An evening of exciting racing drowns out Gossage's whine

The night was finally rolling. The winds, again, were blowing. Robbie Knievel, daredevil by birth, was still alive.

The drivers of the IndyCar Series were whisking along, tire to tire, and the race -- at last -- was on.

When, out of the blue, a typed statement suddenly arrived in the Texas Motor Speedway press box.

"This crowd is great," read the words of Eddie Gossage, TMS president, "and is still the biggest crowd to see an IndyCar race outside of the Indy 500. We're very proud of it.

"But attendance has dropped almost 20 percent since 2005. It's clear that inserting a race between Indy and Texas had an effect."

Oh, stop it. To borrow a phrase from a T-shirt I once saw here, "Shut up and watch the race."

There were 83,000 spectators in the grandstands at the speedway. For 106 laps, the heart of Saturday's race, they had watched accident-free, 210 mph-plus racing, sometimes by three cars, side by side by side.

And Gossage was still mad about a race in Milwaukee?

Oh, stop it.

One of the best IndyCar races ever at Texas Motor Speedway ended with the season's best driver, Indy 500 champion Scott Dixon, celebrating by firing six-shooters in the winner's circle.

The usual large TMS throng was there to watch it and appreciate it. But what eats at Eddie Gossage is that three years ago, this same race drew 102,000. That was before last year, when IndyCar officials inserted the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt 225 at the Milwaukee Mile into Gossage's former spot as the race after Indy.

For Eddie, this is not an original complaint. Hence, the eyebrows raised by the odd timing of his Saturday night statement.

Gossage has had a beef with the IRL people for several years, a combination grievance about the race fees that the league charges his track and, lately, the loss of the prestigious post-Indianapolis spot on the calendar.

The latter issue became front-page news again last week, when driver Danica Patrick was asked about what does and doesn't constitute Indy traditions.

Definitely, Milwaukee, Danica said.

Patrick was breezing along, more or less in seventh place, about the time Saturday night that Eddie's last-word volley reached the media crew.

"We spent more money on advertising and promotion this year than ever before," Gossage's statement continued. "We've been selling tickets at a great pace since Robbie Knievel's jump was announced, but it wasn't enough to dig us out of the hole we were in prior to that.

"We love IndyCar racing and hope to get the IRL's help in turning this trend around."

Yes, it's true. Not even the spectacle of Evel Knievel's motorcycle-riding son possibly plunging to his demise -- and maybe damaging several showroom Hummers -- could stem the loss in attendance.

It's a money thing, you see, not a tradition thing. But Eddie has every right to play the tradition card, because when the IRL was still riding on training wheels, Texas Motor Speedway was here, packing in 100,000, two times a year.

Is the IRL punishing Gossage for canceling the second date? Eddie says no, that the track's second NASCAR date precludes a second IndyCar race.

But surely, there's a price -- there's always a price, right? -- that the two sides can agree upon. There has to be, because the IRL should be proud to call Texas Motor Speedway its second home. Its history here has been filled with excitement, from A.J. Foyt's first slap to Dixon's dash around the yellow flags Saturday night.

Gossage is no fool. Here I am today, writing about his statement. As he knew I probably would.

Too bad, because the night, after beginning with caution flags and flying debris, found its rhythm around Lap 60 and soon took the crowd's breath away. Thirty-one of the first 55 laps were run under caution. And when the dust cleared, and we saw that Ryan Briscoe had roared from nearly two laps down to join the lead pack, it seemed inevitable that homage was about to be paid to yet another IndyCar tradition -- the tradition of exciting, under-the-lights racing at Texas Motor Speedway and a compelling finish.

The crash between Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti, only five laps from the finish, brought an anticlimactic, almost-too-orderly finish to a night that had begun with a giant hot dog-eating contest and a 46-year-old man trying to motorcycle over 21 Hummers.

It didn't need a statement. The night itself had already made one.