In the 1980s and early 1990s, before NASCAR Winston Cup racing had become a national phenomenon and was still a regional sport deeply rooted in the South, Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) had the glamour and appeal that made it the top rung of major auto racing.
With such racing heroes as Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Bobby and Al Unser, Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva, and Gordon Johncock, CART had the legendary names of Indy car racing. Although its fans were not as fervent as those found in NASCAR, this was the brand of racing that America thought was top shelf.
But as CART began to add more street and road-course races onto its schedule, drivers with international racing backgrounds began to take notice. Formula One world champions Emerson Fittipaldi and Nigel Mansell were able to add CART titles to their collection of impressive racing accomplishments.
As drivers such as Foyt, Andretti, the Unsers, Rutherford, Sneva, and Johncock left the sport, they were replaced by drivers from South America and Europe. That created a perception problem in the United States.
While the opportunities for American drivers in CART began to diminish, NASCAR Winston Cup racing began its dramatic rise in popularity to become the major league of auto racing in the United States.
When Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George tried to reverse the trend with the creation of the Indy Racing League, it further compounded CART's perception problem. With the Indianapolis 500 as its cornerstone event, the IRL has gotten stronger since its weak beginning in 1996.
The IRL enjoyed a successful and positive season in 2001, but that same season will go down as one of the most problematic in CART history and a year where CART nearly fell off the radar screen of American motorsports.
With Joseph Heitzler at the helm of a sinking ship, CART took on a tremendous amount of water in 2001. It culminated when the most successful team owner in CART history and co-founder of CART, Roger Penske, pulled his team out of the series to join the rival IRL in 2002.
CART's problems were many. They included low TV ratings, a high-tech formula that proved too costly and difficult to comprehend by the average sports fan, even lower interest among the racing fans in the United States, plummeting prices for CART stock, and near insurrection among some of the owners and promoters. These were issues that needed to be addressed if the series was going to rebound.
New LeaderSo CART turned to the promoter of its most successful event to help lead the series out of the depths of despair. CART ousted Heitzler after one year and hired Chris Pook, the promoter of the highly successful Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, to lead the series back into the spotlight.
But, is it too late to save CART?
"I think Chris Pook can help get some momentum back," says Carl Haas, who co-owns Newman-Haas Racing with actor Paul Newman. "Obviously, it's tough times. I don't think the last situation (with Heitzler) worked out. Pook has a lot of experience in this business. He has run races and has been around racing. He has been successful.
"What has to happen is we have to get the confidence back of the promoters and the teams and the press and of the sponsors. We have to get all those units together and to mesh. I think it's going to be a very tough year. It's a pivotal year. I was all for having Chris Pook come to CART. I sure hope it works."
Two years ago, team owner Derrick Walker determined that the best move for his operation was to have teams in both CART and IRL. He created an IRL team that features Sarah Fisher as the driver while continuing to run a single-car effort in CART.
Walker has a vested interest in the success of both series and has been able to step to the side and offer a reasonable look at the current state of affairs in open wheel racing. He believes a major setback for CART was Marlboro Team Penske leaving the series to join the rival IRL.