What Does an IndyCar Villain Look Like?

The tribality of sports has a tendency to take what would be seemingly normal, ordinary people and give them a part of their personality that makes the seemingly outrageous seem almost normal to them.

For example, former Ohio State University football coach Woody Hayes once went into a tirade while on a recruitment trip in Michigan, boasting that he would not buy a single drop of gasoline in Michigan and would rather push his car back into Ohio than give any money to a business in Michigan.

Harvey Updyke’s rabid Alabama fandom led him to poisoning the iconic Toomer’s Corner trees at Auburn University after Auburn’s 24-point comeback victory in the 2010 Iron Bowl.

For Hayes and Updyke, their intense hatred of a rival was a cornerstone of their personalities, and that brings us to motorsport. Around the world, rivalries have helped motorsport generate headlines, TV coverage and column inches all in the pursuit of victory for one driver over their most hated rival.

Formula 1 went completely box office in the late 1980s/early 1990s when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost squared off for the world championship. A decade later, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen became the next duo to fight for titles. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton‘s 2021 title fight, when combined with the Netflix series Drive to Survive and excellent social media utilization, helped take F1 to new modern heights.

NASCAR’s history is filled with rivalries. Ford and Chevrolet have been forcing fans to take sides almost since the series’ founding. Richard Petty raced hardest against David Pearson. Cale Yarborough literally fought the Allison brothers. Darrell Waltrip in a top tier ride shook up NASCAR’s old guard. Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine had a movie-defining rivalry before Earnhardt had various run-ins with Rusty Wallace and Jeff Gordon and whoever typed the closed captions always had questions for Ward Burton.

IndyCar has also had rivalries throughout its history. A. J. Foyt‘s fiercest rival was Mario Andretti. Andretti also maintained a rivalry with the Unser brothers who both wanted to beat Andretti as badly as they wanted to beat each other. When the next generation of open wheel racers reached the grid, Al Unser Jr. and Michael Andretti both had their on-track skirmishes. After Paul Tracy started winning at Team Penske, it’s probably easier to start naming drivers and team owners he didn’t piss off, but more on that later.

Having…