The Observer

Welcome back, Champ Car. It'll be good to see you in Europe again. But Zolder and Assen? What are you thinking? Of all the circuits to choose from on this side of the pond, you go for these two.

OK, I admit there is some market forces logic at work here. Both the Belgian and Dutch tracks should draw big crowds. Robert Doornbos and Jan Heylen will boost local interest, while Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, Simon Pagenaud and Tristan Gommendy, Swiss Neel Jani and Brits Justin Wilson, Ryan Dalziel, Dan Clarke and Katherine Legge make this the most Euro-centric Champ Car field ever.

But still, Zolder and Assen? The Belgian track, which hosts the Champ Car World Series on August 26, has some limited charm if you look beyond the concrete, but it's hardly conducive to classic racing.

As for Assen, it's a bike circuit, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong. I am genuinely delighted that Champ Car is coming back. But just like last time, I fear they've got the wrong tracks.

The most recent visit was to Brands Hatch in 2003, which should have been fantastic. But for safety reasons, it was decided the Champ Car boys should be limited to the pokey Indy Circuit rather than the glorious Grand Prix loop.

Sure, it was fitting given that the Indy circuit gained its name from the USAC races held as a double-header with Silverstone back in 1978. But Formula Renaults can't overtake on the short circuit at Brands, never mind big, fat Champ Cars.

The race was a dull Bank Holiday procession, made worse by fuel restrictions that never allowed the drivers to really go full-pelt at Brands. It was a terrible waste of a great opportunity.

Will this time be as disappointing? No, I'm sure it won't. The Champ Car circus will put on a show and the races should at least be interesting. But will they be truly memorable, events that will be looked back on in years to come as something special? I doubt it.

What Champ Car should be doing on its European return is racing at the two tracks it visited in September 2001: the Euro Speedway Lausitz in Germany and Rockingham in England. Now, those back-to-back weekends are unforgettable - for the best and worst reasons.

Sorry, for a second there I forgot. Champ Car has given up racing on ovals to concentrate purely on road and street courses. It has forsaken the great diversity that made it stand apart from anything else in the world of racing to apparently work to its own strengths. Eh?

Now, given that the previously all-oval IRL IndyCar Series has now embraced road and street tracks, the arch rival has taken over Champ Car's old unique mantle. Funny world.

Champ Car still has a lot going for it, but the loss of ovals from its schedule is sad - particularly when you look back at those Euro oval races in '01.

That first Lausitz race will forever be remembered for the awful accident that cost Alex Zanardi his legs, of course. Coming just four days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, the series was enveloped in a dark gloom that did not lift when the series turned up in the UK for the following week's race at Rockingham.

But that week in Northamptonshire between September 20-22 was so memorable - eventually for the right reasons.

For the opening two days, it looked like Britain's first major oval race since Brooklands shut in 1939 was going to descend into farce. Cancellation was on the cards.

But on the Saturday afternoon Champ Car delivered exactly what we had all anticipated: a great, colourful, super-fast oval race.

Rockingham was the dream of one man. Peter Davies first began work on bringing US oval racing to the UK in 1990. It took him 10 years, but he realised his ambition - and right up to that first Champ Car race in '01 it was hard to believe it was real.

When I first met Davies, I wasn't sure. He had the gift of the gab, was great company and clearly had a vision. But this was a huge project with all the obvious pitfalls of planning permission, logistics, black-hole expenses and so on.

But it was real. He had the city investors, everything was costed, and on the site of an old quarry near unfashionable Corby, ground was broken.

Davies gave me a guided tour around the building site on a cold, wet day in 2000. Everything was a mess of sticky clay mud, with the oddly familiar concrete walls giving a hint of an oval track in-build.

I was writing an article on the project and typically, he had a 'great idea' for a photo. We climbed into a huge piece of piping wearing hard hats. I ripped the buttons off my shirt climbing in and wondered what the hell I was doing here.

But the dream did not fade. The speedbowl began to take shape, and then CART announced that it was coming to England for a race the following year. It was really going to happen. Wasn't it?

Sadly, by September '01 Davies and his equally ebullient marketing man Christopher Tate were out of the Rockingham picture. Main investor Guy Hands wanted a management reshuffle and the man who had dreamt up this crazy idea in the first place was elbowed out. Rockingham lost a bit of its charm before it was even finished.

But CART was still coming and we prepared for something we never thought was possible. Autosport editor Laurence Foster agreed to provide a team of pitlane reporters for the circuit commentary, and suddenly friend and colleague Tim Scott and I found ourselves under a bit of pressure ...

We turned up at Rockingham on the Wednesday night. We were amazed. The Champ Car clan had decamped and we found ourselves transported to an oval that just had to be somewhere in the American mid-west, not an industrial wasteland in middle England. This couldn't be Northamptonshire, surely. We pinched ourselves. It was real.

What really brought us down to earth was the familiar weather. Holding an oval race in the UK always carried the risk of being hit by rain. Deciding to run it in September was asking for trouble - and that's exactly what CART got.

The Thursday and Friday practice days were dry and clear, but the rain from earlier in the week had caused a major headache. We were introduced to the term 'weepers', when the water table is so high it begins to seep through the asphalt of a race circuit.

You can't run on ovals when it is damp. Michael Andretti likened the patches that appeared to black ice.

For two days the teams and drivers sat around, slowly losing their patience with this place. After the horrors of 9/11 and Lausitz, all they wanted to do was go home.

But for the crowds that turned up, the time had to be filled by something. That's where Foster, Scott and Smith came in.

We interviewed everything and everyone that moved in the open paddock during those two days - at least twice. Being from US racing, the drivers and team owners were polite, friendly and happy to talk (they didn't have much else to do).

The only dissenter was Paul Tracy. Tim and I had always admired this feisty Canadian, but approached him for an interview over the PA with some trepidation - for good reason.

Can we ask a few questions for the fans, we asked? "No," he replied. Oh. We froze. He was smaller than we had expected, but his piercing eyes cut right through us.

"Nothing against you guys, but this place is f****** shit. If you interview me, I'll say nothing good and that won't be good for anyone."

He smiled apologetically and walked away. We breathed a sigh of relief and laughed. Brilliant.

We weren't laughing at night though. Laurence had got us one of those big US motorhomes to stay in to really live the full experience - and we were parked up next to some of the drivers on the infield.

Great - until CART's jet driers set to work to dry out the 'weepers'. They had to do it, of course, and they blasted away around the track all night. We didn't get a wink of sleep.

Foster got more than Tim and I because, being the boss, he had blagged the only proper bed. But he had bought us and other members of the Autosport crew the second largest order of KFC Corby had ever seen. The biggest order had been for a wedding, apparently ...

By Saturday, we were tired and nervous, wondering whether this race was ever going to happen. But suddenly it emerged that the track had dried enough for practice. The cars were heading out!

All the anxiety was replaced by sheer excitement. The Champ Cars' 2.65-litre turbo engines wailed around the 1.5-mile speedbowl, averaging over 210mph. Incredible! We pinched ourselves again.

Then Foster pulled another great stroke. He'd lined Tim up to be the master of ceremonies for race day! Tim, a humble journo, with just a bit of TV and radio work behind him and no formal training in talking to 45,000 people ...

Poor Tim. He was a bundle of nerves. But he almost carried it off until the final moments before the race.

He was cued in to say "And now for the most famous words in racing ..." It was down to Mrs Hands, wife of owner Guy, to say "Gentleman, start your engines".

It was all choreographed so that the teams would fire up the cars as soon as the words had passed Mrs Hands's lips. Except CART's timing was out.

Tim did his stuff: "Now for the most famous words in racing." And ... silence. He'd been cued in a full 10 seconds too early. Afterwards he was a crumpled, humiliated shadow of himself. I made him feel better by silently giggling.

As for the race, well, after everything Rockingham and CART had been through, it finally lived up to expectations. It was a cracker.

And what a quality field. Here's a rundown of some of the drivers who went into battle that day: de Ferran, Brack, da Matta, Castroneves, Andretti, Tracy, Vasser, Kanaan, Franchitti, Servia, Papis, Moreno, Tagliani, Herta, Carpentier, Gugelmin, Dixon, Fernandez, Fittipaldi, Junqueira ...

Real quality. The series had yet to feel the force of decline, and the lure of the IRL that would weaken it so dramatically in the coming years.

Overtaking was tough that day because three of the four corners were flat-chat, but it didn't stop title protagonists Kenny Brack and Gil de Ferran putting on one hell of a show.

It was only decided at the last corner of the last lap as de Ferran's Penske Reynard-Honda swept around Brack's Rahal Lola-Ford to steal a fabulous victory in the country so close to his heart.

ROCKINGHAM CAN RIVAL BRITISH GP, Autosport proclaimed the following Thursday. We were all still on such a high.

But even though CART returned in 2002 for another race, and the Autosport pitlane crew came back for more, it would prove to be the swansong for high-level oval racing in the UK.

Dario Franchitti delivered a home win for the enthusiastic crowd, his first on an oval - but it wasn't enough to convince CART to come back.

The series was in the throes of major financial trouble at this time and Rockingham was losing money. Without a man like Davies to fire the place with passion, Champ Car at 'The Rock' was history.

Lausitz did hold another race after the Brands disappointment in '03, but that was it for Champ Car in Europe.

So it is great that they are back this year. It's not the Champ Car World Series we all knew and loved back in '01, but these are still big, exciting, hairy single-seaters. There's plenty to look forward to.

It just that they should just be racing on Europe's ovals, that's all.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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