Related Stories: "Indy Journal, part 1", "Indy Journal, part 2", "Indy Journal, part 3", "Indy Journal, part 4"

WHO'S THE LEADER ...?

     Lake Buena Vista, Florida:  "Who's the leader of the club
that's made for you and me?" So begins a story we wrote for the
current issue of AutoWeek about the Walt Disney Company's
important move into motor sports.  The line, of course, was
cribbed unashamedly from the Mickey Mouse Club song that was
virtually the anthem of a couple of generations of American
children.
 
     Here, at Walt Disney World, just a few days before the first
race of Tony George's new sanctioning body, the IRL, it strikes
me that same famous question might also now be sung - in earnest
- by anyone interested in the future of Indy car racing, be they
sponsors, race team owners, mechanics, chassis and engine
manufactures, or, perhaps most important of all in the long run,
race fans, those folks who support the sport by putting butts in
the seats and racking up numbers on television's Neilson meters.
 
     In many ways, our sport, motor racing, IS a club made for
you and me, and the question that must be settled in the season
that begins with this inaugural Disney race, is who IS going to
be the leader of our club.  Specifically, who will call the shots
in American open-wheel racing?  Will it be CART headman Andrew
Craig, who speaks for a board of directors, chief among them,
Roger Penske?  CART, formed by Penske and other prominent car
owners in 1979 in opposition to USAC, has developed Indy car
racing into what some argue is the greatest open-wheel series in
the world.  Or will it be Tony George, who as owner of
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, controls the Indianapolis 500, the
most famous race in the world, and after which, of course, Indy
cars are named.  George has founded the Indy Racing League or
IRL, citing out-of-control escalation in the sport (in his view,
resulting in a lack of sponsorship for new young American
drivers) and not enough emphasis on traditional oval track racing
as his reasons.
 
 
     Who will prevail?  This season will tell us.  But whoever it
is will likely define the future of open-wheel racing in this
country.  High stakes, indeed.  Tony George and the IRL forces
fire the opening salvo on Saturday at Walt Disney World with the
inaugural Indy 200.
 
                                Copyright Tim Considine, 1996
                                Editor-at-Large, The Auto Channel

Related Stories: "Indy Journal, part 1", "Indy Journal, part 2", "Indy Journal, part 3", "Indy Journal, part 4"