Racing Into the Future

Chris Pook, for a few more days the head man at Championship Auto Racing Teams, says without a doubt that CART and the Indy Racing League should end their disagreements and unite as a single open-wheel racing organization.

But he quickly adds that it’s not going to happen very soon, and, consequently, CART must push ahead.

CART will make its last push of 2003 -- and its last push as a publicly owned corporation -- Sunday at California Speedway, where the King Taco 500 closes a largely unsponsored season. Before the 2004 season starts, CART will have new ownership and possibly a new name. A holding company, Open Wheel Racing Series LLC, is expected to be approved as CART’s new owner sometime next month, after a vote of stockholders.

When accomplished, stockholders will receive 56 cents a share on their investments. Four years ago, CART, with its MPH ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, was trading as high as $28. When Pook took over Dec. 18, 2001, it was still at $15.70.

CART has no title sponsor.

Paul Tracy, who drives the car that won the championship Sunday in Australia, has no sponsor.

Gone is the more than $80 million CART used up during the year, partly to finance enough teams to field a minimum of cars, a luxury Pook said cannot happen next year.

So why would anyone want to buy CART, even at 56 cents a share?

Pook, who proved his promotional genius when he started the Long Beach Grand Prix and made its success the hallmark of street races throughout the world, remains optimistic about its future.

“We are remarkably positioned for delivering our product for the sponsors to the market in a diminishing world,” he said.

“What sponsors?” he was asked.

“You’ll see, when the new ownership is in place. There are some important people ready to step up and make decisions that are necessary for survival.

“We had racing men running CART for years who were more concerned with their own agenda than with the good of the organization. There was continual bickering between management and certain members of the board. Because of that, there was an inability to meet the needs of the major engine manufacturers, and you can’t run a racing series without them.

“The new owners are businessmen first, racers second. They know what a bottom line means, and it will show.”

The new owners-to-be are Jerry Forsythe, owner of Tracy’s Player’s Forsythe Racing car, which was left unsponsored when Player’s had to pull the plug because of Canadian tobacco-advertising regulations; Paul Gentilozzi, former Trans-Am driving champion and owner of Rocketsports Racing; and Kevin Kalkhoven, who recently joined the racing fraternity as a partner to Craig Pollack in PK Racing.

“There won’t be as many surprises for them when they take over as there were for me,” Pook said. “When I became CEO, we found a surprise a day. Open a new drawer, another problem popped out. The big thing in their favor is that they are taking the company private.

“I am firmly convinced that the day [then CEO] Andrew Craig took CART public, it was the day it started downhill, headed for a train wreck. The problem for years after that was that nobody was paying attention to business.”

One by one, CART’s stars and stout defenders -- first Roger Penske, then Michael Andretti, Chip Ganassi and the major engine manufacturers, Honda and Toyota -- left for the IRL and its Indianapolis 500. With them went financial support from sponsors such as Marlboro, Motorola, Federal Express and the engine makers.

The shift from public ownership to private could save as much as $2 million, estimated Pook, in accounting and clerical work involved with running a public corporation.

“Everything you do has to be laid out where the public can see it,” he said of public companies. “But when you’re private, you don’t have near as much paper work and all that scrutiny.

“CART has produced a pretty dismal product the last few years -- 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, even last year it was not all that good. But we fixed that. Look at our attendance this year, it’s up most places we’ve been.”

Crowds have been huge outside the United States. In Mexico City, there were more than 200,000. Sunday, in Australia, the crowd was 108,100 despite rain that ended up shortening the race. Three events in Canada averaged more than 150,000 each for three-day weekends.

Pook said he planned to remain as a consultant when the switch is completed. According to Autoweek, he will receive “between $264,000 and $488,000 over three years.”

“My mission is complete,” Pook said. “There has been a slow, downhill slide that I would have rather not had, but we have established stability and restructured the company to go private. We have a sensible schedule (still unannounced) and sponsors coming (still unannounced), the teams (only some announced) are stable.”

Pook said his biggest contribution to CART was insisting, “We have to take the product to the market, and not the market to the product.”

What that means is more big-city street races, in the middle of downtowns, the way he envisioned the Long Beach race by using Ocean Boulevard in its formative years.

“It makes more sense to be downtown, instead of 40 or 50 miles out of town,” Pook said. “That way, you may have no more than 100,000 at a race, but if it were in Los Angeles, say, you would have 14 million aware of it, and that’s what today’s sponsor wants. When a race is downtown, the public has to be aware of it because they see it building.”

Pook uses supercross, the stadium version of outdoor motocross, as an example.

“When [Mike Goodwin] took an established sport that was conducted out in the boondocks and said he was going to take it downtown, the purists said it was a sacrilege. The football purists said it was a sacrilege too, running motorcycles up and down the peristyle end of the Coliseum, but the spectators loved it, the media wrote about it, TV showed it, everybody came out of the woodwork to watch it. It delivered value. Now it’s huge.”

(Supercross is no longer held in the Coliseum, but events at Edison Field and other major stadiums are sold out for nearly every event.)

“Pete Rozelle developed the National Football League in the same way.

“That’s really what it’s all about. When we come into these urban markets, the whole demographics of our audience changes. Yes, we get that traditional motor racing fan who will always come. But guess what! We get a ton of other people who are not necessarily motor racing fans. They’re John Q. Public.

“The days of rich guys spending millions, owning teams so they can entertain friends with lavish parties at the tracks and hang out with drivers, the way it was 30, 40 years ago, are gone. Sponsors want return from their investment today.”

Most CART followers blame Tony George, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president, for the problems in open-wheel racing today.

It was George who broke with CART in 1994 when he announced formation of the Indy Racing League, with the Indy 500 as its centerpiece.

Pook said the blame belongs instead with the CART board at that time.

“They treated [George] very rudely, very badly,” Pook said at a Motor Press Guild luncheon. “They had no respect for him. He is the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and I don’t care what you think about him, what your opinion is of him, you have to treat him with respect. He was not treated with respect.

“From our perspective, and I’m on record ever since I went on this job in December 2001, I’ll be the first guy to step up to the plate and say, ‘Hey, what do we have to do to get us back together? Certainly for the Indy 500.’ ”

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CART Season Finale

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* King Taco 200: Saturday, 2 p.m. (200 miles/100 laps).

* King Taco 500: Sunday, noon, 500 (250 laps).

* Where: California Speedway in Fontana.

* CART season winner: On Sunday, Paul Tracy won the Championship Auto Racing Teams drivers’ championship when Bruno Junqueira, his closest rival, crashed with 10 laps left in the Lexmark Indy 300 at Surfers Paradise, Australia. American rookie Ryan Hunter-Reay won the race.

* 2003 standings: 1. Paul Tracy, 226; 2. Bruno Junqueira, 199; 3. Michel Jourdain, 195; 4. Sebastien Bourdais, 159; 5. Patrick Carpentier, 146.

* Last year: Jimmy Vasser won the fastest race in CART history, an average speed of over 197.995 mph.

* Tickets: (800) 944-7223 (RACE) or 1-800-PITSHOP.