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I thought that this would be a good feature to have - a season review thread for the major series. And as the IRL is finished now apart from the insignificant Surfers race, it's first up

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Apparently Milka led more laps than Danica this year. Says it all for the oval racing, doesn't it? Road races were OK on the whole but that had quite a lot to do with the weather

A lot of momentum was squandered and wasted and now the IRL is worse off than it was to start the season.

Says more about Danica then oval racing really.

The reunification was never going to be easy but at least one of the CC refuge teams won. Now that they've had one season they just have to build on what they've so far learned.

I gave the season a 6. It had its moments where it was interesting so it was an avg bleh season to me.

Oval races kept getting worse even by IRL's standard, and the best road course races were just mediocre. The idea of bringing the new car with 2 more years to go is bad ,and if they couldn't find a way to land PT a good ride, I doubt I'd follow the series like I did in the last few years.

Take the downforce away pls

2. I enjoyed the Texas race

It's the worst series in the world.

After Indianapolis, the ratings were either the same or down compared to the previous year with Milwaukee even pulling just a .6 rating on ABC. Going to VERSUS for ten years tells you all you need to know about the direction the IRL is going.

Yeah it was a meh season really and atm the future doesnt look too bright..

I hope they get it together and start moving ahead but its gonna mean some people have to start thinking about the big picture rather then themselves.

It wasn't the best season, however I think it was a good start to re-unification.

Things were never going to be fixed completely straght away & this was always going to be a building year & that will continue into next year. Next year some of the ChampCar teams will be more competitive & I think the series will continue to grow going into 2011 where things will really start to improve with the new car/engine formula. I think the series has everything they need to start rebuilding Indycar racing to where it once was & I for one really hope it all comes together & look forward to watching some great racing in the future

As to the Milka having led more laps than Danica, I think that Milka led 5 laps, Danica 4. Milka's laps led were under caution, Danica's led laps were all under green & she led the one that counted at Motegi

I quite enjoyed the bits of this season I managed to find time to watch. If nothing else, the fact that I was watching a unified series, and you knew the winner of the title would be the best driver currently in US open wheel racing. To me, the return of Franchitti next year is more significant than it appears on first glance, and it wouldn't surprise me to see a few other veterans of the old series return for another crack.

Like Stef says, it's pretty difficult to judge the actual racing in the first post-unification season. Some cars on the grid were going to be at an obvious disadvantage, and I think NH and the other ex-CCWS teams did a fantastic job with what they had available to them. Next season should be better yet in this regard as they have an entire offseason to prep the cars.

Can't wait for Surfers, I hope it's on the calendar as a championship round next season.

I will be dumbfounded if this were to be the case.

Not a chance in hell that the V8s will be there outside of the October 25th data, and if they aren't there it means V8TV won't be there, meaning that a host broadcaster would need to be found.

I read somewhere that the suggested dates were either in March (a clash with the Clipsal 500) or some time in September which clashes with the finals of the two major football codes (Australian Rules and Rugby League) in Australia.

I can't say I've enjoyed the season at all as it is not on FTA TV in Australia, and so the only racing I've seen has been the highlights (mainly crashes) posted by Mattzel and others. It would be great if there was a return to the days when late Monday night was the time to watch (or tape) the latest ChampCar round on FTA. If this doesn't return I doubt I'll be seeing much of the series apart from what is posted on the forum.

Voted it a 6. Overall, it was about average. Below what I was expecting and I wasn't expecting that much. 'Tis a shame we'll have to wait until 2011 for the new car and engines but what are you going to do?

At least now there's only one major open wheel championship. The fans just have to give it time. If they truly love open wheel racing then they'll watch and slog through this depression. If they can't put Champcar to bed and just want to bitch about how bad the IRL is and whine about Tony George, then there's always tin tops.

I do my fair share of bitching about the series too, but I watch every race, even the ones I don't particularly care for. This season could've been better, but it also could've been worse. There were some good races so let us look forward to Surfer's to wrap up the year and hope that the years to come bring Indycar back to the level of respectability it once had.

A solid 6.5 tbh.

I like AOWR but I'm not going to watch if the races are boring and uninteresting.

I gave it a 5. Some of the reasons behind that decision was because of the split weekend of Motegi and Long Beach where Danica Patrick got her first win and Will Power got the last win with the Champ Car equipment. Another was three other first-time winners in Graham Rahal, Ryan Briscoe, and Ryan Hunter-Reay. And then there was that photo finish at Chicago to cap off the season between Dixon and Castroneves. So all in all, the first season of a newly unified AOWR series was alright in my book.