GK on CART's title battle

This weekend's third Target Grand Prix of Chicago at Chip Ganassi's 1.029-mile Chicago Motor Speedway starts the year's second half. Five or six drivers still have serious championship hopes with another four or five capable of making a run at the title if they are able to gain any momentum over the next three or four races. CART may be mired in political dystopia but no other major motor racing championship can equal the Champ Car series for its depth and ferocity of competition.

Dario Franchitti's second place in last weekend's Michigan 500 helped propel him to second in the championship, just three points behind series leader Kenny Brack. Also within close range of Brack are Helio Castroneves, Michael Andretti, Cristiano da Matta and defending champion Gil de Ferran. Sixth-placed de Ferran is only twenty-six points behind Brack and with twenty points for a win in CART, any of these guys has a serious shot at winning this year's title.

"As far as a championship, it's very early days," says Franchitti. "It's far too early to talk about championships because anybody could win it, literally anybody could win the championship. It's so open and it's really too early to be looking at the bigger picture. I think we've got to be looking at one race at a time. Right now for me, it's no different than it was at the first race of the season.

"I think we've got to take every weekend as it comes. I've got a certain amount of confidence in the fact that what we're doing we believe is right. We're definitely not trying to second-guess ourselves. We're quite confident in the direction we're taking, so from that point of view we're gathering momentum. But I think I've been driving the same, even last year. The whole time I've been driving the same. Things may have gelled more as a unit and our luck has certainly improved. Hopefully, that will continue to the end of the season."

Team boss Barry Green has tremendous confidence in Franchitti. "I'm a real believer in Dario Franchitti. He's an all-rounder, not just a road racer. The guy is brilliant on ovals and one of these days he'll win an oval race and there will be many more to come after that. Dario hasn't won on the ovals, not because he's not fast enough. He has been plenty fast enough but he hasn't had the opportunities for different reasons, not necessarily his fault.

"He drove a brilliant race at Michigan," Green adds. "He also drove a brilliant race at Motegi, but we let him down there, and he drove a brilliant race at Milwaukee but we had a bit of a glitch in the pits and he stalled the car and lost a lap. But clearly he was the fastest car on the track in Milwaukee and even a lap down, he still drove beautifully.

"Dario and the team have had their chances on the ovals but haven't quite got the job done on raceday. He's an excellent test driver and given time and given the equipment and the people he will get the car right and when it's right, look out."

Franchitti is delighted to be working this year with race engineer Ian Watt, a fellow Scot.

"That's one of our strongest elements," Dario says. "We both want the car to do the same thing. We understand each other and that's a big plus for me. I need to have the car working the way I want it. I think any driver does if he's going to perform. So I'm pretty happy with that.

"Ian's done a great job. There's nobody in the pit lane I'd rather have on my car because he works incredibly hard and it's working well. It's definitely one of the big positives of our team. Ian's certainly helped but at the same time the infrastrucure of Team Green has been there all the time. Kyle Moyer has gone from being my crew chief to my team manager. He's been a constant, someone who's been there the whole time. Without Kyle, he's one of the mainstays of Team Green. Again everybody's doing their job and that's what it's going to take. No mistakes, no slip-ups, everybody doing their job, and I include myself very much in that picture."

Franchitti believes Team Green's expansion to three cars this year with Michael Andretti joining him and Paul Tracy has made the team stronger.

"It really has," Dario declares. "I think Barry, Kim [Green] and Kyle have done a great job in the way they've planned it out and executed the thing. I haven't noticed any difference. The only difference I've noticed is that when I come back to the truck and we talk about the set-up we've got two other guys to draw from, not just one.

"It's one of those things people were waiting for it to go wrong and there may be days when the three of us might end up in an accident. Anything can happen, but I think we've proved it works very, very well. We've just got keep getting the best from what we have."

While Franchitti has surged forward over the last two months, taking points from five of the last six races, championship leader Brack has had a torrid time since winning at Milwaukee in early June. Brack has eked-out just thirteen points from the last six races and threw away a possible victory in last weekend's Michigan 500 when he and teammate Max Papis crashed with just 18 laps to go.

"I didn't view it as any more dangerous a manoeuvre than the previous thousand in that race," Brack observes. "The whole race was like that. But we touched wheels, my left rear with Max's right front. It was very unfortunate because you never know who is going to win a race like that. It's about timing and what happens on the last quarter of a lap, but for sure both of us had been running strong all day and I think it's safe to say we would have had a very good chance of winning.

"At least we could have had some very good points, but it was very sad. You've got to learn from these experiences and then move on. You can't change the past but you can change the future."

Brack doesn't believe the accident could have been avoided by laying back a little: "You can always go back and say you shouldn't have done that because it turned out that way. But on the other hand, as I said, we passed like that all through the race. It didn't look bad. It ended up bad but it looked OK when I first started it. It wasn't like, 'Shit! This is a big chance!' There was plenty of room there. I was on the outside. I wasn't about to run into anybody.

"In the beginning of the race it got a little silly. There were five or six cars and we were right in the middle of it so I backed out of it. But it's like you're doomed if you do or doomed if you don't because if you fall back a little but then another pack of four or five cars catches up to you and then you're in the same situation again."

Brack knows the most important thing for him over the next few months is to make the chequered flag.

"Finish races, get points, win some more races," Brack recites. "I think that's a good recipe. It's easier said than done obviously. Sometimes I look at things and I say, 'Oh man! We really have hard luck.'

"If you look at the last stint we've been very competitive everywhere but we've had so many problems that have prevented us from getting points at Michigan, Toronto, Portland. But my luck is that no one else has made any big strides either. It's tightened up yes, but we're still in the championship lead and you've gotta look at that as luck because if Team Penske or some other team had everything down we would not be in the championship lead. So we've had luck in other ways than being lucky to win races."

Brack also makes the point that CART is so competitive that a slightly off-colour day or weekend can spell disaster.

"I think you have a lot of ups and downs because if you're just a little bit off here, for whatever reason, you're not going to be second or third, you're going to be twenty-second or twenty-third. Then people say, 'Christ! That's bad weekend.' Well it is but you know, it's just because of the competitiveness of this series.

"It's an extremely difficult series to be really competitive in because there are so many different tracks, so many variables, so much emphasis on set-up and the team to find the best combination in all types of different situations. The drivers are switching from superspeedway mode to short oval mode to street course mode in a matter of days, and we race almost every weekend. It's tough on the teams and crews and the drivers too. It's tough on everybody. This is a very difficult championship."

Team Rahal's general manager Scott Roembke believes Brack's deep self-confidence is his greatest asset.

"I think his mental toughness is his big strength," Roembke says. "Kenny's won championships in other leagues and he's been in championship contention. I think he'll be fine. There's no doubt that both he and Max were devastated after Michigan and I think the devastation wasn't necessarily the situation of the circumstances of the crash.

"We dominated from rolling the cars off the truck on Thursday. We were best Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday in the pitstops. You could almost feel that this was going to be really good. I think they were more disappointed in the fact that the team had really come together and gelled and had proven it had given them both high quality race cars, but in the end we came away with nothing.

"I think we have to be competitive like we have been and I think we've got to be smart and obviously we can't have mistakes either mentally, physically or on the track. You've got to take advantage of your opportunities," he adds.

Roembke believes that Papis who's currently 11th in the championship, 40 points behind his team mate, still has a chance at winning the Champ Car title.

"The way this is breaking down I look at Max as every bit as into it as everyone else at this point," Roembke says. "It's obvious the car is ultra-competitive on ovals and there's four of those left, so if he was to run off and win all four, we'll look up and see where that is. We've just got to focus on doing what we know how to do."

Barry Green also believes all three of his drivers are still in the championship frame with Andretti currently ranked fourth in points and Paul Tracy eighth. "Three cars well in the top ten at the mid-point of the season, I'm pleased," Green remarks.

"We've got three very fast guys, three fast cars and three great teams and I would say we still have three very strong chances of winning the championship. So I'm very pleased at how well the three groups are working together. All I can say is it's going to be one heck of a battle from here to the end and anyone of ten or 12 guys can still win the championship."

Sunday in Chicago may give us a better idea of what to expect from CART's championship battle. But so many drivers and teams are capable of winning races that it will probably be another month or two before we know who the real title protagonists will be.