Seeking More Fans in Cool of the Evening

It was hot Sunday at California Speedway. Really hot. Temperatures topped 100 and the sun beat down from start to finish of the Indy Racing League’s Toyota Indy 400, baking the fans in the stands as well as the drivers in their open-cockpit cars.

Next year, on Labor Day weekend, NASCAR will race there, and it probably will be every bit as hot. NASCAR figures to beat the heat, though, by racing its Winston Cup stock cars -- by then, they will be Nextel Cup cars -- at night.

Car owner Roger Penske, who built the Fontana track then sold it to NASCAR’s International Speedway Corp., would like to see the IRL follow suit, for more reasons than simple comfort.

“I think the night race here for NASCAR is going to be a huge success,” said Penske, one of the most influential men in racing. “I think maybe they should run this [IRL] race at night too, on a Saturday night.

” ... The TV ratings at night would be better and there’s more of an audience.... I think, overall, you’re going to see more night racing, both in NASCAR and the IRL, because of the television opportunities. That’s what we need to grow the sport. We need the electronic media coverage, which helps us grow the stars and show the competition.”

When it comes to open-wheel racing, these days, though, it’s not so much growing the sport as regrowing it. Stock car racing came along later and eventually outstripped open-wheel racing in fan interest, but the Indy cars always maintained a healthy following. When the Fontana track opened seven years ago, the CART race was the top event on the schedule and it sold out what was then a capacity of 71,000 for opening day -- until “the split” in the mid-1990s.

That’s when Tony George, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, decided that his interests in oval-track racing did not match those of Championship Auto Racing Teams, which raced on road and street courses, as well as ovals. George pulled out of CART to form his own organization, the IRL.

The IRL survived a rocky start -- barely, thanks mostly to the Indy 500 -- and CART eventually tail-spun. CART, a publicly held company, was recently sold to private owners, who have yet to announce details of how they intend to run it.

Penske, one of the founders of CART in the 1970s, and the first to leave it for the IRL, is hoping for the best.

“We’ve been in an environment for, what, the last six years, where you’ve had two open-wheel series,” he said. “We, hopefully, are coming to a time now -- you don’t have a public CART, you’ve got a private group of guys. They’ll look at what’s best for their commercial interests and, potentially, we could end up with one series, and that’ll certainly help.

“Tony [George] stayed the course and I take my hat off to him. Obviously, we were competitors, but we saw the vision of using Indianapolis as the keystone and building a series around it. Our sponsors certainly felt that way.”

What a concept: Back in the dim, distant past -- the 1950s and ‘60s -- that’s precisely how the United States Auto Club ran Indy car racing.

Then Penske and some other car owners broke away and formed CART, and USAC grew weaker and weaker. What goes around....

And Penske, himself an old-time road racer, is not so sure road racing would be a welcome addition to the IRL, even if there were a merger with CART.

“There’s a lot of interest [in road and street racing], but I want to be sure we don’t lose this competitiveness, where you can go to a racetrack and there can be 10 guys who can win the race,” he said. “In a typical road race today, even a Formula One race, how you qualify is how you finish.

“It’s a good time for the fans who want to go to a happening -- that’s fine -- but we need to have [competitive] races. I would hope there would be a balance. I would like to see this [a single series] come together.”

*

Formula One

For a change, the world championship will not be a foregone conclusion when the United States Grand Prix unfolds Sunday at the Indianapolis Speedway.

Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher, seeking his sixth title, leads the series with 82 points, but Juan Pablo Montoya of Williams-BMW and Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren-Mercedes are still in the hunt. Montoya has 79 points and Raikkonen 75.

Schumacher could clinch the championship by gaining a 10-point advantage. Failing that, the championship chase will go down to the season finale, the GP of Japan, on Oct. 12.

The last time the points battle was so close was in 1986, when Alain Prost won the title in the last race, beating out Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet.

*

The Local Scene

Todd Burns, the regular-season champion in Auto Club late models, will try to get a leg up on the “California state championship” Saturday night at Irwindale Speedway. On tap is a 100-lap main event, the first of two races for the title. The second will be run Oct. 18 at Mesa Marin Speedway in Bakersfield.

Also running at Irwindale will be legend cars, mini-stocks, the Extreme Racing League and Figure 8s.

Super stocks, street stocks, cruisers and hornets will race Saturday night at Perris, and Ventura has VRA sprint cars and modifieds, along with pony stocks and IMCA modifieds.

On the card Saturday night at Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino are pro-stock late models, street stocks, pure stocks and lady pure stocks, sport trucks and minis.

Speedway motorcycle racers will ride for the Warren Russell Cup at Costa Mesa Speedway at the Orange County fairgrounds Saturday night.

*

Shav Glick is on vacation.