The Real Split Too many would rather blame others than look at reality by blaming the mid 90 s split for the ills of open wheel racing Nothing can be further from the truth The real split which caused the ills of American Open Wheel racing came in the late 1970 s After the death of Tony Hulman Jr in Oct of 1977 and the plane crash that killed a number of USAC officials in April of 1978 Several car owners saw a chance to wrestle control of American Open Wheel racing away from USAC and the Hulman family They then formed their own sanctioning body and board of directors to operate that sanctioning body It was during this period which many like to call their heyday that open wheel racing began to move the focus away from the Indy 500 and grass roots local Saturday night style of racing toward the European style of formula racing For the most part non Indy races saw TV rating in the mid 2 s to low 3 s while the Indy 500 TV numbers dropped by around 10 million households With the added problem with abuse of power by a handful of CART teams manipulating rules to restrict competition from those not among the selected few in their group Many fans began to lose interest in open wheel and began looking for another option In the mid 1980 a new media was taking off cable television and many new networks were looking for events to fill their schedule Networks such as TBS super station in Atlanta and TNN out of Nashville were catering to their regional fan base with NASCAR racing and when their networks went nationwide it helped move NASCAR from it s regional status to nationwide appeal A new concept of a 24 hour all sports channel had sprung up in Connecticut and NASCAR was a natural fit to fill a lot of that air time By the time all NASCAR races were seen live wire to wire the nation found what they had lost in open wheel racing By the late 80s NASCAR had overtaken all of open wheel except for the Indy 500 and by the mid 90 s the crown jewel of NASCAR the Daytona 500 surpassed the Indy 500 in TV viewership