By Jim DeFord (pictured at left)

Photo by Mary DeFord

VANCOUVER, Washington (November 1, 2003) — CART comes out fighting and disappears with a whimper. Its creation in the 1970’s was due to a long standing myriad of disagreements between the team owners and USAC. CART was then hastily formed and they split off from the old USAC, Champ Car series and created CART; Championship Auto Racing Teams. The series was now owner owned.

Eventually they had a meager reconciliation with USAC and raced one USAC sanctioned race a year: The Indianapolis 500. All was good.

For about 20-some years or so.

Then Tony George came into power because of deaths within the Hulman family. Tony wanted much more for the Speedway and much more from CART. After some time of fighting, squabbling, spitting and kicking, he formed the Indy Racing League and pulled the Indy 500 out from under CART’s feet.

CART pretty much said, “So what,” and went about their business sans the World’s Greatest Spectacle in Motorsports. Many thought the IRL would die quickly, but they hang in there, running used CART cars their first year. The series seemed laughable with cars running around with little or no sponsorship livery on their blank sidepods.

And it’s been all downhill for CART from there. Gradually the crowds began thinning, though they surely were not showing up at IRL events either. Did everyone just go home to do yard work? Many think the fans just grew weary of the arguments and the politics of it all. Weary of the name-calling and grand-standing by both sides. No matter the reason, they were not showing up at the track and even the TV ratings began to slide.

But, the racing continued on. Then Penske left for the IRL. But, CART trudged on seeming undaunted by the loss of The Captain and crew.

Then Michael Andretti left along with another major team and three total drivers gone from CART with one swoop. Several other name-branders also followed in Andretti’s footsteps. Still, the CART die-hards said, “So what. Good riddance.”

But 2003 brought out what would be CART’s last year of existence. With no-name drivers. Odd, unknown names on the sidepods, several cars with little or no livery and an unsettled feeling within the sport.

Things were different in 2003. There was no excitement among the media folks like there usually was at the tracks. Many seemed immersed in what/who they would be writing/shooting for in 2004. Several races were funded solely by CART and we knew that couldn’t last long.

When I was at my local event in Portland, I was telling people that they had better get to the track now. This year. Get out there now because this may be the last you see of them at Portland, where they had raced for 20 years.

There was a press conference touting the agreement with CART and the Portland locals for 2004. Everyone cheered, except me. Nothing had been signed. It was fluff. And now Portland is missing from the proposed OWRS schedule along with two other of the world’s most respected natural terrain courses; Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca.

Open Wheel Racing Series has made an offer to purchase the remaining stocks of CART at just about $.50 a share. Laughable. Oh! That was the IRL that was laughable less than 10 years ago. Sorry.

With a name that doesn’t roll off the tongue (‘hours’? ‘owers’?), the OWRS is facing a huge uphill battle. And one that may be lost before it even starts.

As of this writing, it is reported that CART lost $34.4 in the third quarter alone. The deal is expected to be finalized by December, when shareholders vote on the purchase that would lead to the company's de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange.

“If the proposed merger with Open Wheel is not completed for any reason, and if no strategic transaction that is an alternative to the merger is available to us at that time, it is expected that we will be required immediately to cease our operations, wind up our affairs and seek to liquidate our remaining assets,'' CART said in its third-quarter report.

One major aspect of the deal with OWRS and CART is that CART must remain solvent during the sale.

The last snafu is the canceling of the season’s final event at Fontana due to the wildfires in California. And now the ISC is suing CART for $2.5 million for canceling the event.

It doesn’t get a whole lot worse than that. Or does it? Some would say that what goes around, comes around. CART was created as a revolt against USAC. The IRL was created as a revolt against CART. After December CART will cease to exist no matter what happens.

Where does the OWRS go from here? They are attempting to arrange a race in Korea. An odd venue for a company that’s coming in with very little money, killing three of the most popular natural terrain courses in the series and opting to keep the ultra-horrible street courses such as Miami and Denver on the proposed schedule.

Only time will tell where it all goes from here. Maybe straight down the commode if CART’s financial woes worsen before the sale is final.

But, in spite of CART’s last whimper that leaves us strangely empty, we are left with a cup-runneth-over full of 25-plus years of racing memories. Rick Mears, Danny Sullivan, The Unsers and Andrettis and I will not even try to attempt naming all the names. Many drivers ran their entire career under the CART moniker.

Personally I am left with the best racing memories of my life. CART has truly blessed me with treasured memories over half my life.

CART finally recognized the likes of Peter Burke and myself as we laid the path for future webmasters to follow when we created SpeedCenter, one of the world’s first CART related sites on the Internet and established well before CART themselves discovered the Internet.

In those 10 years I have interviewed drivers and owners and team members and driver’s parents. I have walked the hot pit shooting photos with the best in the business and among people that I have such a high regard for it’s hard to put into words. I hope to someday shoot again alongside Mike, and Phil and the other CART photographers that have produced some of the finest motorsports photography in the world. I’ll use this opportunity to publicly thank them for allowing me onto their previously hallowed ground and teaching me the do’s and don’ts of motorsports media. Thanks guys and gals.

And as racing fans what can I say? I will not even try to attempt to call on the Greatest Moments of CART as there have been so many. Search your own memories. Play your old tapes. I have several in a box somewhere around here. That would be a fitting goodbye to CART in my household by replacing tomorrow’s Fontana race with re-living some of CART’s greatest moments in my own living room.

The day my friend, Scott Pruett won his first race with a nail-biting battle over Al Unser Jr. at Michigan would be a fitting goodbye video. I cried that day with tears of joy for Mr. Pruett as I knew what that win meant to him. And now my tears, as I write this, are for the wealth of memories that I will have for the rest of my life, the friends and acquaintances that would have otherwise been simply passerbys. I’ll truly miss you CART. Loved working with you. Thank you for all you have given me. I am truly blessed.

Good bye.

Jim can be reached via email at: jim@rfmsports.com

R.I.P. Trois-Rivieres Race Weekend

A victim of nicotine withdrawal, she will be missed

By Ed Moody

Photos © Margot Orenchuk & Jim DeFord/RFMSports

VANCOUVER, CANADA (July 28, 2003) —  RFMSports withheld running this story at CART's request until after the race. As you may have read, we are one of the few news services for CART that actually obeyed that request. Nonetheless the real story needs to be told in spite of the number of spins on this issue floating around the media with one unnamed news service reporting that Chris Pook was in Europe and The Fight that everyone else was reporting between Tracy and Chris was really between three drivers. Chris Pook was definitely there as was RFMSports. The following is an accounting of what was witnessed by our reporter, Margot Orenchuk as told to Kate Shaw..

RFMSports Writer and Co-Editor, Kate Shaw started this as a news story but it unavoidably turned into an editorial piece. There has been much controversy over the inconsistencies of the CART officiating for many years and this incident has brought things to a head once again. If nothing else, it gives us all something to chat about around the Water Cooler. Ed.

There’s always a lot going on during a race weekend in Canada, mostly good things, sometimes not. Everyone remembers last year’s Molson Indy Vancouver because of the accident that befell Adrian Fernandez and sent him to the hospital – thankfully he completely recovered – but not very many people remember what happened off track except the people who were there.

This year it’s going to be different. This year the off-track stuff is going to be what people talk about – depending a lot on who won the race today. This year it’ll be the Paul Tracy vs. CCWS part that people will be talking about, perhaps for the rest of the season. Maybe even beyond.

After Tracy won the provisional pole on Friday, it seems that certain other drivers (or their team principals, to be fair) decided that if you can’t beat them on the track, you should try to beat them in the courtroom. (Those of you who remember the Indy 500 Debacle of 2002 will know what I mean.) Messrs. Haas and Gentilozzi went stomping off to the Big Guys, to report that their drivers were crying to anyone who would listen, that Paul Tracy had deliberately prevented them from taking the pole away. “If he has the pole,” fumed Mr. Tagliani, “he will do anything to keep it!” Excuse me, Tags, but, like, isn’t that the idea? Surely no driver who has won the pole would gladly bow a rival by and say “Oh, I’ve had a pole this month, why don’t you take this one even though you aren’t as fast as I am!” Sounds silly, doesn’t it, when you put it like that? Sounds silly because it is silly.

Well, silly or not, the weak-kneed Mr. Kneifel bowed to pressure yet again and decreed that Paul Tracy would be deprived of his fastest time for “blocking” and relegated to P2. To his credit, Bruno Junqueira did not pump his fist in the air and start acting as if he had ‘won’ the provisional pole; in fact, he was clearly quite embarrassed by the whole ridiculous show. But Paul Tracy had no compunction, as he followed in the footsteps of the equally plain-spoken Jacques Villeneuve, about branding Tagliani a whiner and going so far as to don a surgical mask to protect him from catching “Whineritis” from him. And he was not the only one at Team Players who felt that way; it was clear to everyone that they backed their driver all the way and definitely believed that this wasn’t the first time Team Players had been singled out for individual attention by the Powers that Be.

From the close of proceedings til the V.I.P. party that evening – a $42.00 ticket that entitled 1,000 guests to mingle with select drivers and Miss Indy contestants, a party which Paul Tracy as guest of honour was to host – the members of Team Players had long conversations with one another about what face they should present to the public and what their next move should be. Tracy’s mentor, Tony Cicale, was part of these discussions and I have no doubt he was instrumental in cooling down some of the worst of Tracy’s first impulses, although everyone knows that Tracy, like Villeneuve, is a man who says what he thinks. You may not like what you hear, but you can be sure what he says is not some pre-printed response vetted in advance by men with briefcases.

The storm gathered speed as the evening progressed and Tracy’s pointed comments about C.E.O. Chris Pook and his minions ‘having it in for me’ began to emerge in the pits, the paddock and among the press.

With this kind of pressure building, one has to admire Tracy for dressing up and appearing at the party. A lesser man would have blown the whole thing off and spent the evening sulking in his room. Indeed, he was very late to the party, and some people wondered if this had not, in fact, been his decision.

Mr. Pook had arrived earlier, and was circulating, talking and drinking wine, acting the genial host.

Where was Tracy? Nobody knew. But Paul Tracy is an honourable man who prides himself on keeping his commitments, and he knew the proceeds of the evening would be going to the Greg Moore Foundation which helps many worthy causes. He also knew that many of the 1,000 people present had bought their tickets in hopes of meeting him. So Paul Tracy put aside his impulses and he showed up at the door.

But as he arrived at the door, he met Nemesis.

Aware of the fact that he was late for the Miss Molson Indy Contest, of which he was to be a judge, Tracy ran up the steps toward the front door – and there at the door was Chris Pook, with a hand out and a breezy “How’s it going?” as if nothing had occurred that day or any day between them. Perhaps mindful of Tony Cicale’s counsel, or perhaps with other things on his mind, Tracy brushed by him unspeaking and kept moving at a brisk clip into the crowded Men’s Room directly beside the bar where several members of the media were standing in quest of their opening round of drinks. Behind him, unbelievably, came Mr. Pook.

Before the media could exchange more than glances, loud voices were heard from that direction the two men had gone – a conversation lasting less than 2 minutes, and punctuated by a two-word phrase in the voice of Paul Tracy that the media agreed was not “Happy Birthday” – and out stormed Tracy and without stopping or even slowing down he went raging down the steps and out the door which banged behind him. A slight silence fell. Would anyone go after him? Would he cool off and come back in? What on earth was going to happen next?

Well, in the words of an eyewitness, “He didn’t judge the Miss Molson Contest, he didn’t host the party like he usually does, he didn’t do the Silent Auction, and 1,000 people that paid $41.25 per person got hosed.” The party resumed at a lower pitch, the guests hung around, spoke with those few drivers who had showed up, participated in the events – while eagerly discussing this startling event -- and then everybody went home.

As news of this contretemps trickled out (you cannot stifle 1,000 invited guests and all those who were there to attend them), some very strange attempts at “spin” were launched, including one declaration that Mr. Pook had in fact been in Europe on Friday night (obviously the man at the V.I.P. party was a stunt double then?) and the argument was among Bruno Junqueira and Alexandre Tagliani and Tracy. When photographic evidence of Mr. Pooks presence at the party, and of Mr. Tagliani’s non-presence there, surfaced, this story line was abandoned. Rumours of a punch-up were also scotched by Adam Saal of CART, who stated, and Tracy confirmed, that no physical contact had been made (including the spurned handshake, remember that?) While no actual transcript of the conversation is yet available, Tracy reported later that he had not said anything that he had not repeated in public later on, although from the reports of interested bystanders, with considerably more profanity included in the Washroom Edition.

The next day when the general public was informed of Tracy’s demotion, the world of CART was distracted from the bad financial news that had been its topic of conversation on Friday, and heated arguments covered the track, the Internet and the sports call-in shows in Canada. And Paul Tracy fanned the flames by invoking He Who Shall Not Be Named (no, not Voldemort – even worse – TONY GEORGE) and making bitter comments about what a “joke” CART was, seeming to express sympathy for the Deserters who made our lives so miserable last year with their incessant whining that “CART is Dead”, and by sticking close to his obviously still boiling mad team who closed ranks around him – as did the majority of those in the grandstands who had come to see their man win and were convinced, as they had been at Indy 2002, that they had seen this despite the Men in Suits.

And then we saw what Paul Tracy and Team Players are really made of.

It is one thing to win by whining. It is another thing to put your right foot where your mouth is. Paul Tracy got into his No. 3 Team Players machine and as soon as the track went hot, out he went to lay down the fastest laps he was capable of doing – to throw down his marker to the whiners and their humourless Men in Suits, and then head back into the pits with the words, “There’s your mark, boys, let’s see what you can do!” And when the chequered flag flew, the Players Mark stood and Paul Tracy had his pole position and his dignity back again. “I went out early,” he said, holding the Pole Flag in one hand and with his other arm round his Mom, “so there couldn’t be any reason for anyone to complain, and I laid down my marker and said beat that if you can. And nobody could.”

The whiners and the cry-babies and their lawyers had the same clear track as Tracy had, the same opportunities to get out their and play their cards, and they came up short.

There was a last abortive effort at spin, when elements of the anti-Tracy press speculated that Patrick Carpentier – Tracy’s teammate – had been ordered to spin his car and hit both walls and bring out a red flag late in the session, solely to preserve Tracy’s pole position. Laying aside the obvious slur at Carpentier’s honour that would assume he would throw his own race away a la Rubens Barrichello – we are obliged to point out that one never knows what will happen when one throws one’s car into a wall. Essentially, this suggestion is that Patrick Carpentier was being ordered to sacrifice his life for his team-mate’s pole position. I will leave that one on the table without the dignity of a reply, as I truly don’t believe one is needed.

So as the grid forms up for the Molson Indy Vancouver, the story reverts to the on-track competition. Will Paul Tracy finish the climb back to the top and silence his whining cohort for one more race? We will soon see. But if he does, I would venture a guess that the standing cheer he will get from the crowd at the Molson Indy Vancouver may possibly make Chris Pook pause and think that perhaps Bernie Ecclestone can provide him more than a bankroll for his beleaguered series.

Try to imagine Ecclestone and Michael Schumacher in a screaming fight in a V.I.P. washroom in Monaco. Think about it.

But at the end of the whole ugly episode I would like to leave you with these words of the only sane man I have heard on the subject this weekend.

"Veteran Brazilian driver Roberto Moreno was sitting next to Tracy as he spoke. At 44, the series' elder statesman wouldn't say whether he thought Tracy was being singled out.

”I think when a person is angry he says things he doesn't wish to say, so I would not like to comment on that,'' said Moreno."

A man who knows when to speak and when to keep silent.  Amazing.  Can we make Moreno CEO of CART?

Photos © Jim DeFord, Lisa Salazar, Margot Orenchuk, David Babcock, Juha Lievenen/RFMSports

TORONTO, Canada (September 20, 2003) – Since Speedvision changed its name to Speed TV and narrowed its vision considerably, a great many of their former heavy viewers, including this one, have been vocal in their complaints that the tone and focus are at serious odds with the wishes of their core viewers.  A recent poll indicates that more than 60% of this viewership have not been watching as often since the focus has concentrated on large, heavy pseudo-stock-cars and trucks and the people who chatter about them\\\ endlessly, when what we want is motorcycles, sports cars, Rally, CART and Formula One.  Speed TV has responded with a petulant effort to Politically Correct the definition of a ‘true race fan’ by stating that people who do not embrace every form of racing equally are not “true race fans” -- according to them, only a person with neither opinion nor preference for any type of racing to the exclusion of others, or at the least, the decency to keep those opinions and preferences to herself, can call herself a “true race fan.” 

Well to this True Race Fan, this is plainly silly.  Racing is about competition, and only the preference for one driver, or one team, or one horse, or one series over another makes it possible to have a competition at all.   Man and woman were born to compete; give them two things that can go fast and they’ll have a contest to see which can go fastest.  People have cheered for races among horses, cockroaches, pigs, hamsters, dogs, raindrops and turtles.    Men and women race, formally and informally, on bicycles, lawn mowers, snowmobiles, karts, open wheel cars, closed wheel cars, street stockers, sports compacts, ten different kinds of motorcycles, and yes, NA$CARS.  They race on ovals, on dirt tracks, on tarmac, on gravel, on ice, on water, and from Paris to Dakar on every conceivable surface.  They even race in boats – cigarette boats, sprint boats, jet boats, F1 boats, sculls and canoes. Each of these forms of racing has its fans, and many of them wouldn't be caught dead at more than half of the others.  That's a lot of people to disenfranchise, wouldn't you agree?

In what other form of entertainment do we demand that a "True Fan" hold neither opinion nor preference in order to be considered "True"?  Do we tell Coolio he's not a True Music Fan because no court order could force him to go to Grand Opera in Italian?  Do we brush off as Not a True Dance Fan a person who loves ballet but cares not at all for the tango? Are we really prepared to brand the avid fan of MotoGP, who has no interest in racing on four wheels, Not a True Race Fan?  Is a fan who counts the days til the Tour de France not legitimate because he doesn’t count the days til the Talladega 500? 

Well, the Politically Correct among us DO take this position.  We girls are not permitted to express a preference for well built Latin men, lest we hurt the feelings of thin men from West Virginia; gentlemen are no longer allowed to prefer blondes, lest brunettes file a class action suit.  Tolerance has been re-defined to mean Acceptance, or else we’re off to court.  So I suppose in the Politically Correct Universe they decree that people who travel to Ascot or Kentucky at tremendous expense to attend horse races are not True Race Fans because they wouldn’t attend a cockroach race if the entire Supreme Court commanded it -- and neither are people who love IMSA and loathe the IRL.

In my opinion (and it is only my opinion), Club True Race Fan isn't that exclusive and doesn't need anyone else to tell its members they belong.

There are many reasons why we have fifty different kinds of racing on land, on water and in the air, on two wheels, three wheels, four wheels or no wheels – with fenders and without them.  The main reason is that people want to race these things in this configuration and other people want to watch them.  Each kind of racing has its audience and many times their fans like only this kind of racing.  In no way does the ability to name every Formula One driver who ever raced for Lotus, but not to name anybody who ever raced a bicycle, mean the rabid Formula One fan lacks legitimacy.  It means the Formula One fan has made a choice to devote himself to one form of racing and that form only.  And nobody else has the right to define him out of the category of “True Race Fan” for that decision. 

Rather than define him out of existence (or try to), why not agree that we each have the right to our own definition of “True Race Fan” (so long as we don’t demand that others accept it as the only definition) and think, “Can we sell them what they want?” instead of “Can we force them to buy what WE think they OUGHT to want?” 

My Fellow True Race Fans:  Don’t Allow Yourself to be Bullied.  If you are a True Race Fan, you already know it.  Stand fast against the Dave Despains of the world for your right to enjoy racing in whatever form it takes, and to turn away from that which you do not like. 

And keep the pressure on Speed to rediscover the “vision” it has removed from its name and 60% of its audience believes that it has lost from its mission.