the new engine formula – this would be the last time the old Dallaras and normally aspirated Honda engines could be used. Consequently, there were thirty-four cars entered for a race on a 1.5-mile oval – more than for the 2.5-mile Indianapolis 500.

Keep in mind that Las Vegas was scheduled for Mid-October, and the series had been going head-to-head with the NFL for over a month. Ratings for the previous race at Kentucky were horrible and the attendance was even worse. IndyCar needed a shot in the arm to carry them into the offseason. IndyCar and Randy Bernard needed for Las Vegas to be a success. If it was, this could be the model IndyCar could use for years to come.

We all know what happened.

After the initial shock of losing the ultra-popular and talented Dan Wheldon wore off, human-nature took over. People needed a scapegoat. This couldn’t have just randomly happened. There must be something or someone to blame. It didn’t take long for Randy Bernard’s detractors to blame him.

There was not a huge groundswell of people clamoring to blame Randy Bernard, but it was a very loud and vocal minority. They had the luxury of hindsight to point to why the Las Vegas race was an accident waiting to happen. By the time that week’s Trackside aired, the anti-Randy crowd had gotten vocal enough that Kevin Lee posed a rhetorical question to them – “Do you have no heart?”

The mainstream press had a field day, with IndyCar and Randy Bernard as their target. On the morning after the Las Vegas tragedy, The Today Show claimed that this was a dare from Randy Bernard to coerce Wheldon into accepting this challenge. We all know that Wheldon said he would not be doing it if he didn’t think he could win. He even thanked Randy Bernard for giving him the opportunity. But lots of people that don’t follow racing were watching that morning. The damage had been done.

Even The Wall Street Journal got into the act. Two WSJ reporters, Alexandra Berzon and Rachel Bachman, wrote a piece entitled “Risk Haunted Fatal Race”. It was filled with errors and inaccuracies that anyone who follows our sport would have immediately discredited. But the fact that they wrote for WSJ gave them credibility to anyone who knew nothing about IndyCar. To read nothing but their account, would lead anyone to assume that Randy Bernard was irresponsible and should have been ousted immediately.

From what I understand, this was one of the most painful experiences of Randy Bernard’s life. Not only had he lost one of IndyCar’s biggest stars, he considered Dan Wheldon a close and personal friend. To witness what happened on-track that day, then to have fans callously lay Wheldon’s death at his feet had to have hurt. I have heard that he has not gotten over the entire experience to this day, and I can certainly understand why.

Time supposedly heals all wounds. Randy Bernard has moved on. In fact, he has been a Nashville resident for about the last ten years, running his very successful management company, as he manages several well-known county music artists. In the closing credits of The Lionheart, it says that Randy Bernard declined to be interviewed for the documentary. Can you blame him?

Michael Andretti points out in the film that anyone could see the Las Vegas race was going to be disastrous, with the design of that track and its high banks. In the film, he called it a dangerous publicity stunt and said it is up to the series to protect the drivers and not put them in dangerous situations. Yet, Michael is shown at the press-conference alongside Randy Bernard and Wheldon, with his mouth shut. He says this twelve years after the fact with the luxury of hindsight. If he felt this way at the time, why did he not speak up? His portrayal of Randy Bernard as essentially an unqualified hack that was running the series, is highly unfair. I recall a few naysayers prior to the event, but not many more than what we are seeing about this weekend’s event at Thermal Club. I do recall pack-racing being predicted by some, but it was hardly any more than what we used to see each year before or after Texas.

This past week, I’ve seen a new uprising from fans that have just watched The Lionheart, that seem to want Randy Bernard’s head on a platter. I’m willing to bet that most of them had even forgotten who Randy Bernard was, before they saw Andretti stir the pot in the film. They quickly sided with Michael in laying full blame on Randy Bernard.

Randy Bernard did a lot of good in his short tenure as IndyCar CEO, which ended after the 2012 season was concluded. He made the fans feel like they had a voice, something they had not felt in years. He was a man full of ideas – some worked, some didn’t. But he was always trying to hit that magic note to bring in more fans.

With the luxury of hindsight, there were several signs that pointed toward Las Vegas being a trouble-spot. But at the time, it never dawned on me that this had the potential to be far more troublesome than anything we had seen before. I don’t think it really dawned on a lot of people, that now claim they knew better.

I cannot begin to imagine what Susie Wheldon has gone through for the past twelve and a half years. Watching The Lionheart brought that home to me even more. She never hinted in the film that she held Randy Bernard responsible. Maybe she does and got Michael Andretti, Dario Franchitti and some of Wheldon’s other fellow drivers to say it for her. If she feels that way, scrap everything you just read that I wrote. She is and was closer to the situation than anyone else, and I yield to her position.

But for the rest of the mob who know about as much as I do about the situation from arm’s length – think before reacting to what you see on television, from people that are enjoying the luxury of hindsight. I believe that Randy Bernard was and is a good and decent man, that had no more to do with Dan Wheldon’s death, than you or I did. It was a very unfortunate combination of circumstances that came together and it happened. I believed that then, and I believe it now. Do we always have to have someone to blame?

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 20, 2024 at 4:04 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.