Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Rahal all for IRL, CART merging into one series

Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

With the Indy Racing League's announcement that it has begun examining CART's assets and could purchase the rival racing series out of bankruptcy, it is looking more and more like open-wheel racing in America is heading toward a single, unified series.

That can't happen soon enough for Bobby Rahal, who fields cars in both CART and the IRL IndyCar Series.

"I think it's pretty obvious (that) two separate series don't make it," Rahal said Tuesday. "If there's one series, there are probably, minimally, eight more cars, maybe 10 more cars immediately in the Indy Racing League and now all of a sudden you've got 29-car fields, 30-car fields; that's precisely what it needs.

"The idea of 18-car fields (such as CART had last season), I think you can try to spin that away as much as you want but the reality is, the more cars the better. I definitely think there needs to be one series with all marketing effort, all organizational effort, dedicated to that one program."

Not that Rahal, a three-time CART champion as a driver, is eager to see the 25-year-old series disbanded.

"I think it's a shame that the situation exists as it does with CART," Rahal said, "and I know there has been a lot of genuine effort to try to take it to the next level, but at some point I really wonder if it's opportunistic for everybody to finally just get behind one deal and make it the best possible series in the United States."

Last summer, CART announced it had reached an agreement to sell the series to Open Wheel Racing Series LLC. When terms of the sale could not be met by CART, the series field for bankruptcy in December. OWRS principals agreed to purchase the series' assets out of bankruptcy in an attempt to salvage the 2004 season.

If Tony George's IRL elects to bid on CART's assets -- including equipment and race sanctioning agreements, it would force the bankruptcy court to hold an auction of CART's assets. George is president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and founder of the IRL.

Having one unified open-wheel series under a single banner would be in the best interests of the sport, Rahal said.

"Having one clear leader in the sport certainly, to me, is of great value," Rahal said. "If I look back on CART, clearly that's what it didn't have and that probably produced much of the unfortunate things we've seen over the last 10 years. Clearly, there was a large dissatisfaction by some of the key players with the way CART was governed for many years.

"With Tony and Brian (Barnhart, the IRL's senior vice president of operations), you know where the buck stops and they're going to do what's right for their series as they see it. I don't think there's any doubt that the fractious nature of the governance of CART -- not in the last year, certainly, but in the last 10 years -- did much to undermine its future."

Rahal said he planned to keep his CART team, with driver Michel Jourdain Jr., intact if OWRS takes over the series. If the IRL buys out CART, Rahal said he would try to convince sponsor in that series, Gigante, to move to the Indy Racing League. Rahal also fields an entry in the IRL with driver Buddy Rice, who is filling in for the injured Kenny Brack.

"Here it is mid-January ... and you have a lot of people on a payroll and what do you do if (CART) doesn't work out? In the meantime, you've been supporting the team on the presumption that it was. I think there's no question that the unknown is not good for CART. The sooner there is some clarity to what's going on, the better for all parties.

"We're all in this together and if we want open-wheel racing to be what it once was -- or at least get on the path to being what it once was -- then we've got to all work together."