A Racing Phenomenon in Any Language

Open-wheel racing as practiced by Championship Auto Racing Teams, once the province of American drivers, has become a global phenomenon.

“Right now, I would define CART as a global open-wheel racing series,” new CART President Joe Heitzler said from his office in Troy, Mich. “We have built an awesome awareness in foreign countries, where cities throughout the world are seeking our sanction to come to their country.

“What we need to do right now is to build a situation where we can convert that kind of energy to our fan base at home. As an indicator of our overseas popularity, all of our races will be shown on live TV on the European continent, including the United Kingdom. Our Eurosports contract sends our races to 118 countries, with 95% of the telecasts in their native language.”

This is a radical turnabout from 1978, when CART broke away from the U.S. Auto Club to form its own sanctioning body. Its legacy then was of drivers such as Bobby and Al Unser, Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Johnny Rutherford and Rick Mears, all household American names virtually unknown overseas.

As Bobby Unser said in 1975, after winning the second of his three Indy 500s, “I’m better known in Europe for winning the Pikes Peak hill climb than I am for winning Indy.”

In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, the popular favorites retired. Second-generation drivers Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr. filled the void in some ways, but in 1989, when Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi won the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship, it opened the eyes of young foreign drivers who saw that they could make names for themselves in the American series.

As Fittipaldi was joined by the likes of Teo Fabi, Arie Luyendyk and Raul Boesel, CART began to generate interest overseas. Then Formula One champion Nigel Mansell left England to race with CART and the entire racing world took notice.

The result is that, in Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, there will be three American drivers--Michael Andretti, Jimmy Vasser and Bryan Herta--and 25 foreigners, 10 from Brazil, Fittipaldi’s country. And seven of the 21 races were scheduled on foreign soil--in Mexico, Japan, Germany, England, Australia and two in Canada. One other, in Brazil, was canceled but will probably return to the schedule next year.

“The balance of foreign drivers suits our direction,” said Heitzler, 56, a business executive who replaced interim president Bobby Rahal last Dec. 4.

“This year we are going to three new sites in Mexico, Germany and the U.K. These weren’t places where CART sought to go, these were places where we were wanted. For our opening race, we went to Mexico. There had never been a sanctioned open-wheel race in Monterrey before [although CART had previously raced in Mexico City] and we had 378,000 spectators over three days. Some people in CART said it was the biggest Friday and Saturday crowd they had ever seen.

“We expect similar responses in Germany, where a two-mile tri-oval has been built in Lausitz, and in England, where Rockingham Motor Speedway is a new 1.5-mile oval in Corby. To give you an idea of our European fan support, Bryan Herta went to the Eurospeedway in Germany with one car for a demonstration run and 105,000 people showed up just to watch him take a few laps all by himself in a 1999 Reynard-Honda.”

Heitzler acknowledges that the loss of familiar names such as Unser, Foyt and Mears has reduced the appeal of open-wheel racing in this country, but points out that the world, especially the world of racing, has changed dramatically since they were racing.

“Back then, open-wheel racing had a distinctive market share,” he said. “It did not have to share with so many brands of racing entertainment. NASCAR was not so big, Formula One was only shown a little on CBS, there was no Speedvision, no ESPN. There wasn’t such a wide distribution of racing interest.

“The focus of the American racing public was almost entirely on open-wheel, with Indianapolis the center of its attention. Today the world is a smaller place, sponsorships are a bigger issue globally. Our foreign drivers and foreign venues bring on significant sponsorship allocations. All of this is good for CART.

“In the U.S., we face very aggressive marketing from NASCAR, from Formula One now that it is back in the States, and from Mr. [Donald] Panoz and his American LeMans series. But we must also come to the realization that we must remember how we got to where we are. We have to keep a grass-roots involvement, so that even if we go to other places, we need to continue to develop a tremendous fan interest in the U.S.

“I keep being asked why we aren’t doing better here, but I think if you look at Long Beach this week you will find the answer. We are doing quite well. Long Beach is an American happening.”

When race founder Chris Pook suggested putting on a motor race through the streets of Long Beach, it was to attract attention as “the International City.” Now the series it will host is international.

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Who is Joe Heitzler?

He is a former amateur racer, a winner of Sports Car Club of America regional championships in New England, where he drove a D Production MGB.

He was involved in the first Long Beach Grand Prix and other USAC and Formula One races while with CBS Sports as a management production executive.

He was involved in getting sponsorship for Joe Leonard in the Samsonite Special and Dick Simon in the Travelodge Special for the Indy 500 in the early 1970s.

He met 1963 Indy winner Parnelli Jones while working with Leonard, a meeting that first led to Heitzler’s becoming a neighbor in Rolling Hills and then to his becoming a candidate for CART president.

“I have always had a passion for auto racing and have always maintained a close interest in it, so when I was on vacation in Nantucket last fall and read in a newspaper about Bobby Rahal hiring a search firm to find a new president, I immediately called Parnelli and Jim Dilamarter [Jones’ business manager] to tell them I was interested.”

Jones has no official standing in CART but Heitzler figured, correctly, that he would get good advice from the former driver, now a successful businessman.

“When I got home, I spent six or seven hours in Parnelli’s office, discussing the job and its ramifications with the two of them,” he said. “The more we talked, the more I felt that matching my skill set with [CART’s] need set would be the perfect merger.

“Parnelli was in Laguna Seca a few days later and brought my interest to Rahal’s attention. [Rahal] got the search firm in contact with me and I met with them and then with the board. I was a late entry but, one by one, they narrowed it down to two or three applicants, then to one.”

He was the first president to be elected by a unanimous vote of the often contentious CART board of directors.

Heitzler added, “I was so passionate about getting into the racing field that I left the industry I had been in for 20-some years with the company I bought from Jack Kent Cooke [National Mobile Television Productions Inc]. So here I am, working as hard as I can to build a brand entertainment awareness. We have to realize that we’re in the entertainment business, that people who come to see us want to be entertained.”

To emphasize his point, Heitzler’s first hire as president was Jay Lucas, former public relations director at California Speedway, to set up an entertainment-marketing office in Los Angeles.

“We feel we have a need to make our drivers more the focus of our telecasts, to make viewers more aware of their personalities,” Heitzler said. “We also found that viewers like the communication between driver and crew chief so we are working with several telemetry and technology companies to help improve our domestic broadcasts.”

Who knows, maybe someday names such as De Ferran, Castroneves, Da Matta and Brack will be as familiar to the American public as Unser, Foyt and Andretti.