Texas boss unhappy with CART

"Both Texas Motor Speedway and its fans are frustrated by what occurred here today," Gossage stated. "But let me be clear that the Speedway and its fans never want an event to be held in which the competitors are placed in a position of unnecessary risk. Over the last two years, I think our sport has dealt with enough tragedy, and we don't need to add anything to that.

"But the bottom line point is CART should have known. We questioned the speed in meetings, in letters. We even offered some of our own suggestions about what to do to the cars. On April 21, I got a letter from Joe Heitzler saying CART is ready, willing and able to run the race. That was in response to some of the questions that we were still raising as recently as 10 days ago about the cars and the speeds."

CART attempted to implement a plan developed Saturday night to slow the cars by reducing turbo boost and adding a large wicker to the rear wing. But Gossage agreed that the measures were too little, too late.

"All the practice was run on Friday and Saturday, and it wasn't until Saturday night, 18 hours before the green flag was set to fall, that CART expressed this problem to us," Gossage said. "There was never any discussion about cancelling the race on Saturday night. We did not demand that this race be run today. We asked and were kept informed by CART about the technical specs, but never this weekend did we demand that CART run this race. Texas Motor Speedway and its fans have suffered tremendously. We will be meeting in the near future to consider our options.

"I'm very proud of everyone at TMS. We met or exceeded all of the demands that CART demanded. This race track was ready to race in the fashion that CART told us it needed to be in, and I'm just frustrated that it didn't happen."

Gossage said that around 57,000 tickets had been sold for the event, though 48,000 of those were season ticket holders who may or may not have attended the CART race.

"When I got the phone call at 11:15 this morning, people were lined up to the road to buy tickets," Gossage said. "We were gonna have a hell of a day. I think we would have had a crowd of 65,000 and that's an impressive when it fills Texas Stadium for a Cowboys game. That's something to be proud of.

"A lawsuit against CART is an option," Gossage added. "We've certainly invested millions of dollars, made changes to the race track and things of that nature, at CART's request, and we have a contract to run a CART race on April 29, 2001. They're not running a race on April 29, 2001, but I don't know that we're ever going to get to that point. But several million dollars is going to have to be resolved here, because CART got the sanctioning money up front. I think Joe Heitzler is a stand-up guy, and we're going to work real close with him because I think he's working real hard to make this thing right."

Gossage said using the TMS road course was not an option for when the Champ Cars return. "Our contract specifies a race on the oval," he said. "We're an oval track, and we will not consider a race on the road course.

"There's a credibility issue between CART and Texas Motor Speedway, and between CART and the fans. That won't make it easy," he added.

"I think everyone had the best intentions, it just didn't come off. I think the world of Joe Heitzler. He's a first-class guy, and I hope he has the strength ­ literally ­ to carry this thing and right this ship and push it forward every day. I personally wouldn't have that job for a million dollars. They have a great, great product and great talent. It's just heartbreaking for a race fan like me to find out there isn't a race today. They need to find a way to go forward and have their races and not have things like this and Brazil occur. Fans don't believe you after awhile, and that's unfortunate."