CART

CART Steers Through Difficult Times

By Steve Keating

All last season Christopher Pook paced the pits wearing the look of a man standing at the helm of the Titanic.

Even as the season came to an uplifting conclusion in front of a record crowd of 174,866 at Mexico City's newly rebuilt Hermanos Rodriguez Autodrome, it was impossible for CART's president and chief executive officer to ignore the icebergs looming ahead of the embattled motor racing series and the sight of drivers, teams and sponsors jumping ship.

Gone from the starting grid next year will be Michael Andretti, the biggest name in American motorsport and the most successful driver in the history of the CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) series. Andretti has acquired his own team and defected to the rival Indy Racing League (IRL) where he will join renowned team owner Roger Penske, who bailed out last season.

Adding to the exodus is newly crowned series champion Cristiano da Matta, who will seek his fame and fortune next season in Formula One with Toyota, while popular Brazilian Christian Fittipaldi is off to NASCAR and Scot Dario Franchitti will partner Andretti in the IRL. Chip Ganassi, who has provided cars for four of the last six series winners, is taking a two-car entry to the IRL in 2003 while Newman-Haas, co-owned by actor Paul Newman, are weighing up their options.

CART's credibility was dented when the German 500 was cancelled and further damaged when the Rockingham 500 was dropped from the schedule this week, leaving the series without a race in Europe. More bad news was delivered by FedEx when the company confirmed it would not be staying on as the series title sponsor. A more serious blow came early in the season when CART's top two engine manufacturers, Honda and Toyota, announced they were also defecting to the IRL.

"The thing was in a considerably larger mess than people thought it was," admitted Pook, assessing the defections. "But on the other hand we have put a lot of good people in place and I think we've made a huge amount of progress. Not as much as I wanted to make but a lot."

CART was once considered a serious rival to Formula One but Pook spent much of his first season in charge fighting off the perception that the series was teetering on the brink of collapse. It has become a faceless series without a signature event and only a handful of confirmed entries for next season and Pook will continue to wage a battle as shareholders nervously watch stock prices which have sunk from a 52-week high of $17.50 to $3.30.

"Perception is pretty monstrous," said Pook. "But right now the media is changing it's position a little bit, going from saying, 'It looks pretty fatal' to 'Wait a minute, they're making progress. They're still not healthy but they're getting there'."

The most pressing problems facing Pook may well be CART's inability to hold on to its star attractions, such as Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Montoya, Alex Zanardi and now da Matta who have all moved on to F1, and finding a big stage on which to showcase the series talent. NASCAR has the Daytona 500 and household names including Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart to pull in the spectators and billions in sponsorship dollars and television rights.

The IRL owns North America's biggest motor racing event, the Indy 500, and can now boast names such as Andretti, Unser and Penske. And who does CART have? Mexico's Michel Jourdain, Italy's Max Papis and Spain's Oriol Servia -- hardly household names in their own countries.

Once promoted as the All-American race series, CART now has few Americans for fans to cheer. No American has won the drivers' championship since Jimmy Vasser in 1996. In this past season there were only three Americans on the starting grid and Andretti will be gone next year.

"We'll have an all-American team next year," assured Pook. "And I take issue that this is a faceless series. We have some of the biggest events there are in motor racing. They (IRL) have the Indianapolis 500. What else do they have?

"We have huge events in Long Beach, Toronto, Miami, Mexico. We're banging off these events left and right, we're going to have 2.5 million in attendance. We'll develop some names. Sometimes you keep them, sometimes you don't.

"But if we keep putting drivers up through the Formula One ranks as we're doing you can rest assured the public who come to watch our races will know what we've got and where we're going."

CART says it will run 20 events in six different countries next year. Many, including races in Toronto, Montreal, Miami, Long Beach, Mexico City, Japan and Australia, are held in front of Formula One type crowds. While the series has lost events in England and Germany, reports surfaced on Monday that CART was considering placing races in Brands Hatch, England, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and Estoril in Portugal.

There have been other small bits of good news for Pook. Ford recently announced they would supply engines for the series next year and would take on a co-presenting sponsor role with Bridgestone tyres. But Pook still has many blanks on the schedule and grid to fill before the new season gets underway on February 23 on the streets of St Petersburg, Florida.

There is some question over whether American race fans will embrace the idea of CART being nothing more than a nursery for Formula One. American sports fans have seldom accepted any event seen or promoted as minor league.

"There's nothing wrong with being the feeder system to F1," insisted Pook, who has had several meetings with Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone. "The people will come."

Report provided by Reuters

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