Fox Sports CEO and Exec Producer Eric Shanks’ “bravado, energy and passion” for a sport he now works in-step with is apparent as he tries to “help return IndyCar to national mainstream notoriety,” according to Nathan Brown of the INDIANAPOLIS STAR. Some of that boost “will come simply from the opportunity the network has given the sport,” with 19 national network TV windows this season that includes all 17 races and both days of Indy 500 qualifying. Additional awareness “will no doubt come from the simple fact” so many practice and qualifying sessions will now air live on FS1. But the “sheer will and interest of one of the most powerful men in sports media doesn’t hurt, either.” Shanks made “grandiose promises” over the weekend as to the “maximalist approach the network plans to take with its coverage.” He said that Fox plans to “‘blow the doors off (the 500)’ with ‘everything Fox has to bear,’” including untold TV personalities that fill the network’s rolodex, an extended hour of prerace coverage and cross promotion with “every active sport it carries on its airwaves.” For a sport that for years has “felt as if it’s been largely stuck in neutral in the minds of the mainstream sports and cultural landscape,” Shanks knows how “important it is to make IndyCar more relevant to a larger swath of people.” It is also a sport that he “understands has a unique culture and history that can’t be lost as he rolls it out to the masses” (INDIANAPOLIS STAR, 3/6).