Memories of Indycar's golden era

The competition and machinery of Indycar racing between 1993 and 2001 provided some of the best highlights in American motorsport history.

As part of our celebration, AUTOSPORT asked some of the stars of that period, including five champions, for their memories of CART's greatest era.

Many picked out their best races, but the overwhelming impression was that of the cars. With around 1000bhp by the end of the era, the turbocharged monsters certainly provided a challenge for some of the best drivers in the world...

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA

Those were good years. There was a lot of competition: in 1999 we had a tyre war, which I'm reminded of when everybody runs the red tyres now in IndyCar. The cars had a lot of grip, there was a lot of horsepower, they were fun to drive.

The current cars are also fun to drive, but they're more like 'momentum' cars. The CART cars were 'hang on' cars. And I was lucky enough to drive them. I drove a car with, you know, 950 horsepower.

The Ganassi cars were really dominant for a few years, and it was fun to be a part of that. But the best thing was how quick we were on the ovals. We used to get to 250mph in the draft, and that was pretty amazing.

My last CART race was at Fontana and we used to call those superspeedways - we only ran at Michigan and Fontana. So we got to Fontana and we hadn't driven one of those tracks in six months, didn't test or anything, and we go there, and I remember, you do one slow lap and then you start to build it up, and after three laps I STILL hadn't gone wide open. And I was thinking 'you pussy, just hold the thing open'.

So I held it wide open through Turns 3 and 4. For some reason I looked at the signal and it was 'voom' [makes hand signal of something passing at warp speed]. And my foot came off the throttle! I came in and said, 'oh my God, I'd forgotten how fast these are'. And two minutes later, it's all back to normal.

It was the same in Formula 1. I was lucky enough to drive the V10s, and when you took the whole month of December off and then got back in the car for the first test, those first five laps were the most fun laps of the whole year. You're trying to go wide open and your feet are coming off, and your brain says, 'no way'. Then you adapt to it, and that's it.

JACQUES VILLENEUVE

Emerson Fittipaldi was my hero from when I was seven years old. Apparently, I could say 'Emerson Fittipaldi' before I could say daddy, so to race against him, Mario Andretti and also Nigel Mansell, who was someone I respected when I was growing up through racing, was amazing.

That's the biggest recollection I have of racing at that time: to compete against those guys, in that environment was just incredible.

ALEX ZANARDI

When I drove my last race for Ganassi at Fontana in 1998, the last race of the championship which was worth a million dollars - Marlboro had put up this prize for the last race - and it came down to the last lap with green and white flags together.

Greg Moore was leading, and my team-mate Jimmy Vasser and I both drafted him and passed him just after the line. We turned in with Jimmy leading and me in second, and I probably had an opportunity to pass Jimmy back, but I saw that Greg was coming back very rapidly on the both of us so I decided to try to make sure that he would not get clean air.

I moved over towards his line to make him lift a little; just blocking his line a little bit, and Jimmy was able to run away. And seeing my team-mate winning made me more happy than you can imagine, and I clearly remember the cool-down lap, when we were celebrating, asking myself 'how can I be so happy for somebody else's win?' And the answer was simply because it was Jimmy Vasser. I wouldn't have felt that for anybody else, I'm sure.

Jimmy's win rescued his championship campaign, because with that result he stepped from fifth to second in the points. You don't have to be selfish, it is not a duty.

At that point I had already announced that I was going to go to Williams to drive in Formula 1. But that day I was so happy for Jimmy winning the race that I really questioned myself; I really questioned whether I'd done the right thing.

GIL DE FERRAN

There was so much power, and the last two years - 2000 and 2001 - the cars and the engines were so developed, it was a very cool car to drive. It didn't matter how many times you drove the car, every time you sat in it you were like, 'hold on, readjust'.

It was challenging to get to the limit, it was challenging to drive at a very high level all the time. I wouldn't dare to say that it's not challenging now, because it always is.

On the street circuits, it was very often hard to go flat between the corners. You were controlling wheelspin all the time. You needed a certain amount of bravery, especially at certain circuits. There were special techniques.

The diversity wasn't quite as accentuated as it was in F1 but everyone had slightly different cars. The cars were very nicely made, particularly when we went to Penske - Penske used to put a lot of effort in, even though they weren't making the cars anymore. Penske had a huge hand in their cars, and they were beautiful.

I enjoyed the diversity of cars and tyres and engines, and the relative freedom that you had - within the constraints of the rules - to do different things.

JIMMY VASSER

As an American driver, CART was everything I dreamed of. I ran Atlantics in '91, and while I didn't win the championship, I won every race that I finished. I was going to go and do F3000, because there weren't any Americans going that way. And then I had an offer to go and do CART. And that had been my dream.

I'd always wanted to go to Europe because nobody was going and they have an attitude in Formula 1 that Americans can't do it. So I wanted to be that guy. But you have to go. You can't go from Indycar, you have to do F3000, or GP2 as it is now.

So that was in 1992. But when you throw the Indy 500 into the mix for an American, and CART was big then. Real big. So that was always my dream. Pulling out of the pits and seeing the rear wing of Emerson Fittipaldi, or Rick Mears ... 'shit, that's Mario Andretti ahead of me, are you kidding me?'. That kind of thing.

Then 1993 was another part-season but I did more races and I had my first podium at Phoenix, and it was Mario's last victory. It was kind of cool. I have a picture of that that I still cherish.

And the machine was a beast. The tyres weren't that good, and there was no traction control at the time, then we dealt with traction control and trying to understand it and getting it to work. And we were trying to contain, well they never gave you real numbers, but we had maybe 1000 horsepower. We ended up over 240mph on the big tracks on average speed.

DARIO FRANCHITTI

When I was a Mercedes driver in the DTM we used to watch the Indycar races because Greg Moore was a Mercedes driver. Then Jan Magnussen went over for a few races in '96 and when he came back he said: "Man, if you ever get the chance to go over there you've got to do it. The cars are brilliant, it's so much fun." That was how it came about for me.

The performance of the cars is the main thing that sticks with me. I remember watching at an oval for the first time, and Gil de Ferran was driving. He came past and I thought 'that's not that impressive'. Well, he was bedding in his brakes wasn't he! The next lap he went past and I couldn't believe it. The speed was terrifying.

The thing that sticks in my mind about those cars is that they never...ever stopped accelerating. They just didn't. They were tricky things to drive. If they wiggled once and you didn't catch it then you were in the wall. From a driver's perspective there was nothing quite like wringing the neck of one of those cars with soft tyres on a street course, or a qualifying lap at Mid-Ohio, woah.

I remember doing a tyre test at Portland for Firestone, and to this day I've never experienced grip or speed like it. We went to Texas and the cars were too fast. In testing we actually calculated the track distance wrong; we didn't realise how fast we were going - we were doing 237 mph average! No wonder we were blacking out - those cars were just off the hooks, they were absolutely insane, and to tie a lap together at a street courses or a short oval, any of these places, god, it was a challenge. They were fantastic.

It was a really cool time to be involved. There were some golden periods of Indycar racing and the mid-1990s was one. As a young driver I had to forget that I was at the front with guys like Andretti, Zanardi, Vasser, Al Jr. That took a bit of getting used to.

I don't think they really felt the effects of the split until probably the start of 2000. I think it took that long. But that really...that ripped the heart out of the whole thing, and it's only now starting to rebuild.

MICHAEL ANDRETTI

It was frustrating to miss the 1993 season from an Indycar standpoint because I think I could have won every race that year. It was tough, but it was great to come back in 1994 when Chip Ganassi gave me a chance, winning my first race back and beating Nigel Mansell.

The cars were great. There was always something new, it wasn't a spec car. It was a fun time to be a driver and engineer because you could be creative. You could suggest things that you wanted, and they were able to build it and make it work. It was a fun time. When I look back I think, 'wow, that was really expensive for the owners'. It certainly wasn't cheap to run in the series back then.

From the driver standpoint that [technical freedom] wasn't a good thing, because if you didn't have the good stuff, you weren't going to be able to get the results. But it was fun when you had the advantage, I tell you that.

Then you come to the mid-1990s and the split happens. It was so frustrating to be caught up in all of those politics. I lost the opportunity to try to win Indy for five years in a row. That was a really sad time for the series.

PAUL TRACY

Obviously winning the championship [in 2003] was huge for me, and winning the races in Canada were also great - winning Toronto a couple times and I won in Vancouver three times.

The crowds were always behind me. I'd won a couple of races already coming into Toronto [in '93], so my confidence was up. I knew coming in it was my first real shot at my home race. The expectation was pretty high for me to win it, and to do it was fantastic.

HELIO CASTRONEVES

Every time you even sat in one of those cars it was kind of scary. Even on the straight - when you stepped on the gas there was SO much power. It was getting towards 1000bhp. The cars were unbelievable.

I remember going to Sebring and being afraid to even stand on the throttle. Sometimes you get used to cars, but those cars, you never got used to them.

The difference was, on the straight, it wasn't just the power, it was that the thing kept going, it never stopped pulling. And the noise was absolutely amazing. I remember going to photoshoots and having fun because you just wanted to accelerate, you just wanted to listen to that noise.

I had a few good races during that period, but the one that stands out was the Penske that we had at Laguna with the weight-transfer suspension [in 2000]. Let me tell you man, that was awesome. Gil [de Ferran] and I were miles away from the other guys. Every corner, the front [of the car] was secure. That was the biggest gain we [ever] got.

BRYAN HERTA

Those cars were tough. Just in the dry they were hard to manage, and in the wet it was all you could do to keep the thing on the road. But we all loved it, and I feel lucky to have been competing back then.

I obviously remember some of the highlights - winning at Laguna, losing at Laguna to Zanardi, and I remember the wet race at Portland [in 1997], which was absolute madness. You could not see anything; it was pissing down with rain.

It started drying right at the end, and Mark Blundell took a flyer on slicks right at the end. It was a dodgy move but he made it work and he nipped de Ferran right at the line by hundredths of a second, thanks to the gamble.

I don't remember where I finished; I just remember driving down the straight and not even looking ahead because I couldn't see anything anyway. I was looking at the edge of the track and waiting for the flag stand, because I knew that when I passed the flag stand I had to wait a bit and then brake for Turn 1. Them the mist would drop and you would see. But on the straights the cars were pumping so much water into the air that you were absolutely blind.

It's a strange thing. I don't know how to describe it, but in the moment it doesn't seem terrifying; you're just doing the best you can and trying to go as fast as you can. Then you get out of the car and go, 'well, that was a bit nutty'.

MARIO ANDRETTI

Every year we had a new car and it was something you looked forward to so much because it was progressive.

As a driver I was like a father expecting every year. You know, a new kid would come out of the blocks and OK, it wasn't always the best-looking kid - some of them were cross-eyed and so forth - but still we had to develop the cars and there was always some action going on.

There was testing, proper preparation and all the tests were being talked about by the media; there was a continuous buzz. The series had so much going for it, I mean so much.

BOBBY RAHAL

Well that decade was probably the height of CART, although the foundation had really been laid in the 1980s. When I came in in 1982 it was still very much like USAC had been in the 1970s - one or two teams dominated, you didn't have that many races every year, Indy dominated everything.

By 1992, all of a sudden several teams could win races or championships; you could have a start-up team like TrueSports. Between 1986 and 1992 we won three championships and quite a few races, so that was one of the more dominant teams, I suppose. By the time of the early 1990s, and throughout the 1990s into the 2000s, the series just kept growing. The crowds were tremendous, TV ratings were good, sponsorships were strong, you had three manufacturers battling, two tyre companies, it was quite popular.

At Laguna Seca, it would take you two-and-a-half hours to get into the track because there were so many people. It was all really good. That's what really makes it such a shame that it all went through the doldrums afterwards because of the split.

In 1992, I think we might have had 700 horsepower if I remember correctly. By 1998 we were at 850, and by 2000, 2001, it was over 900. Driving those cars was exhilarating. It's different today, where you have so much downforce and you can't get rid of enough. In those days you never had enough and were always looking for more.

If you got a little sideways, it was gone. And on top of that, it had so much power that you couldn't drive them sideways because it would just spin the wheels. You didn't have traction control or all these other things. So it really was a challenge to drive them, especially on the street tracks - it was everything you could do to keep them going in a straight line. They had so much power. It was thrilling.

Even on the oval tracks - you're going 235mph, 238mph, and you didn't have the pack racing. You could run in small groups, but you were constantly passing each other - you weren't just droning around side-by-side.

You had Toyota come in, you had Honda come in, you had Firestone come in, a lot of good teams came in during that period. So it was really the place to be.

BRUNO JUNQUIERA

I had a great opportunity to drive for Ganassi in CART when my F1 dream didn't work out. There were big budget teams, engine manufacturers and many good drivers - so for me, as a rookie, it was very difficult and I had to learn really quickly.

I had no experience of the cars, the tracks or the US culture. And the cars were fast!

In my first-ever oval race I qualified on the pole at Nazareth, and then I took my first win at Road America in my first year too. Even before I raced there, I used to watch it on Eurosport when I was living in the UK and racing in Formula 3000 - every race. I loved it, because it was much more interesting than F1 at the time.

ROBERTO MORENO

When I first came to the US I went to Dale Coyne - Payton Coyne Racing. And I had a car that was one year old, and a car that was 100 horsepower less than the top guys, and we still got on the podium at Michigan with that.

I had a little trick with the boost - I would keep pushing it and it would eventually open the valve, and it would give me a little bit more power for half of the straight. And I used to do that twice a lap. I would expand the boost to the limit of the valve for a very short time, and then when the valve opened and it dropped down, I would back it up quickly and that would give me enough speed to be at the same level as the guys with 100 horsepower more. The Ford guys came on the radio and said, 'what are you doing?'. And I said, 'just shut up and pay attention!'.

When I was at Coyne we always struggled on the ovals, and we couldn't figure it out until we got to Michigan, where I did two stints on one set of tyres. It was only after I joined Newman/Haas that I learned how to set the car up for ovals, and I was amazed how simple it was.

We used to do five laps at Milwaukee and then come in for a new set of tyres. Driving for Newman/Haas, I learned what it really means to set up a car. I became very well respected by the engineers there. I showed them how to save a lot of fuel without losing speed.

So learning what I learned from the ovals and giving my input on the road courses, we gelled well together at Newman/Haas. That was a high point in my career.

MAX PAPIS

The best memory in my Champ Car career was winning the Homestead-Miami Grand Prix [in 2000] - the race after Greg Moore passed away, and winning my first race at the same time and being able to bring the red gloves on the podium with me. Also winning the way I did, passing Paul Tracy with 10 laps to go. To me that was a legit, true hard win.

And there's something else, it's not a win but in '97, my first full year in Champ Car, my flight to Australia, sitting beside Greg Moore and me and him getting to know each other, and landing together in Coolangatta like superstars, with all the media and everyone there to greet us, and starting one of the best friendships ever in my life.

CHRISTIAN FITTIPALDI

All the drivers were extremely happy and didn't know about it! Life was great. We went to cool places, we went to cool tracks, we were testing all the time and we were always complaining!

No, I'm kidding, but I think by far the best part was the cars, because on some occasions those things had more than 1000 horsepower and all the downforce - they gave an unbelievable feeling inside the car.

For more stories from a great era of Indycar competition, take a look at the special August 14 issue of AUTOSPORT magazine, guest edited by Alex Zanardi.

The rise and fall of Indycar
How splits with the Indy 500 organisers helped create an iconic era, and then end it more than two decades later

Ganassi becomes a US superteam
The story of Chip Ganassi's squad, as it became the dominant force in America during the 1990s

Top CART drivers
AUTOSPORT asked racers of the 1993-2001 era to pick out their top rivals, then added up the responses. Here's who came out on top...

Mansell on how he conquered America
The 1992 F1 world champion looks back at his 1993 Indycar success, and the troubles that followed

Great Car: Penske PC23
The machine that beat Mansell and put Penske back on top, with a little help from a special engine for the Indy 500

F1 refugees in America
A look at some of the ex-Formula 1 racers who tried their luck in the States, with varying success

Tributes to Moore, Krosnoff and Rodriguez
Memories of the three racing talents who lost their lives during the period