Formed in 1978 by man racing team owners, the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) was formed in order to bring open-wheel racing to the United States. The name or term Open-wheel racing refers to cars where the wheels are located on the outside of the car rather than underneath. During the first 17 years of its establishment, CART showed domination in auto racing in the US. They had a greater fan base and following than the ever popular stock-car racing. However, Tony George, President of the Motor Speedway and a part of the founding family of the Indianapolis 500, expressed his serious concern with the path that CART was taking in the auto racing industry. His ultimate concern was that of CART holding auto racing events in foreign countries that focused on road courses rather than that of oval tracks (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014, p. 441). …show more content…
In doing so, auto racing team owners had to decide whether to stay with CART of move to the new IRL. The rule of thumb was that only auto racing teams of IRL could compete in the Indianapolis 500. In announcing this rule, “George wasn’t simply sending a warning shot across their bow; he went nuclear as a first option” (Pruett, 2016). CART fired back by holding their own event known as the U.S 500 at the Michigan International speedway with over 100,000 fans in attendance. Lawsuits were being filed by both CART and IRL for the use of “IndyCar” which CART had licensed from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This resulted in stock car racing becoming the favorite of auto racing fans as opposed to open-wheel racing. In addition, CART suffered a loss of major sponsors and IRL struggled to secure sponsors (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014, p.