Champ Car drivers hope to make up ground
IndyCar vehicles come to Glen this weekend
By Keith McShea NEWS SPORTS REPORTER
Updated: 07/05/08 7:15 AM
WATKINS GLEN — Justin Wilson has a quick answer to how wide the gap is between the established teams on the IndyCar Series and those like his, who have merged into the open-wheel series from former rival Champ Car:
“Five years and $20 million.”
In auto racing, that’s a whole lot of technology, testing and tweaking, and it’s why Wilson is 16th in the standings despite being a two-time runner-up in the Champ Car series. And why 19-year-old teammate Graham Rahal is 17th, despite winning consecutive Rookie of the Year honors, first on a support series and then with Champ Car.
And it’s why they’re very happy to be at Watkins Glen International this weekend.
“I think we’re looking at it as restoring some confidence and also restoring some pride,” said Wilson, a 29-year-old Englishman. “We’re used to being at the front, and the circumstances the way it is, we’re mid-field. Now it’s time to get back to what we know and show that we can do this.”
For the Champ Car drivers who raced exclusively on twisting, turning road and street courses but have spun their wheels during a schedule dominated with traditional IndyCar oval tracks, there hasn’t been a much more beautiful sight than the historic, 11-turn track atop one of the many picturesque hills of the Finger Lakes region.
Wilson and Rahal raced the Glen track for the first time in two practice sessions Friday; qualifying is today at 1:30 p. m.
The pair are teammates at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, a team founded by actor Paul Newman and entrepreneur Carl Haas (partner Mike Lanigan joined last year). The team has produced eight Champ Car championships by Mario (1984) and Michael Andretti (’91), Nigel Mansell (’93), Chrstiano da Matta (’02) and current Formula One driver Sebastien Bourdais (’04-’07).
Rahal, son of 1986 Indy 500 champion Bobby Rahal, showed the team was ready for the circuit’s first turns on a street course when he became the youngest IndyCar winner at St. Petersburg in the second event of the IndyCar schedule.
Since then, the series has come together exclusively at ovals, which is where the time and money have made a difference for former Champ Car outfits labeled “transition teams” this year. The decision on the long-awaited merger was finalized in February, which left the Champ Car scrambling from the start.
“[Regular IndyCar teams are] just more organized because they know these pieces work, and these pieces don’t,” Wilson said. “And we’ve got to try all these different paths on a race weekend. We’re testing at the race track. . . . The biggest thing we’re lacking is time.”
Keith Wiggins, the owner of HVM Racing, has fielded teams for seven years in Champ Car.
“Really, you’re playing catch-up,” said Wiggins, whose driver, E. J. Viso, is an impressive 12th in points in his first season with the team. “We don’t know the cars, we don’t know any of the tracks. Getting all of that organized, normally all that would happen in winter, and here we are doing it in the first few races. It’s a challenge.”
Thus far on the ovals, the newcomers have felt a little like they’re racing around in circles.
“It’s tough and it’s trying every weekend to go out there and know that you’re competing maybe for 15th or 16th place,” said Rahal. “That’s not all that exciting.
“A place that shows our gap is a place like Texas, a mile and a half of just flat [acceleration],” said Rahal. “Easy flat, out-of-the-pits flat. Those are the places where, although we’ve had good race cars, the last few miles an hour just aren’t there. And that just comes with a lot of money and a lot of time.”
Teams are doing what they can to catch up.
“Our guys will be the first ones at the gate to come in, and they will for sure be the last ones to leave,” said Rahal. “We’ve seen where Ganassi [Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon of Target Chip Ganassi Racing are first and third in the standings, respectively] will qualify, and then literally from qualifying they’ll just take their car, put it on the trailer and go home. And all of our guys are like, ‘What are we doing here ’til 11 p. m.?’
“But that comes with the extra time they’ve had with this car, over the last few years, doing testing and wind-tunnel testing and races and the things that we’re just new to.”
Despite the rough transition, the former Champ Car teams realize that any bumps on the oval tracks are offset by having open-wheel racing together in one series.
“The merger is the best thing that’s happened in the last 10-12 years, we’re not complaining about that,” said Wilson. “We’ve got one series and everyone is moving in the right direction. We’re just looking at it as: let’s learn as much as we can this year, and hopefully that will pay off next year and the year after and we can get up there and be competitive.
“The circumstances we’re in right now are pretty rare. There’s not a merger every year.”
And while the Champ Car teams are certainly welcoming their opportunity on a road course this weekend, it’s not like the IndyCar teams don’t know what they’re doing.
Penske Racing’s Helio Castroneves is going for his fourth straight pole at the Glen today, and Dixon is aiming for an IndyCar first as he tries to win for the fourth straight time at the same track. Andretti-Green’s Tony Kanaan has started in the top five all three races and has finished second, 11th and fourth. Wheldon has three top 10 starts and was fifth in ’05. Buddy Rice of Dreyer & Reinbold was sixth last year.
“It’s still a new car, we’ve still never run the car on these courses and other teams have,” said Wiggins. “Again, the top teams will put resources behind it. I think for sure it has it’s advantages and we enjoy doing them, but you just have to bear in mind, we’re still behind.”
Marco Andretti, who is in his third year on the IndyCar Series, finished fifth here last year and joins Kanaan and Danica Patrick on the powerful Andretti-Green team, might not agree.
“The Champ Car guys, to be honest, they might be more advanced than us on road courses, as far as their shocks and stuff like that. At St. Pete, they roll off the truck and they’re giving us a run for our money already and Graham Rahal won.
“The teams and drivers that came over, they know what they’re doing. We call them transition drivers and rookies — no, definitely not.”
