Quote:
Originally posted by Raoul Duke
The IRL ... stole Cart's greatest race from them and claimed it as their own(IMHO). It should return to Cart where it rightfully belongs.
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CART's identity crisis stems from the fact that the Indy 500 does
not rightfully belong to CART, it never has and it never will. The Indy 500 was never a CART sanctioned race. In fact in the early years of CART, Indy 500 points did not count towards CART's championship. When CART used the moniker "IndyCar" in the early 90's the name was licensed fron the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. CART chose to build their series around a race that was not theirs, and could be taken from them at any moment. And, eventually it was...
This thought may be hard to fathom, but CART should have left Indy behind when they broke away from USAC in 1979. It's hard to believe that, back then, USAC would have been able to pull off a racing league able to compete with CART. Although the early years may have been tough, CART could have built a centerpiece event of their own instead of building up the prestige of an event that was not theirs. By now, that event would have more than twenty years of tradition, and it's hard to imagine in what capacity the Indy 500 would exist today, if it did at all.