I've never been to an IC oval race, but have been to street and road course IC and sports car races, and that's still not something I'd recommend for anyone.
During my first ever race, one of the things I picked up pretty quickly was that one of the things that separated the rookies from the vets was that the latter had and used some form of ear protection. The sounds are one of the things that can't be replicated watching on TV, and it's particularly great in a sports car field with a multitude of different engines, but I'm not going to risk my hearing for it, and shudder when I see parents who bring their young kids to the races and do nothing to protect them in that respect.
And yeah, CART was great, up until…[censored]. Those methanol-burning engines had a different smell as well.