With the race cars packed away in their transporters and sent down the road for a race the next weekend in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the CART paddock moved on from Texas as quickly as the speed limit allowed. The three-day saga, born from all manner of mistakes, would become an infamous chapter in a year that brought CART to its knees.
Intensified by Zanardi’s sickening crash at the CART race in Germany just four days after 9/11 — when a similar sentiment of not wanting to race was expressed, this time, out of respect for the lives lost in the terrorist attacks — the once-proud series was becoming unrecognizable.
Safely removed from the rightfully outraged TMS fans and the immediacy of Gossage’s scorn, CART took the safe and predictable route of announcing the Texas race would not be rescheduled. Signed as a three-year deal, the bad blood accrued throughout the ordeal ensured the experiment would not survive beyond 2001.
In a subsequent lawsuit filed by TMS for a breach of everything, CART was rumored to write a check for $3.5 million in a private settlement that served as a deserving end to a miserable marriage.
Mike Zizzo: It’s crazy it’s been 20 years. I look back and I still don’t see a reason to play the blame game. It was a lose-lose for everyone. This was going to be a great event for Texas Motor Speedway. It was going to be a great event for CART. We both lost on this one.
If there’s a sense of pride to be found amid the regret within this grand fiasco, it’s in the decision to protect CART’s most valuable assets.
Helio Castroneves: The promoters, some of the team owners…everybody’s upset. But I have to say that if Dr. Olvey and the drivers weren’t united that day that we shouldn’t race, probably someone would not be here to tell the story.
Oriol Servia: I was in a very small, rookie team. For us, we had a great qualifying, which was huge. The car felt great. This was going to be a big deal for us. And I cannot tell you how relieved I was that the event was canceled. I mean, it was absolutely the right thing to do. It was going to be a disaster. We couldn’t do more than 10, 15 laps without losing control of our bodies. It was that extreme, it really was.
Wally Dallenbach: And the fact of the matter was it was a very unfriendly move that had to be made and we took the responsibility with the support of the doctors and the support of some of the drivers that it was a good move. I was very disappointed and a lot of us were brokenhearted that we had to do that. I took the fall for it, and I’m OK with it. But I would have never lived it down if we’d have killed a driver there knowing that we had a problem. And we did have a problem; we were going too damn fast for the configuration of a mile and a half racetrack.
Lessons were learned, but few have regrets over the decision taken to cancel. Motorsport Images
Mike Zizzo: Looking back, one, I wish we probably would have done more due diligence in terms of testing, but no one could have predicted the speeds would have gone as high as they did. The biggest thing is I wish we could have only needed to postpone it. I just felt terrible for the fans. I just wish we didn’t hurt the fans. But to this day, I still think it was the right decision.
I don’t think a lot of us could have lived with ourselves if we would’ve lost a driver that day just to put on a show. It was basically like putting jet fighters on a track. And it’s all about the drivers’ safety, whether or not due diligence was done. It’s always about the drivers’ safety. You should never sacrifice a driver for an event. And I live by that today.
The glorious series founded in 1979, responsible for some of the greatest Indy car racing the sport has known, limped through the 2002 and 2003 seasons before declaring bankruptcy. A handful of wealthy CART team owners bought the series and relaunched it as Champ Car in 2004, which survived through early 2008 and faded into history when another collapse and the ensuing purchase by the Indy Racing League led to its permanent shuttering.
Max Papis, driver, Team Rahal: I still believe that the race pace would have been dramatically slower and we would have not had any problem. I think the race pace would have been in the 210s, and I don’t think it would have been at 230mph. But in hindsight, if they would’ve asked me, I was ready to jump in the car and race, simple as that. Maybe I pissed a lot of people off when I tell them that I was ready to race, but I was. I would not lie and that’s why I’m a true, genuine competitor.
When I look back at it, it was maybe what CART deserved in that moment. So many bad mistakes made that they contributed to the sport’s collapse. This was maybe one of the things that people should have looked at and said, “Yeah, we’re making many mistakes.” Instead, they kept drinking the Kool-Aid until the thing shut down. To me, that was the saddest part and it ended up with a bankruptcy of one of the most amazing sports. I tell people I won some CART races, and they don’t even know what it is.
Most people with a reasonable understanding of all that went down in Texas would place the heaviest blame on the series’ side. CART, as a business and sports entertainment organization, failed its paddock, sponsors, and fans. It’s an indisputable truth.
But there’s an underlying tone that’s emerged since 2001 and it doesn’t sit well with one of its former officials as a steady drumbeat of blame continues to flow from the track’s president against an organization that no longer exists.
Chris Kneifel: The fact that Eddie Gossage, to this day, is still the one writing the history on it; that’s the only thing that bugs me. I understand that he got put in a bad spot, but he was part of the damn thing. But he’s still the one out there talking about it, because he’s controlling the narrative and he’s got the bully pulpit to do it. But that’s his personality, too. That’s Eddie Gossage for you.
And in terms of taking shots at CART, fair enough, that’s his opinion. I can’t tell a guy not to have an opinion. But rather than just say, “You know what, those [CART] guys, it was a bad deal for the fans, but they made the right call.” He’s the only one that would never say that.
Invited to take part in this feature series, Gossage declined, citing a lack of desire to rehash the past while in a partnership today with the NTT IndyCar Series.
Of note, and while in partnership with the NTT IndyCar Series, Gossage rehashed the subject in 2015 on the event’s 15th anniversary in a NBC Sports web feature. Created with the assistance of TMS, the story, which paints a flattering portrait of Gossage as a whistleblower and victim, caught Kneifel’s attention.
Another story on the event’s 19th anniversary, this time with The Indianapolis Star, and while TMS was in partnership with the NTT IndyCar Series, followed a similar one-dimensional pattern as the track president rehashed 2001 while apportioning 100% of the blame on CART.
This, too, drew Kneifel’s ire.
Chris Kneifel: If Eddie was that concerned, why did he bring the cars there to race? Right? Seriously, dude. You have the racetrack. I wouldn’t disagree that one or however many tests that were done wasn’t sufficient. Fair enough. I’m not going to argue that at all. But take the counterpoint to what he’s saying: OK, well then why did you ask these guys to come race there?
If you were that certain, if you were that positive that those cars were going to be too fast, why did you do a three-year deal with them? Makes no sense. It’s revisionist history. Control the narrative.
One might draw the conclusion that Kneifel and his mentor would be satisfied if Gossage dialed down the rhetoric from 100% blame to 99.
Wally Dallenbach: I have a basic rule. If you don’t have anything good to say about somebody, don’t say it, and that’s where I am with Eddie.
Gossage isn’t without sympathy for his views, though.
Robin Miller: You had to feel a little bit sorry for him. They did a good job of promoting the race. They had a title sponsor. The thing of it was, in Texas, CART left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth. It was good for the IRL and bad for CART. But nationally, with all the positive press CART got for taking care of the drivers, they got more good publicity than they probably ever had.
It seems fitting how the some of the same people who couldn’t agree on how to save the Firestone Firehawk 600 back in 2001 are unable to find common ground or extend olive branches 20 years later.
There’s a strange piece of history from the event sitting in Kenny Brack’s house. It’s the trophy he received — a helmet, of all things — for winning the pole at a race that never happened. In typical fashion for the Swede, a marvelous yarn was spun.
Kenny Brack: I always say that you can have records, but people always break your records; it’s just a matter of time. Very few records stand the test of time because of technology and better people and whatever it is. But if you go for records that nobody wants to hold, then you can hold them for a long time. Like my pole for this race the only time CART went there. And I have another record nobody has from Texas.
People have had many crashes there since then, but they’ve been in the 60-100 G range, and mine [in 2003] was 214! And it’s still a world record, I think, for a racing crash. I was explaining to my son, I said to him, you know, if you want to get a record, do it in something where people don’t really want to go after that record. So my Texas crash falls into that category!
But I still have the helmet they gave me for winning the pole. It’s one of the trophies that’s got quite a unique history to it. Really, there’s nothing like it.
The opening day of practice for CART at Texas Motor Speedway was April 27, 2001, and we know how that story ended. That date is also tied with another infamous failure for CART as the film that carried hopes of bringing the series mainstream acclaim and stardom went down in flames as one of the worst racing movies ever made.
Mike Zizzo: I should have known there was going to be an issue at the race. The week started with us getting a bunch of media and industry types to kick off the week by watching the premiere of “Driven” at a local Dallas-Fort Worth movie theater. What a ****show.
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