Newman/Haas/Lanigan won't have a spare car until late in the month. (LAT photo)

It’s difficult to imagine Newman/Haas/Lanigan not having an armada of cars since Carl Haas was the Lola distributor for four decades and then ran the Panoz parts truck last year in Champ Car. But the longtime open-wheel powerhouse is in the bread line like everyone else right now.

"Our one big holdup right now is a fuel cell, so we’re a little bit behind and our goal right now is to have that third car ready for the Pit Stop Contest (May 23)," said John Tzouanakis, team manager for Newman/Haas/Lanigan, whose team had to rebuild Rahal’s mangled racer for St. Petersburg (which he won). "I’m hoping we can send some guys back home next week to get it ready because it would be nice to have a spare car down here."

Thankfully, there’s been no shortage of camaraderie in the IRL paddock.

"We’re the only Champ Car team that didn’t get a new chassis, but the IRL has worked hard to help us and the other teams have been very cooperative," said Kremer. "The nature of this whole thing is a compressed time span and everything happened so fast there weren’t clear parameters out there for everything. It’s like you took a snowflake globe and shook it up.

"But the positive thing is the cooperation among all the teams and I can’t say enough good things. AGR, Penske, Marty Roth .... they’ve been great to us."

That sentiment is echoed by Johnson.

"Chip (Ganassi)’s guys help us on a day-to-day basis and I think our alliance with him is the best in the paddock. They’ve been so good to us. And the same with Scott Roembke (Rahal Letterman) and Tim Cindric and Tom Wirtz (Penske)."

Tzounanakis also complimented Dallara. "They can only do so much in a short period of time and I think they’ve done a good job of getting bits and pieces to everyone."

Since the returning IRL teams gave up cars to the transition teams, they’ve also been left scrambling a bit for spares.

"The IRL ordered 14 new cars and we’ve delivered 12 plus a ton of spares," said Garrett. "We get a big crate from Italy twice a week and I think we’ve risen to the occasion."