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7 unusual facts about Champ car


2001 Tenneco Automotive Grand Prix of Detroit

The 2001 Tenneco Automotive Grand Prix of Detroit was a Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) race that was held on June 17, 2001 on the Raceway on Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan.

City of Sports Complex

To host the 2007 Pan American Games, the City of Sports Complex, administered by Rio de Janeiro City Hall and an arena of important international motor sport races such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix, CART IndyCar Racing and Motorcycle Speed Races, was turned into a mega sports complex with the capacity to stage several sport disciplines.

David Grace

He was the CEO at Rockingham Motor Speedway between 2000 and 2002, and oversaw the opening of the track and the return, after many years, of CART racing to Britain.

David M. Brown

On April 21, 2001, Brown appeared on ESPN as an expert on g-force loading on the human body that led to the cancellation of the Firestone Firehawk 600 CART race.

Emerson Indy 250

The first running was a CART series race held on Saturday May 24, 1997, the day before the rival Indy Racing League's Indianapolis 500.

VisionAire 500K

That incident, and a previous incident in July 1998 in a Champ Car race at Michigan which also killed three spectators, led to new rules requiring cars to have tethers attached to wheel hubs in an effort to prevent such incidents from happening again.

The plans, however, were scrapped when USAC entered into a joint sanctioning effort with CART, and the 1980 calendar was reorganized.


1996 Indianapolis 500

Off the track, Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana against CART to protect the "IndyCar" trademark.

2004 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach

It was the first event for the new Champ Car World Series which was created when Gerald Forsythe, Kevin Kalkhoven, Paul Gentilozzi and Dan Petit purchased the bankrupt CART series' liquidated assets in an Indianapolis courtroom the previous January.

Can-Am

The series peaked in the early 80s but as the CART Indycar series and IMSA's GTP championship grew in stature it faded.

The second incarnation of Can-Am faded away as IMSA and CART racing became more popular in the early 1980s but remained active until 1987.

Chaparral Cars

With the formation of CART Hall decided to field a car for Unser in that series.

Hall would wind up getting 13 wins and 2 championships in USAC and CART sanction Indy car races.

Chip Mead

Starting out in US Formula Super Vee, the single-seat Can-Am series, and North American Formula Atlantic in the late 70's including a 7th place points finish in the 1977 Formula Atlantic season, Mead later made 7 starts in the CART Championship Car series from 1980 to 1983.

Claude Bourbonnais

Claude Bourbonnais (born June 24, 1965, L'Île-Perrot, Quebec), is a former driver in the Toyota Atlantic, Indy Lights, and CART Championship Car series.

Dave Billes

He was later Jacques Villeneuve (elder)'s car owner in CART IndyCar competition in the early 1980s, and entered two cars in the 1985 Indianapolis 500.

Dick Simon

A multiple starter and top-ten finisher in the race, he also became a car owner, founding Dick Simon Racing helping to begin the IndyCar careers of Stéphan Grégoire, Arie Luyendyk, Raul Boesel, and others.

Ensign Racing

Nunn would later go on to be a prominent chief engineer in the American-based Champ Car series, winning championships with drivers Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya in the late 1990s.

Forsythe/Pettit Racing

Forsythe/Pettit Racing is a racing team that competed in the Champ Car World Series owned by Gerald Forsythe and Dan Pettit.

Gastón Mazzacane

He then went to the US and competed in the last half of the 2004 Champ Car season with the Dale Coyne Racing #19 American Medical Response car.

Lee Kunzman

Lee Kunzman (born November 29, 1944, Guttenberg, Iowa), is a former driver in the USAC and CART Championship Car series.

Leigh Diffey

In 2001 Diffey filled in for Jeremy Shaw covering the Champ Car series for ESPN International alongside Ben Edwards at the Rockingham Motor Speedway (United Kingdom) and the Lausitzring (Germany).

Mo Nunn

He ran the Ensign Formula One team in the late 1970s and early 80s, and later worked for Chip Ganassi's highly successful Champ Car team, before founding Mo Nunn Racing for the 2000 season.

NASCAR in Australia

The Australian NASCARs were supporters of the Gold Coast Indy 300 run by CART on the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit during the early years when CAMS sanctioned categories ignored the race meeting, for until 1992 this was NASCAR's only opportunity to race away from its home circuit at Calder Park.

Penske PC-26

The Penske PC-26 was designed by Nigel Bennett and manufactured by Penske Cars in Poole, Dorset for the 1997 CART Championship.

Rick DeLorto

He attempted to race in two CART Championship Car races in the fall of 1982 (during their split with USAC) at the Milwaukee Mile and Road America but failed to make the field in both races.

Roger Rager

Roger Rager (born September 3, 1948 in Lincoln, Nebraska), is a former driver in the USAC and CART Championship Car series.

Tradin' Paint

In 2003, Tradin' Paint was the name of a one-hour special program where 4-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon and former CART champion and Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya traded race cars and drove around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Formula One race course.

Walker Racing

Walker Racing is a racing team founded by Derrick Walker in 1991 racing originally in the CART Championship Car series.


see also

1979 Champ Car season

the 1979 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1980 Champ Car season

the 1980 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1981 Champ Car season

the 1981 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1984 Champ Car season

the 1984 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1986 Champ Car season

the 1986 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1987 Champ Car season

the 1987 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1989 Champ Car season

the 1989 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1991 Champ Car season

the 1991 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

1993 Champ Car season

the 1993 IndyCar season, sanctioned by CART, who would later become Champ Car

2002 Shell Grand Prix of Denver

It was the first Champ Car event in Denver since a 1991 street course event in Denver's Civic Center.

2004 Champ Car season

Momentum for Champ Car began to turn in the aftermath of Rahal's exit when his driver, Michel Jourdain, Jr., announced that he and his sponsor, the Mexican supermarket Gigante would not follow Rahal to the IRL.

2007 Bavaria Champ Car Grand Prix

Promotional events leading up to the Grand Prix included driver appearances and track performances of a Champ Car at the Bavaria City Racing held in Rotterdam and at the Rizla Racing Days weekend at the TT Circuit.

On July 12, 2007, at a press conference held in Lieshout, Netherlands, Bart Rietbergen of the Dutch Champ Car Grand Prix, Jos Vaessen, Chairman of TT Circuit Assen, and Peer Swinkels, chairman of the Bavaria Beer company, announced that Bavaria Brewery, the second largest brewer in the Netherlands, would be the title sponsor of the 2007 Grand Prix event.

Casey Mears

He ended the season by filling in for injured Champ Car driver Alex Zanardi, posting one top-10 finish in four starts.

Grand Prix of Montreal

This mirrored the name change of the Toronto Champ Car race from the Molson Indy Toronto to the Molson Grand Prix of Toronto after its sale by Molson.

Joe Sostilio

His career-best finish on the AAA/Champ Car circuit was a pair of 7th-place efforts at Langhorne Speedway and Darlington Speedway in 1954.

KW Motorsport Ltd

KW Motorsport Ltd have a wide range of engineering consultancy in Champ car and Le Mans series including the design of the Nasamax, Protan and Creation AutoSportif chassis that are based on Reynard Motorsports original products.

Mike Lanigan

Lanigan also took over the promoter position of Champ Car's Grand Prix of Houston in 2006 and Grand Prix of Cleveland in 2007, neither of which survived the merger to appear on the IndyCar Series schedule.

Nelson Philippe

With just one year of experience in cars, Philippe tested with two Champ Car teams, before signing with Paul Gentilozzi's Rocketsports Racing team.

Paul Gentilozzi

Gentilozzi and fellow Champ Car owners Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven purchased the assets of Champ Car following a financially difficult 2003 season.

Rocketsports Racing

They did compete in the Champ Car finale at Long Beach Grand Prix, with drivers Antônio Pizzonia, who competed for Rocketsports at Long Beach in 2006, and Juho Annala.

Ron Shuman

The following season in 1982 Shuman notched his best Champ Car finish at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Racetrack with a 5th place and competed in two other dirt track Gold Crown races.

Toyota USA Automobile Museum

2. Racing: Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s famous off-road stadium truck; GTP race cars; a Long Beach Grand Prix historical photo wall; and the Chip Ganassi Target Champ Car, NASCAR, and the Land Speed Record Prius.