Ganassi’s Successful Career as an Owner Has Parallels to That of Penske

Has Chip Ganassi become motor racing’s next Roger Penske?

Ganassi chuckles at the thought, saying he’s not a next anybody, that he’s just plain ol’ Chip Ganassi, the same kid from Pittsburgh--only a little older--who once drove Indy cars and now owns race cars that can’t seem to stop winning.

But the parallels are there.

Ganassi graduated from Duquesne in 1982, dabbled in driving Indy cars for several years before becoming a car owner.

Penske graduated from Lehigh in 1959, was a national champion sports car driver and won the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix for Sports Cars in 1962 before he quit racing in 1964 to become a businessman.

Ganassi has won three consecutive CART champ car titles, with Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi, and is close to a fourth with rookie driver Juan Montoya of Colombia. After leading most of the season, Montoya trails Scotsman Dario Franchitti by nine points with one race remaining, the Marlboro 500 on Sunday at California Speedway.

Penske is the only other team owner in CART with three successive titles. He won them from 1981 through 1983 with Rick Mears and Al Unser, but he has also won six others since getting into Indy car racing in 1969.

Ganassi expanded on his team ownership by building his own racetrack, the Chicago Motor Speedway, a one-mile oval that had its inaugural race last Aug. 22. Fittingly, the Target Grand Prix was won by Montoya in one of Ganassi’s Target cars.

That followed a pattern established by Penske, who built California Speedway, a two-mile oval where the Marlboro 500 will close the 1999 CART season. Except that Penske’s drivers have not come close to winning at Fontana.

Penske, 62, is the founder and chairman of Penske Corp., a diversified transportation business that runs a $6-billion operation. Even so, Penske still finds time to work the Marlboro Team Penske pits during CART races and also occasionally takes in NASCAR races where Rusty Wallace drives

one of his stock cars.

Ganassi, 41, is vice president of the FRG Group, a Pittsburgh holding company with interests in telecommunications, manufacturing and the computer business. Also, like Penske, he works in the Target/Chip Ganassi Racing pits on race day. He is also a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“It all comes down to the team,” Ganassi said. “If there is any similarity between what I’ve done and what Roger’s done--and I don’t look at it that way--it’s that we both have strong individuals working for us, working as a team.

“Sometimes I think I have a lot of input into the team; at other times I think I have none. When you have a lot of smart people working for you, which we do, people look at our results and think I’m some awesome guru, or swami, or something. People get the mistaken view that you’re different because you’re successful, but I’m not. When my team was an eighth-place team, no one asked me for my opinion.

“We put together a strong team that helped Jimmy [Vasser] and Alex [Zanardi] win and now the same team is behind Juan. He might not win the championship, but he’s had a heck of year, one no one could have expected. Least of all, me.”

Montoya, 23, was plucked from Formula One apprenticeship to replace Zanardi this year. He stunned CART by winning seven races and seven poles, jumping to a big lead in the chase for the $1-million champion’s bonus by winning three consecutive races early in the season at Long Beach, Nazareth, Pa., and Rio de Janeiro. He also won three in a row in August and September at Mid-Ohio, Chicago and Vancouver.

Montoya lost his lead two weeks ago in Australia when Franchitti won from the pole while Montoya, after running second, crashed 17 laps from the end and failed to score any points. Franchitti leads, 209-200.

How Ganassi discovered Montoya in Spain has a parallel of sorts in the way Penske discovered Rick Mears, in the sense that both were untested youngsters with little or no reputation.

“A lot of this racing stuff is luck, like our getting Juan,” Ganassi said. “When Zanardi decided to go back to Formula One, he invited me to come to his first test in Barcelona and I said to Morris [team manager Mo Nunn] that it would be nice if he went with me because he had been so close to Alex.

“We weren’t even looking for a driver, really, and Morris didn’t want to go, but I told him I’d go on the Concorde if he’d go, so he said OK. Well, when we go there, Frank Williams had a couple of other test drivers there and got to talking about this Montoya kid and we looked at how he drove and before we knew it, we had a driver.

“I don’t think anybody expected him to do what he did, win all those races, right off the bat. We thought maybe he’d win a couple or three races, but nothing like what he’s done.”

Rumors that Montoya, whether he wins the championship or not, will return to Formula One irritate Ganassi.

“What’s the world coming to when you have a rookie and people ask you about replacing him already?” he asked. “For crying out loud, this is only his first year, and yes, he’ll be back next year.”

Mears was a successful off-road racer who had driven a few Indy car races for safety equipment manufacturer Bill Simpson when he rode in Wally Dallenbach’s annual Colorado 500 motorcycle rally. There, he spent a few moments chatting with Penske, moments that ended with Penske offering him an Indy car ride as a substitute for Mario Andretti when Andretti was off racing in Formula One.

That chance conversation led to Mears winning four Indy 500s, three national championships and 29 races for Penske before he retired.

Fifteen years ago, Ganassi was a struggling driver, looking for rides to make his mark. He was the fastest rookie qualifier at Indianapolis in 1982, quicker that fellow newcomers Bobby Rahal and Danny Sullivan. After starting 11th, he finished 15th.

He drove in 1983 for Pat Patrick and was voted most improved driver by his peers. The following year, still with Patrick, he finished second at Cleveland, but suffered injuries in a serious accident with Al Unser Jr. at the Michigan 500. After that, he drove only occasionally, first for A.J. Foyt at Indy in 1985 and then for the Machinists Union for two races in 1986.

“I decided about that time that I’d make a better owner,” he said.

In 1988, Ganassi bought into Patrick’s team and was on hand to help Emerson Fittipaldi win the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship.

Ganassi formed his own team in 1990 and put together a package that wound up winning three championships. First, he brought Target stores into racing as a major sponsor, then he gambled on switching from Chevrolet to Ford Cosworth engines, and in 1994 was the first owner to switch to a Reynard chassis.

Success was slow in coming, but there were hints along the way. In 1992, Eddie Cheever started second at the Indianapolis 500, led nine laps and finished fourth. In 1993, Arie Luyendyk won the pole at Indy and finished second.

Victory finally came in 1994 when Michael Andretti won the team’s and Reynard’s first race, on the street circuit in Surfers Paradise, Australia. He also won at Toronto.

When Andretti returned to his old Newman-Haas team in 1995, Ganassi signed two lightly regarded drivers, Vasser and Bryan Herta. Vasser had driven three years with minimal success for Jim Hayhoe, and Herta had driven five races for Foyt before suffering a devastating accident during practice at Toronto that ended his season because of leg and pelvis injuries.

In their first year, Vasser had a pair of second-place finishes and Herta was named most improved after finishing second once in Ford-powered Reynards.

Then Ganassi made three bold moves. He switched to Honda engines and Firestone tires and replaced Herta with a little-known Formula One driver, Zanardi, who came with the blessings of the Reynard factory.

Vasser won four races, including the inaugural U.S. 500 with its $1-million bonus, and became the first CART driver to finish every race en route to winning the championship. The rookie Zanardi won six poles and three races, including his dramatic pass of Herta for victory at Laguna Seca, and wound up third in points.

“Like I said, a lot of this racing stuff is luck,” Ganassi said. “But what’s that old line, ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get?’

“The thing about racing, and the world too, I guess, is that you’re only as good as your last race, or last session, or yesterday. That’s as good as you are, your last time out. You’ve got to keep re-proving yourself, reinventing yourself, rejuvenating yourself.”

Zanardi, a gregarious little Italian, proved the Laguna Seca pass--he actually got airborne in a surprising maneuver on the Corkscrew on the last lap--was no aberration and dominated 1997 and 1998 by winning 12 races and million-dollar bonuses both years.

“Alex and Juan are different personalities, but they’re both great guys and great drivers,” Ganassi said. “Zanardi has a lot more experience with people, merely because of his age [33], and his attention span is considerably more than Montoya’s, whose attention span is about .3 of a second. He’s a kid. I don’t mean that in a bad sense, but he is very young.”

Nineteen of CART’s 27 drivers are from foreign countries, and Ganassi went to Europe to find Zanardi and Montoya. So what is the problem with American racing, Ganassi was asked.

“Right now, I believe young drivers get a better training ground in Europe than they do over here,” he said. “They have more depth in their developmental series. There is a great deal of interest in Europe in the apprentice series that I don’t see here.

“In the United States, racing is no different from other sports. No one is interested in baseball’s minor leagues or basketball’s farm leagues. Fans here only like the top guys. Fans abroad are interested in every level of racing, but not here. Consequently, there are more and better series at the lower levels over there, and the result is better drivers who rise to the higher levels.”

* HE’S NO LEADING MAN

If Paul Tracy is in front going into the final lap Sunday, he wants to have a very comfortable margin. Page 4

* WALLY WORLD CLOSING

Wally Dallenbach, who has been chief steward of CART since 1980, will be running his last show. Page 6

* TRACK/SCHEDULE/CART ENTRIES

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