CART Facing a Revolution

Championship Auto Racing Teams, proclaiming the Penske legend, Brazilian drivers and turbocharged engines, comes to California Speedway for the fifth time this weekend for the Marlboro 500.

Will it be the last?

Maybe, considering the growing instability in what once was America’s premier open-wheel racing organization.

Maybe not, if CART can keep the wheels on for at least another year.

A revolt, of sorts, of a major sponsor, and a revolt, in earnest, of engine manufactures, has left CART’s future in some doubt.

Roger Penske’s team, winner of nine CART titles, among them the last two, may switch to the Indy Racing League next year, or run teams in both series, thanks to tobacco’s Master Settlement Agreement of 1998, which mandates that a cigarette brand name be used in only one racing series.

Penske’s major sponsor, Marlboro, wants to be part of the Indianapolis 500, the IRL’s centerpiece race. Marlboro also sponsors Formula One champion Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari on the world Grand Prix circuit, and the Philip Morris Co., maker of Marlboro, apparently is more interested in promoting its U.S. image in the Indy race than in sticking with CART’s expanding international program.

Penske, one of the founders of CART in 1978, ran two cars in this year’s Indy race, finishing 1-2 with Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran, but because they were CART drivers in an IRL race, all the team’s Marlboro logos were removed--from the cars and uniforms of the drivers and crewmen.

Next season, Penske could run CART champion De Ferran in Marlboro colors in the IRL and another car, presumably with Castroneves, in CART. Or, if there were enough other sponsorship money, he could run two cars in each series. Or, if he could not find another major sponsor, he could run Castroneves in a second IRL Marlboro car, leaving CART without a Penske team.

“[Marlboro is] evaluating at this point what’s in the best interest of our team for the future,” Penske said recently in an interview with USA Today. “Our decision will be driven by our sponsor.”

De Ferran, the Brazilian who has won the last two CART championships, said he would run wherever Penske sent him, that his allegiance was to “the Captain,” as Penske is known.

The decision is not expected until after Sunday’s race, the last of this year’s CART season.

Penske has been a vocal supporter of a common engine rule that would make it easier for CART teams to run in the Indy 500 and other races in the IRL’s oval-racing series, and CART announced last month that in 2003, the series would switch from turbocharged V-8 engines to 3.5-liter normally aspirated engines.

That caused a major eruption among the manufacturers, who lease engines to individual teams:

* Honda, winner of four of the last six manufacturers’ championships, announced it was leaving after 2002.

* Ford Cosworth, leaving the door open for a possible change in the rules, said it would not build a non-turbocharged engine in 2003, but would consider furnishing engines for an all-Cosworth series if CART would retain its turbocharger rule.

* Toyota said it would go along with the new rule but also said it would not furnish normally aspirated engines for the entire organization if both Honda and Ford were gone.

CART has yet to reveal specifics of its 2003 rules.

All manufacturers have said they will continue to provide turbocharged engines for 2002, but the uncertainty over what will happen after that has left CART teams concerned about sponsors as well as equipment.

Spokesmen for Honda and Ford were both critical of the way the change was handled.

Said Tom Elliott, president of Honda Performance Development, “Honda can no longer put its trust in the CART rule book or those who administer it.

“Honda cannot work in an environment where the sanctioning body has such little regard for its engine manufacturers.”

Said Dan Davis, Ford’s director of racing technology, “Ford is not willing to commit the massive resources required to design, develop and produce a brand new engine and the necessary volume of parts at a significant financial loss in order to participate in a series that today has questionable marketing value.”

With public opinion running 9-1 against the switch from turbos to non-turbos, it would not be surprising if the CART board did an about-face and maintained the status quo. That would probably result in an all-Ford Cosworth series.

Having a single engine supplier is nothing new in open-wheel racing. In 1990 and 1991, Chevrolet provided the power, and for many years in the USAC era, Offenhauser was the only power plant.

CART team owner Gerry Forsythe wants to retain the turbocharger rule and has been quietly buying up CART stock in hopes of getting his point across.

He was the major dissenter when the 22-member CART board of directors voted to change the engine formula.

Forsythe, who has two votes on the board because he fields one team with drivers Patrick Carpentier and Alex Tagliani, and another with Bryan Herta, also wants to return CART to a privately held organization. CART became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 1998 under the leadership of Andrew Craig, then president of the organization.

CART stock, listed at 25.5 earlier in the year, had fallen to 12.75 Wednesday.

Although he has not said so publicly, Forsythe believes that private ownership is necessary so that the series can have a dictatorial leader, such as the France family in NASCAR and Bernie Ecclestone in Formula One.

And, who else better than Forsythe?

Forsythe is also involved in partnership with Frank Arciero Sr. to build the Yuba City Motorplex, near Sacramento, and is a partner in England’s Rockingham Speedway, which hosted its first CART race this year.

Although CART has a substantial war chest, reportedly $138 million, the organization has taken some major hits this year, both financially and in public relations.

CART paid $3.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Texas Motor Speedway over cancellation of a race April 29, two hours before it was scheduled to start, when drivers complained of dizziness while going more than 230 mph on the high-banked oval.

Besides refunding the $2.1-million sanctioning fee, CART reimbursed the speedway money that had to be returned to 60,000 ticket holders.

It lost an additional $8.5 million in contracts when it elected to discontinue its Dayton Indy Lights series after Sunday’s final race. The decision was made to drop the so-called development series when as few as 11 cars showed up for races.

Joe Heitzler, CART president and CEO, has taken a lot of heat for the events of 2001, but he inherited most of the problems from the previous administrations of Craig and interim boss Bobby Rahal. Heitzler, with no vote in the proceedings, has the dubious task of trying to placate both the board of directors, who are concerned with their race teams, and the stockholders, who want a return on their investments.

“I know that a lot of people do not think CART is where it should be, but the truth is that attendance is up substantially and, in terms of competitiveness, our series is second to none in the world,” Heitzler said.

“The negatives directed toward CART have been unfounded. We need to put this year behind us and proceed to 2002.

“Our future looks good. We will announce our 2002 schedule this week and we have a stronger TV package than before with CBS and Speed Channel [the new name for Speedvision] providing 60% more hours of coverage than this year.”

However, the lack of a schedule has caused hardships for teams struggling to sign sponsors, since the teams don’t know precisely what they can guarantee.

And the TV package may be a financial headache. Instead of getting money from the networks, CART must pay $235,000 an hour for the telecasts, which will include live half-hour prerace programs.

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WINNING TOUCH

Penske Racing has been the most dominant team in Championship Auto Racing Teams competition, with its drivers winning nine championships in 23 seasons:

* Rick Mears, 1979, ‘81, ’82

* Al Unser, 1983, ’85

* Danny Sullivan, 1988

* Al Unser Jr., 1994

* Gil de Ferran, 2000, ’01

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THIS WEEK’S RACE

What: Marlboro 500

Where: California Speedway, Fontana

Schedule: Friday qualifying, 11:15 a.m.; Sunday race, 9:30 a.m. (ESPN)