Drivers respond to critics of CART

Wednesday, May 2, 2001 | 10:33 a.m.

There was little Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) could have done to foresee the problems that led to the indefinite postponement of Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway, according to driver Bryan Herta.

Although some critics of CART have publicly wondered why the series didn't schedule an open test at the 1.5-mile, high-banked oval before the inaugural race, Herta said the problems drivers experienced with the excessive gravitational forces may not have surfaced in a test.

"Because of the way the development goes on our cars -- and it is an ongoing process -- even if we had an open test with all the cars present two or three months prior to the race, I know from my experience the Ford engine I have now has a pretty significant amount more horsepower from the development they've done than it did two or three months ago," Herta said.

"There's a lot of things that happened in the development that made the cars faster. There's no assurance if we had been there at a group test that this problem would have manifested itself. It may have, but for people to assume that if we had tested here three months ago that we would have known this, I think that you're jumping the gun a little bit."

Herta joined CART president and CEO Joe Heitzler and fellow drivers Michael Andretti and Mauricio Gugelmin on a media teleconference Tuesday to discuss the events surrounding the series' decision to postpone the race.

Heitzler said he was would continue to work with Texas Motor Speedway general manager Eddie Gossage to find a suitable date to reschedule the race.

"Our goal is to get this race back on the schedule," Heitzler said. "I'm meeting with all three of the manufacturers and we learned a lot about ourselves as we explored all these options.

"If the Texas Motor Speedway will work with us and give us some dates, we believe that we can respond in a very safe and diligent manner."

But first, Andretti said, the series' engine builders must find a safe way to reduce the horsepower the engines produce.

"It's going to be up to the engineers to come up with a way to slow these things down that makes sense," Andretti said. "I mean, it sounds so easy to slow a car down. I had somebody come up to me and say 'Why didn't you guys go out there and just not go flat out?' You can't do that; we're racers. We're going to go out there and go as fast as we can.

"They're going to have to get a minimum of a hundred horsepower out of these engines and be able to do it safely without creating other problems of reliability with the engines."

All three drivers said CART did the right thing in postponing the race in light of the serious threat to the participants' safety.

"I applaud CART for taking the stand that they did," Andretti said. "(Heitzler) took the drivers' safety first over anything else and from a driver's standpoint, I can tell you one thing: that makes you feel very good because that was a very difficult situation."

Heitzler also echoed Las Vegas Motor Speedway general manager Chris Powell's comments that what transpired in Texas would not have a negative impact on negotiations to bring a CART race to LVMS beginning in 2002.

"I have not raised the issue since about a week ago with Chris Powell at the Las Vegas Speedway, but I will be talking with him prior to me going to Nazareth (this weekend)," Heitzler said. "I anticipate because of the public nature of both of our companies that it's in the best interests of both of our firms to see CART racing at these facilities under the right conditions.

"We feel that time zone and some interesting broadcasting options that we have available to us necessitates that we work closely with (LVMS owner) Bruton Smith and Chris Powell to see a race in Las Vegas."

Heitzler added that CART would not experience similar problems in Las Vegas to those encountered at Texas Motor Speedway because the 1.5-mile oval at LVMS is less severely banked than the Texas track.