After the War: Exclusive interview with Andrew Craig

In May 1996, Andrew Craig was at the epicentre of the political storm tearing US single-seater racing apart.

As CART CEO, he was striving to keep his championship alive despite the loss of the talismanic Indianapolis 500 to Tony George's rival Indy Racing League, and working feverishly to ensure the success of CART's new US 500 at Michigan, which was going head to head with Indy.

Fast forward to 2008, and the warring series have been united, but with the IRL emerging triumphant and effectively absorbing Champ Car - the outcome that Craig was once determined to avoid.

But, speaking about the issue for the first time since his departure from CART in 2000, Craig explains why he wholeheartedly welcomes the merger and is optimistic about the future, while reflecting on the pivotal events of May 1996, and the missed opportunities that prolonged a conflict which could have been resolved before it had barely begun.

1996: The first split 500

Back in 1996, George was widely painted as the aggressor, but eventually more questions were raised about CART's actions. Should Craig's organisation have done more to seek a compromise? Had it just arrogantly assumed its series was bigger than the Indy 500?

Craig insists he never underestimated George or the importance of Indianapolis, and that the sticking point was the United States Auto Club's presence on the IRL side.

The future CART teams' frustration with USAC had caused them to break away and form their series in 1979, and although a compromise was reached to allow the USAC-sanctioned Indy 500 to be part of the CART championship from 1983, mutual antipathy between the two bodies lingered still.

"There was no question in everyone's mind that not having the Indianapolis 500 would be a massive problem," Craig says. "But that was counterbalanced by a profound reluctance to get involved in anything that involved the United States Auto Club.

"If we'd sat down and said 'I know, let's not race at the Indy 500', I think we would've been thrown out of the room. It was an extremely important event in American sports culture, and you clearly want that race to be in your series. We just didn't have the luxury of that option.

"You really could argue that when CART lost the Indy 500 we should have just gone out of business, and said 'okay, the game's up. The Indy 500 is just too important for American open wheel racing, we can't survive without it, we'll just close shop'.

"But life's not like that. The teams were very proud of what they'd built up at CART. They wanted to keep going with their series. They had this deep, deep, visceral concern about USAC and just did not want to go near anything that would be run by the USAC. So we decided to stay in business."

He is certain that the split could have been healed before it even began had USAC not been a factor.

"The very first initiative to solve this was actually in late 1994. I called Tony, because we always kept in contact, and said 'let's see if we can find a resolution'. I suggested that we should set up a completely new sanctioning body - not CART, not USAC and not him. He seemed to be quite responsive to that.

"We had a meeting and I brought in Carl Haas, Carl Hogan and Chip Ganassi, but USAC were clearly not keen. And if I'm honest, I think I would have had trouble delivering that plan on my side as well, although if that idea had flown, it would've been great.

"But I really do think things could have been worked out, but as far as CART was concerned, it just wasn't going to happen with USAC."

The painful irony of the impasse is that USAC's involvement with the IRL proved to be fleeting. By mid-1997, George had dismissed the organisation and set up his own sanctioning team after a series of high-profile blunders. "USAC did everything we anticipated they would have done," says Craig.

By that time the two championships were firmly entrenched, their positions polarised even further by the head to head between the first IRL Indy 500 and CART's US 500 in May 1996.

The announcement that CART would hold an alternative 500-mile race on the same day came hot on the heels of George's declaration that 25 of the 33 Indianapolis grid spots would be reserved for the IRL competitors.

"We didn't do it lightly," Craig says of the decision to launch a rival race. "But bear in mind that this was a very, very difficult time for CART.

"And looking back I think it was one of the finest hours for the company - we somehow kept all the teams on board apart from AJ Foyt, who was always going to go with the Speedway, and Dick Simon. So that was a huge success.

"But the teams who stayed with CART gave us a very clear message. They were saying 'we can't tell our sponsors that we're going to sit at home and do nothing on Memorial Day weekend.' That's a big holiday weekend in the States.

"So we absolutely had to have a race on that weekend. I just thought, 'let's do it'. At that time Roger Penske was very enthusiastic and was prepared to rent us the Michigan track, so we got on and went head to head.

"Some people said it was a bad idea, but we had to give the teams something. It had been like ping-pong diplomacy keeping them all on board - people like Carl Haas, Bruce McCaw and Jerry Forsythe in particular were rock solid, but some of the others had concerns. Tony Bettenhausen was incredible. He had nothing like the resources those guys had, and it would have been much easier for him to go to the Speedway, but he stuck with us on principle.

"You've got to understand that at the time there was a lot of feeling amongst sponsors and teams that what we were doing was right. We had 19 sponsors for that event, all companies that were meant to be running off to the Speedway because CART was such an awful organisation, but they all stood by us.

"We responded to the needs of the times. We needed a rallying call, and the teams desperately needed something to offer their sponsors."

Ultimately the US 500 was marred by the warm-up lap carnage that delayed the start and saw CART pilloried.

"The crash at the start was a disaster," Craig admits. "That caused the press to be able to duck the issue. We looked like idiots, and all the commentary was about that: 'they think they're so good but they can't even get to the start of the race properly'. We looked like complete buffoons.

"Some people said it was hubris on our part to start the cars three abreast, as they do at the Indy 500. But in 1995 we had done exactly that at Michigan because our promoter Gene Hasket said it would be great for his fans and would give his race a distinctive character. And it worked just fine, so we did it at the US 500. We never did it again after that ..."

While Craig is deeply proud of what CART achieved that day in Michigan, he admits that the US 500 was still dwarfed by Indy.

"That first US 500 was a huge success, it really was," he said. "We put that race together in three months, we self-promoted it and we had 110,000 people - which of course was a third of what the Speedway had - but I think that was the most people ever for an open wheel race at Michigan.

"But there was no question that we were a blip compared to the Indy 500. It was the event that people knew and it had all those years of history and pedigree behind it. We were a very, very minor player.

"I never set out to make the US 500 bigger than the Indy 500, it was simply to offer our teams and sponsors the alternative that they wanted in the circumstances."

1999: The merger that got away

Over the years, there were countless efforts to reunite the warring championships. Many were fronted by manufacturers, team bosses or other luminaries, but Craig believes the discussion that came closest to succeeding prior to the current merger was one he initiated directly with George in mid-1999.

"I called Tony, which I used to do from time to time, and said 'is there any point in us chatting?' And he said 'sure, there's nothing wrong with chatting.'

"I met with him, and I got the strong impression from him that he would like to find some resolution that would be good for both sides. A resolution where there were no winners, no losers, and everybody came together.

"We decided to pursue it, and we had a lot of very positive discussions and several meetings down at Indianapolis before coming up with a proposal described as a merger, but that effectively involved CART buying the assets of the IRL.

"The main reason we were in a position to make that kind of offer was because we had just floated CART on the stock market. It had been very successful for the company and it gave us a level of financial freedom that we'd never had before. It enabled us to have that sort of conversation.

"Tony was positive about this idea, but the big stumbling block was the philosophical issue of the famous IRL engine. What was very, very important for Tony's side was that we should adopt their normally-aspirated engine rules.

"I called a meeting of the four CART engine manufacturers on the Monday after the Michigan race, and also invited (IRL suppliers) GM and Nissan. I told them that things were developing well, but it wasn't going to happen unless we abandoned our 2.6-litre turbocharged engines because it was philosophically very important for the Speedway that we used their engine rules.

"Toyota were always the most flexible and constructive, and their attitude was 'we want to see one series, if this is what it's going to take, we're in, let's do this.' Ford's attitude I'd say was broadly similar, maybe a little bit more concerned with costs, but basically receptive.

"Honda were very, very cautious at the meeting, but subsequently their attitude was 'we will never, ever build the IRL engine. The Honda name would never go on that engine.' Which I find a phenomenal irony given what later happened ...

"Mercedes were slightly ambivalent, but they were about to leave and put all their money into F1 anyway. But (Mercedes' engine builder) Ilmor was supportive.

"GM were concerned that they would get rolled over and not be able to compete financially because of the way their motorsport operations were structured. But they certainly weren't a negative factor, they were just a concerned partner of the Speedway.

"So I left that meeting thinking 'okay, it's not perfect, but there's probably enough there to try and move this thing forward.' I told the rest of the CART teams that talks were going on, the dynamics were moving in the right direction, and we'd get back to them once we'd got something. By that time, on the CART side, they just wanted a resolution, so they were happy to let that go.

"But Tony also had to talk to his teams about it for the first time. He sent Leo Mehl, the IRL's executive director, and apparently there was a revolt.

"They were just enraged, because they felt they were going to be put out of business - which may or may not have been true. But the perception was that the CART teams who had all this money and these big-money manufacturers would just roll over them.

"After that it just ran out of steam and Tony announced that he wasn't going to do it.

"It was a huge disappointment. I think there was a real shot then at getting it back together. In the end, Honda did build that engine, so I think they would have fallen into line. I think it could have been done.

"There was immense goodwill on Tony's side - he really wanted to find a solution. But in the end the pressures on him from the IRL teams were too great and that made it impossible for him to do the deal.

"And actually I respect that. I really do. His teams' argument was 'we're the people who supported you, we bought into your philosophy, and now you're going to throw us off the bus.' And you have to say, from their point of view that was fair enough. And Tony was loyal to those who were loyal to him."

Had unification happened then - after just four seasons of separation rather than the 12 that eventually ensued - Craig believes US open-wheel racing would have been in far healthier shape.

"The split had already done a lot of damage, but at that stage there was life in the corpse. I think a lot of investment would have been needed. The TV ratings were really getting abysmal by this time, so there was an awful lot of work to do so. But there was certainly a chance to get it going again.

"We really did try on both sides. Tony was very good, his lawyers were terrific. We hadn't gone into what the value of the IRL assets would have been, but philosophically we were quite close. But in the end, it didn't work out. Which was a blow. A real, real shame."

The collapse of the merger talks left Craig disillusioned. It also proved to be the beginning of the end of his tenure, and the start of CART's decline - although the majority of the disasters that followed came after Craig's departure.

He readily accepts the blame for the Hawaiian Superprix fiasco - a proposed big-money non-championship spectacular that Craig admits he was always sceptical about but supported anyway after seeing the teams' enthusiasm, only for it to collapse at the eleventh hour after the promoter defaulted.

"It was a complete cock-up, I was the CEO and I have to take full responsibility," Craig says. "I'd been there six years by that time, it was a very gruelling experience and I let something go that I shouldn't have.

"I think the biggest damage of the Hawaiian Superprix was to my personal credibility, not so much CART's credibility. It was like 'what is he thinking? What is he doing? Is he asleep?'

"I basically fell out with the teams big time, and that passed on to the board. I was pissed off with them, they were pissed off with me, and I was fed up with the whole thing. I was out of the door in the middle of 2000."

Craig then watched from afar as incidents like the ill-fated decision to race at Texas (a venue Craig had rejected on safety grounds) and pop-off valve controversies of 2001 paved the way for the exodus of teams to the IRL, and CART's eventual bankruptcy and demise.

"I did think 'boy, this is going to be a struggle for whoever comes next,'" he said. "I was struggling. It was really hard to keep the thing going - an incredibly demanding job to manage all these competing components and keep the thing flying.

"But I think with the right management, they could have survived. They had plenty of cash, positive cash-flow and good profits. I don't know what happened, but from the day I left the company, they just didn't seem to make any money at all."

2008: A bright future

Craig's tenure coincided with CART's greatest ever years of racing and competition, but from his side of the office, 1994 to 2000 was dominated by political headaches:

"Running the series at that time was a really, really tough job. I can't say there were many occasions when I thought 'gee, what a lucky guy I am!' to be running CART - although I wish there had been."

But he is far more optimistic about the merged era.

"I don't think that just having the merger and just eliminating confusion is a solution in itself. But boy, it's a big step in the right direction, no question about that.

"It eliminates one huge excuse for mediocrity. I think it will revitalise the Indy 500, of that there's no question. And at its core, that's the race that the rest of the series can be built on."

CART's television ratings plummeted in the late 1990s, and Craig blames the decline squarely on the split - which enraged die-hards and perplexed casual viewers - rather than sports fans' tastes drifting towards NASCAR.

"When baseball had its big strike here, many people turned away from baseball. People have very traditional views about sport, and during the split they saw a lot of the heritage of the sport being undone, and thought 'these people just care about money'.

"It also caused huge confusion for audiences, no question about that. After the IPO we were spending about 10 percent of our revenue on promotion - I think it was up to $12 million by the time I left - just to try and arrest this decline. We were struggling, and it was just horrible."

Craig believes that the priority for the merged IndyCar Series should be to ensure that the on-track product is suitably entertaining, and that this will naturally generate increased interest now that the confusion and bad blood of the schism are no longer distracting audiences.

"The basic elements are back in place. What it needs now is some great, great racing and a solid TV package from a great TV partner, which I'm sure ABC and ESPN will be, and other committed partners to help rebuild the thing.

"What you can't do, and I think a lot of people just didn't get this, is make people watch your sport. You can advertise the hell out of it, but in the end, you've got to want to watch it. You want new fans to come and experience it, but unless they like what they see, they're not going to stay.

"So make sure you give the fans want they want: which is lots of overtaking, lots of colourful cars, and great atmosphere. And I think the merged series is ultimately going to have all of that."

The IRL has been accused of morphing into 'CART-lite' by adopting many of the traits of Craig-era CART that it formerly rejected. Once a stoically all-oval series, George's championship now features several road and street courses and will add more in 2009.

Craig points out that while CART's diverse calendar came about more by accident than design, it proved to be one of the series' major strengths, and should serve as a model for IndyCar.

"Nobody set out to devise a series with a combination of short ovals, superspeedways, road courses and street courses - it just kind of happened through expediency when CART was first set up.

"But it came to be a very, very appealing part of the series' psyche. Our market research always suggested that this was one of the attractive features that differentiated CART from any other series.

"The perception was that if you could race on all these different types of tracks, if you could engineer the same car and same engine to do well on all different kinds of tracks, then you had to be good. That resonated very, very well with our fans.

"It really caught people's imagination and they would be well advised to keep following that model, because it's clearly what the public wants."

An area that concerns Craig more is how IndyCar can find a balance between American and foreign drivers. Only seven US racers have full-time drives in this year's 27-car IRL field - a much greater imbalance than was seen in mid-1990s CART, which was widely criticised for its foreign bias at the time.

Craig frankly admits that he had no idea how to solve this conundrum in his era, and isn't sure what George can do.

"America is a country that likes to see local talent winning. I don't think Emerson Fittipaldi's arrival was seen as a good thing by the Indianapolis crowd.

"There was this ludicrous notion that somehow good American boys were being pushed out by wealthy foreigners. We were in the wealthiest country in the world, and you're telling me that those foreigners have got more money and can push American drivers out of their rides?

"The reality was that the foreigners would quite often work much harder, would bring sponsors with them, and were more innovative, whereas the domestic talent had this feeling of being entitled. Look at a guy like Tony Kanaan - he slept in a karting shop, they used to lock him in at night, because he had no money. You can't tell him that he's some 'rich foreigner'.

"It's actually very hard to start out on an open-wheel career in America. If you're running in Atlantics, let's say, you'll only do 12 races in a year if you're lucky, and those races will be separated by a distance of 4,000 miles, and it will cost you a fortune.

"Whereas someone racing in Formula 3 and living in London will probably do 20 races a year, and most of those races are only three hours away from where they live. So I think to some extent that's why they got blown away, because it's just plain hard to become an open-wheel driver here.

"When I started, there were still plenty of American drivers and we had American champions, but the writing was on the wall, and I wouldn't have had a clue how to resolve that. How do you saying to a racing team 'you've got to take this American driver with no money' when you've got terrifically talented guys like Montoya arriving? I certainly never had a solution."

But overall, Craig sees no reason for pessimism at the moment. He led CART in its halcyon days immediately before the split, and knows what US open wheel racing can achieve when not dogged by politics and acrimony. Rather than resenting the fact that his some-time 'nemesis' has effectively won, Craig is celebrating the resolution of a conflict he wished he could have ended many years earlier.

"I think everybody should be optimistic right now," he concludes. "There's an opportunity here and I wish them well with it."

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