Written by:
Marshall Pruett
“I was doing DTM with Mercedes and then in 1996 the series had been canceled; it just kind of priced itself out of the market,” said Dario Franchitti, IndyCar champion and 1997 Hogan Racing alumni. “I sat next to Ilmor’s Paul Morgan at Mercedes’ end-of-season dinner in Stuttgart. And Paul says, ‘What do you want to do going forward?’ And I said, ‘I'd really like to go over and race CART. It looks like a great place to race. I know that Jan [Magnussen] had gone over and driven for Hogan-Penske and he had a good time doing it, and it's something I’d really like to do.’ And he said, ‘Leave it with me.’
“And I think that was in late November, maybe early December. And he calls me back in January and says, ‘Hey, Carl Hogan’s really interested in running you in the season – you should give him a call immediately, and the guys at Mercedes want to do it, as well. Get on the flight and you're going to go do some testing.’ So there we go. That's how it happened.”
That phone call would result in the most life altering change of Dario Franchitti’s life. But for Indycar team owner Carl Hogan’s willingness to take a chance on an oddly named Scottish driver that few in America had ever heard of, it’s unlikely Dario’s face would now grace the Borg-Warner trophy as the 2007 Indy 500 victor.
Yet the story about Carl Hogan and his Hogan Racing IndyCar team takes a slight twist when we look back at the great effect Carl’s modest outfit now has within the American Le Mans Series. From his former drivers to throngs of ex-crew members, it’s impossible to walk more than a few steps through the ALMS paddock without bumping into a former Hogan Racing associate.
SPEED's David Hobbs raced and won for Hogan back in the F5000 series prior to Carl's move to Can-Am and Indycars. (Photo: LAT)
» More Photos
The list was an impressive one at Petit Le Mans: 2007 12 Hours of Sebring winner and Patron Highcroft driver Dario Franchitti, Patron Highcroft team manager Rob Hill, Penske Porsche driver Helio Castroneves, ALMS entrant Bobby Rahal, Fernandez Racing team manager and co-owner Tom Anderson, Audi engineer Ron Mathis, Audi technician Greg Martin, and former Audi driver JJ Lehto rank amongst the higher profile personnel who’ve worked for Carl. Of the less impressive names, you can add a certain ALMS reporter from SPEEDtv.com to those that worked for Hogan Racing.
There are at least a half-dozen more graduates from Hogan’s racing teams – from hospitality workers to mechanics – that make their living in the ALMS, but of the lot, Tom Anderson’s association with Hogan Racing goes back the furthest from anyone else in the Series.
“Carl Hogan was team owner in the Formula 5000 series. I was hired as a mechanic and at the time that I started in 1972. The shop was in Lime Rock, Connecticut right across the street from the track -- the building is still there today; it's called the Lime Rock Garage now, but that was Hogan racing in 1971, ‘72 and ‘73. And then at the end of ‘73 Carl had a fallout with his team manager and asked me to move all his stuff to where he had his base of business operations in St. Louis.”
Once they were in Missouri, Anderson would see Carl Hogan’s involvement in the team continue to grow. “When I started with them it was a two-car team with David Hobbs and Brett Lunger and was sponsored by Hager slacks. When the Hager slacks money went away, Carl pretty much ran the entire team out of his own pocket. He ran Hobbs again in ’75 and then we ran two cars at the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix for Hobbs and Jody Scheckter. Carl was a great sportsman and put a lot of it out of his own pocket to make sure that things happened.”
Hogan's association with Al Holbert in Can-Am helped propel Holbert's later success with the CRC car and then with Porsche prototypes.
» More Photos
Hogan would make his first shift from open-wheel to sportscars a year later. “Formula 5000 became the new Can-Am, the single-seat Can-Am series. We did a couple of races with Randy Lewis and then Carl came back full time in ‘78 with Al Holbert and the Busch car in Can-Am. Then he had his own car built that Lee Dykstra designed, the HR001, that was driven again by Al Holbert. It was an intriguing time.”
Carl’s partner in Rahal-Hogan Racing, Bobby Rahal, tells the next chapter in the Hogan Racing story. “When Holbert went and did his own thing with Dykstra and CRC Chemicals, Carl stepped away; he’d gotten out for a while -- and then kind of came back on the scene around 1989 with Chip Ganassi. I had known Carl a little bit so it was very much of a social relationship than business at that point and I was considering who to try and partner with to start my own team. We talked and pretty quickly, Carl said, ‘Yeah, let's do it.’ So off we went. Obviously, we won the championship that year, our sponsors at Miller Brewing Company couldn't have been happier, and the rest of it is history, as they say.”
Rahal-Hogan Racing indeed claimed the 1992 championship at their first try, and the partnership carried on for three more seasons. Beyond the tough business exterior, Hogan’s regular practices also had an impact on how Rahal conducted his own business affairs after the two split at the end of the 1995 CART season.
“First thing in the morning -- we’d travel – and he'd be going through all of his calls one after the other. His suitcase was meticulous with all the files of each thing he had on his plate that day or over the next several days. And as a result, he was very, very well organized and very buttoned-down when it came to the running of his business. I looked after the team at Rahal-Hogan Racing, but he really took care of the books and the day-to-day stuff--what were we spending, what we had coming in, and so on. He brought a definite focus on the financial side to our partnership and to this day I use a lot of what I learned back then.”
Like the gentleman race car drivers that participate in the sport for the sheer enjoyment, Hogan was very much a gentleman owner – someone who willfully spent large sums of money on his passion, but whose life was filled with other interests that either matched or outweighed the importance of motorsports. Business was Hogan’s first priority, and for a man of such immense stature—both physically and commercially, the fun-loving character people got to know in the CART paddock was an altogether different animal in the boardroom.
Tom Anderson (R) went from working as a mechanic for Hogan in the seventies to being co-owner of the Fernandez Racing ALMS team. (Photo: LAT/Levitt)
» More Photos
Away from the race track, Carl Hogan was a Midwestern shipping magnate, whose fleet of 18-wheelers operated from coast to coast. Hogan Trucking was centrally located amongst a number of major breweries, and the business thrived as he was their preferred method to haul millions of bottles of beer throughout the country.
But Hogan’s Missouri base also meant Hogan Trucking was in close proximity to Chicago, which led to a rather famous encounter with the head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa. With the mob-affiliated Hoffa looking to unionize Hogan’s workforce and pad the Mafia’s pockets with Carl’s profits, Carl’s legend grew to new heights when he not only stood up to Hoffa, but backed him down.
“Of course, you heard about how he had stood up to Jimmy Hoffa,” Rahal said. “Not many people did that and lived to tell the tale. And you heard about a lot of those kinds of stories, again, nothing in real specifics but, in general terms, Carl was the last person anyone wanted to sit across the table from if you weren’t being fair, including Hoffa. If that doesn't impress you I don't know what would.
“I think Carl was always a guy who knew what he wanted and he also knew how to do a deal. And he also knew what was important to the other side and what was important to him. As a result, he was a very successful businessman.”
