The good, the bad and the sad, as remembered by Robin Miller

Very informative article from Robin, and as usual, he’s right on the money.

After spending millions for four years and then supposedly catching a couple of his “allies” with their hands in the cookie jar, Kalkhoven told Forsythe he was done last winter. And so, mercifully, was Champ Car.

Cookie jar? Hey robin been surfing the forums again for help in writing your stories…

Car owners can’t run the store??

Tony George ownes & funds lots of IRL cars????

As long as TG makes all the decisions Indy
Car is destined for failure…

Good article. Finally sanity prevailed opening the door to get open wheel back to where it once was before the pinheads and ego’s got involved. Now Indy 500 qualifying session will have some cars to “bump” and it will have some meaning again…

Man do I feel old, so many good memories from when CART was the pinnacle of US racing. Just a few: A couple newcomers at Mid-Ohio in probably ‘83 (Micheal Anretti and Al Unser Jr.); Working at a golf club and cornering Jim Trueman to talk about racing; Watching Bobby Rahal win the ‘86 500; Watching Rahal and Unser Jr. change the lead for 50 laps at Michigan; Watching Gary Bettenhausen win the pole at indy and have Jack Arute remind him that it was 30 years to the day that his father had died; Watching a car do 232.483 at Indy; Having reigning F1 champ Nigel Mansell come to America - Oh the list goes on.

I think we also need to give a call out to Carl Horton on the issue of safety. He donated state of the art equipment for the Horton Safety Team that traveled to all of the races. I know he also set up a state of the art medical facility at Mid-Ohio. Besides that he sponsered flat-track Harleys - “Horton’s Harleys Hustle!”

Lets be honest. CART’s obituary was written at the start of the 1996 US 500. That day the IRL put on a hell of a good show at Indy, with Buddy Lazier drinking milk with a broken back, the CART highlights ended at the drop of the green flag..opps red flag.

Robin Miller is right on as usual,but personally I feel far too much damage has been done. You have to mourn also before you can heal and Champ Car’s body isn’t even cold. It was a great ride and gave us the best racing in America

I think OW’s troubles in the U.S. started long about 1965, when Jimmy Clark won Indy in (gasp) a rear engined car. That was what actually started the domino effect of
1. Indycars were no longer a viable career move for sprint car guys, who had the motor in front.
2. Road racers were now more suited to run Indy.
3. Europe has always had better road racers than the U.S. ( Yes there were a couple of exceptions like Mario or Donohue)
4. American fans, rather than having to learn how to pronounce “Helio” or “Christiano” or “Bourdais” flocked to NASCAR where thay could just call ‘em Dale or Tony.
American fans don’t give a rodent’s rectum about anything not American. Not really a good thing, but a statement of fact. Until race fans become more like baseball fans, where there seems to be an acceptance of Central- and South American and japanese players, I fear OW will take a back seat to NASCAR and even NHRA.

Except that AOWR was far more popular in 1995 (with the mid engined cars and foreigners) then it was in 1965 (where the only thing that got TV and other media exposure was the Indy 500).

The reason it failed was because first and foremost of proper management. The CART boys elected a bunch of weaklings to put in charge because they could control him. This was not the case of Bill France Jr. or Bernie Ecclestone.

My addendum --

By the time of The Split, the fatal flaws of CART were already in place.  No, not just the fact that the inmates were running the prison, but rather, the decisions that they’d made.

For starters, you can’t have a series where the cars are going 256.99 down the straightaway (MIS, by Paul Tracy).  It actually detracts from the race—I was barely able to see a car’s color, much less its sponsor logos—and set the table for their departure from oval racing as well as the 1998 MIS tragedy.  And, as Robin pointed out, you can’t have a series which rivals F1 in costs without having the market exposure (and marketing ability) to match.  The IRL, CHAMP and to some extent NASCAR have all adopted a common template with either a common engine, or a tightly-regulated engine to address such concerns, but such an idea was completely counter to CART’S religious belief system. 

You couldn’t have a series where talented, deserving young American talent is locked out (Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kenny Irwin, et al).  IT wasn’t that all of the drivers were foreigners, it was that a young American had little chance to drive at Indy. 

The reason that CART owners didn’t know they were in trouble is that they still had Indy to make them into stars, to attract big sponsors, and to appeal to former F1 drivers.  CART didn’t know how much it depended on Indy, even with its fame in other places.  By 2001, at the last CART race at MIS (where I had pit credentials), the only drivers that most of the fans knew were the guys who’d raced at Indy—who was these “Tony Cannon” and “Helium Castro” guys?  Even though most of that era became the start of the IRL, they only became stars by going to Indy.  To separate CART from Indy is akin to American horse racing pulling out of the Kentucky Derby, or endurance racing divorced from Le Mans, or figure skating banned from the Olympics.  The owners might’ve disdained the partying owner’s son at IMS, but little did they realize that he held the only trump card in the entire card game.  The US 500 in 1996—heavily supported by Toyota, who paid fans to attend—signaled the height of their arrogance, and the beginning of the end.