IRL Wins This Battle in War With CART

INDIANAPOLIS — The new engines lasted for 500 miles. The new chassis didn’t shake apart going over the yard of bricks at the start-finish line. There were multiple leaders and lead changes galore. There were 13 cars running--and running strong--at the close and controversial finish.

Given up for dead by many after a lackluster month of practice by a preponderance of no-name drivers in suspect new equipment, the Indianapolis 500 proved Tuesday to be not just a lively corpse but one gleefully tap-dancing on the coffin.

Instead of making a spectacle of itself, the 500 was the kind of competitive event that prompted its long-ago promoters to proclaim it “the greatest spectacle in racing.”

And Tony George, the guy who runs the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was last seen heading for the cashier’s window to turn in the chips he had won on the biggest gamble since the guy who backed the colonies against the British in 1776.

George needed a sensational act in center ring here to give his fledgling Indy Racing League respectability and credibility. That’s precisely what he got. And now, it may be a very long time before--if ever--Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr. and the other stars of Championship Auto Racing Teams, the outfit George ran out of here, are seen driving race cars on this track again.

George’s gamble was that he could put on a show here without those guys. He has done did it twice--last year with old CART equipment, Tuesday with new cars built to IRL specifications--and now he has all the time in the world to develop the IRL into the first-class Indy car oval-track series he said he had in mind when he dropped his bomb on CART after the 1995 race here.

Had the race been the fiasco so many were expecting, had the modified stock Oldsmobile Aurora and Infiniti engines not held up, had the newly developed G Force and Dallara chassis behaved badly, had the preponderance of no-name drivers driven as if they were in a Figure 8 race, then public opinion--and financial concerns--might have prompted George to seek reconciliation with CART. Now, he doesn’t have to. If CART wants to race here again--and it does--it will be on George’s terms.

And the longer the split continues, the stronger the IRL will become. That may not be at CART’s expense, though, for already the series are very different.

CART, already heavy with European and South American drivers and with plans to add races in Japan and Germany to its schedule of events in North and South America and Australia, figures to draw more and more of its driving talent from foreign shores. CART may find itself battling Formula One, rather than the IRL, for drivers.

The IRL, with its oval-track format, figures to appeal more to North American drivers, the kids like fifth-place 500 finisher Tony Stewart who come up through the midget and sprint-car ranks and can’t wait to get to Indianapolis.

Whatever happens, not being able to race here will always stick in CART’s craw--and pocketbook--and Tuesday’s race will go into the books as the turning point.

George wouldn’t get into political ramifications afterward--he did say, “The progress we have made in a very short time has been nothing less than phenomenal.”--but others had no such compunctions.

Third-place finisher Jeff Ward, a former motocross rider who drove like an Indy car veteran here, said, “It was a great race and not too many motors blew up. It was a good boost for the IRL. . . . We were confident that we had the motors to finish and probably everybody else did too.”

Runner-up Scott Goodyear, a CART expatriate, agreed.

“There was a lot of great racing, good drivers, a lot of side-by-side racing. I’m really enjoying this league. It’s been very competitive. You could see it out there today, the way the guys were racing.”

Winner Arie Luyendyk, another former CART driver, but one who could never get a regular ride with any established team, even after winning the 1990 Indy 500, tweaked his old organization.

“I had to run faster all day long to stay where I was [than he did in 1990, when CART was running here],” he said. “We had a very competitive race, one of the most competitive of the last several years. Obviously, this formula works.”

And when someone asked him about the confusion on the last lap, when starter Bryan Howard threw the green flag while the warning lights around the track remained yellow, Luyendyk said, “I was ready for it. I had seen it before on TV in a CART race.”