Over the past five years, I’ve tried to maintain confidence and enthusiasm about the Champ Car World Series, but the task is getting harder and harder.
We’ve heard promises about additional entries that haven’t materialized. Guarantees of new sponsors that haven’t panned out. Seen attempts to race in the Far East that haven’t come close to reaching reality. Watched American street races (three-day festivals of speed) come in with great fanfare and slink out with major embarrassment.
Then there is the rotating driver game. In thirteen races this season, Champ Car has fielded at least 10 different driver lineups.
The cheapest and shabbiest-looking shuffle came in the six-week gap leading up to the race in Surfers Paradise, Australia. Four drivers lost their rides, two of whom were replaced by potentially inferior pilots in terms of on-track performance.
Ryan Dalziel was forced out at Pacific Coast Motorsports and Oriol Servia was shoved aside at Forsythe Championship Racing to make way for Mexican drivers so that Champ Car could fulfill its contractual obligation to have local drivers in the field for the Nov. 11 season finale at Mexico City.
Then, just days before the Australian race, PKV Racing announced that Tristan Gommendy was out due to “unresolved business issues.” When they got done laughing, most observers translated “unresolved business issues” as “unpaid sponsorship dues.”
It’s no secret that half of Champ Car’s slim 17-car grid is occupied by paying drivers, and reportedly, Pay-By-Touch is unhappy with the value it is getting from PKV. Pay-By-Touch is shopping its sponsorship budget for 2008, targeting teams in the IRL.
Gommendy was certainly one of the most obscure drivers in the Champ Car field, but he occasionally did a respectable job, taking a surprise pole position for the race at Mont-Tremblant, Canada. Yet, when the sponsorship check was slow in coming, PKV was hasty to pull the plug on the Frenchman’s season.
Making the situation even more humorous (or horrendous), PKV tabbed Servia to step into the No. 22 car for the Australian race. Servia already had a taste of Champ Car’s current ‘driver du jour’ modus operandi, having been dropped in favor of paying drivers by PKV prior to the start of the 2007 season.
The final driver swap brought in Nelson Philippe for Jan Heylen at Conquest Racing. This one at least made sense; Eric Bachelart’s team has struggled for funding, and Heylen’s sponsors allegedly reneged on a major payment. Until being sidelined for most of this season, Philippe was one of Champ Car’s brightest young stars. It’s unfortunate that his return came at the expense of Heylen, who finished a career-best second in his last race.
More significantly, Forsythe and PKV (co-owned by series co-principal Kevin Kalkhoven) are supposed to be Champ Car’s marquee teams.
Neither owner is lacking for cash, yet both Kalkhoven and Forsythe appear to be penny-pinching at a time when their teams (not to mention their series) are in dire need of investment.
What would it have cost them to just field additional cars for the last two races of the season? A couple hundred grand, or pocket change to men of their ilk.
 Now, with the news that RuSPORT Racing is set to shut down on Nov. 15, Champ Car is facing its annual car count crisis earlier than ever before. Not to mention the fallout from ‘the prototypical Champ Car team of the 21st Century’ closing its doors after less than five years in business.
The continuing saga of massive turnover of drivers, teams and races and the lack of significant sponsorship has some observers wondering whether Champ Car is going to answer the bell for the 2008 season.
And even worse, the series staunchest supporters are starting to wonder: Why bother?