Just been looking around on the net & found this.... @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_Car

Formation of CART

The split away from USAC in 1979 was spurred by a group of activist car owners who had grown disenchanted with what they saw as an inept sanctioning body. COMPLAINING OF POOR PROMOTION AND SMALL PURSES, this group coalesced around Dan Gurney, who, in early 1978, wrote what came to be known as the "Gurney White Paper", the blueprint for an organization called Championship Auto Racing Teams.

Huh looks like some things never change...or does it?

Sad thing is it could have all been avoided had USAC and IMS banned the Cooper in 1961.

Oh man this topic always gets people banned on speeedtv.com. Be careful.

O well they can ban me..

I find it hard to believe that CART had an open wheel series that was anywhere near as challenging as USAC had in 1970; ovals, super speedways, road courses and dirt track miles.


CARTs structure was flawed from the start. Having race teams and car owners govern the sport is somewhat akin to having the inmates running a prison. Many of these car owners and drivers came over from SCCA which had the CAN-AM series fail twice and Formula A/5000 fail as well. In my opinion CARTs demise was inevitable whether the IRL was formed or not given past history. CART jumped the shark before the IRL was formed when it became more financially viable to have a electronics company hier drive full time in the series while four-time Indianapolis winner Al Unser was stuck with Indy one-offs. The current incarnation of the IRL is basically what CART was with a few more ovals.

Did CART pay you to say that?? LOL:emote20:

No, they learned in 1 race that they couldn't compete with the Indy 500 - Period. And those same people organized the Belle Isle event this year for the IRL

I agree.

I dont think we are in a much different place today if either 1)IRL was never started or 2) IRL and CART merged somewhere between 1996-2000.

Either way open wheel would still be playing for 2nd place behind Nascar unfortunately.



Some might say....If CART and IRL merged early on it would have been totally different. I don't think so becuase the opportunities for sprint car guys would still have been Nascar. $$$ has and always will been the biggest factor in CART or today the IRL.


The IRL was good for awhile as it gave guys like Kinser, Hewitt, Yeley, Tyler, Michner, Steele,Kite, etc...atleast somewhat of a shot during the early years. But once your big $$$ came in like Gannasi, Andretti, Penske that chance was gone almost regardless of talent.

Same thing if the 2 series would have merged say, in 1997 or 98. It would have brought the big $$$ that was left in CART (Newman Haas, Penske, Ganassi, etc) back in the picture thus putting our sprint car guys on the sideline and probably most of the drivers mentioned above would have never got a shot.

Would be curious to know if Pat Sullivan agrees or disagrees....

It looks like a slow boring day when we dredge up stuff from 30 years ago. There must be something new to talk about.

I guess my point is.....be it 30 yrs ago ,10 yrs ago , 5 days ago or as we speak its the same ol deal over on 16th st.