The Mid-Ohio media center hosted an impromptu CART reunion during the IMSA weekend. Adam Saal, who served two stints (sentences?) as the CART PR man, shared some vintage memorabilia he was given by his father, including a 1982 Cleveland Grand Prix program and one of my National Speed Sport News columns from 2006
In light of the recent publication of “Indy Split,” it’s interesting to look back on this actual reporting from the time. Enjoy, and be happy that these days, the focus is rightfully on the racing instead of the politics.
LONG BEACH, Calif. – When I caught a fleeting glimpse of Michael Andretti walking in the Champ Car paddock Saturday morning, I figured I must have inhaled too much second-hand pot smoke a few nights earlier when I saw David Gilmour in concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
But then I also saw fellow IRL team owners (and former Champ Car denizens) Bobby Rahal and Chip Ganassi, followed by Honda’s Robert Clarke and former IRL business vice-president Ken Ungar, and I realized that it wasn’t just a lingering contact buzz. Their collective presence in the Long Beach paddock was in-the-flesh proof of just how serious the merger talks between Champ Car and the Indy Racing League are getting.
Not that anyone on either side wanted to address unification the record. “We’re still talking, and that’s all I can say,” Kevin Kalkhoven tersely told me on Saturday afternoon. “There are definitely people out there who are trying to stop it from happening.”
“The process is much further along than it’s ever been before,” allowed Clarke, who has masterminded Honda’s American racing operations since 1993. “The question is whether it can finally make it over the hump.”
No, to me, the question is who in their right mind doesn’t want Champ Car and the IRL to work together to rebuild U.S. open-wheel racing? And the only answer I can come up with is the good folks at NASCAR and the International Speedway Corporation, who would likely not benefit from a unified open-wheel series that relies mainly on road and street course venues.
Who has the most to lose if open-wheel racing suddenly starts to bounce back? NASCAR, and by extension, ISC, which is also owned by the France family. They have certainly already done their part in creating and prolonging the open-wheel war, from helping convince Tony George to start his alternative league in the first place to putting a less-than-stellar effort into promoting open-wheel races from both series at their tracks.
It would also explain why Roger Penske came out with those inexplicably pessimistic remarks when IRL founder George finally came clean with the news in March that he was talking with Kalkhoven about merging the two feuding series. After all, Penske sold his own racetrack empire to ISC and remains a significant shareholder in that company.
You’d think that of all people, Penske would want to see Indy-style racing bounce back with or without ISC’s help, because that’s the arena where he made his name. Image is everything, and it doesn’t look good for Penske or ISC when those iconic red-and-white cars are running around oval tracks surrounded by gleaming empty grandstands.
That image problem the IRL suffers undoubtedly contributed to the appearance of Messrs. Andretti, Ganassi and Rahal at Long Beach, where they witnessed the big crowds they were accustomed to in their CART days. But they also saw the problems clearly plaguing the 2006-era Champ Car, including a crippling lack of corporate sponsorship resulting in a thin 18-car field.
It’s naïve to think that just announcing a truce between the IRL and Champ Car would instantly restore open-wheel racing to where it was at in 1995, when it was 80 to 90 percent of NASCAR in terms of sponsorship revenue and television ratings. But it would certainly be the first step toward giving everybody on both sides something to be optimistic about and a future to work for.
Champ Car can claim that Long Beach is back to where it was in the ‘90s and the IRL can delude itself into believing the Indy 500 hasn’t lost any of its luster. I hope they all stop kidding themselves or we’ll all end up working for another France family franchise – the Grand Am sports car series…
