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Written by:
David Phillips
01/24/2007 - 07:00 PM
Sebring, Fla.
The DP01 looks good, but has so far failed to raise enough interest to stop Champ Car's owners from subsidizing part of the '07 field... (LAT Photo) » More Photos
The toughest transition in racing has nothing to do with going from braking to powerdown, understeer to oversteer or vice versa. No: the toughest transition in racing is going from buy-a-ride to paid driver.
Name one driver who used his personal money to buy his way into the top echelons of the sport and went on to land a paying ride with a top flight team. OK, besides Niki Lauda. Lauda used family connections within the Austrian financial community to mortgage his future on a Formula One ride with March in 1972, did a reasonable enough job to land a paying ride with BRM in '73 and a year later went to Ferrari en route to three world championships.
Name another buy-a-ride driver who comes close to Lauda's success. Certainly there are any number of drivers who have worked their way into the top rungs of the sport with the help of patrons. For example, Arie Luyendyk might well have withered on the vine but for Provimi Veal boss Aat Groenevelt. And remember, Bobby Rahal's career was on the brink of stalling-out when Jim Trueman came along. More recently -- and creatively -- Justin Wilson sold shares in his career to a cadre of backers who have since been rewarded by their "investment's" success in Formula One and Champ Car.
Still, for every Lauda -- or for that matter -- Luyendyk, Rahal and Wilson there are scores of George Eatons, Rikki von Opels and Rupert Keegans who never produced the results that led the likes of Enzo Ferrari, Frank Williams, Roger Penske and Carl Haas to stop thinking of their family bank accounts and begin thinking of the on-track results they could deliver . . . and how much money to pay them. With the opening round of the 2007 Champ Car World Series little more than two months away, Champ Car owners Gerald Forsythe, Paul Gentilozzi and Kevin Kalkhoven are trying to pull-off a transition perhaps even more challenging than the one faced by buy-a-ride drivers seeking to be paid for their efforts.
It's no secret that, since acquiring the assets of Championship Auto Racing Teams in early '03, Forsythe and Kalkhoven in particular have underwritten or subsidized various teams and drivers. There's no shame in that, particularly given the circumstances facing them in '03. Having gained control of the series barely two months before the first race and after a winter when many teams were on the verge of shutting their doors, the subsidies were nothing more, or less, than an investment in their new property.
Of course, the money they invested in teams in '03 would prove to be just the beginning. First came the acquisition of Cosworth, then (in time) all or part of the promotional overhead at the Long Beach, Toronto, Milwaukee, Road America and Denver events, not to mention overhauling the Atlantic series from stem to stern and, of course this year, investing in the new Panoz DP01 chassis. Although the event promotion business has been a mixed bag, the Cosworth deal -- at least from the perspective of providing a stable engine platform tailor-made for the Champ Car World Series -- has been a home run. Ditto the Champ Car Atlantic Championship which, thanks to the new Swift chassis, Mazda engines and a $2 million prize for the winning driver, turned a moribund feeder series into one of the world's most robust and fiercely contested junior formulae.
The hope was lightning would strike a second time with the introduction of the Panoz DP01 in the 2007 Champ Car World Series. Less expensive to buy and run than the Lola B2K-based chassis that had long been the staple of the series, the DP01 was seen as the magic bullet; the one element in the equation that would finally enable the Champ Car World Series to transition from stasis to growth. Remember last summer's predictions by series officials of grids of 20, 22 or more cars? Indeed there was even some vague talk about capping the field at 24 entries.
Well the first of three scheduled pre-season tests got underway this week at Sebring and, two months before the start of the series, those predictions look, er, optimistic. By actual count there are fourteen cars on hand, but that's not the real issue. Panoz is producing DP01s at a steady clip and should have enough chassis built in time for the season opener in Las Vegas on April 6-8 for every team that wants (or, more importantly, has the resources) to field a couple of cars with at least one spare car per team. The problem comes in the teams marshaling the financial resources to field those 20-24 cars predicted last year.
...a reality made evident by the number of drivers roaming the Sebring paddock without deals for the upcoming season. (LAT Photo) » More Photos
Of the fourteen cars running at Sebring, only seven are officially accounted for in terms of drivers/sponsors. Count 'em: Newman/Haas? One (Sebastien Bourdais). Forsythe? One (Paul Tracy). Pacific Coast Motorsports? Two (Alex Figge and Ryan Dalziel). PKV? One (Neel Jani). RuSPORT? One (Justin Wilson).
But those deals and the ones that will get the promised 20 cars on the grid at Las Vegas are going to take money not yet in evidence. For the financial puzzle of running a Champ Car team has changed this season. In days gone by, modestly funded teams could take their Lolas back to the shop after the season finale at Mexico City, drain the fluids and put them up on jacks for the winter, then dust 'em off, do the race prep and show up at the season opener the following spring for a relatively (in motor sports terms at least) minor investment.
That's not the case this year, when a team planning on running two cars in the Champ Car World Series will have had to cough-up in the neighborhood of $2 million for chassis, spares and ancillary equipment. And in an environment where multi-million dollar sponsorships are more scarce than Hector Rebaque victories -- at least when it comes to American open wheel racing -- that results in what we have at Sebring, namely seven cars fully accounted for and the rest in varying states of limbo. Like I said, several driver/team combination are waiting in the wings, but as many as a dozen are nowhere near done. And one team that has run two cars the past several seasons -- MiJack/Conquest -- stayed home rather than risk a potentially ruinous accident at Sebring. And another, one owned by series co-owner Gerald Forsythe is, from all indications, only planning on running one car in '07.
The cynics will say some team owners are holding out, playing a game of chicken with the series owners who they (the team owners) believe will blink when they see only 15 or 16 entries ready to go a few weeks before Las Vegas and anteing up the subsidies (again) needed to fill the field. While the series owners are understandably loathe to do that, the fact remains that Champ Car has come a long, long way since '03, all or most of that way having been financed by the deep pockets and commitment of Forsythe and Kalkhoven in particular. And, notwithstanding the number of entries (or the loss of Ford and Bridgestone as series sponsors), lots of good things are happening in the '07 Champ Car World Series. The Panoz DP01 is a home run in virtually every respect, not least of which is the level playing field it's created, enticing one new team (Pacific Coast) and one new team owner (Team Minardi USA's Paul Stoddart) into the series and enabling perennial underdog Dale Coyne Racing to run with the big dogs at Sebring.
What's more, a well-respected figure within the series was at Sebring doing due-diligence for a group of investors who have every intention of fielding a team this year, if not for the season opener then for later in the season with an eye towards being fully ready for '08. Then there's the addition of a couple of blockbuster events in Las Vegas and Phoenix to the schedule, not to mention China and Europe, not to mention a television package that should prove attractive to sponsors.
But the series ain't there yet. And it's going to take more than the Panoz DP01 to get there. It's going to take time, patience and bold (and productive) marketing strategies. As well, there's a growing sense in the Sebring paddock that it's going take another round of subsidies and investments by Forsythe and Kalkhoven to get the series over the hump; to get the teams to where they can put on a compelling show in '07 -- especially in Vegas and Phoenix and on television -- to reach the stage where teams (and the series) have some numbers to show potential sponsors for next year and can run the DP01s they bought this year without making additional major outlays.
There are no guarantees another round of investment in the series by its owners will enable Champ Car to complete the transition from a subsidized to a fully self-supporting series. Or, to further torture the earlier analogy, no guarantees the owner-subsidized Champ Car World Series is to race series as Niki Lauda is to buy-a-ride drivers. One thing is for sure though: the Champ Car World Series has proven itself decidedly more worthy of additional subsidy-investments than Messrs. Eaton, von Opel or Keegan.
David Phillips is a Senior Writer for RACER magazine. To learn more about RACER, click here for subscription information.
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