F1 or IndyCars? Which one do you follow? And why? Pt 2.

There was time, not THAT long ago, when IndyCars – a category known formerly, many of you I’m sure will remember, as ‘Champ Cars’ or before that, even, CART, looked and went a lot like F1 cars.

Though the single, and to this day, absolutely fundamental, difference between the two categories – that F1 teams must each design and build their own unique cars – was as important then as it is today, this was a time when the cars were so similar in terms of engine performance, the mix of mechanical and aerodynamic grip, and general driveability, that it was not unheard of for the champion of one category to ‘jump ship’ mid-Atlantic, as it were, and try to add a second series’ win the year – or two or three – after.

British ace Nigel Mansell is perhaps the best known of this small but highly qualified group, earning the World F1 championship title for the Canon-backed Williams Grand Prix team in 1992 and the CART (which, by the way, stood for Championship Auto Racing Teams) US-based ‘IndyCar’ series title for the K-Mart/Havoline-backed Newman/Haas team in 1993.

In acknowledging the success of the Mansell move, it was one of the contemporary motorsport world’s true greats, Brazilian driver Emerson Fittipaldi, who made the most successful ‘second-career’ switch to the United States’ premier single-seater racing series.

As a two-time (1972 & 1974) F1 World Champion Fittipaldi went on to win the PPG Indy Car World Series title for Patrick Racing in 1989, as well as the Indianapolis 500 race twice, for the first time with Patrick Racing in 1989, and the second with the Penske team in 1993.

Oh, how we, as simple fans at the time, lapped up this new form of single-seater racing, with its big, brusque cars, mix of tracks from ovals to converted street tracks, and classic ‘European-style’ road courses like Road America and Road Atlanta.

Obviously since our very own Scott Dixon joined the series (with the PacWest team way back in 2001) then won the first of six series titles in 2003, after a move in mid-2002 to the Chip Ganassi squad) Kiwi interest in the US-based Champ/IndyCar series has focused on the driver they call The Iceman.

Fair enough too, because in the 21-years he has been competing in the US’s premier single-seater racing car series, the now 41-year-old has established a place for himself in the true pantheon of American racing greats.

For me though, the truly Golden Years of US single-seater racing came when Scott was literally just a kid.

In 1995, for instance, brash young Canadian driver Paul Tracy won the, by then annual, Champ Car race through the beachside streets of downtown Surfers Paradise.

Behind him – and separated by just 0.7 seconds at the finish line were a battling Bobby Rahal and Scott Pruett with Brazilian Mauricio Gugelmin fourth, PacWest teammate Danny Sullivan fifth and fellow US ‘Hall of Famer’ Al Unser sixth.

All up the race meeting ‘Down Under’ attracted 26 entries from 16 teams, and proved conclusively what I have always felt, that – done right – there is definitely room for more than one ‘premier’ global single seater formula.

In saying that, there appears to be such a huge gulf right now between the ‘unique-to-every-team’ hybrid-powered bespoke builds available to F1’s current elite and the off-the-shelf Dallara DW12 chassis and production-based Chevrolet or Honda 2.2-litre twin turbo V6 engines the NTT IndyCar Series has been since (way back in) 2012 that I’m not sure that even a driver of the talent, dedication and soaring ambition of the latest Kiwi to join the series, Scott McLaughlin, could use the current NTT IndyCar platform to launch his own tilt at F1.

Of course, ‘stranger things have happened.’

Back in 1995, for instance, mercurial French-Canadian driver Jacques Villeneuve used wins in both the CART IndyCar World Series championship as well as that year’s Indianapolis 500 as a successful springboard to F1.

Jacques, son of the equally enigmatic Gilles Villeneuve, who died as a result of a crash in practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder – did not tread the most conventional path to F1 glory.

However, his cause was definitely helped by his performances for the new Forsythe-Green Racing squad in his rookie (1994) and sophomore (1995) years in the FedEx Champ Car Championship series.

Columbia national Juan Pablo Montoya was another driver to benefit from time spent wrestling a big, heavy old Reynard-Honda around the eclectic mix of short and long ovals,’ temporary street-based track and long flowing ‘European-style’ road courses, which makes it such a hard series to win.

Win it Montoya did though, claiming the 1999 FedEx US Championship title in his rookie year (he was just 24 years old at the time) from Scottish-born teammate Dario Franchitti.

Despite his odd Italian/Scottish roots Franchitti actually plays a key role in any ‘Kiwi’ narrative of the whole F1 vs IndyCar scene, thanks to the mentoring role he played with our very own bona fide IndyCar legend-in-the-making, Scott Dixon.

For a start neither Franchitti nor Dixon have ever seriously flirted with Formula 1. Both appear(ed) perfectly satisfied, in fact, to throw their lot in with the US-based series, rather than chancing an arm (or leg) on a 50/50 call to a drive in the much more cut-throat, dog-eat-dog world of F1.

In saying that there have obviously been risks to this strategy, though in this case most of these are obviously outside a driver’s direct control. And so, as the old adage, goes, ‘out of sight out of mind.’

I’m also of the opinion that there have always been a few too many cooks, ready, willing and – worst of all – seemingly able at will to ‘poison the broth’ with their own signature mix of herbs and spices within the current management structure to truly trust the direction the NTT IndyCar series is going to take over the next 3 to 7 years.

And I will never, ever – even on my deathbed – be able to forgive Tony-Bloody-George for setting up the fundamentally-flawed and openly divisive Indy Racing League in 1994.

With a nice stable rules’ platform, a good strong car, and increasing interest from car manufacturers keen to lease engines to teams, not to mention from circuit owners and/or municipal councils both within the US as well as offshore, you’d have thought it only a matter of time before CART took their Champ Car offering global.

Incredibly, however, it was not to be, with George eventually ‘winning’ an ugly battle for ‘his’ IRL Series in 2003 before the competing Champ Car series was finally declared bankrupt in 2008 and it and the IRL Series were ‘reunified.’

Since then – as many of you no doubt know – there have been a number of other changes, both (major and minor) to improve the package and ‘the show.’

The key one here was the sale by the owners, the Hulman family, in 2019, of both the Indianapolis 500 and the IndyCar LLC sanctioning body to Roger Penske.

As it stands then if you are to compare – say – coverage of the opening round of this year’s NTT IndyCar series from St Petersburg in Florida, which you can if you click below:

with the same sort of highlights package coverage from the first F1 GP of season, from Melbourne’s Albert Park, which, again, you can check out yourself here (https://youtu.be/dt8ANZIZ8Co) you won’t have to have a degree in brain surgery to work out which is the premier world formula and which is the pretender to the throne.

In my humble opinion, in fact, you have to go back to the ‘glory days’ of CART’s Champ Car era from – say – 1989 through until 1999 or the year 2000 – to see the kind of action which you can enjoy or endure in this YouTube video made to celebrate Nigel Mansell’s historic 1993 series win below:

For me though my interest in any sort of sport (motor or otherwise) starts and finishes with the competitors – ‘Les Combatants’ if you will. So, despite the fact that the current car has more in common with a current Formula 2 rather than its ultimate Formula 1 cousin, as long as there are a couple of hard charging Kiwis at the front of the pack it is with the NTT IndyCar Sers where my ultimate fan loyalty must lie.

In saying at my – long suffering – wife Delia got me absolutely hooked on F1’s own reality TV show (on Netflix!) Drive to Survive, last year. Sure, the purist in me hated it – at first anyway – but I was soon hopelessly caught up in all the drama and intrigue of a typical F1 season.

To the point where, if F1s’s new owner, the US-based Liberty Media Corporation, is happy to keep funding it, and a genuine ‘made-for-TV’ talent like our own Liam Lawson is signed up by ‘someone’ to contest the 2023 F1 World Championship all I can really say is a rousing ‘light the touch paper lads then stand well back, because this is going to be spectacular!