As the first non-oval track event in the history of the Indy Racing League, the 2005 St. Petersburg Grand Prix was a significant event in the 1996-2008 Indy car “split.”
The St. Pete GP was created by Chris Pook, the former CEO of CART. It ran once, in 2003, but by the end of that year, CART was bankrupt, Pook was on the sidelines, and the promising street race was seemingly a one-and-done – until Michael Andretti and his partners led the IRL’s first foray into road racing.
Of course, 2020 excepted, St. Pete has remained a popular venue for the INDYCAR season opener ever since, and eleven of the fourteen tracks on the 2021 NTT IndyCar Series schedule are road or street courses.
It’s worth looking back to this column I wrote for ESPN.com in March 2005 to preview the “inaugural” St. Pete race (INDYCAR ignored the 2003 edition until recently), especially the questions posed in the next-to-last graf. I titled it “IRL To Host CART Reunion.”
ST. PETERSBURG – Only 15 months have passed since what many remember as “CART” ceased to exist, but it looks like they’re already having an unofficial reunion.
It’s the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, where the featured stars will be the drivers, teams, sponsors and manufacturers that dominated CART-sanctioned Indy-style racing during the ‘80s and ‘90s, racing on a track inaugurated by CART in 2003 in an event organized and promoted by former CART luminaries.
The only difference most St. Petersburg locals might notice is louder race cars, though if they look closely they’ll see the words “Indy Racing League” prominently featured on every firesuit and uniform, showing that IRL founder Tony George is the new boss in town.
Fittingly, this “CART reunion” will take place in a cosmopolitan urban setting featuring a downtown street course. And that’s what makes this race so significant for George’s open-wheel series: It’s the IRL’s road racing debut after 105 consecutive events staged on ovals. In the IndyCar Series’ tenth season, after 85,724 consecutive left turns, King George finally proclaimed, “Turn right!”
And the people responded with great joy.
Within the IRL paddock, at least, where anyone with the possible exception of those having the last name ‘Foyt,’ is thrilled that the IndyCar Series has embraced road and street racing. With this weekend’s Honda GP centered at the heart of downtown St. Pete instead of at a dusty oval 20 or 40 miles out of town, parties and corporate functions are scattered throughout the weekend, all within convenient walking distance of the track and hotels. Honda and Red Bull both have large-scale entertainment plans; “Our hospitality area will be overflowing on Sunday,” said a Rahal Letterman Racing source.
But then look at the driving force behind the revived St. Pete race, which springs back to life after a one-year absence with the potential of growing into a marquee event for the IRL. Andretti Green Promotions is co-owned by open-wheel legend Michael Andretti (who these days seems to remember the five IRL race starts he made near the end of his career more than the 42 CART race wins that defined his legacy); and Barry Green, a CART team owner from 1994-2002 famous for coming out on the winning (1995) and losing (2002) side of controversial Indianapolis 500 finishes.
“Andretti Green Promotions is thrilled with the opportunity that lies ahead in St. Petersburg,” Green commented. “It’s a terrific venue and has all the elements necessary to create a successful event for the city, the fans, the competitors, a national television audience and the Indy Racing League.”
The man who readied the 1.8-mile street/airport course for racing is Kirk Russell, who served as CART’s chief steward and rule-writer from 1979 to 2001. In 2003, CART drivers said the St. Pete track was one of the best street courses in America, and with some walls pulled back and FIA-style curbing now installed at Turns 1 and 10, it should be even better.
“Barry said he hopes to make it the Long Beach of the east,” Russell stated. “It’s a phenomenal layout with a nice flow to it and some real challenging corners. It’s as nice as anything I have ever seen. And since a third of the track is bordered by the harbor, we’re putting in temporary docks so big boats will be able to pull into the south marina and watch.”
They’re hoping to replicate the success of the 2003 St. Petersburg race, which was organized by the same group that runs the Long Beach GP and staged in February as the CART season opener. CART CEO Chris Pook said the race day crowd was 35,000, though Andretti, Green and Russell weren’t included in that total.
“We hit a home run – a grand slam home run!” was St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker’s assessment of the 2003 event, though the race itself wasn’t particularly notable. Paul Tracy won it by 12.1 seconds over Michel Jourdain Jr., with Bruno Junqueira third. St. Pete 2003 is mainly remembered for the remarkable American debut of Sebastien Bourdais, who claimed pole position and sprinted to a 17-second lead in the first 30 laps before a rookie mistake relegated the Frenchman to an unrepresentative 11th place finish.
Local media came away from the event with a favorable impression. “The Bay area’s first big-league Indy-style race brought out the best in temporary street course racing: a festive atmosphere, an enthusiastic crowd, wonderful-sounding engines and interesting sights,” said the Tampa Tribune. “(But) it also brought out the worst: a dull race…”
The IRL, accustomed to frenetic split-second finishes in its full-throttle oval races, is certainly hoping its road racing kickoff produces a closer and more exciting race than the one CART put on in 2003. It’s bound to, simply because there is so much that can go wrong in terms of drivers who haven’t turned right in years and cars that have never been subjected to the demands of 100 laps around a bumpy street course.
The St. Pete race is also a test for the IRL and for American open-wheel racing in general. As “NASCAR” becomes increasingly synonymous with “Oval Racing” in America, will the IRL attract more fans to St. Pete and its two additional road races later this year than it generally has with its poorly attended events at ovals? If so, will that subsequently lead to oval venues being dropped from the IRL calendar, to be replaced by road and street races that the League’s drivers, sponsors and manufacturers seem to crave?
By Sunday evening, we’ll start to have some answers. It promises to be an interesting weekend. And a hell of a party.
POSTSCRIPT: Andretti Green Racing scored a 1-2-3-4 sweep of the 2005 St. Pete GP, a day after 18-year old Marco Andretti won his Indy Lights debut. “It looked like the fix is on and I’m starting to believe it was,” admitted Michael Andretti. Link to my April 3, 2005 column
