After the Grand Prix of Denver Sunday, Paul Newman arrived at the victory-lane podium outside the Pepsi Center on a scooter, not a bicycle borrowed from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
The co-owner of Newman/Haas Racing settled in to watch the champagne-drenched postrace ceremony, but took the time to listen to a question about how important a Champ Car World Series-Indy Racing League merger would be for the sport.
He thought for a moment.
“There’s no sense talking about something that isn’t going to happen,” he said.
If he’s right, that’s terrible news for all fans of open-wheel racing.
This is a battle of wills, understandable but also highly regrettable.
“Whatever it is,” Newman said, “we’ve got our own business plan. It was a very tough, interesting race today. As long as we can keep the fans excited, it’s all right.”
The greatest thing Champ Car has going for it is the continuing loyalty of Newman and partner Carl Haas, one of the sport’s true champions in every sense of the word.
To paraphrase Butch Cassidy: Newman and Haas have vision and the rest of the open-wheel racing czars wear bifocals.
To them, this clearly is a fight, and they’re not backing down. I respect loyalty and certainly empathize with their stubbornness, and I admire their allegiance to Champ Car more than I do the “pragmatism” of teams that defected to the Indy Racing League in recent years – led by, among others, Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and Bobby Rahal. Everyone involved seems to have slammed the brakes on common sense.
Prideful on both sides, they also are missing the bigger-picture reality: Every year the Champ Car-IRL game of chicken continues, the reputation of open-wheel racing is damaged. It slips further down the scale of significance in a crowded auto racing and sports marketplace.
Here in Denver, it’s getting harder every year to take the Grand Prix serious as anything other than an afternoon at the state fair. It’s fun to eat fried corn on the cob, have a beer or a frozen daiquiri, pick up and install the earplugs, wander and people-watch, then settle down to spot the Champ Cars zipping past.
Only a few of them.
The Champ Car circuit’s problems are myriad, no matter where the trucks are parked for the week. And they were highlighted in Denver. There are homes in Cherry Hills Village with garages big enough to hold the 11 cars that remained on the track after only 27 of the 97 laps around the temporary street course.
Although this was a better Grand Prix than most of recent years, with a collision and subsequent confrontation between Sebastien Bourdais and Paul Tracy on the final lap adding some spice and probably getting the circuit additional time on the highlight shows, that kind of minifield isn’t a big-league race.
That isn’t meant to be a cheap shot.
Given the choice between open-wheel and stock-car racing, I’m in the minority that prefers open-wheel, and I still fondly remember covering the better days of the circuit, when it was “CART” – Championship Auto Racing Teams – and when the IRL did not exist. I enjoy the international feel of the experience, though Champ Car having only one U.S.-born driver – Sunday’s winner, A.J. Allmendinger – is another hindrance to more pervasive acceptance.
But Champ Car is running on fumes, with sponsorship slipping at every level. The lessening support for the Grand Prix of Denver isn’t surprising.
What’s surprising is that there still is this much support from the Colorado corporate community and race fans.
When the title sponsor, Centrix Financial, bailed out at a twilight hour, it had more to do with the firm’s financial and legal problems than the race itself. Yet if another sponsor signs on, the only way to justify it would be as an attempt to stake out a Denver race sponsorship spot on a retooled circuit following a Champ Cart-IRL merger, or even a Champ Car collapse.
The IRL will be perceived to have “won” if it waits for Champ Car to either accept repugnant merger terms – or fold.
In truth, though, if the circuits don’t merge soon, everybody loses.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
