Columnist Ron Kantowski: It’s time for CART to leave ovals

Wednesday, May 2, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. His inside notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) has been criticized by fans and media for calling off Sunday's Firestone Firehawk 600 at Texas Motor Speedway when doctors and even a NASA expert confirmed that 235-mph speeds in concert with a 24-degree high-banked track would result in excessive G loads that could cause drivers to black out.

One homemade banner at the track suggested that the series acronym stood for Cowards Aren't Racing Today, but blasting CART for making that decision is foolish.

But it was almost as foolish for CART to think its road rockets could race safely at Texas to begin with.

These are two different issues and should not be confused.

But now that they are being confused by those who apparently have little interest in the competitors' life expectancy rates, perhaps it is time for CART to rethink its position and adopt a strategy to prevent such a situation from developing again.

One solution would be to play by the rival Indy Racing League's rules, switching to less powerful engines and thereby reducing speeds on the ovals from warp to mind-boggling. But that's not likely to happen given the contentious history between CART and the IRL, and the stubbornness of the CART engine suppliers.

So why not just reduce the number of oval races, or even abolish them altogether?

It's now obvious that modern technology has spawned cars that are superior to the drivers, at least on the high-speed ovals.

So if you are CART, which was founded by wealthy road racers who evolved into car owners, at what point should you consider returning to your roots?

If I were on the CART board, I would get out a sheet of paper and list the pluses to racing on ovals. Then I would do the same for the minuses and make a business decision based on the math.

Heck, let me do it for them:

Pluses

Minuses

By sticking to mainly road course events, CART could distance itself from NASCAR and the IRL and establish its own identity, thereby eliminating confusion among casual fans.

And with the money CART saves/makes by going road racing, its teams could purchase a couple of those Matchbox cars the IRL runs and return to the Indy 500 en masse, thus giving CART sponsors more bang for their buck and its teams a presence at what (somehow) remains a racing institution.

I'm sure a lot of CART fans would miss the ovals. At least until they packed a cooler, spread out a picnic blanket and smelled the bratwurst at Road America.