CART Struggles to Stay in Chicago; But so far, the options are limited.(Chicago Motor Speedway)(Brief Article)

Of all the stops on the CART schedule, Chicago Motor Speedway must be the most unloved. A one-mile paper-clip oval, slow and awkward, the facility is crammed into an unattractive horse-racing track in Cicero, a gritty industrial suburb miles from the glamour of downtown Chicago. The racing has been mediocre, crowds have dwindled, and the atmosphere is decidedly unmagical. If one event can stand up and represent the unhappy vibe that is the CART tour these days, it's Cicero.

But never mind all that. Chicago happens to be the third-largest market in the country. So when the track's operators announced in February that they were suspending all motorsports operations, newly elected CART CEO Chris Pook took a bold, and for CART, nearly unprecedented step: He rented the joint.

The long and the short of it is this, according to CART vice president Rena Shanaman: ``With the importance of the Chicago market to CART, frankly this was the only logical path. After all, it is the No. 3 market in the United States. A considerable number of our sponsors are headquartered here or have offices here, and several of our biggest teams are based here. CART did not want this race to go away.''

Paying a fee of ``somewhere around $850,000,'' says Shanaman, CART leased the track and took on the entire job of operating and promoting the event in-house this year, with Shanaman serving as general manager. Chicago Motor Speedway was originally developed on the grounds of Sportsman's Park by track owner Charles Bidwill III and CART team owner Chip Ganassi, at a reported cost of some $65 million. In August 1999, a near-capacity crowd filled the 67,000-seat facility for the inaugural race, where rookie sensation Juan Montoya took a popular win. But the next year saw an estimated crowd of only 35,000, and in 2001, fewer than 30,000. The layout's tight radius and narrow groove are fine for the hayburners, but for Champ cars, especially when equipped with the low-downforce Handford device CART has run on the short ovals, the races were boring parades with virtually no overtaking. The fans stayed home.

But in the long run, what probably has sealed Chicago Motor Speedway's fate was the construction of a purpose-built, state-of-the-art oval facility in Joliet, a few miles farther southwest. Owned by the International Speedway Corp., the new track was guaranteed instant spectacular ...