The Indy Racing League and ChampCar - a series formed from the financial ruins of what had been Championship Auto Racing Teams - have been at loggerheads for numerous years but recently have been talking about a merger of the two series, with the hope that such a merger will help begin a process to improve the popularity and strength of Indycar-style racing in the US. In early July 2006 news broke that Tony George, founder and leader of the IRL, and Kevin Kalkhoven of ChampCar, had reached some agreement to share power over Indycar racing in the US.
However, an agreement has been stalled, and the reason may have been that Kalkhoven set up Tony George to force a merger that would effectively benefit only ChampCar. (Note: may need to register to see link) Such a scenario, though, is in keeping with the general approach of the series first formed as CART in 1979.
Self-serving hardball was a trademark of CART from its formation as a sanctioning body run by and for its richest car owners led by Roger Penske. The formation of CART became possible with the death of Anton "Tony" Hulman, president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in late 1977, and the deaths of several high-ranking USAC officials in a plane crash in 1978. CART effectively took over Indycar racing, and when team owners Paul Newman, Carl Haas, and Jim Trueman entered CART following the demise of CanAm Challenge Cup road racing in the early 1980s, it infused CART with money and racetracks it needed to secure itself in American racing.
But the seeds of CART's eventual demise were sewn in running battles with "have-not" teams led by Andy Kenopensky, who almost single-handedly pushed CART to a corner in 1989 in a series of rancourous team owner meetings in which drivers were brought in to argue for a new rules package conceived by CART's Board Of Directors, only to be hounded out of the meeting by angry have-not team owners.
Then in 1993 came the so-called Honda Rule, requiring incoming engine manufacturers to supply multiple cars from the very beginning of a factory effort, a rule widely considered intended at deterring Honda from entering CART and pushed by its richest team owners for their benefit and not that of the sport. When CART asked Dianne Simon as a result of the controversy to study charges of conflict of interest within CART, she came back with a report that summarized that CART was run in the manner of a whites-only country club.
Tony George, who'd assumed control of IMS in the early 1990s, battled with CART over the direction of the sport, but for him the final straw may have been Roger Penske's Mercedes "stock block" engine of 1994. This was a rebadged Ilmor Engineering project "disguised" as a stock block to acquire lesser turbo boost restriction imposed for the Indy 500 every year; the idea behind turbo boost limits was to allow true stock block engines such as Buick to be able to run with the vastly more expensive race engines of Penske and the other big-buck teams of CART. Penske Racing's Mercedes "stock block" was a rather obvious flaunting of the rules with all-too-obvious contempt for the rulebook, and after Penske easily won the 1994 500 Tony George went to work, and in 1995 formed the template for breaking Indianapolis away from CART.
The new IRL was vilified in racing circles and CART scheduled a 500-mile race at Michigan International Speedway on the same day as the 500, billing it as the US 500, "The real stars, the real cars, the real race." This contempt by CART seeded its eventual defeat by IRL, as the US 500 disintegrated in a massive melee coming to the green flag; drivers involved were allowed to haul out backup cars as if nothing had happened, a concession inconceivable in any other racing series and one that struck at the integrity of the competition. Jimmy Vasser, one of the wrecked cars, drove his backup car to the win.
But from there IRL began growing and CART began suffering. IRL emphasized retro-tech racecars and strove to get American short track drivers into Indycar racing; it began to succeed as drivers Billy Boat and Tony Stewart began to achieve success in IRL. IRL raced at Texas Motor Speedway in 1997 in a race marred by a costly scoring breakdown that led to the spectacle of race winner Arie Luyendyk assaulted in victory lane by A.J. Foyt. Foyt and driver Billy Boat got revenge in 1998 in an exciting battle with newcomer Greg Ray in a race that saw 21 lead changes in 300 miles.
Early in the 2000 decade IRL reached a new spurt of growth as new speedways in Kentucky, Kansas, and Chicago opened and fans witnessed breathtakingly comeptitive open-wheel racing where the battle for the lead was usually a nonstop affair and hair-close finishes were becoming the norm. Ohio racer Sam Hornish made a dramatic impact in Kentucky in 2000 and this parlayed into a ride with Panther Racing, which had evolved into one of IRL's powerhouses. Hornish lifted IRL to a new level with a hard-fought 2001 championship highlighted by a spectacular three-abreast victory at Texas at the end of the season, then followed it up with a harder-fought title in a season-long battle with Penske Racing, coming over to IRL after the collapse of their program in CART.
Penske's withdrawal from the sanctioning body he'd helped form combined with escalating financial woes to doom CART, and the assets were purchased by Kevin Kalkhoven, who implemented a different business plan to keep the series afloat. IRL, meanwhile, hit a serious roadblock when Toyota and Honda entered the series in 2003; costs escalated and car counts dropped dramatically, and after 2005 Chevrolet and Toyota left, leaving the series stymied and trying to regain lost ground in racing.
IRL, though, did something neither CART nor ChampCar have been able to do - it made open wheel championship racing compelling again. The machinations of Kalkhoven in merger talks with Tony George are another example of the hardball that George refused to put up with in the 1990s, and if there is any unification of Indycar racing it needs to be for the good of the sport, not the good of Kevin Kalkhoven.
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