The IndyCar season starts this week down in St. Petersburg, Florida. The races will be shown on Versus this year, and the network is eager to promote the new addition to its sports lineup.

Someone at Versus is a little bit too eager to promote the event though. Versus is running ads on Google Adsense that promote the IndyCar race as a Formula One race. Even NASCAR fans can tell you that, beyond both being open-wheel series, they are not at all the same.

Is Versus just hoping that nobody will notice when, instead of Lewis Hamilton & Felipe Massa, they see a race with Danica Patrick & Scott Dixon?

Here are a couple of examples of the advertisement that Versus is running through Google Ads on various F1 sites:

From F1 Fanatic (an excellent Formula One site):

From F1 Competition (a Formula 1 management game):

There are so many mistakes with this ad that one has to wonder if Versus is staffed by chimpanzees.

First, there is the obvious fact that Formula One is not IndyCar.

Second, “streets” does not contain 3 instances of the letter “E.”

Third, St. Petersburg is not spelled “St. Petersburgh.”

Other than that, these ads for IndyCar are great.

Trying to advertise IndyCar races on a F1 site is a perfectly good way try to get some crossover race fans. However, Versus should be honest about what series they are showing. IndyCar has some great action and the product deserves more respect than that.

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