Champ Car: The Long Goodbye

While the US racing merger is in many ways a bright new beginning, it has also marked the end of a once great and much-loved championship, as the Champ Car World Series took its final bow at Long Beach last weekend.

Born as CART, and briefly known as Indycar, the series that ultimately adopted the Champ Car appellation deserves to be remembered for much more than just being defeated by the Indy Racing League.

Its parlous final years do Champ Car a disservice. Over nineteen seasons and 458 races, CART/Champ Car produced some of the finest, fastest and most diverse motorsport ever seen. At its best, it was simultaneously a classically American series pitting generations of homeland legends against each other, a Formula One feeder, and a refuge for those disillusioned by the comparative drabness of the rest of the motorsport world.

All eulogies adopt a generously blinkered view of the departed, and Champ Car certainly had its flaws - many of which have been explored in our previous feature on the damaging split.

And with the merged IndyCar Series already resembling mid-1990s CART in many ways and set to adopt even more of its rival's strengths in the future, Champ Car's spirit will certainly live on, so Long Beach was not an absolute farewell.

But nevertheless, with history set to regard Will Power as Champ Car's last ever race winner, now is the perfect time to take an unashamedly rose-tinted look back at a few of the qualities CART Champ Car should be fondly remembered for, and some of the drivers that made it special.

The Concepts

It started with an essay

In contrast to the many modern series seemingly created on the whim of a major manufacturer, CART Champ Car came into being because a US racing hero decided his beloved sport was being neglected and had to change, so sat down and wrote an incendiary, inspirational open letter.

Dan Gurney's famous 'White Paper' decried the state of American open wheel racing in the late 1970s. He felt it had become a stagnant and irrelevant backwater, in which costs were rising in inverse proportion to sponsorship and prize revenue.

"We as businessmen should be ashamed of ourselves for being involved in a prestigious sport such as Championship racing, with all of its potential, while it is as weak and disorganised as it presently is," Gurney wrote.

He called on it to follow F1 and FOCA's example by improving its organisation, raising its profile, and making the sport more commercially viable and healthier for all parties from teams and drivers, to track owners, sponsors and fans.

Gurney's words struck a chord, particularly with team owners Roger Penske and UE 'Pat' Patrick, and within a year Championship Auto Racing Teams had been formed, broken away from USAC, and created the series that later became known as Champ Car.

In the end, CART may never have quite lived up to the hopes expressed in the White Paper, but Gurney's ideals remain utterly relevant thirty years on.

The world's most diverse championship

CART's priority was always to try and race in the most viable markets - and more by coincidence than design, that resulted in a spectacularly diverse calendar, which proved to be an extremely popular concept amongst fans as well as an outstanding challenge for drivers and teams.

By the mid 1980s, CART champions had to prove themselves on road courses, street tracks, and ovals, with the calendar eventually offering equal amounts of all three.

And there was plenty of variety within those categories. The road courses ranged from Cleveland's expansive, bumpy, airport runways to the ultra-challenging sweeps of Elkhart Lake, while the street schedule encompassed everything from the fast chicanes and long straights of Surfers Paradise, to the sinuous Detroit course.

In contrast to the modern fashion for identical 1.5-mile ovals, the mid-1990s Champ Car schedule quickly dispelled newcomers' notions that all ovals were the same. The one-mile short tracks of Milwaukee and Nazareth were a world away from the flat-out Michigan and Fontana superspeedways or the quirky Gateway and Homestead tracks, while the Rio 'roval' even required braking and downshifting!

Sadly, that variety diminished as ovals slipped off the calendar in Champ Car's final years. But its 1980/90s calendars remain a fine blueprint for a diverse and traditionally American open wheel series.

The international blend

CART began with an all-American field, and ended with virtually no American presence. But at times in-between, it achieved a near-perfect blend of home and foreign talents.

At its best, Champ Car was a resolutely American championship that welcomed talents from abroad to complement the home heroes.

Italian Teo Fabi was the first foreigner to break through, making an impressive stop in CART on the way to F1 in the early 1980s. Former world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, and later Nigel Mansell, then paved the way for an ever-greater influx from overseas, but all the time the newcomers had to beat established US stars like the Andrettis, Unsers, Danny Sullivan and Bobby Rahal. It was only when that balance tipped too far towards the foreigners that the championship suffered.

Champ Car was never going to be an international rival to F1, but in its heyday it became a respected alternative for certain types of European-trained driver. Veterans who had tired of F1 or run out of European opportunities could find a happy new home in the US (Jean Alesi, Rubens Barrichello, Johnny Herbert and Heinz-Harald Frentzen all considered CART opportunities in the late 1990s or early 2000s).

Rising stars who had the talent for F1 but perhaps not the finance or the single-minded focus required found they were more suited to Champ Car. And Williams had no qualms about lending their protege Juan Montoya to Champ Car for a couple of hugely successful years when he couldn't be accommodated in their F1 line-up.

For a few heady seasons CART was simultaneously an American series, an F1 feeder, a retirement home, and an F1 alternative, resulting in a thrillingly diverse mixture of ages, characters, backgrounds and levels of experience. It retained international relevance, without compromising its US identity. It ultimately lost both, but it was great while the balance lasted.

Expecting the unexpected

Champ Car racing wasn't for the purists. The regular yellows, the sometimes amateurish level of farce, and the often variable levels of driving ability led to many exasperating moments - but also some of the most exciting and unpredictable racing ever seen.

CART could be dull, especially in its latter years, but in its mid-1990s heyday the series produced countless unforgettable races. The order on the first lap was rarely anything like the final result, with each race producing a multi-layered, constantly changing, narrative as fluctuating car performance, unexpected full course yellows, incidents and accidents continually shuffled the pack.

The five-car wheel-to-wheel barging match that decided the 1995 Cleveland result, the record-breaking 0.055 seconds that covered the top three at Portland in 1997, and the unpredictable mayhem that seemed to result virtually every year at Elkhart Lake and Surfers Paradise, all enhanced Champ Car's reputation as F1's chaotic, anarchic, but endlessly entertaining cousin.

The cars themselves were key. As F1 switched to grooved tyres and narrow track chassis, CART retained its big, heavy, powerful machines with large slicks and significant underbody aerodynamics. They had a muscular elegance that was very aesthetically pleasing, could withstand plenty of punishment, and didn't suffer too badly from aerodynamic turbulence until the late 1990s. They might not have been pushing technological boundaries forward like F1, but they were the perfect racing machines.

Superspeedway thrillers

CART always had a knack for producing breathtaking wheel to wheel racing on the large ovals. Al Unser Jr beating Scott Goodyear to 1992 Indy victory by 0.043 seconds, or Scott Pruett prevailing over Al Jr at Michigan three years later after swapping the lead countless times in the final laps, were classic examples.

But things really stepped up a gear with the introduction of the Handford wing in 1998. Designed to reduce speeds, it also dramatically increased the slip-streaming possibilities. Its first appearance at Michigan saw the lead change hands a remarkable 62 times - and the official count didn't include the many additional passes on the backstretch. The 2001 Michigan race would raise that record to a staggering 73 changes of leader.

It wasn't to everyone's taste, but watching Juan Montoya and Michael Andretti running wheel to wheel, inches apart, at 230mph as they diced for Michigan victory on the final lap in 2000 (with another four cars right behind them), no-one could argue that it wasn't supremely entertaining.

The Inspirational Drivers

Rick Mears: A class act

So many of CART's most famous names have been flamboyant drivers or members of legendary dynasties. Its first champion, Rick Mears, was neither. He was just extremely talented, a deeply intelligent driver, and probably the greatest open wheel oval racer of all time.

The unassuming Mears, who came close to a Brabham F1 drive alongside Nelson Piquet but baulked at the notion of paying for the seat, joined Penske just before CART's formation and never left the team. Even after his eventual retirement in 1992, he stayed on as a driver coach.

Mears used his trademark patient style - not risking too much in the early laps but allowing the races to come to him and then striking at the end - to deliver three titles for Penske in the first four years of CART.

More would probably have followed, but for the Sanair accident that shattered his feet in 1984. The legacy of this crash would subsequently hamper him on the increasingly prevalent road and street courses. But that didn't stop him winning at Laguna Seca in 1989 (or starring on many other road events), and he always played down his physical disadvantage.

He scored his fourth and final Indy 500 victory in 1991 with a breathtaking late outside line pass on Michael Andretti. Seven years after an accident that should have ended his career, he was still winning with the same combination of precision, patience and skill that had made him the dominant driver of the early 1980s.

The great dynasties: Unsers and Andrettis

Nearly a quarter of all Champ Car races were won by just two families: the Unsers and the Andrettis. Between them, brothers Bobby and Al Unser, the latter's son Al Jr, Mario Andretti, son Michael and nephew John claimed 107 wins and kept their family rivalry at the forefront of CART throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

This was a contest not just between two legendary American racing dynasties, but between the generations within those dynasties - especially in 1985, when Al Unser Sr beat Al Unser Jr to the title by just one point.

Al Jr and Michael were capable of challenging their respective fathers virtually from the moment they took to the CART grid, and as Mario and Al's careers faded, the sons continued the battle into a new era, with 'Little Al' taking his first title in 1990 after a long contest with Michael.

Their fathers didn't retire quietly, though - with 'Big Al' continued to race part-seasons into the early 1990s, and taking a podium at Indianapolis in 1992 aged 52. Mario, who was teamed with Michael at Newman/Haas from 1989 through 1992, was still winning at the age of 53 in 1993, and only stepped out of the cockpit a year later.

When Jimmy Vasser became Champ Car's last ever American-born champion in 1996, he had to overcome Al Jr and Michael Andretti in a final round showdown to clinch it. That proved to be the last year of the great Unser/Andretti rivalry, with Unser Jr's results subsequently slumping amid personal problems, although Andretti continued to win until departing for the IRL after 2002.

This left Champ Car without any Andretti or Unser representation, which perhaps should have been taken as an ominous sign. The CART 'soap opera' had lost its two central families, and would not run much longer.

Whether the rivalry will be resumed with yet another generation remains to be seen. Michael's son Marco is already an IndyCar winner, but Al Jr's son Al Unser III has so far struggled to advance his career beyond Indy Lights.

Mansell mania

Reigning world champion Nigel Mansell's astonishing decision to turn his back on F1 and switch to CART Indycars for 1993 proved to be the breakthrough the series required to alert the rest of the world to its excellent racing product and diverse challenge.

With hindsight, it's actually surprising that the move worked so well for CART. After all, Mansell won the US title at the first attempt, while CART ace Michael Andretti failed spectacularly in F1 when he made the opposite move the same year.

On paper, their differing fortunes seemed to suggest that F1 drivers were head and shoulders above their CART counterparts - yet the focus of the media attention was more on the superior spectacle, competitiveness and atmosphere in America. The 1993 CART Indycar season wasn't anywhere near as open, entertaining or close-fought as 1996 to 1999 would be, but it still beat contemporary F1 on all three counts.

Although many international fans switched off when Mansell turned his back on America in 1994, the influx of worldwide attention had been so enormous (even Mansell's test days were international media circuses) that CART still emerged with a much larger profile than it had before the Briton's arrival. And Mansell's endorsement also awoke many other worldwide drivers to CART's qualities.

History relates that Mansell's main contribution to CART was in terms of exposure, but his driving performance shouldn't be neglected. Like Montoya six years later, he took to the ovals with remarkable speed and ease, rewrote the 'rookie' record books, and forced the established drivers to raise their game. It was in many ways a greater achievement than his cruise to the 1992 F1 title in a superior car.

Zanardi magic

But for a tangle with a backmarker at Vancouver in 1996, Alex Zanardi would have taken three straight titles in his first Champ Car sojourn, but it was the manner of his success - rather than the undoubtedly impressive statistics - that placed him amongst US open wheel racing's all-time legends.

Zanardi's talent was for achieving the seemingly impossible: audaciously stealing Laguna Seca victory from Bryan Herta at the Corkscrew on the last lap in 1996, charging from last to victory at Cleveland a year later, and recovering from a lap down to win the 1998 Long Beach race in a car with bent suspension...

No matter how hopeless the situation appeared, Zanardi could never be overlooked; he always remained capable of conjuring up a result in the face in apparently insurmountable adversity.

The passion that inspired his against-the-odds successes was also sometimes his undoing. But for every controversy, there were many more moments of awe-inspiring genius, as Zanardi usually channelled his red mist to supreme effect.

Although not a bad oval racer, the road and street tracks were certainly Zanardi's natural habitat, and the scene of 13 of his 15 wins. He once remarked that he would enjoy Michigan far more if it was interrupted by a hairpin so he could out-brake his rivals rather than just drafting them - but that lack of enthusiasm didn't stop him winning there in 1997.

Unsettled by his F1 failure and a year on the sidelines, driving for Mo Nunn's fledgling team rather than Ganassi's well-sorted squad, and hamstrung by the harder tyres of the Firestone monopoly, Zanardi's 2001 comeback was depressing. Ironically the day he recaptured his dazzling form was the day he lost his legs and nearly his life - an event which led to his most heroic achievements yet.

Greg Moore: What might have been

Ignore the underwhelming statistics. Greg Moore was Champ Car's Stefan Bellof - or perhaps even its Gilles Villeneuve. A driver of immense, otherworldly, talent whose tragically early death came before he got his hands on championship-calibre machinery.

The Canadian was the inverse of his contemporary Zanardi in that while he was still a fine road course driver, it was his oval form that set him apart. His high-speed car control was breathtaking - he collected a flat-out, 360 degree spin at Michigan in 1996 with barely any time loss, and somehow stayed out of the wall with water pouring onto his tyres from a holed radiator at Nazareth a year later. It was like rallying on an oval - and it was devastatingly effective. His dominant pole lap at Homestead in 1998 left the rest of the field reeling in amazement.

At the time of his death at Fontana in 1999, Moore had signed for the Penske team that won the next two CART titles. He was set to become their new Mears, and would have still been winning for them now - had he lived he would be just 33 years old today. He also lost out more than most from the CART/IRL split, for he would surely have thrived at Indianapolis.

The circumstances of his death added to the Moore legend. Coming through the field at Fontana after missing qualifying following a scooter accident that left him with a broken finger, he crashed while completing a four-abreast outside line pass, having already made up 16 places in nine laps. Even as his car flew headlong towards the inside wall, Moore was still trying to correct the slide. He never gave up.

Paul Tracy - Champ Car's last hero

Though many would debate whether it was actually a good thing, Paul Tracy kept Champ Car alive as CART collapsed. With every other big name jumping ship for the IRL, the hugely popular Canadian's loyalty gave the beleaguered series a focal point to rally round - and while his results may have fluctuated, 'PT' never failed to entertain.

Capable of dominating three races then crashing out of the next three, Tracy's blend of genius and mayhem kept him in the limelight throughout his 17 years in Champ Car. Many will only remember the accidents (and he must hold some kind of record for tangling with teammates), but Tracy's raw talent should not be underestimated. Few could come back from 23rd to win at Elkhart Lake, as he did in 2000.

His feisty rivalry with Sebastien Bourdais enlivened a period that could otherwise have been dismissed as a case of one clearly superior driver and team dominating over a depleted field. Yet throughout Tracy's war of words with Bourdais (much of it played out via his unforgettable autosport.com column, Paul Position), he always showed due respect for his nemesis' ability, if not his personality...

Tracy will always divide opinions, and perhaps his importance to Champ Car history was artificially inflated because he became the last man standing as other big personalities defected. But there is no doubting the talismanic role he played in the series' last days, or how much his mercurial, forthright presence would add to the merged championship.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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