Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: CART teams no lock for LV’s IRL race

Thursday, Nov. 11, 1999 | 4:22 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. Reach him at bh@vegas.com or 259-4089.

Two announcements, made within four days of each other, signaled hope for fans of open-wheel racing in general and Las Vegas race fans in particular.

On Tuesday, Indy Racing League executive director Leo Mehl speculated that as many as 12 teams from the rival Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series would compete at the Indianapolis 500 next May for the first time since 1995.

On Friday, CART issued a release with its 2000 schedule that said the last two weekends in May had been left open on the schedule to "facilitate participation by CART teams in the 84th running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 28, 2000."

While it wasn't a total reunification of the two series, it was the next best thing. The two warring series would get together for the Indy 500, then go their separate ways and run their own races for their own championships.

For local race fans who were aware that the 2000 IRL event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be the last race on the IRL schedule prior to the Indy 500, it meant the possibility that some of those CART teams choosing to run at Indy might use the Las Vegas race to test their new IRL cars.

Although that possibility still is not out of the question, CART team owner Bobby Rahal suggested Wednesday that his team, which fields drivers Max Papis and Kenny Brack, would have its hands full just fielding cars for Indy.

"At this stage, it would take all of our effort just to find the things we need to find to enter Indy, forgetting anything else," Rahal said. "At this stage of the game, my primary goal is to win the CART championship for our team and to do what we can to participate in the Indy 500."

Rahal, who won the Indianapolis 500 as a driver in 1986 and retired at the end of last season with 24 career victories and three series championships, said many CART teams may find the cost of racing prior to Indy to be prohibitive.

"If you're going to go to Indy, you've got to go to win, which means multiple cars, multiple engines, a crew ... you can't do it cheap," he said. "Just the equipment is well over $1 million -- forgetting the operating expenses.

"It's not like it's a cheap or an easy deal to do. In some respects, it's a real hardship to gear up for."

Which is what Rahal and other CART owners will be doing during the next 60 days -- Rahal's self-imposed time limit for getting an Indy effort finalized.

In many cases, buying an engine and a chassis -- or two or three -- that meets the IRL's specifications is the least of many CART owners' problems.

In Rahal's case, he has been running Ford engines in both his CART cars since 1997. The most competitive engine in the IRL, however, has been the Aurora, which is manufactured by Ford rival General Motors. How would Ford react if Rahal decided to campaign a GM engine in the highest-profile race on the planet?

"I don't know -- I haven't even talked to Ford about it yet," Rahal said. "There are a lot of factors at hand and our partners, their considerations, certainly are key.

"Over the next several months, I'll be talking with our partners to determine if we can go forward. It would certainly be my hope that we could."

It's a safe bet that most fans of open-wheel racing are holding out similar hopes.