Championship Auto Racing Teams
Championship Auto Racing Teams was a sanctioning body for American open-wheel car racing that operated from 1979 until dissolving after the 2003 season. CART was founded in 1979 by team owners formerly from the United States Auto Club Championship Car division. The owners disagreed with the direction and leadership of USAC. They developed a then-novel business model of team owners sanctioning and promoting their own series collectively rather than relying on a neutral governing body to do so.
While the CART owners broke off to form their own series, the sport's biggest race and centerpiece – the Indianapolis 500 – remained under the sanctioning control of USAC. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the CART Indy Car World Series became the pre-eminent open-wheel auto racing series in North America. It featured a diverse schedule of superspeedways, short ovals, road courses, and street circuits. The CART-based teams continued to compete at the Indianapolis 500, essentially as a one-off. From 1983 to 1995, an arrangement was put in place in which the Indy 500 would pay points to the CART championship. Though it was still sanctioned by USAC, it was effectively integrated into the CART season schedule.
Even as the series prospered, concerns about costs, competitiveness, and revenue sharing began to create opposition to CART's organizational structure. Attempts at reform, which saw the company rebranded as IndyCar in 1992 and a compromise board formed, failed. In 1996, an open wheel "split" saw the newly created Indy Racing League take full control over the Indianapolis 500 and start a competing oval-based open-wheel series. CART ceased using the IndyCar name but continued its series without participating in the Indianapolis 500.
The "split" saw a dramatic drop in interest for open wheel racing in the United States, which was compounded by the growing popularity of NASCAR, creating a downward trend in sponsorship and attendance at some tracks. After a series of additional setbacks in the early 2000s, several of the major teams and manufacturers defected to the rival IRL. CART went bankrupt at the end of the 2003 season.
In 2004, a trio of team owners acquired the assets of the series from bankruptcy, rebranding it the Champ Car World Series. Continuing financial difficulties caused Champ Car to file for bankruptcy before its planned 2008 season; CART and CCWS assets and history were merged into the IRL's IndyCar Series.
Vehicles
Champ cars were single-seat, open-wheel racing cars, with mid-mounted engines. Champ cars had sculpted undersides to create ground effects and prominent wings to create downforce. The cars would use different aerodynamic kits depending on whether they were racing on an oval or a road-course.Teams typically purchased chassis constructed by independent suppliers such as Lola, Swift, Reynard, and March, with some owners, such as Dan Gurney and Roger Penske, constructing their own. The series exclusively used Goodyear tires until 1995, when Firestone entered, creating a spirited competition between the brands. Firestone ultimately became the exclusive supplier in 2000, with their parent company Bridgestone taking over the role in 2002.
Champ cars used turbocharged engines that ran on methanol fuel. Cosworth, Ilmor, and Buick engines were common powerplants through the mid-1990s. Mercedes-Benz took over as Ilmor's branding, while Honda and Toyota joined as factory efforts. By the 1990s, engines were typically leased from manufacturers, who conducted research and development during the racing season; one engine could easily dominate competition in the first part of the season and then fall behind. The exclusive availability of more advanced versions of engines to certain teams in the early-1990s became a major source of contention within the organization, and manufacturers fiercely resisted proposals to have engines simply be purchased by teams. In 2003, after the withdrawal of Honda and Toyota, CART purchased a series of identical 2.65L V-8 turbocharged Cosworth engines and leased them to teams under Ford branding.
Champ cars were visually similar, and often compared to, the higher budget and more technical Formula 1 cars, which also featured wings, mid-engines, and an open-wheel design. Due to their use on ovals, Champ Cars weighed more and were more substantial in size, were slower to accelerate but were higher in top speed. Both series intentionally downplayed direct comparisons for commercial reasons, but 2002 saw a rare occurrence in both series running the same track within a month of each other. Former Chip Ganassi Racing driver Juan Pablo Montoya won the pole position for the Formula One race with a lap time of 1'12.836, with the slowest being Alex Yoong's 1'17.34; Several weeks later, Cristiano da Matta won pole position in a Champ Car race with a lap time of 1'18.959.
History
Foundation
In 1905 the American Automobile Association established a national driving championship and became the first sanctioning body for auto racing in the United States. The AAA ceased sanctioning auto racing in the general outrage over motor racing safety that followed the 1955 Le Mans disaster. In response, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony Hulman formed the United States Auto Club to take over the sanctioning of what was called "championship" auto racing, or open wheel racing, whose biggest event was the annual Indianapolis 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. USAC sanctioned the championship exclusively until 1978, and was the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile's recognized American authority with regard to open wheel racing.Competitors in the championship circuit, coalescing around Dan Gurney, began to become critical of USAC's sanctioning though the 1970s. Notable incidents included the loss of a lucrative series sponsorship by Marlboro in 1971 after USAC failed to enforce the brand's exclusivity at events, the existence of dirt tracks, purses that teams said would result in a loss in money even if the team made the podium, and a lack of modern promotion for the non-Indianapolis events in the series.
In early 1978, Gurney wrote what came to be known as the "Gurney White Paper", the blueprint for an organization called Championship Auto Racing Teams. Gurney took his inspiration from the improvements Bernie Ecclestone had forced on Formula One with his creation of the Formula One Constructors Association. The white paper called for the owners to form CART as an advocacy group to promote their interests in USAC's national championship. The group would also work to negotiate television rights, sponsorship agreements, and race purses, and ideally hold seats on USAC's governing body. In 1978, the last season that USAC was sole sanctioning body for championship racing, their 18 race schedule had 4 road course races and 14 oval track races.
On April 23, 1978, eight top USAC officials died in an airplane crash, creating an organizational vacuum that severely hampered the 1978 season. In November 1978 Gurney, joined by other leading team owners including Roger Penske and Pat Patrick, took their requests to USAC's Board, but the proposal was rejected, leading to the creation of a new stand-alone series. The first CART race was held on 11 March 1979, with the Sports Car Club of America sanctioning the series.
USAC initially tried to ban all CART drivers from the 1979 Indianapolis 500, informing CART teams by telegram during their event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, until CART succeeded in obtaining an injunction to allow its cars to qualify. Of the 20 races held in 1979, 13 were part of the 1979 CART Championship. An attempt by USAC and CART to jointly sanction races in 1980 as the Championship Racing League saw USAC withdraw after 5 races, and by the end of 1981 the only USAC sanctioned asphalt championship race was the Indianapolis 500.
CART PPG Indy Car World Series (1982–1991)
By 1982, the CART PPG Indy Car World Series was generally recognized as the American national championship in open wheel racing. In 1983, USAC agreed to allow CART to add the Indy 500 to its schedule and have drivers be awarded points in the CART championship while retaining their authority to sanction the 500. Beginning with a schedule mainly based on oval speedways like its USAC predecessor, the series began to replace the declining Can-Am series in prominent North American road racing circuits such as Road America, Mid-Ohio, and Laguna Seca. Many racing stars, including Mario Andretti, Bobby Rahal, and Danny Sullivan found success in CART, which by the mid-1980s expanded by sanctioning street races, taking over the Detroit Grand Prix and the Grand Prix of Long Beach from Formula One, and expanding to Toronto and Cleveland. CART founded the first full-time driver safety team that traveled with the series, instead of depending on local staff provided by promoters.For the first time, open-wheel racing outside of Indianapolis had developed a stable schedule, enabling more generous sponsorship and television opportunities for team owners. Despite the corresponding increases in attendance, TV revenue, and purses, CART's egalitarian governing structure created its own headaches. CART owners were incredibly diverse: For example, owners such as Carl Haas and Roger Penske owned speedways and had generous contracts with tire, chassis, and engine manufactures, while other teams simply purchased older cars and ran the races they could afford to attend. The diversity of interests led to annual disputes and accusations of real and apparent conflicts of interest with regard to rules, sponsorship, driver safety, track selection, and other matters.
In 1988, CART joined ACCUS, allowing foreign drivers to compete without risking their FIA Super Licences. This, combined with former F1 champion Emerson Fittipaldi's series title in 1989, attracted drivers from South America and Europe to join what had previously been a mostly American dominated series. A growing contingent of international drivers helped make the series a valuable television property for growing sports cable networks worldwide. CART would host its first race outside North America, in Surfers Paradise, Australia, in 1991.