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There are a lot of unhappy people out there in the IndyCar world these days. Team owners, series officials, media types and fans all seem to be struggling to smile recently. Over the years, I’ve referred to them as The Legions of the Miserable or The Humorly Challenged – realizing that there really is no such word as “humorly”. I always thought the term “vertically challenged” was funny, so I altered it to include my made-up word.

One of the many traits I appreciated about my father was that he always had a sense of humor. He had little patience for those that took themselves way too seriously. Now he knew when he needed to tone it down and act appropriate. He usually knew his audience, but I knew him well. I could always see a mischievous twinkle in his eye, when I knew he was holding back a sarcastic comment.

I am glad that all three of his sons inherited that trait, and kept it alive long after he passed away almost thirty years ago.

Maintaining a sense of humor has gotten me through a lot of tough times – and yes, I’ve had my share of tough times. I would like to say that my sense of humor also rubbed off on my wife, Susan – but that would not be true. She already had a keen wit long before I came along. I am convinced that it was her sense of humor and her strong will that got her through her very serious health issues that started four and a half years ago.

People involved with IndyCar don’t seem happy right now, and I’m not sure why. We just finished a season that saw some of the best oval racing we’ve seen in a couple of decades. There is an unprecedented TV package with FOX on tap for next season that will see all seventeen races shown on network TV. Car count at races is as high as it has been since the early 90s. A new multi-year extension with Firestone has just been announced. These are just a few of the many positives going on with IndyCar. Things are good right now, but no one seems happy.

Yes, there are problems. Name me one sports entity that doesn’t have problems. The series faces the real possibility that one of its biggest and longest partnerships (Honda), could announce they are leaving the series after the 2026 season. That would leave only Chevrolet to supply engines, unless the series can find either a replacement manufacturer or a way to convince Honda to stay. In my eyes, that is the biggest problem facing the NTT IndyCar Series in the near future. As detrimental as that would be, it is not life-threatening for the series. For decades, engine manufacturers have come and gone. It would be a blow to the series, but I don’t think it would be fatal.

There are other problems too, but why do they seem to overshadow the many positives going on? Yet it seems that many involved are either hanging their heads like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, or they are sniping and snapping at each other over seemingly nothing.

Mainstream IndyCar beat-writers are getting overly defensive with amateur media members (not me) over who broke what story. Team owners are taking passive-aggressive jabs at each other in public. There is no joy in the faces or voices of so many involved with IndyCar. Everyone seems to have lost their sense of humor.

Of course, fans are not immune to this. Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen humorous memes on social media having fun with various IndyCar topics, only to see fans ripping them to shreds for laughing at something that they take seriously. I’ve got news for a lot of these folks, you can deal with a serious topic with humor…and it’s OK.

As I have grown older, one thing I have really learned to appreciate in others is a self-deprecating sense of humor. That was one thing my father did not have. As good of a sense of humor that he had, he did not possess the ability to laugh at himself. Some confuse a self-deprecating sense of humor as false modesty. They are two different things. It doesn’t seem that many involved with IndyCar these days have the ability to laugh at themselves. In all the decades I’ve followed this sport, I cannot remember a time when so many seemed to be so thin-skinned. It’s not a good trait.

I’ll tell you who we need – Robin Miller. Can you imagine Robin Miller getting into a Twitter spat with a podcaster over breaking a story? Prior to when he got sick before passing away in 2021, Robin Miller had his detractors. Many did not appreciate his brashness and brutal honesty. They also did not appreciate his abrasiveness or his sarcastic sense of humor. But I did. I appreciated all of it.

I never had much interaction with Miller, but he sat just a couple of rows behind us in the IMS Media Center. Even after he became ill, he kept the IndyCar media center lively with his irreverent sense of humor. He never took himself too seriously and wouldn’t allow anyone else to take themselves too seriously either. If you saw him on Wind Tunnel or some of his many videos on Racer.com – what you saw was the same Robin Miller we all saw in the media center. He kept things fun.

Now that he’s gone, there is no one that has a connection to fans, drivers, team owners and series officials; that can keep serious situations funny, irreverent and lively.

I will end this semi-rant with something I saw on Twitter Monday night – an IndyCar Offseason Bingo Card. I did not come up with it, and I’m not even sure who did, or who to give credit for it – but I found it funny and it made me laugh, which is something we all need to be doing more of these days.

I am hopeful that we can get back to the days of not that long ago, when the IndyCar world had a sense of humor and could actually laugh at itself. After all, this is a sport. We aren’t curing cancer over here. Let’s try to have a little more fun out there, and shed the tags of Joyless, Humorly Challenged and The Legions of the Miserable. Life is too short to take things so seriously…especially yourself.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on October 2, 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.