Racing Away; While Honda says goodbye to CART, is the IRL the next stop?(Brief Article)

Collection Hall is the name of the most elaborate museum Honda Motor Co. has built, and the production cars are tucked away in a wing on the third floor with the ATVs, scooters and lawn mowers. Racing gets a floor to itself, and a presence in every corner, starting with a race car company founder Shoichiro Honda built around an airplane engine in 1924. The hardware includes winners in trials riding, motocross and Superbike, solar races, LSR events, touring cars, GT prototypes, CART and F1. The message is obvious. Honda can claim motorsport as its heritage as legitimately as Ford, Ferrari or Porsche can. Honda Motor Co. races.

Strange, then, that next year Honda will not be racing automobiles in its most important market. When it stops supplying CART engines at the conclusion of this season, American Honda will have no official auto racing program for the first time since 1983-the year it began supporting teams in IMSA and the SCCA. The situation is complicated by the Collection Hall's host facility, which happens to be a $200 million racing complex, in many respects the world's best, completed five years ago for the expressed purpose of hosting a CART oval race. The track-Twin-Ring Motegi-is a wholly owned subsidiary of Honda Motor Co. Now, with Honda leaving CART and CART's race contract up, the racing world is wondering what happens next.

Not sticky enough? Enter Anton Hulman George (Tony to most) and his entourage, including IRL official Brian Barnhart, who visited Motegi during the CART weekend. The rumor bus loaded and shifted into overdrive: It's the IRL that will race at the Twin-Ring, with Honda building engines for that series next season.

Ain't happening, on the second count, we assure you. American open-wheel cars will race again at Motegi, and American Honda will be back in auto racing. Which cars and where are a matter of speculation, because Honda hasn't made up its mind.

``At some point, yeah, we want to be back,'' says Honda vp Tom Elliott, who nurtured Honda's rise in North American auto racing and assured those programs were funded. ``We are trying hard to find some way to stay involved.''

CART makes no bones. ``Japan is a very important market to us,'' says CEO Chris Pook. ``If not Twin-Ring Motegi, then somewhere else-whatever it takes. But our goal, our desire, is to be at Motegi.''

And the president of the IRL? George tried his best not to be seen. In polite Japanese fashion, track officials respectfully refused interviews. Answers to a written list of questions were delivered by a PR man, attributed ...