Nice job so far. Get Sarah into Victory Lane soonest. She deserves to have IndyCar's first female win, instead of Danica (though Danica OTL has better equipment and a stronger team).
He Came From Indianapolis: Indycar Racing TL
- Thread starter TheMann
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Sarah will have a trophy on her shelf years before Danica even tests an Indycar, my friend.
Good, because of the current IRL drivers without a win who've been around a while OTL, (Vitor Meira, Davey Hamilton, and Sarah, to name three) she's the most deserving of a win before she hangs up her firesuit and runs her team full-time. Even a rain-shortened event, where she's in the lead due to pit strategy or whatnot, counts as a win. I'd rather see her first trip to Victory Lane be as a driver than as a team owner.
Alright, I'll spill on this one.
Sarah's first victory is in the 2002 Kobalt Tools 400 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, NC, a Saturday night race. She starts third, quickly dispatches second-placed Christiano da Matta and polesitter Buddy Rice, and her and Rice spend the race running each other hard. Fisher leads the most laps - 120 to Rice's 106 - and wins the race, with her teammate (Robby Gordon) finishing third. Sarah very nearly repeats the feat at Chicagoland later in the year, leading the most laps again, though she only finishes third. Fisher's time with Walker (1999-2004) includes two wins, eleven top-10 and three poles.
FYI, Hamilton is a winner as well. Davey only gets two wins in six seasons, all of them for A.J. Foyt. That being said, Foyt's team is sponsored by the United States Navy and Marines for that whole run, so the cars always look sharp.
2000
Indycar Racing entered the 21st Century with a new TV partner, growing popularity and with the three American automakers making major efforts to dominate American racing. While the factor efforts were at Le Mans and in the American Le Mans Series, Ford and General Motors paid plenty of attention to their Indycar efforts. GM, seeking to make the Oldsmobile brand survive, badged their new engines the "Oldsmobile Aurora M1" for their factory efforts, which for 2000 included Vision, Walker, Galles, Menard, Panther and Foyt. Among the driver strength for these were Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon, Al Unser Jr. and Robbie Stanley, though Stewart would be the big winner. Their squads also included talented youngsters in Sam Hornish Jr., Tony Renna and Sarah Fisher. GM would not win the manufacturers title, losing it to Honda, but by only five points.
To nobody's surprise, business story of the year for Indycars was NBC Sports taking over the TV rights to the series. It was a very successful endeavor, with the sixteen races broadcast by NBC Sports having an average TV rating of 3.2, some 20% higher than the 1999 average. NBC Sports' first Indy 500 gets the biggest TV ratings since the Indy 500 went to live TV in 1985, with a rating of 13.4 with a 32 share. That huge crowd got a classic Indy 500 to watch - polesitter Kenny Wilden's race lasted just three laps before he ran a hair too wide in Turn 2 and swipes the wall. Ten other drivers - Robby Gordon, Al Unser Jr., Adrian Fernandez, Michael Andretti, David Empringham, Paul Tracy, Davey Hamilton, Gil de Ferran, Tony Stewart and Greg Moore - led laps in the race, with the last 20 laps coming down to a straight fight between Moore and Stewart, with the talented Canadian coming out ahead of the Hoosier hero. Despite Stewart's loss, he still got a mighty roar from the crowd for his victory. The surprising high finisher of 2000 was Nigel Mansell, who had started 26th and finished in fourth, behind Moore, Stewart and Hamilton. It appeared that the British driver had well and truly been bitten by the Indycar bug, and still had all of his prodigous skill.....
Moore won the Indy 500, but Stewart got the last laugh in the end. Four wins for Stewart - California, Charlotte, Road America and Road Atlanta - and consistent high performances put Stewart in command of the title chase, despite the best efforts of Penske pilots Moore and Gil de Ferran to catch up. Perhaps more surprising was the fifth-placed driver, Al Unser Jr. His personal problems of 1999 had seemingly been worked out - thanks, apparently, to plenty of help from Robbie Stanley and Paul Tracy - and Little Al and old friend Rick Galles had hooked up again, and the combination proved to be surprisingly good in 2000, losing fourth in the title chase to Juan Pablo Montoya due to Montoya's charge through the field in Las Vegas, which saw him charge from 35th on the grid to third. By the end of 2000, Galles Racing, a team many figured was headed into history, had most certainly proved its worth again, and Little Al quite clearly was ready to go back to the top. The rookie title was won by the incredibly-talented newcomer to the Panther team, Ohio-native Sam Hornish Jr. Hornish was not particularly good on road courses, but on an oval he was absolutely deadly - which four poles in 2000 and finishing seventh in the points proved. Hornish was quite clearly another of the incredibly talented young drivers that would be a force in Indycars in the years to come.....
The 28-round 2000 Indycar World Series schedule saw no less than 11 different winners, and clearly consistency was the name of the game in the series if one wanted to win. Stewart and Moore embodied this - Stewart won four times, Moore twice, but both of them finished in the points 22 times out of a possible 28, which contributed to the 23-point gap between Moore and teammate de Ferran, who had ten points in hand over Montoya at the end of the season. Montoya's performance saw him move to Formula One for the Williams team for 2001, taking over from the retiring Ayrton Senna. Formula One team scouts were regular visitors to the Indycar circuit, with one of the most regular and enthusiastic visitors being Frank Williams. Williams also managed to inspire one of the feel-good stories of 2000. Driver Sam Schmidt, who had competed full-time in 1998, had been seriously injured in an ugly January 2000 Indy Lights practice crash. He met Williams for the first time when Williams turned up at the race at Phoenix, with Williams supposedly telling Schmidt that racing is a team sport, and that you can get all of the satisfaction of winning as an owner, and to not let his injuries get his passion down. Schmidt did just that, turning up at the Indy 500 as a team owner in May with sprint car star Steve Kinser driving his car. Kinser dutifully put the car in the field, starting 30th and finishing ninth. NBC made a note to talk to Schmidt, who was quite happy with his team's first attempt at the Indy 500 as an owner. One could hardly blame him, and Schmidt's transformation from driver to team owner was the feel good story of the 2000 season.
The promotional campaign that started in 1999 kept on going through 2000, though by the end of the 2000 season several of Indycar's sponsors were taking over the mantle of promoting the series as well. The slogan "The Fastest Sport on Earth" was made accurate at the series' final round, when Paul Tracy qualified on the pole at a speed of an astounding 242.057 mph, being clocked at 260.128 miles per hour at the fastest point of the track. Tracy's pole saw him take the fastest closed-course speed record, though his record only lasted until Gil de Ferran broke it at the same track a year later. The 2000 California 500 was the fastest race in Indycar history, with winner Tony Stewart averaging an astounding 202.673 mph for the entire race, breaking the record set at the 1993 Michigan 500, where Nigel Mansell had won with an average of 188.762 mph.
The first-ever Indycar race in Africa, held at the Kyalami Circuit in Midrand, South Africa, on March 19, 2000, was an event for the ages. The South African promoters, fully intending to send a message to Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, gave the Kyalami circuit a $35 million makeover for the event, and the Indycars were not the least bit effected by the high altitude of the Kyalami circuit. Helio Castroneves got the honor of winning the first race at Kyalami, in front of a crowd of 125,000 very enthusiastic fans, despite the 95-degree heat probably causing some issues and causing a number of mechanical failures. Jimmy Vasser, who finished second, said that the South Africans had really rolled out the welcome mat, saying "this is an incredible place in an incredible country, and I hope we have plenty of races in the future here."
For the support series, 2000's Indy Lights series was dominated by Kurt Busch, who won six times in 17 races, easily topping rivals Townsend Bell and Mark Hotchkis for the title. Busch's performance surprised many, considering that he had gotten the ride for 2000 on the basis of an astoundingly successful series of one-offs in 1999. The obvious talent of the Las Vegas native was obvious, and when Kenny Wilden left the Galles team to join the factory Cadillac effort in the American Le Mans Series for 2001, Busch moved into the seat vacated by Wilden. 2000 Atlantics Champion Dan Wheldon had the opportunity at an Indycar ride with newcomer team Sigma Autosport, but he turned it down, demanding that he take over one of the seats on PPI's Indycar team, then occupied by Anthony Lazzaro and Oriol Servia.Wheldon, who by then was getting to be known for his insufferable nature, was replaced in the Sigma ride by talented Brazilian driver Max Wilson, and his demanding, arrogant attitude saw him fired by Wells, though Wheldon soon got back into the series at Lynx Racing.
The first season of the United States Touring Car Series launched well, with Indycar veteran Dominic Dobson winning the inaugural title for PacWest Racing in their Dodge Stratus, though over the 15-round series he beat back a strong challenge from RealTime Racing's Acura Integras and their star pilot, Brazilian Pierre Kleinubing. The races were shown on Speed Channel, except for the final three races, which were shown on USA Network. They came to be glad they did that, as one of those three events, at Road Atlanta, saw Kleinubing and his Acura Integra and rival Michael Galati and his Audi A4 spend 20 laps fighting a wild battle where the two passed each other eight times apiece and swapped paint several times. The World Challenge in June 2000 was renamed the Motorola Cup, and gained recognition for its fields of modified exotic cars. Jeff McMillin won the first Motorola Cup, him and his BMW M3 not winning any races but finishing every race - one of only two cars in the field to do so - and finishing 13 of the 15 races in the points.
The American Le Mans Series saw its field grow substantially for 2000. 1999 participants Panoz and BMW returned, with Panoz returning as Ford Panoz, and with Audi, Cadillac and Chrysler coming to the series. Audi's mighty R8 was the class of the field, and Allan McNish and Michele Alboreto taking the ALMS title for the factory Audi team. Cadillac and Chrysler had teamed with Riley and Scott and Reynard, respectively, and while both showed flashes of potential both were off the pace, and also had some reliability issues. For the second half of 2000, a semi-factory Toyota effort, run by the SARD team, appeared in the American Le Mans Series, first racing at Mosport with a tuned version of Toyota's GT-One from 1999. The American Le Mans Series gained a number of new entrants when an agreement between the ALMS and the rival Grand Am sports car series was forged, with the struggling Grand Am series moving its entries into the ALMS starting at Petit Le Mans.
At Le Mans, All of the big three arrived at the 2000 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ford and Panoz wanted a repeat of the year before, while Cadillac and Chrysler wanted to make strong starts. Chrysler's fastest car was the race's first retirement, retiring with a broken engine on the second lap. Cadillac's race wasn't much better. One Cadillac ran like clockwork in fourth place behind the three factory Audis until just four hours to go, when a blown tire destroyed much of the left rear of the car, causing a 17th place finish. Panoz had a rough day as well - The fastest Panoz was eliminated from the race by a blown tire causing a GT car to veer into the side of the car while Mario Andretti was at the wheel. Both BMWs suffered engine problems, and while most of the factory cars finished, the fourth-place finisher at Le Mans was ALMS runner Team Rafanelli, whose Judd-powered Lola arrived home fifteen laps behind the lead Audi. Two private 1999-spec Panoz Roadsters finished sixth and seventh in the hands of Japanese entrant TV Asahi Team Dragon, which beat both the factory Panoz Roadsters home.
The final race of the year for just everyone was the ALMS finale at Adelaide in Australia, scheduled to be a 10-hour event ending at 10 pm. As with the 1998 Petit Le Mans, the field was massive - 60 cars - and it had a bunch of ALMS drivers in it. Al Unser Jr. made his name known to Australian fans for good, when he joined Mark Skaife and Craig Lowndes in the Holden Dealer Team entry, which bought a Cadillac LMP from French team DAMS. With an engine upgrade and some bodywork changes, the upgraded car went on to finish third in the race behind the two factory Panoz entries, in large part because of Little Al's incredible mid-race three-hour stint, where he climed the car from ninth place to fourth, which became third when the third-placed BMW suffered a transmission failure. The lead Panoz in this race was driven by the Andrettis, with Jeff Andretti joining his father Mario and elder brother Michael, and despite injuries to his legs, Jeff had no issues keeping up the pace. That Panoz, after contact with a GT Porsche and Michael brushing the wall in Turn three, finished in sixth.
By the end of 2000, Tony George and ALMS founder Donald Panoz regularly consulted on things regarding their respective series, and NBC Sports picked up the American Le Mans Series for 2001, first showing the race at Long Beach in April 2001. NBC had been buoyed by their success with the Indycar World Series, and only having made a passing interest in NASCAR, passed on the chance to pick up the NASCAR Sprint Cup for 2001, which Fox would up picking up and running with quite successfully.
The first United States Grand Prix since 1991 was held at Indianapolis on September 24. The event was a success, with attendance of some 135,000 at the race. Indianapolis Motor Speedway had undergone a major renovation for the event, and the track, while certainly not the best driving circuit on the Formula One circuit, the event was a commercial success and a hit with American Formula One fans. Ayrton Senna made his last race in the United States here, finishing third in the race for Williams behind the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Senna was well-received, with his driver introduction being met with a massive cheer that took some four minutes to die down, and the crowd again roared when Senna drove past the Honda-powered Jordan of Heinz-Herald Frentzen to get that third place. When news of Senna's third place was announced to the crowd at Laguna Seca, where that weekend's Indycar race was, where the crowd cheered the news.
2000 was the year that the future really opened up for the Indycar World Series. With attendance at the 28 events of the season averaging some 92,000 at each event, and with tens of millions now watching Indycar Racing in nearly 70 countries, it was no surprise that the Indycar Series was now considered the largest motorsports series in the world aside from Formula One. George's first "performance review" by his fellow team owners and stockholders, which was done in late 2000, saw that even those who had fought against his ascension to the Indycar leadership two years before had to admit that George knew what he was up to, and that his management team was a blessing into the series.
Indycar Racing entered the 21st Century with a new TV partner, growing popularity and with the three American automakers making major efforts to dominate American racing. While the factor efforts were at Le Mans and in the American Le Mans Series, Ford and General Motors paid plenty of attention to their Indycar efforts. GM, seeking to make the Oldsmobile brand survive, badged their new engines the "Oldsmobile Aurora M1" for their factory efforts, which for 2000 included Vision, Walker, Galles, Menard, Panther and Foyt. Among the driver strength for these were Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon, Al Unser Jr. and Robbie Stanley, though Stewart would be the big winner. Their squads also included talented youngsters in Sam Hornish Jr., Tony Renna and Sarah Fisher. GM would not win the manufacturers title, losing it to Honda, but by only five points.
To nobody's surprise, business story of the year for Indycars was NBC Sports taking over the TV rights to the series. It was a very successful endeavor, with the sixteen races broadcast by NBC Sports having an average TV rating of 3.2, some 20% higher than the 1999 average. NBC Sports' first Indy 500 gets the biggest TV ratings since the Indy 500 went to live TV in 1985, with a rating of 13.4 with a 32 share. That huge crowd got a classic Indy 500 to watch - polesitter Kenny Wilden's race lasted just three laps before he ran a hair too wide in Turn 2 and swipes the wall. Ten other drivers - Robby Gordon, Al Unser Jr., Adrian Fernandez, Michael Andretti, David Empringham, Paul Tracy, Davey Hamilton, Gil de Ferran, Tony Stewart and Greg Moore - led laps in the race, with the last 20 laps coming down to a straight fight between Moore and Stewart, with the talented Canadian coming out ahead of the Hoosier hero. Despite Stewart's loss, he still got a mighty roar from the crowd for his victory. The surprising high finisher of 2000 was Nigel Mansell, who had started 26th and finished in fourth, behind Moore, Stewart and Hamilton. It appeared that the British driver had well and truly been bitten by the Indycar bug, and still had all of his prodigous skill.....
Moore won the Indy 500, but Stewart got the last laugh in the end. Four wins for Stewart - California, Charlotte, Road America and Road Atlanta - and consistent high performances put Stewart in command of the title chase, despite the best efforts of Penske pilots Moore and Gil de Ferran to catch up. Perhaps more surprising was the fifth-placed driver, Al Unser Jr. His personal problems of 1999 had seemingly been worked out - thanks, apparently, to plenty of help from Robbie Stanley and Paul Tracy - and Little Al and old friend Rick Galles had hooked up again, and the combination proved to be surprisingly good in 2000, losing fourth in the title chase to Juan Pablo Montoya due to Montoya's charge through the field in Las Vegas, which saw him charge from 35th on the grid to third. By the end of 2000, Galles Racing, a team many figured was headed into history, had most certainly proved its worth again, and Little Al quite clearly was ready to go back to the top. The rookie title was won by the incredibly-talented newcomer to the Panther team, Ohio-native Sam Hornish Jr. Hornish was not particularly good on road courses, but on an oval he was absolutely deadly - which four poles in 2000 and finishing seventh in the points proved. Hornish was quite clearly another of the incredibly talented young drivers that would be a force in Indycars in the years to come.....
The 28-round 2000 Indycar World Series schedule saw no less than 11 different winners, and clearly consistency was the name of the game in the series if one wanted to win. Stewart and Moore embodied this - Stewart won four times, Moore twice, but both of them finished in the points 22 times out of a possible 28, which contributed to the 23-point gap between Moore and teammate de Ferran, who had ten points in hand over Montoya at the end of the season. Montoya's performance saw him move to Formula One for the Williams team for 2001, taking over from the retiring Ayrton Senna. Formula One team scouts were regular visitors to the Indycar circuit, with one of the most regular and enthusiastic visitors being Frank Williams. Williams also managed to inspire one of the feel-good stories of 2000. Driver Sam Schmidt, who had competed full-time in 1998, had been seriously injured in an ugly January 2000 Indy Lights practice crash. He met Williams for the first time when Williams turned up at the race at Phoenix, with Williams supposedly telling Schmidt that racing is a team sport, and that you can get all of the satisfaction of winning as an owner, and to not let his injuries get his passion down. Schmidt did just that, turning up at the Indy 500 as a team owner in May with sprint car star Steve Kinser driving his car. Kinser dutifully put the car in the field, starting 30th and finishing ninth. NBC made a note to talk to Schmidt, who was quite happy with his team's first attempt at the Indy 500 as an owner. One could hardly blame him, and Schmidt's transformation from driver to team owner was the feel good story of the 2000 season.
The promotional campaign that started in 1999 kept on going through 2000, though by the end of the 2000 season several of Indycar's sponsors were taking over the mantle of promoting the series as well. The slogan "The Fastest Sport on Earth" was made accurate at the series' final round, when Paul Tracy qualified on the pole at a speed of an astounding 242.057 mph, being clocked at 260.128 miles per hour at the fastest point of the track. Tracy's pole saw him take the fastest closed-course speed record, though his record only lasted until Gil de Ferran broke it at the same track a year later. The 2000 California 500 was the fastest race in Indycar history, with winner Tony Stewart averaging an astounding 202.673 mph for the entire race, breaking the record set at the 1993 Michigan 500, where Nigel Mansell had won with an average of 188.762 mph.
The first-ever Indycar race in Africa, held at the Kyalami Circuit in Midrand, South Africa, on March 19, 2000, was an event for the ages. The South African promoters, fully intending to send a message to Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, gave the Kyalami circuit a $35 million makeover for the event, and the Indycars were not the least bit effected by the high altitude of the Kyalami circuit. Helio Castroneves got the honor of winning the first race at Kyalami, in front of a crowd of 125,000 very enthusiastic fans, despite the 95-degree heat probably causing some issues and causing a number of mechanical failures. Jimmy Vasser, who finished second, said that the South Africans had really rolled out the welcome mat, saying "this is an incredible place in an incredible country, and I hope we have plenty of races in the future here."
For the support series, 2000's Indy Lights series was dominated by Kurt Busch, who won six times in 17 races, easily topping rivals Townsend Bell and Mark Hotchkis for the title. Busch's performance surprised many, considering that he had gotten the ride for 2000 on the basis of an astoundingly successful series of one-offs in 1999. The obvious talent of the Las Vegas native was obvious, and when Kenny Wilden left the Galles team to join the factory Cadillac effort in the American Le Mans Series for 2001, Busch moved into the seat vacated by Wilden. 2000 Atlantics Champion Dan Wheldon had the opportunity at an Indycar ride with newcomer team Sigma Autosport, but he turned it down, demanding that he take over one of the seats on PPI's Indycar team, then occupied by Anthony Lazzaro and Oriol Servia.Wheldon, who by then was getting to be known for his insufferable nature, was replaced in the Sigma ride by talented Brazilian driver Max Wilson, and his demanding, arrogant attitude saw him fired by Wells, though Wheldon soon got back into the series at Lynx Racing.
The first season of the United States Touring Car Series launched well, with Indycar veteran Dominic Dobson winning the inaugural title for PacWest Racing in their Dodge Stratus, though over the 15-round series he beat back a strong challenge from RealTime Racing's Acura Integras and their star pilot, Brazilian Pierre Kleinubing. The races were shown on Speed Channel, except for the final three races, which were shown on USA Network. They came to be glad they did that, as one of those three events, at Road Atlanta, saw Kleinubing and his Acura Integra and rival Michael Galati and his Audi A4 spend 20 laps fighting a wild battle where the two passed each other eight times apiece and swapped paint several times. The World Challenge in June 2000 was renamed the Motorola Cup, and gained recognition for its fields of modified exotic cars. Jeff McMillin won the first Motorola Cup, him and his BMW M3 not winning any races but finishing every race - one of only two cars in the field to do so - and finishing 13 of the 15 races in the points.
The American Le Mans Series saw its field grow substantially for 2000. 1999 participants Panoz and BMW returned, with Panoz returning as Ford Panoz, and with Audi, Cadillac and Chrysler coming to the series. Audi's mighty R8 was the class of the field, and Allan McNish and Michele Alboreto taking the ALMS title for the factory Audi team. Cadillac and Chrysler had teamed with Riley and Scott and Reynard, respectively, and while both showed flashes of potential both were off the pace, and also had some reliability issues. For the second half of 2000, a semi-factory Toyota effort, run by the SARD team, appeared in the American Le Mans Series, first racing at Mosport with a tuned version of Toyota's GT-One from 1999. The American Le Mans Series gained a number of new entrants when an agreement between the ALMS and the rival Grand Am sports car series was forged, with the struggling Grand Am series moving its entries into the ALMS starting at Petit Le Mans.
At Le Mans, All of the big three arrived at the 2000 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ford and Panoz wanted a repeat of the year before, while Cadillac and Chrysler wanted to make strong starts. Chrysler's fastest car was the race's first retirement, retiring with a broken engine on the second lap. Cadillac's race wasn't much better. One Cadillac ran like clockwork in fourth place behind the three factory Audis until just four hours to go, when a blown tire destroyed much of the left rear of the car, causing a 17th place finish. Panoz had a rough day as well - The fastest Panoz was eliminated from the race by a blown tire causing a GT car to veer into the side of the car while Mario Andretti was at the wheel. Both BMWs suffered engine problems, and while most of the factory cars finished, the fourth-place finisher at Le Mans was ALMS runner Team Rafanelli, whose Judd-powered Lola arrived home fifteen laps behind the lead Audi. Two private 1999-spec Panoz Roadsters finished sixth and seventh in the hands of Japanese entrant TV Asahi Team Dragon, which beat both the factory Panoz Roadsters home.
The final race of the year for just everyone was the ALMS finale at Adelaide in Australia, scheduled to be a 10-hour event ending at 10 pm. As with the 1998 Petit Le Mans, the field was massive - 60 cars - and it had a bunch of ALMS drivers in it. Al Unser Jr. made his name known to Australian fans for good, when he joined Mark Skaife and Craig Lowndes in the Holden Dealer Team entry, which bought a Cadillac LMP from French team DAMS. With an engine upgrade and some bodywork changes, the upgraded car went on to finish third in the race behind the two factory Panoz entries, in large part because of Little Al's incredible mid-race three-hour stint, where he climed the car from ninth place to fourth, which became third when the third-placed BMW suffered a transmission failure. The lead Panoz in this race was driven by the Andrettis, with Jeff Andretti joining his father Mario and elder brother Michael, and despite injuries to his legs, Jeff had no issues keeping up the pace. That Panoz, after contact with a GT Porsche and Michael brushing the wall in Turn three, finished in sixth.
By the end of 2000, Tony George and ALMS founder Donald Panoz regularly consulted on things regarding their respective series, and NBC Sports picked up the American Le Mans Series for 2001, first showing the race at Long Beach in April 2001. NBC had been buoyed by their success with the Indycar World Series, and only having made a passing interest in NASCAR, passed on the chance to pick up the NASCAR Sprint Cup for 2001, which Fox would up picking up and running with quite successfully.
The first United States Grand Prix since 1991 was held at Indianapolis on September 24. The event was a success, with attendance of some 135,000 at the race. Indianapolis Motor Speedway had undergone a major renovation for the event, and the track, while certainly not the best driving circuit on the Formula One circuit, the event was a commercial success and a hit with American Formula One fans. Ayrton Senna made his last race in the United States here, finishing third in the race for Williams behind the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Senna was well-received, with his driver introduction being met with a massive cheer that took some four minutes to die down, and the crowd again roared when Senna drove past the Honda-powered Jordan of Heinz-Herald Frentzen to get that third place. When news of Senna's third place was announced to the crowd at Laguna Seca, where that weekend's Indycar race was, where the crowd cheered the news.
2000 was the year that the future really opened up for the Indycar World Series. With attendance at the 28 events of the season averaging some 92,000 at each event, and with tens of millions now watching Indycar Racing in nearly 70 countries, it was no surprise that the Indycar Series was now considered the largest motorsports series in the world aside from Formula One. George's first "performance review" by his fellow team owners and stockholders, which was done in late 2000, saw that even those who had fought against his ascension to the Indycar leadership two years before had to admit that George knew what he was up to, and that his management team was a blessing into the series.
A question about the 2000 Indy 500: did Sarah win Rookie of the Year at Indy? And was she or Hornish the IndyCar Rookie of the Year for the season?
Sarah was ROTY at Indy in 1999, ROTY at Indy in 2000 was Alex Tagliani, who finished sixth.
2000's ROTY for the season was Sam Hornish Jr, 1999's ROTY was Juan Pablo Montoya.
OOC: Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnd ITS BACK.
2001
2001 opened up building on the success of 2000, with the event at Mont-Tremblant gone - the track was undergoing a major rebuilding and as such couldn't be raced on - and a new event at Fundidora Park in Monterrey, Mexico. It also opened with a new sponsor, as PPG's deal for the series naming rights had expired at the end of 2000, with the new name being the FedEx Indycar World Series. Several sponsorships for the series also had signed over the off-season. The season opened up with several teams having swapped drivers around - Ganassi was the most notable, with Brazilian F1 tester Bruno Junquiera and highly-rated Mexican-American driver Memo Gidley driving the cars. Gidley had a fringe benefit to the series' popularity, as he was in a relationship with Hollywood movie star Jessica Alba, and Jessica was a regular visitor at the races. Jimmy Vasser had bumped Greg Ray out of the series by taking his seat at PacWest, though Ray was offered - and accepted - the position as driver of PacWest's lead US Touring Car effort. Ray got his revenge in this regard, as he won PacWest's second consecutive USTCC championship, this time beating out the Nissan Altima SE-Rs of Peter Cunningham and Randy Pobst, Pierre Kleinubing's Acura TL and Michael Galati's Audi A4.
Tony Stewart got his title defense off with a bang, winning at Phoenix, but by Indianapolis, it was clear that on the ovals, Al Unser Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr. had the better of him. Little Al was the shock of the season, as it was quite clear that him and Rick Galles, together again, had the ability to dismantle the Indycar field. Unser won five times on the season, including at Indianapolis, but stronger consistency by Greg Moore took him to the title, though going into the final round at California both Moore and Unser, along with Moore's teammate Gil de Ferran, could win the title. The final race was PacWest's first win since 1998, as Jimmy Vasser led 112 laps on his way to winning at the awesomely-fast California Speedway. The race at Indianapolis was Unser matching his uncle Bobby, winning his third Indy 500. He had to work at it, though - the front row of Memo Gidley, Robby Gordon and Tony Kanaan was untouchable early on. Kanaan retired from the event with a dead fuel pump, and Gil de Ferran got into lead after Robby Gordon, the 1999 winner, fell back with handling difficulties and a pit mishap dropped Gidley down the order. Little Al took the lead on Lap 144 when de Ferran's car broke a halfshaft, and Little Al held on through the final stops, and managed to keep Gidley, Alex Zanardi, Sam Hornish Jr. and Richie Hearn behind him, all of which were charging for the front. Sarah Fisher finished her third straight Indy 500 in the top ten by finishing ninth, and Japanese driver Nobuteru Taniguchi broke the curse of Japanese drivers at Indianapolis all having problems, finishing twelfth after a solid run from 25th on the grid. Fisher had, at the race before at Charlotte, only been stopped from being Indycar's first female winner by a penultimate lap pass by Little Al, who apologized to Sarah for blowing her chance to make history. Sarah laughed it off, commenting that she'd have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.
The Charlotte race in itself was a surprise, as the attendance at the races at Lowe's Motor Speedway had swelled from 55,000 in 1998 to 87,000 in 2001, square in the middle of stock car country. The manager of the track, Humpy Wheeler, was a guy well known for promotional stunts, and his excellent efforts at promoting stock car racing had rubbed off on the Indycar Series, as they found several events in NASCAR country, most notably Charlotte, drew very well for the Indycar Series, despite the reputation of the south as being NASCAR's turf. For 2002, the Charlotte race moved forward two weeks, to help get separation between the Indycar race and the Coca-Cola 600 stock car race on Memorial Day weekend, as well as make room for the newest track to host Indycars in 2002, Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama.
The horrible events of September 11, 2001, stunned everyone in the Indycar Series just as it did virtually everyone around the world. Two of Alan Gow's employees had been among those on United Flight 175, and their names were carried on every car at the next race. The series was scheduled to race at Eurospeedway Lausitz the weekend after the attacks, and they did, though virtually all cars carried prominent American flags, in many cases covering up sponsor logos, and the race was renamed "The American Memorial." Perhaps fittingly, all of the top five finishers - Al Unser Jr., Sam Hornish Jr., Robby Gordon, Davey Hamilton and Casey Mears - were Americans by birth. The race was, despite the tragedy, a commercial success, but the promoter wound up going bankrupt during the off-season, and the race did not return for 2002. But that, in itself, became one of the openings of a lifetime. In December 2001, The Indycar Series proposed a major race in New York the weekend before September 11 in 2002, as a symbol of showing off that New York does not bow down to a tragedy. George had raised the idea, but Bloomberg was not expected to take it seriously - but he did. On January 20, 2002, Bloomberg proposed the idea to New York's City Council, which approved of the idea if the Indycar Series could cover the costs of setting up the promotional efforts. This was not an issue, and after negotiating the deal and agreeing to move the race from Watkins Glen to New York, the Indycar Series announced on March 27, 2002, that "The New York Trophy" would be run at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens on September 15. A month after that, the American Le Mans Series joined the event, hosting a race at Flushing Meadows Park as well. Following a major sponsorship deal by General Motors, the event was made free of charge for residents of the city of New York, provided they reserved their tickets in advance. It would go down in the minds of many New Yorkers as a great tribute, and that George's comment about showing that New York and America can go on after the attacks was well-received.
The 2001 title was the first for Canadian Greg Moore, and his victory at Vancouver also saw him awarded the Key to the City by paraplegic Vancouver city councillor Sam Sullivan, with Sullivan commenting that Moore had "Made the fans who root for him here in Vancouver very proud. His championship victory two months later added to Owen's point. Moore's teammate got a bigger honor, with Gil de Ferran, despite only finishing third in the title being offered the position of Toyota's second F1 driver, achieving de Ferran's life-long dream.
Several newcomers came to the series in 2001, with the two biggest ones being Indy Lights front-runner Christiano "Shorty" da Matta and 1999 ALMS champion David Brabham, who both joined the Newman-Haas team for 2001, as Michael Andretti moved off to form his own team, helped when he poached backing from Motorola, which did so angered PacWest owner Bruce McCaw that he swore he'd beat Andretti in 2001 title chase with one of his drivers. He failed at that attempt, but PacWest did grab two wins thanks to Jimmy Vasser, but PacWest, despite years of struggling and losing its biggest single sponsor, was looking on the cusp of Indycar success. The biggest new arrival was the team owned by Mo Nunn, who had for years been Chip Ganassi's chief engineer before becoming a team owner in his own right for 2001, also joining Andretti, Adrian Fernandez and Stefan Johansson in becoming team owners. Mo Nunn also brought back one of the most popular drivers in the Indycar Series with him - Alex Zanardi, back in the series after sitting out most of 2000. Zanardi was initially beaten by Japanese teammate Nobuteru Tanguchi, but by mid-season Zanardi had driven level with Taniguchi, and Zanardi returned to victory lane at Road Atlanta after a wild battle with da Matta. Zanardi's late-season consistency saw him finish seventh in the points. Ganassi's new hires both did well for themselves, with Junquiera being the Rookie of the Year, confortably beating Brabham, da Matta and ex-F1 pilot Johnny Herbert, who drove Johansson's car all year.
Road Racing grew in popularity through the 2000s, and it was reflected in the growth in importance of the American Le Mans Series. For 2001, the weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was an off-weekend for both the NASCAR Winston Cup Series as well as for the Indycars, with the American manufacturers all mounting serious attempts at Le Mans, with new cars and four cars apiece from Cadillac, Chrysler and Ford Panoz. Cadillac sent two cars with a factory effort and two from the DAMS team, which also competed in the European Le Mans Series. Chrysler brought two cars with the French ORECA team and one each from Team Rahal and NASCAR squad Evernham Motorsports, while Panoz enlisted Newman-Haas Racing to run with the Factory team, while a pair of 2000-spec cars were run by TV Asahi Team Dragon. They were joined by Audi, Bentley, MG and Toyota. Toyota, who ran a heavily improved variant of the GT-One, and Bentley's Audi R8-based EXP Speed 8, were the only closed-roof prototype entries. Audi won their second consecutive Le Mans, though Audi had to work hard for it - the Cadillacs were strong the whole time. A pit fire eliminated one of the factory Panoz entries, though the other three all finished. The 2001 ALMS season had Audi, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford Panoz, BMW and Toyota in it, and it showed in the level of competitiveness and the field sizes. The Audi R8 was the fastest car, but the Americans could - and did - show a few surprises. Several privateer teams, led by the Dyson, Intersport and Rafanelli teams, had surprises to play too - Rafanelli's bullet-quick Judd-powered Lola prototype was the fastest independent with the regularity of the tides, and Dyson stuck with the Riley and Scott MkIIIC chassis, which got help after Reynard bought Riley and Scott in 2001, but switched to the turbocharged Ford V8 power used by the Ford Panoz efforts.
In late 2001, a second surprise came up, coming from Latin America, as an Indycar-rules new series would start in Latin America for 2002, named the Copa Latinoamerica in Spanish and the Copo Latino-Americano in Portuguese. This new series started off with ten races in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Run during the winter, it was supposed that some of the American drivers and teams may well decide to take on the Latin American races. And by the time the series started in October 2002, it had some huge names among its ranks - Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Mauricio Gugelmin, Christian Fittipaldi, Robert Moreno, Esteban Tuero and Juan Manuel Fangio II among the pilots, and indeed Gugelmin won the first title from Senna and Moreno. The agreement between this series and Indianapolis was evident right from the start, as it allowed the Indycar Circuit to move to Mexico City, while allowing Fundidora Park to go to the Latin American Series, which proved to be a successful event for them. True to form, the PacWest squad came to play for several rounds in 2001-02, with Jimmy Vasser and Casey Mears doing well, including Mears scoring a first Indycar win in the Latin American series round at Cordoba in Argentina. The focus was overwhelmingly on the runners from South America, though - and the legendary drivers had lots of young guys to mentor, and Indycar chassis were much cheaper to buy and maintain than other race cars, which made for plenty of entries.
2001
2001 opened up building on the success of 2000, with the event at Mont-Tremblant gone - the track was undergoing a major rebuilding and as such couldn't be raced on - and a new event at Fundidora Park in Monterrey, Mexico. It also opened with a new sponsor, as PPG's deal for the series naming rights had expired at the end of 2000, with the new name being the FedEx Indycar World Series. Several sponsorships for the series also had signed over the off-season. The season opened up with several teams having swapped drivers around - Ganassi was the most notable, with Brazilian F1 tester Bruno Junquiera and highly-rated Mexican-American driver Memo Gidley driving the cars. Gidley had a fringe benefit to the series' popularity, as he was in a relationship with Hollywood movie star Jessica Alba, and Jessica was a regular visitor at the races. Jimmy Vasser had bumped Greg Ray out of the series by taking his seat at PacWest, though Ray was offered - and accepted - the position as driver of PacWest's lead US Touring Car effort. Ray got his revenge in this regard, as he won PacWest's second consecutive USTCC championship, this time beating out the Nissan Altima SE-Rs of Peter Cunningham and Randy Pobst, Pierre Kleinubing's Acura TL and Michael Galati's Audi A4.
Tony Stewart got his title defense off with a bang, winning at Phoenix, but by Indianapolis, it was clear that on the ovals, Al Unser Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr. had the better of him. Little Al was the shock of the season, as it was quite clear that him and Rick Galles, together again, had the ability to dismantle the Indycar field. Unser won five times on the season, including at Indianapolis, but stronger consistency by Greg Moore took him to the title, though going into the final round at California both Moore and Unser, along with Moore's teammate Gil de Ferran, could win the title. The final race was PacWest's first win since 1998, as Jimmy Vasser led 112 laps on his way to winning at the awesomely-fast California Speedway. The race at Indianapolis was Unser matching his uncle Bobby, winning his third Indy 500. He had to work at it, though - the front row of Memo Gidley, Robby Gordon and Tony Kanaan was untouchable early on. Kanaan retired from the event with a dead fuel pump, and Gil de Ferran got into lead after Robby Gordon, the 1999 winner, fell back with handling difficulties and a pit mishap dropped Gidley down the order. Little Al took the lead on Lap 144 when de Ferran's car broke a halfshaft, and Little Al held on through the final stops, and managed to keep Gidley, Alex Zanardi, Sam Hornish Jr. and Richie Hearn behind him, all of which were charging for the front. Sarah Fisher finished her third straight Indy 500 in the top ten by finishing ninth, and Japanese driver Nobuteru Taniguchi broke the curse of Japanese drivers at Indianapolis all having problems, finishing twelfth after a solid run from 25th on the grid. Fisher had, at the race before at Charlotte, only been stopped from being Indycar's first female winner by a penultimate lap pass by Little Al, who apologized to Sarah for blowing her chance to make history. Sarah laughed it off, commenting that she'd have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.
The Charlotte race in itself was a surprise, as the attendance at the races at Lowe's Motor Speedway had swelled from 55,000 in 1998 to 87,000 in 2001, square in the middle of stock car country. The manager of the track, Humpy Wheeler, was a guy well known for promotional stunts, and his excellent efforts at promoting stock car racing had rubbed off on the Indycar Series, as they found several events in NASCAR country, most notably Charlotte, drew very well for the Indycar Series, despite the reputation of the south as being NASCAR's turf. For 2002, the Charlotte race moved forward two weeks, to help get separation between the Indycar race and the Coca-Cola 600 stock car race on Memorial Day weekend, as well as make room for the newest track to host Indycars in 2002, Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama.
The horrible events of September 11, 2001, stunned everyone in the Indycar Series just as it did virtually everyone around the world. Two of Alan Gow's employees had been among those on United Flight 175, and their names were carried on every car at the next race. The series was scheduled to race at Eurospeedway Lausitz the weekend after the attacks, and they did, though virtually all cars carried prominent American flags, in many cases covering up sponsor logos, and the race was renamed "The American Memorial." Perhaps fittingly, all of the top five finishers - Al Unser Jr., Sam Hornish Jr., Robby Gordon, Davey Hamilton and Casey Mears - were Americans by birth. The race was, despite the tragedy, a commercial success, but the promoter wound up going bankrupt during the off-season, and the race did not return for 2002. But that, in itself, became one of the openings of a lifetime. In December 2001, The Indycar Series proposed a major race in New York the weekend before September 11 in 2002, as a symbol of showing off that New York does not bow down to a tragedy. George had raised the idea, but Bloomberg was not expected to take it seriously - but he did. On January 20, 2002, Bloomberg proposed the idea to New York's City Council, which approved of the idea if the Indycar Series could cover the costs of setting up the promotional efforts. This was not an issue, and after negotiating the deal and agreeing to move the race from Watkins Glen to New York, the Indycar Series announced on March 27, 2002, that "The New York Trophy" would be run at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens on September 15. A month after that, the American Le Mans Series joined the event, hosting a race at Flushing Meadows Park as well. Following a major sponsorship deal by General Motors, the event was made free of charge for residents of the city of New York, provided they reserved their tickets in advance. It would go down in the minds of many New Yorkers as a great tribute, and that George's comment about showing that New York and America can go on after the attacks was well-received.
The 2001 title was the first for Canadian Greg Moore, and his victory at Vancouver also saw him awarded the Key to the City by paraplegic Vancouver city councillor Sam Sullivan, with Sullivan commenting that Moore had "Made the fans who root for him here in Vancouver very proud. His championship victory two months later added to Owen's point. Moore's teammate got a bigger honor, with Gil de Ferran, despite only finishing third in the title being offered the position of Toyota's second F1 driver, achieving de Ferran's life-long dream.
Several newcomers came to the series in 2001, with the two biggest ones being Indy Lights front-runner Christiano "Shorty" da Matta and 1999 ALMS champion David Brabham, who both joined the Newman-Haas team for 2001, as Michael Andretti moved off to form his own team, helped when he poached backing from Motorola, which did so angered PacWest owner Bruce McCaw that he swore he'd beat Andretti in 2001 title chase with one of his drivers. He failed at that attempt, but PacWest did grab two wins thanks to Jimmy Vasser, but PacWest, despite years of struggling and losing its biggest single sponsor, was looking on the cusp of Indycar success. The biggest new arrival was the team owned by Mo Nunn, who had for years been Chip Ganassi's chief engineer before becoming a team owner in his own right for 2001, also joining Andretti, Adrian Fernandez and Stefan Johansson in becoming team owners. Mo Nunn also brought back one of the most popular drivers in the Indycar Series with him - Alex Zanardi, back in the series after sitting out most of 2000. Zanardi was initially beaten by Japanese teammate Nobuteru Tanguchi, but by mid-season Zanardi had driven level with Taniguchi, and Zanardi returned to victory lane at Road Atlanta after a wild battle with da Matta. Zanardi's late-season consistency saw him finish seventh in the points. Ganassi's new hires both did well for themselves, with Junquiera being the Rookie of the Year, confortably beating Brabham, da Matta and ex-F1 pilot Johnny Herbert, who drove Johansson's car all year.
Road Racing grew in popularity through the 2000s, and it was reflected in the growth in importance of the American Le Mans Series. For 2001, the weekend of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was an off-weekend for both the NASCAR Winston Cup Series as well as for the Indycars, with the American manufacturers all mounting serious attempts at Le Mans, with new cars and four cars apiece from Cadillac, Chrysler and Ford Panoz. Cadillac sent two cars with a factory effort and two from the DAMS team, which also competed in the European Le Mans Series. Chrysler brought two cars with the French ORECA team and one each from Team Rahal and NASCAR squad Evernham Motorsports, while Panoz enlisted Newman-Haas Racing to run with the Factory team, while a pair of 2000-spec cars were run by TV Asahi Team Dragon. They were joined by Audi, Bentley, MG and Toyota. Toyota, who ran a heavily improved variant of the GT-One, and Bentley's Audi R8-based EXP Speed 8, were the only closed-roof prototype entries. Audi won their second consecutive Le Mans, though Audi had to work hard for it - the Cadillacs were strong the whole time. A pit fire eliminated one of the factory Panoz entries, though the other three all finished. The 2001 ALMS season had Audi, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford Panoz, BMW and Toyota in it, and it showed in the level of competitiveness and the field sizes. The Audi R8 was the fastest car, but the Americans could - and did - show a few surprises. Several privateer teams, led by the Dyson, Intersport and Rafanelli teams, had surprises to play too - Rafanelli's bullet-quick Judd-powered Lola prototype was the fastest independent with the regularity of the tides, and Dyson stuck with the Riley and Scott MkIIIC chassis, which got help after Reynard bought Riley and Scott in 2001, but switched to the turbocharged Ford V8 power used by the Ford Panoz efforts.
In late 2001, a second surprise came up, coming from Latin America, as an Indycar-rules new series would start in Latin America for 2002, named the Copa Latinoamerica in Spanish and the Copo Latino-Americano in Portuguese. This new series started off with ten races in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Run during the winter, it was supposed that some of the American drivers and teams may well decide to take on the Latin American races. And by the time the series started in October 2002, it had some huge names among its ranks - Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Mauricio Gugelmin, Christian Fittipaldi, Robert Moreno, Esteban Tuero and Juan Manuel Fangio II among the pilots, and indeed Gugelmin won the first title from Senna and Moreno. The agreement between this series and Indianapolis was evident right from the start, as it allowed the Indycar Circuit to move to Mexico City, while allowing Fundidora Park to go to the Latin American Series, which proved to be a successful event for them. True to form, the PacWest squad came to play for several rounds in 2001-02, with Jimmy Vasser and Casey Mears doing well, including Mears scoring a first Indycar win in the Latin American series round at Cordoba in Argentina. The focus was overwhelmingly on the runners from South America, though - and the legendary drivers had lots of young guys to mentor, and Indycar chassis were much cheaper to buy and maintain than other race cars, which made for plenty of entries.
2002
The success of 2001 was reflected in 2002, especially in the sponsors field, with virtually every regular carrying the name of a major sponsor, with multi-million dollar sponsor deals being almost a norm, with the biggest numbers going to the top teams, of course. There was only new team for 2002, that being the entry of Japanese company HKS as their own team, after Nobuteru Taniguchi's quite respectable run at Mo Nunn Racing in 2001, entering the series with Nissan engines (joining PacWest, Hogan and Johannsson as the teams with Nissan power) but with a brand-new chassis from Japanese race car manufacturer Dome cars. Dome had been hoping that its R103 chassis would entice other teams, but nobody bit. Regardless, the HKS team had a building year, though it was tempered with at times impressive runs, particlarly Taniguchi's crowd-pleasing pole position and fifth-placed finish at Twin Ring Motegi.
The 2001 champ team, Marlboro Team Penske, had a new driver as Gil de Ferran headed off to Formula One for the Toyota Grand Prix team. Helio Castroneves took over the second car at Penske, the charismatic Brazilian making a good team-mate to Greg Moore. Despite the rumors of fans who figured that Helio would end up being the number two to Moore, all involved - including Moore, Castroneves and Penske - all made it clear that the best racer would win, and that there would be no team orders. Helio made that point quite obvious when he won his first race for Penske at Phoenix, outrunning a charging Paul Tracy to do so. Helio's ride at Patrick Racing was taken by one of Tony George's highly-regarded prospects, Indiana native Ryan Newman, who scooped up the Rookie of the Year title - but he had to beat down the other of George's prospects, Las Vegas native Kurt Busch, who quickly became the anti-hero in the Indycar series after an accident with Robby Gordon at Milwaukee, when afterwards he commented "I guess for now I'm stuck back there with the washed-up has-beens." Robby Gordon commented on that on Speedvision's "Wind Tunnel" program, saying that if Kurt ever said that to his face that he'd punch him in the mouth for it. Busch, despite his bad attitude, got results and drove well, with teammate Al Unser Jr. commenting that Kurt could be a dominant force in Indycars, but that he could do well to not act like a dick all the time.
Moore's biggest challenger for his title repeat was sophomore Christiano "Shorty" da Matta at Newman-Haas, with Christiano winning only twice, but eventually coming out ahead in the title chase over Moore. Moore and da Matta ran against each other on several occasions, and in one case (Vancouver) collided with each other while fighting for the lead - an act which both drivers shrugged off as a "racing incident". Castroneves finished third in the title chase, winning four times and finishing second to Greg twice, and locking up his third in the championship by winning the final race of the season at Fontana. Tony Stewart led the championship early in the season, but was unable to put up the consistency to stack up enough points to win the title. Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti, Sam Hornish Jr. and David Brabham, da Matta's teammate, were also regular contenders, but like the rest of the field, eventually slid behind the charging Moore and da Matta.
The series made major media attention in April, when Sarah Fisher broke the gender barrier when she went on to win the Kobalt Mechanics Tools 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. She did so in dramatic fashion, after spending virtually all of the second half of the race slugging it out with Buddy Rice and taking the checkered flag with Rice tucked under her rear wing. Fisher's win got her attention on virtually every media outlet in the nation, and made Fisher quite justifiably famous. Despite the huge publicity, Sarah brushed most of it off. "I'm just an average young woman who happens to make a living driving race cars. I'm no celebrity, and I'm not gonna become one just because I won an Indycar race. Mind you, if I win Indy one day, I might think a little different." was her comment to Gordon Kirby on the matter. Walker Racing was having no issues with sponsorship, and teammate Robby Gordon also won the race at Twin Ring Motegi, and both of them were regular good runners.
Another feel-good story was at PacWest. Visa and Bank of America had extended their deals with Bruce McCaw and his team, and in 2002 the team had one major goal - kick Michael Andretti's ass. Andretti made that anger rather more pronounced after proudly commenting that "Motorola made the right call by signing with us" after winning the race at Kyalami. Three weeks later, the joke was on him as Casey Mears ripped off his first Indycar win with a fantastic performance at a very hot Long Beach Grand Prix, outrunning polesitter Bruno Junquiera and defending winner Al Unser Jr. in an incredible three-way battle, and McCaw made absolutely certain that Andretti knew it. McCaw got some unexpected help when Paul Tracy grabbed the pole for his hometown race in Toronto, and commented to Jack Arute after qualifying "Does this mean I too can talk s*** about Michael, now?" Michael, however, won the race in Toronto, and answered back to Paul (who finished third) after the race "You can talk all the s*** you want, because every time you do I end up kicking your a**, so by all means, keep talking." Michael did ultimately finish higher in the points than both PacWest drivers, but McCaw was unfazed by this - if anything, the competition between him and Michael was making his passion level even higher, and he was loving it.
The series recorded its highest race day attendance totals ever, with the combined number of fans at the races topping three million on the season and averaging over 100,000 a race, with average TV ratings in the 2.0-2.5 rating, with the races on major networks being somewhat higher than that. Indy busted its 2000 record for highest live TV ratings, posting a 14.1 rating with a 30 share, and selling out the race, despite Indy adding another 30,000 seats to the infield and on the approach to Turn 3, bringing the track's capacity to better than 350,000. A survey by Harvard University found that an Indycar or NASCAR Winston Cup series event brought more money to an economy than any other sporting event save the Super Bowl or the World Series. That survey wound up being used by both NASCAR and CART to make points about the importance of their events.
While Indy is always the grand-daddy of Indycar World Series events, in 2002 it had a rival. Following the stunning announcement in March of a race in New York City at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, the series had been expecting a big turnout. The decision by General Motors to make the event free of charge for participants caused a media circus in itself, with the event expected to be a circus, and from the moment the Indycar Series and American Le Mans Series teams arrived in New York, the city was abuzz. Even the race's naysayers commented that the huge weekend, with the massive publicity that it got, was exactly the elixir the city needed. True to form, over 300,000 people jammed themselves into every possible place to watch the races of the weekend, and take in one of the biggest parties the city had seen in decades. The 2.84-mile track was excellent for passing by any standard, with the American Le Mans Series race, won by the Cadillac LMP of Brian Simo, Tommy Kendall and Elliott Forbes-Robinson the evening before, being quite the show by any standard. The Indycar race was a similarly massive event, with the green flag being waved by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Great starts by Michael Andretti and Anthony Lazzaro gave way to a fight between Casey Mears and Memo Gidley, with Jessica Alba (Gidley's girlfriend) on the pit wall for much of the race cheering her boyfriend on. Mears won over Gidley, with Bruce McCaw, who had lost two friends in the North Tower on September 11, 2001, literally crying over the win. Michael Andretti held on for third, and refused to make a crack about McCaw or Mears despite not-particularly-subtle poking about it by Robin Miller. It was noted in the media that despite the large number of non-American drivers in the Indycar series, eight of the top 12 finishers - Mears, Gidley, Andretti, Robby Gordon, Anthony Lazzaro, Buddy Rice, Kurt Busch and Jimmy Vasser - were Americans. The race was an unqualified success - and the Monday after the race, New York's City Council authorized the race again for 2003.
In June 2002, the alliance between the Indycar World Series and the American Le Mans Series official, by announcing the mergers of the sanctioning bodies. CART would continue to exist as a holding company which owned the series, but the job of sanctioning the Indycar World Series would move to IMSA for 2003, and that would include the Indianapolis 500. A month later, the series took on a new, major sponsor in clothing company Izod, which became the official apparel provider and clothier of the Indycar World Series. The deal was a three-year deal with a substantial, though undisclosed, payout. Izod took full advantage of their new deal in promotions. As prosperity returned to America following the short, sharp recession following the 9/11 attacks and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, sponsor money moved up, too. It showed in the cars in the Indycar World Series, with many cars going with larger engine cowlings and wing endplates, barge boards and dorsal fins simply to find more room for sponsor's logos. Several teams were also experimenting with parts of their own, with solid wheel covers debuted by Dale Coyne, Menard and Vision and quickly becoming de rigeur on the oval tracks.
In November 2002, the series announced its new cars, starting for the 2005 season. The deals were innovative, in a way few imagined. Every car would be required to have a spec set of bodywork attachment points, and the teams would be free to make their own "body kits" for the cars. To get around the badging problems, the series would also point out the body kit maker in the results, in addition to the maker of the chassis, engine and tires. The rules mandated that the cars have fiberglass bodywork because of the cost and difficulty of making race-spec carbon fiber. The engines would not change - that was in the pipeline, but the series announced that because the bodywork and chassis charges were as substantial as they were, that the engines would come later. The cars would also all be wired for TV cameras, allowing fans of the series to be able to ride on board with all the drivers in the race and with several different cameras on each car, and every car would be required to both carry its number clearly, but also carry the name of its driver on the sides of the cockpit, to allow easier identification of who drove which car. Wheels were free as long as they fit within the dimensions. The only catches to aerodynamics were that they had to be approved by an independent technical team before they could be raced. The proposal would make for very different looking cars when they entered the series in 2005, a fact all noticed and nobody ignored.
The success of 2001 was reflected in 2002, especially in the sponsors field, with virtually every regular carrying the name of a major sponsor, with multi-million dollar sponsor deals being almost a norm, with the biggest numbers going to the top teams, of course. There was only new team for 2002, that being the entry of Japanese company HKS as their own team, after Nobuteru Taniguchi's quite respectable run at Mo Nunn Racing in 2001, entering the series with Nissan engines (joining PacWest, Hogan and Johannsson as the teams with Nissan power) but with a brand-new chassis from Japanese race car manufacturer Dome cars. Dome had been hoping that its R103 chassis would entice other teams, but nobody bit. Regardless, the HKS team had a building year, though it was tempered with at times impressive runs, particlarly Taniguchi's crowd-pleasing pole position and fifth-placed finish at Twin Ring Motegi.
The 2001 champ team, Marlboro Team Penske, had a new driver as Gil de Ferran headed off to Formula One for the Toyota Grand Prix team. Helio Castroneves took over the second car at Penske, the charismatic Brazilian making a good team-mate to Greg Moore. Despite the rumors of fans who figured that Helio would end up being the number two to Moore, all involved - including Moore, Castroneves and Penske - all made it clear that the best racer would win, and that there would be no team orders. Helio made that point quite obvious when he won his first race for Penske at Phoenix, outrunning a charging Paul Tracy to do so. Helio's ride at Patrick Racing was taken by one of Tony George's highly-regarded prospects, Indiana native Ryan Newman, who scooped up the Rookie of the Year title - but he had to beat down the other of George's prospects, Las Vegas native Kurt Busch, who quickly became the anti-hero in the Indycar series after an accident with Robby Gordon at Milwaukee, when afterwards he commented "I guess for now I'm stuck back there with the washed-up has-beens." Robby Gordon commented on that on Speedvision's "Wind Tunnel" program, saying that if Kurt ever said that to his face that he'd punch him in the mouth for it. Busch, despite his bad attitude, got results and drove well, with teammate Al Unser Jr. commenting that Kurt could be a dominant force in Indycars, but that he could do well to not act like a dick all the time.
Moore's biggest challenger for his title repeat was sophomore Christiano "Shorty" da Matta at Newman-Haas, with Christiano winning only twice, but eventually coming out ahead in the title chase over Moore. Moore and da Matta ran against each other on several occasions, and in one case (Vancouver) collided with each other while fighting for the lead - an act which both drivers shrugged off as a "racing incident". Castroneves finished third in the title chase, winning four times and finishing second to Greg twice, and locking up his third in the championship by winning the final race of the season at Fontana. Tony Stewart led the championship early in the season, but was unable to put up the consistency to stack up enough points to win the title. Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti, Sam Hornish Jr. and David Brabham, da Matta's teammate, were also regular contenders, but like the rest of the field, eventually slid behind the charging Moore and da Matta.
The series made major media attention in April, when Sarah Fisher broke the gender barrier when she went on to win the Kobalt Mechanics Tools 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. She did so in dramatic fashion, after spending virtually all of the second half of the race slugging it out with Buddy Rice and taking the checkered flag with Rice tucked under her rear wing. Fisher's win got her attention on virtually every media outlet in the nation, and made Fisher quite justifiably famous. Despite the huge publicity, Sarah brushed most of it off. "I'm just an average young woman who happens to make a living driving race cars. I'm no celebrity, and I'm not gonna become one just because I won an Indycar race. Mind you, if I win Indy one day, I might think a little different." was her comment to Gordon Kirby on the matter. Walker Racing was having no issues with sponsorship, and teammate Robby Gordon also won the race at Twin Ring Motegi, and both of them were regular good runners.
Another feel-good story was at PacWest. Visa and Bank of America had extended their deals with Bruce McCaw and his team, and in 2002 the team had one major goal - kick Michael Andretti's ass. Andretti made that anger rather more pronounced after proudly commenting that "Motorola made the right call by signing with us" after winning the race at Kyalami. Three weeks later, the joke was on him as Casey Mears ripped off his first Indycar win with a fantastic performance at a very hot Long Beach Grand Prix, outrunning polesitter Bruno Junquiera and defending winner Al Unser Jr. in an incredible three-way battle, and McCaw made absolutely certain that Andretti knew it. McCaw got some unexpected help when Paul Tracy grabbed the pole for his hometown race in Toronto, and commented to Jack Arute after qualifying "Does this mean I too can talk s*** about Michael, now?" Michael, however, won the race in Toronto, and answered back to Paul (who finished third) after the race "You can talk all the s*** you want, because every time you do I end up kicking your a**, so by all means, keep talking." Michael did ultimately finish higher in the points than both PacWest drivers, but McCaw was unfazed by this - if anything, the competition between him and Michael was making his passion level even higher, and he was loving it.
The series recorded its highest race day attendance totals ever, with the combined number of fans at the races topping three million on the season and averaging over 100,000 a race, with average TV ratings in the 2.0-2.5 rating, with the races on major networks being somewhat higher than that. Indy busted its 2000 record for highest live TV ratings, posting a 14.1 rating with a 30 share, and selling out the race, despite Indy adding another 30,000 seats to the infield and on the approach to Turn 3, bringing the track's capacity to better than 350,000. A survey by Harvard University found that an Indycar or NASCAR Winston Cup series event brought more money to an economy than any other sporting event save the Super Bowl or the World Series. That survey wound up being used by both NASCAR and CART to make points about the importance of their events.
While Indy is always the grand-daddy of Indycar World Series events, in 2002 it had a rival. Following the stunning announcement in March of a race in New York City at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, the series had been expecting a big turnout. The decision by General Motors to make the event free of charge for participants caused a media circus in itself, with the event expected to be a circus, and from the moment the Indycar Series and American Le Mans Series teams arrived in New York, the city was abuzz. Even the race's naysayers commented that the huge weekend, with the massive publicity that it got, was exactly the elixir the city needed. True to form, over 300,000 people jammed themselves into every possible place to watch the races of the weekend, and take in one of the biggest parties the city had seen in decades. The 2.84-mile track was excellent for passing by any standard, with the American Le Mans Series race, won by the Cadillac LMP of Brian Simo, Tommy Kendall and Elliott Forbes-Robinson the evening before, being quite the show by any standard. The Indycar race was a similarly massive event, with the green flag being waved by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Great starts by Michael Andretti and Anthony Lazzaro gave way to a fight between Casey Mears and Memo Gidley, with Jessica Alba (Gidley's girlfriend) on the pit wall for much of the race cheering her boyfriend on. Mears won over Gidley, with Bruce McCaw, who had lost two friends in the North Tower on September 11, 2001, literally crying over the win. Michael Andretti held on for third, and refused to make a crack about McCaw or Mears despite not-particularly-subtle poking about it by Robin Miller. It was noted in the media that despite the large number of non-American drivers in the Indycar series, eight of the top 12 finishers - Mears, Gidley, Andretti, Robby Gordon, Anthony Lazzaro, Buddy Rice, Kurt Busch and Jimmy Vasser - were Americans. The race was an unqualified success - and the Monday after the race, New York's City Council authorized the race again for 2003.
In June 2002, the alliance between the Indycar World Series and the American Le Mans Series official, by announcing the mergers of the sanctioning bodies. CART would continue to exist as a holding company which owned the series, but the job of sanctioning the Indycar World Series would move to IMSA for 2003, and that would include the Indianapolis 500. A month later, the series took on a new, major sponsor in clothing company Izod, which became the official apparel provider and clothier of the Indycar World Series. The deal was a three-year deal with a substantial, though undisclosed, payout. Izod took full advantage of their new deal in promotions. As prosperity returned to America following the short, sharp recession following the 9/11 attacks and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, sponsor money moved up, too. It showed in the cars in the Indycar World Series, with many cars going with larger engine cowlings and wing endplates, barge boards and dorsal fins simply to find more room for sponsor's logos. Several teams were also experimenting with parts of their own, with solid wheel covers debuted by Dale Coyne, Menard and Vision and quickly becoming de rigeur on the oval tracks.
In November 2002, the series announced its new cars, starting for the 2005 season. The deals were innovative, in a way few imagined. Every car would be required to have a spec set of bodywork attachment points, and the teams would be free to make their own "body kits" for the cars. To get around the badging problems, the series would also point out the body kit maker in the results, in addition to the maker of the chassis, engine and tires. The rules mandated that the cars have fiberglass bodywork because of the cost and difficulty of making race-spec carbon fiber. The engines would not change - that was in the pipeline, but the series announced that because the bodywork and chassis charges were as substantial as they were, that the engines would come later. The cars would also all be wired for TV cameras, allowing fans of the series to be able to ride on board with all the drivers in the race and with several different cameras on each car, and every car would be required to both carry its number clearly, but also carry the name of its driver on the sides of the cockpit, to allow easier identification of who drove which car. Wheels were free as long as they fit within the dimensions. The only catches to aerodynamics were that they had to be approved by an independent technical team before they could be raced. The proposal would make for very different looking cars when they entered the series in 2005, a fact all noticed and nobody ignored.
President Al Bundy
Banned
I've got a question regarding the USTCC. What sort of regulations do they use? Something similiar to European racing series or did they come up with an own set of regulations?
And as always, good updates. Especially IMSA sanctioning both the ALMS and the ICWS thrills me. Good work.
And as always, good updates. Especially IMSA sanctioning both the ALMS and the ICWS thrills me. Good work.
It's their own set. They use a displacement/weight formula, where cars with bigger engines (Chrysler 300M, Nissan Altima, Pontiac Grand Prix) have heavier weight but more power, and lightweights (Honda Civic, Acura Integra, Nissan Sentra SE-R, Toyota Celica) with less weight and less power, and middleweights (Audi A4, BMW 330i, Subaru Impreza, Acura RSX) in between. The goal is to even it off so that every car is competitive. Max engine size is four liters and six cylinders, minimum weight for the small cars is 1900 lbs. All cars are professionally built of course, running on slick tires. Six-speed gearboxes are the norm, sequentials are allowed but come with a weight penalty. Bodywork modifications are similar to International Group A regulations.
And as always, good updates. Especially IMSA sanctioning both the ALMS and the ICWS thrills me. Good work.
That was done entirely to show that the two series have similar goals and can negotiate together with a stronger hand. Both Indycar and ALMS don't want to be pushed around by NASCAR or the FIA, and them showing a united front helps here. ALMS' bottom GT category has a mountain of entries, brought on by the deal which brought the Grand-Am competitors into the ALMS, and part of that deal was a commitment to make sure the privateer entrants can stay in the series. The ALMS takes that commitment seriously, which tends to bug Audi and Toyota in particular.
President Al Bundy
Banned
Sounds actually pretty good. Just like the old Group A-DTM. Speaking of DTM, I thought they would establish a DTM-type championship years earlier ITTL. But this seems to be an actual backward step.
Truthfully, a DTM-type series are too big and too expensive for North America, I think. I was thinking of maybe making a few standalone endurance races where DTM cars are eligible.
President Al Bundy
Banned
Maybe DTM-spec cars could run in a special class in the ALMS. IOTL, there were rumours that Lexus might enter the ALMS with their DTM-spec IS-F. See here:
But the question is of course, whether the ACO will give its ok. Audi and Mercedes would certainly be happy to see their DTM cars at Le Mans and Daytona (I assume the Daytona 24 Hours are a part of the ALMS).
I'm thinking about that, but truthfully, I'm not sure there is room for the USTCC and the DTM series in North America. I am thinking about the idea of them running as a sport sedan class in the ALMS, but the problem there is the number of entries. As early as 2000 they had to split events at Portland and Lime Rock because of the number of entries. I don't think adding to that would be a good idea, unless I could get at least two manufacturers to go for it. Mercedes isn't going to - embarrassed at Le Mans in 1999. Audi already has the R8 and may go for that for a junior team. BMW already has prototype and GT efforts. Lexus is a possibility, especially after the end of the GT-One program in 2002. If it goes, it'll be for 2004, when the DTM goes to sedans in Europe.
(OOC: I am not seeing an American DTM getting off the ground. The cars are too pricey and complex for private teams, and Grand-Am has always been a privateer-oriented series.)
President Al Bundy
Banned
Mercedes could rebadge their C-Classes as Chrysler models. That way, DaimlerChrysler could keep the Chrysler brand in the sport after the end of their LMP program. In case of Audi and Lexus I totally agree with you. But in case of BMW I think that they might enter as a sort of preparation for a DTM-entry. IOTL, Rahal-Letterman Racing helped developing the BMW M3 GTR, ITTL they could help developing a DTM-version of the BMW 3-Series.
That would require bodywork changes, and Chrysler already has two factory efforts in the ALMS - the LMP and the Vipers in the GT1 category, and with the Cadillacs and Ford Panoz now winning fairly regularly and taking the fight right to the Audis and the Corvette and Ferrari as stiff competition in the GT1 category, as well as Mercedes-Benz's Indycar program and DTM in Europe, they don't really want to spend more resources turning their DTM competitor into a ALMS competitor.
Don't forget about the Vipers. They aren't going home at the end of 2002 as OTL.
The GT2 category is already pretty wild and BMW's V8-powered M3 GTR (which OTL debuted in 2001 and was banned at the end of the year) is already top dog in that category.
The Sedans category will have three entries right off the bat - Audi (S4), Lexus (IS-F) and Cadillac (CTS-V), which is enough to make it work. These cars are, of course, far bigger hammers than the ones which race in the USTCC.
For 2003, the Prototype 1 entries are from Audi, Cadillac, Ford Panoz and Chrysler. BMW and Toyota have withdrawn (both after getting beaten badly in 2002) but both are active in other areas. Several private entries use Lola, Dome, Pescarolo-Courage and Riley and Scott chassis, mostly using either Judd V10 or Ford V8 engines. Prototype 2 is dominated by the Reynard 2KQ and MG-Lola EX257, with the only factory efforts being two EX257s entered by Rover North America to promote their cars on sale here. The MG use turbocharged AER engines, the Reynards mostly use Judd V8s, except for the Comptech squad, which uses Mugen-Honda power. Most of the front-runners run on Michelin tires, though some use Goodyears and the Rafanelli and Intersport teams run Pirelli tires.
In GT1, Corvette won the 2002 season, but Chrysler has a response in the new-for-03 Vipers, Prodrive has brought its awesome 550 GT and Saleen has the S7-R in the hunt. Saleen runs on Goodyears, everybody else on Michelins except the Zonda, which runs on Pirellis. Several Private Teams run Viper GTS-Rs and Saleen S7-Rs, and one Europe-based team runs a heavily-developed version of the 996-series Porsche 911 GT2. The Pagani Zonda SV is new for 2003, and is running the ALMS, but its raw and unproven.
In GT2, Porsche's 911 GT3-X is out to beat BMW's dominant M3 GTR, which owned the 2001 and 2002 GT2 category seasons. Ferrari's 360 GT is the regular third-place runner. Salisbury Racing has entered two TVR T400s in the GT category as well. 2/3 of the Porsche teams have the new GT3-X, whereas most of the others use GT3-RS variants. The BMWs are divided between BMW Team PTG and the factory BMW Racing team. All of the Porsche teams run on Michelin tires, the BMWs have two on Michelin tires and the other two on Yokohama. The Ferraris all run on Pirellis and the TVR squad uses Dunlop tires.
Entires for most races run in the 50-55 car range, which forces split races at many tracks, including Miami, Pacific Raceways and Barber Park. The big events (Daytona, Sebring, Mosport, Petit Le Mans) have bigger fields still.
Great Story, Being an australian the only chance to see american openwheelers on Free to Air TV was the surfers race in my short life (only 17 atm).
Could Australia and New Zealand also have similar series to what the south americans have with indy cars. After the rule changes for 2005 so it would be 05/06 and call it the Tasman Series after the origonal series of the 60's and 70's and some people who want to revive the series seaing he indycar formula as very atractive.
Also can you get the Calder Park Thunderdome to hold the australian indycar race, and make it remarkable for being an oval to be run in clockwise configuation (also have the V8 Supercars as a suport, i have always wanted to see what an oval v8 race would look like)
Could Australia and New Zealand also have similar series to what the south americans have with indy cars. After the rule changes for 2005 so it would be 05/06 and call it the Tasman Series after the origonal series of the 60's and 70's and some people who want to revive the series seaing he indycar formula as very atractive.
Also can you get the Calder Park Thunderdome to hold the australian indycar race, and make it remarkable for being an oval to be run in clockwise configuation (also have the V8 Supercars as a suport, i have always wanted to see what an oval v8 race would look like)
The problem there is that Australia's home-grown race series - the V8s, of course, but also the Utes and the Nations' Cup GT cars - are well developed and well supported. There simply isn't the room in Australia's motorsport community for a full-time Indycar-rules series. South America hasn't that issue, as most South American series are fairly small time and big-league open wheel racing was common there until the late 1970s, plus the vast number of Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean and Venezuelan drivers in modern open wheel racing, both in North America and Europe.
The Thunderdome is too small and too steeply banked for the Indycars. 24 degrees of banking on a mile oval is pretty hairy for Indycars, particularly with the D-shaped track layout. Getting the Thunderdome to work well for Indycars would require widening the track and either knocking down the banking from its current 24 degrees or rebuilding it as a tri-oval, and you'd probably have to expand the pits, too. Running clockwise in an oval-spec Indycar is not gonna happen, because modern Indycars bot OTL and ITTL are designed with offset suspensions and staggered tires for left-hand turns, and they wouldn't change the cars that much for one event. The race would probably run counter-clockwise. The Thunderdome is fairly rough in terms of facilities, too, and if Indycars wanted to run a race in Melbourne the racetrack at Phillip Island is in considerably better shape. Calder Park would need a major renovation before it would have any hope, and I don't see that as likely considering the track's current shape.
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