Having to Play Catch Up

They look like Indy cars, they sound like Indy cars. Heck, a few years ago they were Indy cars.

But when the transporters roll in, carrying the open-wheel racers for Sunday’s Marlboro 500 at the California Speedway in Fontana, they won’t be hauling Indy cars. They’re called champ cars now. Well, that’s what they’re called in one organization, Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART.

In another, the Indy Racing League, or the IRL, similar looking open-wheel cars are called, ta-da, Indy cars.

Isn’t it queer that in this golden age of auto racing, the crown jewel looks more like a wrench? One lost deep in the innards of an engine, where it is clanking up the works.

Who ever would have thought, in the heady days when the Indianapolis 500 was drawing drivers from Formula One, NASCAR and U.S. sports car tracks, besides the usual oval-track guys, that it would become the most divisive force in the sport?

Is it any wonder that, in the ensuing confusion, the good ol’ boys from NASCAR have taken a commanding lead with their Winston Cup stock car series that has become the envy of the business? A Winston Cup weekend practically ensures a successful season for any track in the country. The Winston Cup season still has three races to run but when it’s over, the 35 racing weekends will have drawn around 6 million fans. That’s an average of more than 170,000.

Not to mention the TV audience. A week and a half ago, for instance, NASCAR’s Pepsi 400 at Daytona Beach, Fla., drew the same share of Southern California cable viewers as the USC-Washington State football game, which was on opposite it.

And had that race been shown on CBS, rather than cable, as was scheduled before central Florida wildfires forced a postponement last summer, the prime-time race doubtless would have done much better.

A CART race from Australia, shown delayed the next day on cable, drew half as big a viewing audience here. And there is no chance that CART will average 170,000 live fans any time soon.

All of which means CART is in trouble?

Far from it. CART may not be NASCAR, but it has never had it so good. In early August, CART announced record revenues, $30.1 million, and net income, $7.8 million, for the first six months of 1998. And that’s only the corporate side.

“We’re coming down to the end of what I think’s been a very successful season,” Andrew Craig, CART’s chief executive officer, said. “We had 28 full-time [drivers]--we’ve never had so many before--a record 19 races [20 are scheduled next season], increased sponsor interest in the series . . .

And attendance?

Up, almost everywhere, with a number of oval-track sellouts. And that street race in Surfers Paradise, Australia? Drew in the neighborhood of 250,000 for the weekend.

Still, things could be better, both on the track and in perception. If attendance was up, or at least steady, for most races, there were some clinkers, the Rio 400 in Brazil, for one, but more notably the U.S. 500 at Michigan International Speedway, Detroit-headquartered CART’s “home” track. The race that was to have been CART’s answer to the Indy 500 drew 60,000--to a track that seats 112,000. NASCAR routinely sells it out.

It turned out to be what is widely considered the best race in CART history--wheel-to-wheel racing, 62 lead changes, Greg Moore passing Jimmy Vasser on the last lap for the victory--but even that artistic success was overshadowed by the deaths of three spectators, struck by a flying wheel and other debris after an accident on the track.

And there still are some people confused by the CART-IRL split.

“If these are the best drivers, how come they don’t drive in the Indy 500?” goes the reasoning.

They don’t because, when he started the IRL in 1996, Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, made the 500 the centerpiece of his new venture, reserved most of the 33 starting spots for his drivers and, in effect, told CART to take a hike and to stop calling their cars Indy cars.

The split is old news now and no longer as painfully urgent as a toothache. But it’s still there, distracting as a cross-eyed Mona Lisa, nettlesome as a sliver. CART drivers, many of them, still itch to go back to Indy but if there is a get-together on the horizon, it’s still a big secret.

In fact, in announcing an 11-race schedule for next season, the IRL reduced its engine rpm limit, slowing its cars and widening the split. As if it needed to. CART uses turbocharged racing engines in its cars, the IRL normally aspirated stock-block engines. The difference could hardly be more pronounced.

If it’s any consolation to CART, the Indy 500 has lost some--there are plenty who would say most--of its luster, and the 500’s baby brother, NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 has, in only five years, gained pretty much equal stature and possibly more fan interest.

Craig suggests that NASCAR’s growth, at the probable expense of open-wheel racing, is directly related to the Indy 500.

“Looking back before the split, I think that our form of racing was being held back somewhat,” he said. “There was no real cohesive championship. We thought we had a championship but, in truth, it was a collection of races that circled like satellites around the Indy 500. The whole sport of open-wheel racing looked inward, rather than outward in development, to the past rather than the future, and I think that held the sport back for many, many years.

“Rather than being what it was back in the ‘60s, a very open national championship [series], increasingly it became all about one race. It was during that time that the seeds of NASCAR’s tremendous success were sown.

“The split . . . has perhaps held back [CART’s] growth somewhat, but on the other hand, we’ve got more corporate support, more teams, more drivers and more races than we’ve ever had before.”

In other words, not being involved at Indy has not been all bad, allowing CART to develop its own personality.

Not that that personality is firmly fixed. For the second time since 1995, CART’s champion is leaving the series to drive next year in Formula One. Alex Zanardi, soon to be known again by his given name, Alessandro, will drive for the Williams team in F1 in ’99. Not surprising, since his racing roots are in Europe and he has pretty much cleaned the plow in CART.

He was rookie of the year in ‘96, won the championship in ’97 and ran away with it this season, clinching the title with four races left.

Canadian Jacques Villeneuve was CART rookie of the year in ‘94, won the championship in ‘95, then skipped off to F1, where he won that title in ’97.

So does that make CART a development series for Formula One?

“I think there’s increasing worldwide interest and attention in our series,” Craig said. “That results from the fact that drivers are perfectly capable of stepping out of this series, stepping over to Formula One and winning races, indeed winning world championships. Rather than us being below Formula One, I would say that most people regard us as being right there, side by side. And if part of being side by side is that our talent moves over, and beats their talent, that’s not so bad.”

Indeed not, but then, that has happened only once--so far. Zanardi certainly is a determined and talented driver and may do it as well, but he hasn’t done it yet. Michael Andretti, one of CART’s shiniest stars, tried it in his prime, won zero races--he was barely competitive--and quickly returned to CART.

On the other hand, two former F1 champions, Emerson Fittipaldi and Nigel Mansell, won CART championships, Fittipaldi coming out of retirement to resume his career in CART.

Craig doesn’t like losing Zanardi but . . .

“I would rather the traffic was that way,” he said. “If you remember a few years back, we had something of a reputation for being a rest home for old Formula One horses. I’d much rather be seen as I think we are now, producing the best racing in the world and producing the most talented race-car drivers in the world. It’s a price to pay if, from time to time, guys go off to Formula One, so be it. It’s better than what we used to be.”

Truth is, CART does have lots going for it. If its races are not as competitive as NASCAR’s--and it’s difficult for open-wheel cars to match the crowd-pleasing fender banging of stock car racing--they tend to be far more competitive than the usual Formula One parades. CART’s drivers, even its foreign drivers, are much more recognizable than the IRL’s. But the IRL has Indianapolis and CART has . . .

Well, CART has a 500-mile race Sunday at Fontana. It won’t draw 350,000 people, as Indy does, but if it produces the kind of wide-open racing that went on in July at the California Speedway’s sister track in Michigan--minus the tragedy--CART may finally have its elusive breakthrough event.

“Quite frankly, we have a lot of work to do to build open-wheel racing in this country,” Craig said.

But a rouser of a race in a season-ending 500, a race specifically placed to be a marquee event, could do wonders that way, at the same time helping CART build its own “traditional” race.

Let’s see if the CART guys can pull it off.