I Can’t Get Nooo, Grad-u-ation…

I’ve had the Rolling Stones’ song “Satisfaction’ playing in my head all week whenever I think of the complete cluster-bleep the Atlantic Championship is facing with its year-end prize money situation.

Someone with a bigger brain than mine (and a bigger wallet) will need to come up with a plan to pay one of these three the $1,000,000 prize that was announced for the Atlantic Championship. (Phil Sedgwick/Atlantic Championship)

Without rehashing much of what I wrote earlier, the 2008 Atlantic season happened at the last moment and only through some extraordinary efforts by Ben Johnston, Vicki O’Connor, Mazda, Cooper Tires, the teams, and a few other sponsors to keep it alive when it wasn't retained during unification.

IMSA was eventually drawn in to sanction the series, a TV package was assembled, Johnston put up a solid prize money package for each round, and off it went.
The series and the season were salvaged.

In case you missed it, and many did, a young Finn named Markus Niemela won the title, but in an ugly dispute with his team over prize money, he came away with little to show for his efforts. He's back in the series again this year, but isn't likely to repeat as champion.

With an air of stability going into 2009, and despite the financial crunch felt throughout the racing world, an idea was hatched – one that came from the teams. It would prevent another 'Niemela' situation where the title winner only has the prize money from each race to use to move up with. Their plan was to create a separate payday for the series champion. They vowed to put up a seriously impressive prize for the 2009 titlist of (say it in your best Dr. Evil voice): One Meeeel-ion dollars.

$1,000,000 would not have impressed anyone back when ChampCar owned the series, but now in private hands, it is a big deal. The $1M prize figure was arrived at after consulting a GP2 team, with the aim to create a prize that could be used to buy a ride overseas, but there were no restrictions placed on where the money could be spent.

And how exactly would that big prize fund be generated? Here’s where the Atlantic Championship fills the boilers with coal and aims for the nearest iceberg.

The owners hatched a plan where each entry would contribute $50,000 to the pot, and with the wildly unrealistic hope that 20 cars would show up in 2009, they allowed themselves to believe their champion would be cashing a check for One Meeeel-ion dollars to take to GP2 or Indy Lights. They even figured 22 to 24 cars would appear, and everyone would get a rebate of sorts when that surplus of cash came in.

If we step back from fantasy land and look at the 12 cars that started the Mid-Ohio race last weekend, and accept that 11 to 12 cars have been the norm in 2009, the math leaves us well short of the announced $1M the champion is supposed to receive eight weeks from now.

But that’s not even close to the reality they're facing. I couldn’t get exact figures, but one entrant says that as soon as teams realized they wouldn’t get close to the 20 cars needed, those that originally offered to fork over the $50K tore up their checkbooks and abandoned the program.

The prize money scheme – and that’s all that it is, a scheme – should have been nixed from the beginning. So here we are with the open-wheel equivalent of a raffle with with no tickets sold and a big announcement made that the 2009 champ would have the financial horsepower to buy a bigger ride in 2010.

Let’s be clear – we can’t blame this one on the series. They made the bonehead move to go along with the plan and to put out the press release announcing the big $1M prize, but this situation is FUBAR thanks to the entrants.

So how does this get solved? Great question – no one knows at the moment. I’m told it’s being worked on, but what that means isn’t really clear.

As I’ve already mentioned, Johnston is tired of writing checks, and it’s unfair to expect him to take the hit on this one. Mazda’s done everything short of harvesting and selling their internal organs to keep the Atlantic Championship afloat, and Cooper Tires has no real need to empty their wallet anymore than they already have.

The teams hatched this Three Stooges-esque ‘get rich quick’ scenario, but at the moment, it looks like the one to pay for that mistake will be the kid that wins the championship and walks away empty-handed.

How this problem gets fixed is one of the biggest questions in open-wheel that doesn't have an immediate answer. Three of the strongest Atlantic drivers we’ve seen in years now face the possibility of earning a title that’s worth little more than the paper it’s printed on.

How they get the real paper -- One Meeeel-ion dollar’s worth -- is beyond me.


The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Marshall Pruett is Auto Racing Editor for SPEEDtv.com. Pruett grew up at "Pruett's Olde English Garage," his father's shelter for abused foreign cars, and spent his childhood being dragged across the West Coast to help with his dad's amateur racing exploits.

Pruett spent twenty years working in the IRL, CART, IMSA, and most of the known open-wheel feeder series before retiring from active duty in 2001. And in case you were wondering, no, he isn’t related to Scott Pruett.

Marshall lives in Northern California with his wife Shabral.