Quick Changes; About the only thing you can count on in CART is that it will be different tomorrow.(Championship Auto Racing Teams)

As midseason approaches, Christopher Pook and his new administration sit firmly entrenched at Championship Auto Racing Teams. But CART remains CART, and the most loyal fan realizes this race series' future is anything but assured.

Pook likes to describe himself as a good thief, willing to steal any idea, borrow any tool, pick any brain to get where he wants to go. It's been said often enough to be cliche, but cliches tend to be accurate: If anyone can salvage CART and its unique variety of racing, it's Pook. Yet we surmise that, in his heart of hearts, Pook has at least grasped the possibility that CART is drifting on water deeper, darker and stormier than he might have anticipated. While he has done things to get the ship right and under power, the storm remains. From the outside at least, CART looks as iffy as it did in December, when the thief became captain.

On the racetracks, it has been strange, largely because during the month of May the world and many CART teams rendezvoused at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, while CART more or less dropped off the screen. The season began early in March, but by late June CART had run only seven of 20 events. With the NASCAR-style punishment of 10 sun-baked races in 13 weeks ahead, it's almost folly to project what has happened so far onto the final championship standings.

What has happened is Cristiano da Matta won four of those seven races. Measured against CART's winner count the last three seasons, da Matta has dominated in Schumacher fashion. Indeed, with a different twist here or there, he and Newman-Haas teammate Christian Fittipaldi might have shared the podium at all four road and street races. Yet a lousy performance on ovals has offset the team's strength on road courses. It may bode well for da Matta that CART's schedule favors road races by 2.33 to one this season.

Ganassi Racing is (or was) quickly regaining the form that produced four straight championships in 1996-1999. Bruno Junqueira won the race in Motegi (not to mention the pole at Indy) and stands second in the points behind da Matta. Teammate Kenny Brack has been fast enough to win at four of the six venues. Yet at Milwaukee, Ganassi plucked driver Scott Dixon from Bruce McCaw's failing PWR team and added a third car. The midseason expansion could threaten the momentum built to date.

Ganassi team manager Mike Hull believes the opposite-that another driver's input and another set of data to evaluate setup changes will make Ganassi stronger.

``We think we should benefit from Scott coming aboard,'' Hull says. ``We've added new people for the third car, yes, but this team's hallmark has always been sharing. If the team works the way it's designed, we'll get better.''