Columnist Ron Kantowski: Champ Cars will make fast friends

Thursday, July 15, 2004 | 9:47 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Heck, if all it took to bring some real racecars to town was to go on vacation, I would have packed my bags and called Clark Griswold in 1996.

You know, real racecars. The kind without doors. That turn left and right. Purebred racing machines that can cover 500 miles in the time it takes to run down to 7-Eleven for a quart of milk and a loaf a bread.

Or, as an Indy-car friend of mine once yelled from the top of the grandstand at Phoenix upon being exposed to NASCAR for the first time:

"Hey, Rusty! The gas is on the right!"

C'mon, you didn't really expect a guy who grew up in Indiana to hitch my cart to the NASCAR bandwagon, did you?

The truth of the matter is that we open wheel racing fanatics still can't deal with the fact that a bunch of guys named Darrell driving decal-plastered taxicabs around the track have supplanted our favorite form of auto racing as the creme de la creme of American motor sports.

But at least we have Sept. 25. That's the night real racecars will return to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, as the Champ Car World Series will finally make its debut at the 1.5-mile oval as part of a unique same-day doubleheader featuring the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

At 7 p.m., the pick-'em-up trucks will start laying down rubber in the racing groove. At about 9, when the Champ cars start their engines, the track records will begin to fall.

For those who don't follow the type of racing where most of the cars are driven by guys with funny-sounding names -- "furriners" is what A.J. Foyt used to call Jim Clark and the rest -- the Champ Car series is what remains of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). Once upon a time, CART was as big as it got in American-based auto racing.

About the last time that could be said was 1996, the year Indianapolis Motor Speedway chief Tony George formed the Indy Racing League, supposedly as a lower-cost alternative to CART, to provide more opportunities for American-born drivers and to return Indy-style racing to its oval-track roots. Well, at least he succeeded in returning the races to the ovals.

The IRL has won the open-wheel war, as virtually all of the top teams that raced under the CART banner have switched allegiance, principally because the Indy 500, the highlight of the IRL schedule, was too big a plum for their sponsors to ignore. But it has been a bloody battle. Open-wheel racing has yet to recover from the split and probably never will.

Take for instance, the genesis of the Champ Car race that is coming to Las Vegas. While it should prove to be mutually beneficial to both the speedway and the sanctioning body, you don't have to park your car in Monster Garage to figure out who initiated the contract talks.

Was Champ Car desperate to find a home for one of two TBA races on this year's schedule? I can't say for sure, although spies at LVMS tell me they saw a monkey with a tin cup following the Champ Car brass around the paddock last week.

While there's no such thing as a bad track rental when you're the landlord, the three of us who still follow Indy-style racing would charge that LVMS has aligned with the wrong side again, settling on Avis when it could have had Hertz. That also was the case in '96, when LVMS cast its lot with the fledgling IRL instead of established CART. There were five IRL races at LVMS, and the only one that wasn't a disaster at the gate was the first one, only because it christened the track.

Back then, the IRL was comprised of a bunch of washed-up CART drivers and Tony Stewart, who was an aggressive young lion before he started driving like a bull in a china shop. Now, with most of its big teams having switched sides, it's Champ Car that is looking to develop a supporting cast of drivers for transplanted Las Vegans Paul Tracy and Jimmy Vasser, its biggest/only stars.

It's not the ideal scenario, but if you're an open-wheel race fan, you don't look gift horsepower in the mouth.

My only other advice would be to get to the track early -- not so much to avoid the traffic, but to get a cold beer before the NASCAR fans drink it all up.

All kidding aside, the truck guys put on a pretty good show, too.

Even if they haven't figured out the gas is on the right.