I'm really getting tired of this guy...

[Tailwind]

Brock Yates in a column for Speed TV

CART on the other hand, is sucking for air. Despite rosy assessments in USA Today by Gary Graves on Nov. 29, and a lengthy treatise by our own, well-respected David Phillips on this site, Mr. Pook and his CARTers face a desperate situation.

While Phillips and Graves argued that successes in Canada and Mexico bode well and that new Ford and Bridgestone backing will inject high energy into the series, I beg to disagree. Please note that I have been skeptical about CART’s long-term future for years, believing that its strategy to cut the emotional umbilical cord between it and traditional American grass-roots motorsports fans would in the end by a fatal mistake. By choosing to be a faux Formula 1 with “international” cars and drivers, as opposed to building loyalty among domestic spectators, teams and drivers, their doom was sealed.

The result: feeble network television ratings, spotty crowds, egregious costs, sagging sponsor support, chaos in its boardroom and steady defections of teams and drivers, both to the IRL and Formula 1.

The decision to embrace Ford’s so-called “high-tech” turbo Cosworth as an off-the-rack powerplant might make short-term sense economically and counter the loss of Toyota, Honda and earlier, Mercedes-Benz, but the notion of 18 identically powered cars snaking around inner city go-kart tracks or on faraway venues in Canada, Mexico and probably Europe, will do absolutely nothing to attract the broad-based American fan and sponsor support that is needed for survival. Surely Federal Express, ABC/ESPN, Toyota, Honda, etc., etc., recognized that CART has positioned itself outside the tent where NASCAR and the IRL’s Indianapolis 500 (and its satellites) now hold all the power.

Like it or not, this nation is essentially provincial in its sporting appetites. Consider the weak support for Grand Prix racing and professional soccer over the years, as opposed to the booming popularity of stock car racing and our own pro football. Face it; our enthusiasm for sports not-invented-here is limited at best. We can delude ourselves that we are sophisticated internationalists, but when it comes to counting bodies at the turnstiles or toting up the Nielsen ratings, the truth is revealed. The sooner the dreamers who support CART’s global current philosophy realize this; the sooner they might steer it to recovery. Tip O’Neil once observed that all politics are local. The same is true for sports.

Chris Pook is one smart guy and he may yet save CART, but the plan for the 2003 season seems not so much a desperate reach for a life preserver but rather grabbing an anvil plunging straight for the bottom.

I wish I was wrong. But I’m not.