Farm Team?
If you follow the sport closely, you've got to admit one of the most interesting people in the CART series is team owner Chip Ganassi.
I admit to a large gap - call it the lost years - in my interest in auto racing, particularly in champ cars. I first begin to follow the series back when USAC ran it and the hot shoes were guys like Bill Vukovich.
Looking at a little Racing History
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I stayed interested up through the days when Colin Chapman brought Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill and the rear-engined Fords to the Indy 500. Of course, who can forget Andy Granatelli, Parnelli Jones and the turbine-that-nearly won the race?
Along about the mid-1970s and up through the mid-1980s I lost interest. Can't tell you why. But then cable television came to my burg, and I latched onto ESPN. My interest really re-kindled when Mr. Donut, Alex Zanardi, came into the series.
And so Chip Ganassi was just a car owner to me. Little did I know while I was busy elsewhere Chip had a driving career.
There's an excellent short biography of Ganassi on Seventhgear, noting "Chip Ganassi's biography is remarkably similar to Bobby Rahal's or Roger Penske's for that matter, although Chip was not as successful behind the wheel as either of them."
Now that I didn't know, and so I learned something. What I did know is that The Chipster has learned fast and done well as a car owner, despite jealous mutters that he's serving mostly as a F-1 'farm team.' Sour grapes, those comments? I'd say so, considering the four straight championships.
Consider this. Ganassi's "Drive for Five" might have been successful if Juan Montoya hadn't come away with a pocketful of DNFs to go with his "most laps lead."
Care to second-guess The Chipsters switch to the Toyota engine? Not me. Toyota's apparently got major bucks stashed away and people at the top of the corporate food chain willing to spend them on making cars go fast.
Maybe that's why a guy probably shouldn't bet Ganassi shot himself in the foot with his selection of Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian as his drivers for the 2001 season.
The copyright of the article Farm Team? in CART Auto Racing is owned by Gary Presley. Permission to republish Farm Team? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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