I hope both series merge and have some flight teams once again, like Penske, Ganassi, Forsythe, and PKV. I just hope their is more than one chassis available. CART in its glory days was so entertaining, I hope this merger brings back those memories.
A long long time ago, on a continent known as North America, there was an open wheel racing series known as USAC, which after a popular revolution then became known as CART. CART seemed like a wonderful idea, until the greedy team owners decided they could run their own racing series. The evil lord Penske, and the his lesser lord Gannassi, thought they should control everything. Probably to create an "unfair advantage". A very rich Indiana farmer named George the Tony, whose fields were used by the series for their most important event, decided that not only was it too costly to run a series, but that most of the drivers were foreign and making right turns was happening way too often. So this farmer started his own series called the IRL using less expensive engines, and cars that only turned left. Civil war broke out, as the teams took sides. The team owners that wanted to control everything started their own series. Unfortunetely, due to their greed and extreme stupidity, they scheduled their first event the same day as the Indiana farmer's event. Both were events were injured, but since Kharma is evident in life, the team owner's event started off with a terrifically enjoyable mass wreck on the very first lap. How embarassing for the greedy team owners. They made the racing fan, the one that buys the tickets that supports the cost of racing, make a choice. Bad move, for everyone lost, but sadly egos prevailed, so the civil war contined for years. The IRL grew in popularity, their driver's names became better known, and they put on very competitive events. But the fan lost interest. Both series saw poor growth and success. Along came a series by the family known as France. they took advantage of the civil war, and created a third but different type of racing series of overwhelming success all over the world. They used tricks to attract the fan, and grew in strength while the other two series suffered. In the meantime, many teams defected from the team owner series, and in the greatest hypocracy of all, the evil lord Penske and his sub lord Ganassi joined the IRL. Now both series were f****d. The team owner controlled series continued to flounder, and finally it became controlled by those with some vision. New blood, new ideas. They soon realized that in order to succeed, they must find a way to become one again with the IRL. The Indian farmer also realized the same, so the Kal and the George all began very quiet and private discussions. When the fans found out, at least what remained of the fans, they rejoiced. Glory be, there is reason to believe!! The faithful were to be rewarded for their dreams and their patience. But could this be a dream induced by breathing too many exhaust fumes? Another hallucination, false promises? Only time will tell. (names were not changed to protect the innocent as there is no one innocent)
Well said. I could add that somewhere in the time frame my CART shares (100) purchased at 16 went to 42. Then the evil lords you mentioned, plus a man named Patrick, drained Cart dry.
As long as the new series is continued to be called the IRL, then I'm OK with the merger. If it's CART or CHAMPCAR, then I'll never watch again. Why? Texas 2001 I think the result will still be a primarily oval track series, with some road/street courses added. It's simply easier and cheaper to organize an oval event
No. A group headed by Kalkhoven and Gentilozzi bought the remains. The outstanding shares were worthless. I forgot about Texas 2001. They had opportunities to test at the track and no one did. But remember, this new group headed by Kalkhoven are the ones who turned Cart/Champ Car around. Attendance and car counts exceeded the IRL for the first time in 2005. An understatement would be that the nature of the business attracts some king size egos.
My memory escapes me, but didn't someone demand a kink be added at Montreal when F1/Cart were there in the same year, to avoid comparing lap times. F1 only had 20% of a race in 2005. This year Champ and Rolex cars will run together April 8-9 at Long Beach.
It would seem like the new series (if there is one) should be called Indy Car. That would probably provide the best name recognition with the general public. I would also like to see F1 do a better job of promoting itself here in the US. Scott Speed is a start and I'm sure Red Bull will do what it can to brand him here.
CART was founded by a number of people, not just Penske. Chiefly among them U.A. "Pat" Patrick, Dan Gurney, Penske, Bob Fletcher, John Frasco, J. Kirk Russell, John Capels and Wally Dallenbach began the team franchise series after much dissatisfaction with USAC which was basically attempting to keep 40 year old technology afloat and teams entering races with half-million dollar cars racing for $10,000.00 purses. It's important to remember that during the heydays of CART in the late 80s and early 90s, CART was nipping at the heels of F1 in terms of media coverage, popularity and importance. Driver cross-overs (notably Nigel Mansell who came to CART as the reigning F1 World Champion) were not uncommon as even Ayrton Senna was taking a look at CART as a possible option going so far as to test a Penske CART car. There is/was a lot of bad blood from the split. The guy who would sit you down and tell all about it at length was the late Tony Bettenhausen. Bettenhausen, who's family sacrificed so much for glory at the Indy 500, would relate how CART teams which took part at Indy were more or less forced to take long term leases in the special VIP suites outside Turn Two at IMS. Sponsors and teams thought nothing of dropping millions into this proposition in order to entertain VIPs, clients and partners at the big race. Many of these leases ran to 8 or 10 years at a cost of over $1M/year. Upon the split, Tony George basically liquidated these long term leases from the CART sponsors and this was what bascially funded the start of the IRL. The CART teams and sponsors were burned out of tens of millions of dollars and, beside all of the obvious reasons, this deal is what really irked CART team owners and sponsors. Marlboro was taken for a huge amount and lesser sponsors such as Alumax were out to the tune of about $8M. Tony Bettenhausen was an easy going gentleman racer but when the subject of the IRL or Tony George came up, you could literally see the steam coming from his ears. Of course, had there not been all this bad blood, George did hold the door open for 8 CART teams to take part in the first IRL Indy 500 which was such a debacle, one of the lesser funded CART teams would have won the big race easily and the IRL "experiement" would have gone away with a wimper. Sadly, hindsight is a wonderful thing. And, as we later saw, when CART teams did re-enter Indy, they wiped the floor with the IRL regulars. CART made a lot of misteps in the meantime no doubt. Rather than keeping to their plan, they were distracted by what NASCAR was doing and then Chairman Andrew Craig began taking wide risks by getting new European venues into bidding wars over CART sanctioning. Then manufactureres such as Mercedes-Benz were pushed out which signaled the first of the defections and of course the practice of professional drivers being elbowed out in favor of lesser drivers with suitcases full of cash (generally from South America) which is what finally did CART in. It is interesting to note that a poll was taken perhaps 2-3 years ago which asked fans who were their favorite Indy Car drivers. The response was interesting in that the answers were most commonly drivers from the 70s and 80s such as A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr, etc. rather than Dario Franchitti, Michael Andretti or Sebastien Bourdais, etc. So, both IRL and Champ Car have failed to establish their brand in the eye of the public the 800lb gorilla based in Daytona Beach goes merrilly along. Will there be a Champ Car/IRLmerger? Quite likely, but it will take another decade to re-establish the new brand in the eyes of the media and the non-expert viewing public. And, in the mean time, the NASCAR hype-machine works overtime to shove their product down our throats. BHW
I feel the same. I was ready to support the new CART, even up to the time they scheduled event one at Michigan Int'l the same day as the 500. What were they thinking? I bought tickets to MIS, but I also had my long standing Indy 500 seats. It became obvious that CART was asking us to take sides in a manner that did not take into account the monies spent by race fans that attended the 500. No matter how much you dislike Tony George, we were betrayed by the arrogant team owners of CART. I did not attend either event, too disgusted. Despite all the other well known members of CART, Roger Penske is the most influential, even over Patrick. Never again would I support anything that he, they, represented. The first lap of that first CART event was fantastic, they all wrecked each other on national TV. Watching Penske not qualify for the 500 some years later was for me one of the best moments in racing history. I am a die hard Mark Donahue fan, but Penske and friends crossed a line that I will find hard to forgive. My 2006 Indy 500 tickets arrived in the mail yesterday, E Penthouse. I have only been to the 500 once since the split, but keep renewing the seats with the hopes that there once again be just one major US open wheel series. Maybe 2007 will be the ticket.
Just like the suites deal, in the 90's IMS/George rules were that all teams bought all hospitality food/drink from their caterers. At Rahal hospitality it was 75K plus for the Indy 500 event and they were sneaking in wine and liquor. That was a small part of the start of the annimosity. 10 years later there's no one to be mad at anymore. I think there are enough open wheel race fans in the US for a successful series. I think there is a huge pool of new Nascar fans, who are new race fans, who would be even bigger road racing fans if exposed to it. I've turned a few from the counter clockwise side.
I was on pit lane on Bubble day when Penske didn't qualify. It's late afternoon and this data guy is holding a laptop in front of Unser and Fittipaldi trying to show them where they were slow. They were livid, poking him in the chest. We were 10 feet away trying to contain ourselves.
Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Honda, etc. are all playing directly out of their F1 hand with all their performance road cars. Which of the 5 isn't using naturally aspirated, high-revs as their current engine philosophy? How about their latest transmission designs? Chevy, Ford, and Dodge all have been playing the OHV V8 at levels not seen since the musclecar era, to the extent that it forms the basis for entire marketing campaigns (that thing gotta a hemi?). No street car comes even remotely close to resembling a track car, especially not at these levels. That's a very good thing; but to pretend that the manufacturers are not designing cars, in particular drivetrains, to be marketable in relation to their racing endeavors is simply false. Neither one of the philosophies employed by either side is the most efficient to power a car. They are marketable though, largely as a result of the racing they take part in. This is not a new thing... I seem to remember a certain Italian company defecting to low-revving turbos during the 80s, when F1 was turboed... must be a coincidence. Did turbos somehow become less efficient? Is that why the F50 didn't use them? Just my $.02... In an extremely broad perspective, you basically have two ways to make it. Either as a marketing blitz like NASCAR and F1 as of lately, or by being plain old insane, so powerful/fast that people come to see in awe. The only thing that strikes me that way currently is NHRA and WRC (although WRC less as of lately). GTP, Can-Am, and the Killer Bs all qualified though back in the day in this category. March, Eagle, etc. were recognizable because they were fast. Plain and simple. No one watches Indy (CART/IRL) now because it's a second rate series, miles behind F1. That's my point. If they're not going to become a mainstream manufacturers marketing venue, then they have to draw crowds with option #2. Bring back insane HP. Have higher trap speeds than F1. Oversteer. Burnouts. I just don't see how they can draw crowds as long as F1 is so far ahead. It has both the marketing and speed card to play at this point. Indy needs to take one of those away in order to compete. That, and they need to stop looking so God-awefully ugly.
If you won't go to another 'CART' race because of Texas in 2001, then I will assume you will never go to another F1 race because of Indy last year ? TifosiRon: oooh a Donohue fan....... one of my memories is posted on this website: http://www.unfairadvantageracing.com/ When Mark died I stopped watching racing for about 5 years, then I never took a personal interest in any driver in any class, until Kulwicki......... and now I vow to never choose a 'favorite driver' ever again. As I said earlier about open wheel racing here, it has slipped a lot over the last 10-15 years, part of that they did to themselves, and part of that is because of everything else that has come along, from every other sport imaginable, to cable tv, to DVD's, to the internet........ The mainstream public simply has more to do.
If starting with a fresh sheet of paper, how about using Nascar spec engine? This would give the current Nascar fans something to get behind. A engine formula would then be created to give parity to the 4 cam motors.
At one time, someone with intelligence came up with the idea of using one engine, both in open wheel and NASCAR. But egos prevailed. Sure would reduce the engine cost of racing.
If they had cancelled the race with 30 minutes before start time, then absolutely yes. As it is, I simply won't buy Michelin or Toyota products in the future.
I am certain there are people here who know more of the business aspect of racing than I, but think of this. Kalkhoven/Champ and Rolex/France cars together this year at Long Beach. You would have thought T. George would have had the France's ear for a joint race weekend. It tells you something, I'm just not sure what. IMO the motors rumored would be fine and the pictures of the Panoz car I have seen don't look too bad. I would hate to see the merged series become like Nascar, that's what the IRL was. Barton was right. In the early 90's Cart was approaching F1 in speeds and had an international appeal. You can't turn back the clock, but you can look back and see where you've been.
Great, great posts everyone! For once, everyone seems on the same page in a controversial issue. One underlying theme is the cost of racing. My post in this thread lamented the demise of the "no car rules" format that was the Indy 500 until the split. Obviously this is the most costly way to run a race or a series! Even F1, the most innovative series in racing (?), has severe limitations on new technologies to keep costs down. Would anyone support the idea of the Indy 500 NOT being part of a series, but run as a stand alone race, by invitation and qualifying, with lax rules on cars? Yes, it would be expensive, but it would be the Superbowl of racing. What would tickets cost if Shumi, other top F1 guys, top NASCAR guys, the top LeMans guys all showed up? All of a sudden, Danica Patrick would be yesterday's news! Worldwide viewership would be over a billion people. Okay, flame away. I know I'm just dreaming. Ken
Great idea and already happened: Race of Champions in Paris. But it never got a billion viewership although it would have deserved it. Indy would of course be the better arena for that.
I like the idea. That's what Indy was for a 10 year stretch or so starting in the mid-60s. I imagine today it would be difficult to attract F1 drivers (not to mention to the time commitment required during most of May). If you were able to get two or three big stars from F1 and NASCAR, however, there would be a flood of nominations to do the race.
Hope you have your Nomex on Severly limiting technology does not reduce the costs, it can actually increase the costs associated with the development of the race car. Banning Traction control was one of the most glaring examples of this. In order to ban it, they banned sensors on the wheels, which lead to sensors that actually figured out that a wheel must be spinning, by understanding the rest of the cars attitude etc. The cost to develop this, over 'simple wheel sensors' was stunning. However the reduction in lap times, was worth it, and its implimentation was virtually indectactable, hence its legal status nowadays of being un-policeable. Every tiny increment of performance increase costs an insane amount of money, with restrictions on the technology, the performance increases have to be found eslewhere. McLarens use of exotic materials in the engine is another one, they figured out that a coating would help the engine generate more power, so they used it (at great espense), once the FIA banned it, they stopped using it, but managed to extract the same power (more acutally) from the engine that replaced it (sans coatings), again at great expense. Rule stability costs less than banning things every year
