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IndyCar
INDYCAR: 1995 CART Oval Calendar Worth Revisiting
The 1995 CART oval schedule could serve as a blueprint for the IndyCar Series as it moves forward from the crash that took the life of Dan Wheldon.
With monstrous power on tap from a 2.65-liter turbocharged V8 engines, sticky tires and plenty of downforce, Gil de Ferran and the rest of the 1995 CART drivers thrived on one-mile ovals. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
Prior to the debut of the Indy Racing League 1996, the 1995 Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) schedule presented a season of oval events that could serve as the blueprint for the IZOD IndyCar Series as it moves forward in the wake of the crash that took the life of Dan Wheldon.
Armed with multiple chassis and tire manufacturers, plus three engine manufacturers churning out 900 hp or more from their turbocharged V8s, the 1995 CART Indy cars were wickedly powerful, extremely fast and a serious handful to drive.
Loaded with impressive sights and sounds to promote, the 1995 schedule complemented the cars and the style of racing they were best-suited to deliver.
16 years later, and with the events that took place at Las Vegas in mind, it’s worth asking whether future IndyCar Series schedules would benefit from adopting the oval formula that worked so well for CART before it had the IRL to contend with.
The calendar, as set by the CART officials, was comprised of 17 rounds, with 7 held on street courses, four on road courses and six on ovals. Two of the ovals were held on tracks of two-miles or more in length (Indianapolis and Michigan) while the other four were contested on one-mile tracks that ranged from slightly banked to completely flat.
With no competition in the open-wheel marketplace and a world of oval options to choose from, CART filled its plate with one-milers. Although plenty of 1.5-mile ovals existed in 1995, Indy car’s history was forged on the short tracks and the CART schedule reflected it.
66 percent of the 1995 oval races were held on one-mile tracks, and as those who attended will attest, the four bullring visits didn’t disappoint. Speeds on the one-milers were high, the grandstands were heavily subscribed and drivers enjoyed the challenge of having to keep 900 hp under control lap after lap.
Bryan Herta claimed pole at Phoenix with a lap of 181.9 mph, Robby Gordon took pole at Nazareth at 187.4 mph, Teo Fabi earned the pole at Milwaukee with a lap of 162.4 mph and Andre Ribeiro, who would go on to win Honda’s first race at Loudon, scored the New Hampshire pole with a 177.4 mph lap.
It was a different time for open-wheel racing—the thought of racing on a high-banked 1.5-mile track had never dawned on most people in the CART paddock. But with the emergence of the IRL, the blending of NASCAR tracks and open-wheel racing would soon become a staple of the all-oval Indy car series.
Lapping at 200 mph or more at most ovals in 1995—as has become the norm these days—was reserved for Indianapolis, where Scott Brayton took the pole at 231.6 mph in his Lola-Buick, and Michigan where Parker Johnstone went 230.4 mph for pole in his Reynard-Honda.
In the business of supply and demand, CART kept the supply of 200 mph events low and the resulting demand was high. Compare that to recent years where breaking 200 mph on ovals has become so commonplace, fans no longer associate Indy cars with impressive speed. The supply is so high, the demand is entirely diluted.
While this writer has not spoken to the entire field of drivers that raced at Las Vegas, conversations have been held with most of the veterans and not one has expressed a desire to continue racing on 1.5-mile ovals. Zero.
Frankly, the statements have skewed 100 percent towards never wanting to return to the pack-style racing that the 1.5-milers tend to produce, and a few drivers said they would seriously consider retiring or switching to another form of racing if faced with racing on 1.5-milers again.
Whether those drivers would stick to their guns and retire or switch categories is a topic to explore in the future, but for now, and with the general sentiment erring towards a desire to race only on one-mile ovals (except for Indy), the final pre-IRL CART schedule could be the roadmap to follow.
As two drivers who raced in CART in 1995 and later in the all-oval version of the IndyCar Series told SPEED.com, the more INDYCAR CEO Randy Bernard shifts the series back to its oval roots and away from 1.5-milers, the better.
“I think that questions need to be asked,” said Bryan Herta, who counts a win on the 1.5-mile Kansas track amongst his four Indy car victories.
“We can’t forget history and some of the schedule evolutions we’ve been through before. If you look at the IRL schedule from 2003 to today, how far has it evolved? It went from nothing but ovals to adding road racing to what’s become predominantly a road and street course championship. The tide has been moving in that direction, and the last holdout has been two or three tracks where we have the pack racing.”
Herta cited the three 1.5-mile tracks left on the 2011 IndyCar calendar—Texas, Kentucky and Las Vegas—as problems for the series to address immediately. With two of those tracks set for a return in 2012 (Texas and Las Vegas, while Kentucky has been replaced by the two-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana), Bernard could face a greater problem: convincing his drivers to show up and race.
“You have pack racing at Kentucky a little bit—at least for the first part of a stint until the tires wear out and people go single-file,” Herta continued. “You have it big time at Texas and you obviously have it at Las Vegas. The series has become far more competitive in the last two or three years, and the teams have become better, which tightens things up on those tracks. The cars are within two-miles-an-hour of each other and the grids have gone from struggling to get 18 cars to a steady mid-20s on the ovals, or more. You have to react to the changes in the series--the cars and the car counts--and adjust where you go racing.”
The Phoenix oval has been fundamentally altered to suit the needs of the NASCAR Sprint Cup cars and Nazareth has been closed since 2004, leaving the other two one-mile ovals from 1995, Milwaukee and Loudon, as the most viable candidates to replace Texas and Las Vegas.
The IndyCar Series returned to Milwaukee and Loudon in 2011, but due to issues with the promoter (Milwaukee) and poor crowds (Milwaukee and Loudon), both were dropped for 2012.
“If you go with the argument that what makes IndyCar unique and great is the diversity of the tracks we race on, you can’t write the ovals off the schedule; that’s certainly not what Dan [Wheldon] would have wanted,” said Herta. “If you want to honor the tradition of Indy car racing, there isn’t a better oval track you’ll go to outside of Indy than at Milwaukee. The tradition of Milwaukee being right after Indy is what people expect. And if you ask the drivers—the ones who will be honest—they’ll tell you it’s the biggest challenge and the one we enjoy the most. That style of track is what we need to return to. Yeah, the crowds weren’t great this year, but I think people expected miracles after we abandoned the market, then brought it back at the last minute and expected it to return to its former glory.
“I’d love to see the series do all they can to bring it back. It’s a perfect place to keep racing Indy cars. And talking to Dario [Franchitti] and some of the guys who went back to Loudon, they loved it there as well. That’s another track I hope the series changes its mind about. You need more than one year at some of the ovals we used to race at to gain traction. We want to race there, but you have to be realistic on how fast they’ll grow. If you look at those one-mile crowds back in 1995, they were pretty big. If think if we commit to them, in time, they’ll commit to us.”
Like Herta, Gil de Ferran was in his second season of CART in 1995, and while he would go on to win IndyCar Series races on the 1.5-mile tracks at Nashville and Texas, the 2003 Indy 500 winner says his greatest satisfaction came from the short ovals.
Armed with multiple chassis and tire manufacturers, plus three engine manufacturers churning out 900 hp or more from their turbocharged V8s, the 1995 CART Indy cars were wickedly powerful, extremely fast and a serious handful to drive.
Loaded with impressive sights and sounds to promote, the 1995 schedule complemented the cars and the style of racing they were best-suited to deliver.
16 years later, and with the events that took place at Las Vegas in mind, it’s worth asking whether future IndyCar Series schedules would benefit from adopting the oval formula that worked so well for CART before it had the IRL to contend with.
The calendar, as set by the CART officials, was comprised of 17 rounds, with 7 held on street courses, four on road courses and six on ovals. Two of the ovals were held on tracks of two-miles or more in length (Indianapolis and Michigan) while the other four were contested on one-mile tracks that ranged from slightly banked to completely flat.
With no competition in the open-wheel marketplace and a world of oval options to choose from, CART filled its plate with one-milers. Although plenty of 1.5-mile ovals existed in 1995, Indy car’s history was forged on the short tracks and the CART schedule reflected it.
66 percent of the 1995 oval races were held on one-mile tracks, and as those who attended will attest, the four bullring visits didn’t disappoint. Speeds on the one-milers were high, the grandstands were heavily subscribed and drivers enjoyed the challenge of having to keep 900 hp under control lap after lap.
Bryan Herta claimed pole at Phoenix with a lap of 181.9 mph, Robby Gordon took pole at Nazareth at 187.4 mph, Teo Fabi earned the pole at Milwaukee with a lap of 162.4 mph and Andre Ribeiro, who would go on to win Honda’s first race at Loudon, scored the New Hampshire pole with a 177.4 mph lap.
It was a different time for open-wheel racing—the thought of racing on a high-banked 1.5-mile track had never dawned on most people in the CART paddock. But with the emergence of the IRL, the blending of NASCAR tracks and open-wheel racing would soon become a staple of the all-oval Indy car series.
Lapping at 200 mph or more at most ovals in 1995—as has become the norm these days—was reserved for Indianapolis, where Scott Brayton took the pole at 231.6 mph in his Lola-Buick, and Michigan where Parker Johnstone went 230.4 mph for pole in his Reynard-Honda.
In the business of supply and demand, CART kept the supply of 200 mph events low and the resulting demand was high. Compare that to recent years where breaking 200 mph on ovals has become so commonplace, fans no longer associate Indy cars with impressive speed. The supply is so high, the demand is entirely diluted.
While this writer has not spoken to the entire field of drivers that raced at Las Vegas, conversations have been held with most of the veterans and not one has expressed a desire to continue racing on 1.5-mile ovals. Zero.
Frankly, the statements have skewed 100 percent towards never wanting to return to the pack-style racing that the 1.5-milers tend to produce, and a few drivers said they would seriously consider retiring or switching to another form of racing if faced with racing on 1.5-milers again.
Whether those drivers would stick to their guns and retire or switch categories is a topic to explore in the future, but for now, and with the general sentiment erring towards a desire to race only on one-mile ovals (except for Indy), the final pre-IRL CART schedule could be the roadmap to follow.
As two drivers who raced in CART in 1995 and later in the all-oval version of the IndyCar Series told SPEED.com, the more INDYCAR CEO Randy Bernard shifts the series back to its oval roots and away from 1.5-milers, the better.
“I think that questions need to be asked,” said Bryan Herta, who counts a win on the 1.5-mile Kansas track amongst his four Indy car victories.
“We can’t forget history and some of the schedule evolutions we’ve been through before. If you look at the IRL schedule from 2003 to today, how far has it evolved? It went from nothing but ovals to adding road racing to what’s become predominantly a road and street course championship. The tide has been moving in that direction, and the last holdout has been two or three tracks where we have the pack racing.”
Herta cited the three 1.5-mile tracks left on the 2011 IndyCar calendar—Texas, Kentucky and Las Vegas—as problems for the series to address immediately. With two of those tracks set for a return in 2012 (Texas and Las Vegas, while Kentucky has been replaced by the two-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana), Bernard could face a greater problem: convincing his drivers to show up and race.
“You have pack racing at Kentucky a little bit—at least for the first part of a stint until the tires wear out and people go single-file,” Herta continued. “You have it big time at Texas and you obviously have it at Las Vegas. The series has become far more competitive in the last two or three years, and the teams have become better, which tightens things up on those tracks. The cars are within two-miles-an-hour of each other and the grids have gone from struggling to get 18 cars to a steady mid-20s on the ovals, or more. You have to react to the changes in the series--the cars and the car counts--and adjust where you go racing.”
The Phoenix oval has been fundamentally altered to suit the needs of the NASCAR Sprint Cup cars and Nazareth has been closed since 2004, leaving the other two one-mile ovals from 1995, Milwaukee and Loudon, as the most viable candidates to replace Texas and Las Vegas.
The IndyCar Series returned to Milwaukee and Loudon in 2011, but due to issues with the promoter (Milwaukee) and poor crowds (Milwaukee and Loudon), both were dropped for 2012.
“If you go with the argument that what makes IndyCar unique and great is the diversity of the tracks we race on, you can’t write the ovals off the schedule; that’s certainly not what Dan [Wheldon] would have wanted,” said Herta. “If you want to honor the tradition of Indy car racing, there isn’t a better oval track you’ll go to outside of Indy than at Milwaukee. The tradition of Milwaukee being right after Indy is what people expect. And if you ask the drivers—the ones who will be honest—they’ll tell you it’s the biggest challenge and the one we enjoy the most. That style of track is what we need to return to. Yeah, the crowds weren’t great this year, but I think people expected miracles after we abandoned the market, then brought it back at the last minute and expected it to return to its former glory.
“I’d love to see the series do all they can to bring it back. It’s a perfect place to keep racing Indy cars. And talking to Dario [Franchitti] and some of the guys who went back to Loudon, they loved it there as well. That’s another track I hope the series changes its mind about. You need more than one year at some of the ovals we used to race at to gain traction. We want to race there, but you have to be realistic on how fast they’ll grow. If you look at those one-mile crowds back in 1995, they were pretty big. If think if we commit to them, in time, they’ll commit to us.”
Like Herta, Gil de Ferran was in his second season of CART in 1995, and while he would go on to win IndyCar Series races on the 1.5-mile tracks at Nashville and Texas, the 2003 Indy 500 winner says his greatest satisfaction came from the short ovals.
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