Strategic Retreat; CART backs up and digs in for next season.(Brief Article)

You're damn right we're going to be back next year,'' says CART CEO Chris Pook. Embattled and beleaguered he might be, but there are no plans to throw in the towel. ``This is too good a product,'' he says. ``This is not going to go away.''

But clearly, CART 2003 is going to look a lot different from the glittering spectacle of only a few years ago. The engine manufacturers are departing, and with them all their sweet deals, doling out free engines, paying drivers' salaries, financing teams, and not least, spending untold millions in marketing and promotion. In the new CART, the focus will no longer be on easy money and conspicuous consumption, but on value. CART will now be a spec series, with identically prepared Cosworth turbocharged engines. The current chassis has been frozen, and will carry one aero package used for both ovals and road courses, to trim team budgets even further. ``We're going to take it back to the basics and rebuild it from the bottom up. We've put the emphasis on making sure we've got healthy teams,'' Pook says. In other words, nobody's throwing money at CART anymore, and the new CART must reflect that.

The effect of the cost spiral has been seen not only in CART's bottom line, but on the front line, where every fan can see it: the car count. CART began this season with 20 cars, where it once boasted 26 or more. Now only 18 cars make the grid. And next year there could be as few as 12 entries from the present teams, depending how you count. CART is further motivated to cut costs and increase car count because the sanctioning body pays penalties to promoters when fewer than the minimum number of cars show up. Requirements are typically 20 cars, and penalties vary depending on the contracts with individual promoters. Series managers are scrambling to cover the shortfall.

The biggest blow came last week, with the sale of Team Green to Michael Andretti. Sponsor Kool is not expected to return to CART next year, and is taking a hard look at moving to the rival IRL.

``We haven't made a final decision but expect to by the end of August,'' says company marketing boss Burt Kremer. ``It's really the evolution of the last several years in CART that has taken us in a direction where quite frankly we see our return going down every year.'' Meanwhile, engine supplier Honda also reportedly wants Andretti to follow the automaker to the IRL. The result is that all three former Team Green cars could well be missing from the CART field next year (as ...