Big teams and names returning to Indy 500

Mike Harris

Wednesday, March 28, 2001 | 12:48 p.m.

The Indianapolis 500 is beginning to look more like the event that not so long ago was the most important auto race in the world.

Chip Ganassi signaled the turnaround last May, bringing his elite CART team to Indianapolis Motor Speedway and beating the best of the rival Indy Racing League with driver Juan Montoya.

Roger Penske, whose team has won a record 10 Indy 500s, will return for the 85th running of the race with reigning CART champion Gil de Ferran and Helio Castroneves. Now, Michael Andretti will be back in the lineup for the first time since 1995.

"I feel like I have some unfinished business at this place," said Andretti, son of 1969 Indy winner Mario Andretti and the latest of the big names in American open-wheel racing to announce his return to the race.

The 38-year-old Andretti, a former series champion and the CART leader with 40 career wins, finally made his much-anticipated announcement Tuesday.

"I can't tell you how empty I felt every May, knowing the cars were running at Indy and knowing I wasn't going to be there," Andretti said. "Now I'm going to have a chance to get an Indy win, which is something I've always dreamed about."

There have been a lot of people - competitors and fans - with the same empty feeling as Andretti since 1996, when speedway president Tony George founded the IRL. The top teams and drivers of the established CART series chose to stay away.

Although the IRL competition was close and exciting, the absence of big names quickly ate into what had been the biggest TV ratings in motorsports. The race still sold out, with more than 400,000 people showing up on Memorial Day weekend, but attendance for practice and qualifying leading up to the big show was well off.

Worse, there was little electricity or excitement in the air at Indy anymore.

That began to change last May.

First, Al Unser Jr., a two-time Indy winner, left CART and Penske to sign with his old team, Galles Racing, in the IRL for the 2000 season. Unser, just a few months older than longtime friend and competitor Andretti, remains an icon at Indy and definitely caused a stir with his return.

When Ganassi, whose team won an unprecedented four straight CART titles from 1996-99, decided to break the Indy boycott by the older series, there was a renewal of interest in the race.

"We didn't go to Indianapolis because of politics. We went to race in a very big event and to do our best, like we always do," said Ganassi, who drove at Indy in the early 1980s and was a co-owner of the winning Patrick Racing team in 1989 with Emerson Fittipaldi.

"History is everything at Indy, and we love being part of that history," said Ganassi, who returns this year with rookie drivers Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian.

Montoya has moved on to Formula One, and teammate Jimmy Vasser, seventh last year at Indy, has switched teams.

"I know Roger and some of the other CART owners feel the same way," Ganassi said. "But every team has to make its own decision about coming based on sponsorship, manpower and other factors."

Bobby Rahal, who won the 1986 Indianapolis 500 and is now a team owner in CART, also would like to be racing at Indy.

"But it just doesn't work for us at this time," he said. "We need to have our drivers concentrate on the business of winning races in CART and the championship in our own series."

But the holdouts are fewer each year, and Indianapolis is starting to produce that old feeling of anticipation.

"We'll have an Unser and an Andretti there, and Penske is back," said IRL team owner Ron Hemelgarn. "We didn't need those guys to validate the biggest race in the world. Indy has always been about racing against and beating the best."

Hemelgarn, who fields cars for 1996 Indy winner and defending IRL champion Buddy Lazier, added, "We'll certainly be doing that now."

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On the net:

Andretti: http://www.andretti.com

Indianapolis 500: http://www.indy500.com

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