DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — With the tremendous influx of IndyCar drivers who have entered NASCAR Sprint Cup in recent years, the reaction to the IndyCar Series preparing to absorb Champ Car was met with a positive response at Daytona Int’l Speedway.
“Now that they are merging, I must have been the bad luck that kept them from doing that,” quipped three-time IndyCar champion Sam Hornish, Jr., who is now a NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie at Penske Racing. “I’m happy for them. That’s what has to happen for open-wheel racing to survive. They had to get back together.
“I’ve seen it get close before, and everybody thought it was going to happen, and it didn’t. We’ll see what happens.”
Patrick Carpentier spent much of his career in CART, Champ Car and later with IndyCar, running for such team owners as Gerry Forsyth in CART and Eddie Cheever in the IRL.
Carpentier is in his first season as a NASCAR Sprint Cup driver for Gillett Evernham Motorsports and terms it an “absorption,” not a merger between the two sides.
“If this had happened in 2003, I don’t know if it would have made a difference for me,” Carpentier said. “Maybe then it would have, but now I hope it’s not too late. I was so mad in Champ Car because when I came into the series, it was a great series with great names like Al Unser, Jr. and Michael Andretti and Bobby Rahal and these guys when I came in. It was fun.
“In the end, it was sad. I went to Las Vegas to the Champ Car race to make sure I made the right decision, and I thought I did. I looked at the race and was sitting with my wife eating ice cream and it was sad. They were racing and there was nobody there, nobody left. They would release the mechanics in the winter and hire them back when the season started.”

"The first day I sat at that driver’s meeting at Homestead, I sat there and they were laughing at the other group. In life, it always comes to bite you back. I remembered thinking of that in the driver’s meeting. I said I’m not sure I would be laughing if I were them. For years, both of them kept arguing. I hope they can bring it back because they have something good in their hands.” — Patrick Carpentier

Carpentier said he feels a bit of karma has hit Champ Car because he remembers a driver’s meeting for a CART race at Homestead when he was a rookie and how derisive comments were made about the rival Indy Racing League, which is now the IndyCar Series.
“The first day I sat at that driver’s meeting at Homestead, I sat there and they were laughing at the other group,” Carpentier said. “In life, it always comes to bite you back. I remembered thinking of that in the driver’s meeting. I said I’m not sure I would be laughing if I were them.
“For years, both of them kept arguing. I hope they can bring it back because they have something good in their hands.”
Longtime CART and Champ Car team owner Barry Green is now Jacques Villeneuve’s business manager. Although his brother, Barry Green, is one of the team owners at Andretti Green Racing in the IndyCar Series, Green believes it is crucial for this latest attempt to combine the series to finally happen.
“Everyone knows what Barry Green tried to do many, many years ago and my thoughts haven’t changed — it has to happen,” Green said. “Now, it’s been a long time since the split. A lot of damage has been done. The very best thing about them coming back together is we can all forget about the split, and those guys involved in IndyCar today can focus on IndyCar and try to rebuild it because a lot of damage has been done.
“But Barry Green thinks it’s great. If they do come back together that’s the right thing to do. The only way it’s ever going to be rebuilt is if they are both back together.”
Robby Gordon was one of the first IndyCar or Champ Car drivers to leave for NASCAR, but has always had a strong desire to see IndyCar racing return to prominence.
“The easy part is to get all the cars and engines together; the hard part was getting the two sides together,” Gordon said. “There are plenty of IRL cars out there and manufacturers work every day. Some of the IRL teams will help the Champ Car teams and vice-versa.
“Good for them. Hopefully open-wheel racing will grow to what it was in 1995. It was a very strong series, a lot of fun to compete in and we had a lot of fans back then. Hopefully, we will reunite some of those fans. Now with one open-wheel series in America, I’m happy to see that. It’s good for Tony George. I think his spec is pretty good. He has reduced costs because 10 years ago we spent more than it costs to run the IRL today. Hopefully, the timing isn’t bad and that the economy won’t be a problem now.”
Jim Aust of Toyota Research and Development was involved with both CART and IndyCar before the company left both and placed all of its emphasis on NASCAR. However, Toyota still sponsors the Long Beach Grand Prix and would love to see all the teams in open-wheel racing there this April.
“I’m sure there is a lot yet to be finalized, but we’re looking forward to that possibility that the two open-wheel series can get all the cars to be at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in mid-April,” Aust said. “That’s important to us as a sponsor. We hope everything works out and they can move the series forward and fans start coming back to open-wheel racing.
“If this happened in 2003, maybe we’d still be in that form of racing. We were always looking towards NASCAR to have some involvement in that. We were looking at NASCAR down the road, but that’s a good question and could have potentially had some impact on things, but that’s history and we’re on to NASCAR and we’re not going to be looking back.”