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The Champ Car World Series!
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History
(on behalf of wikipedia)In 1909 the American Automobile Association (AAA) established the national driving championship and became the first sanctioning body for auto racing in the United States. In 1956, the United States Automobile Club (USAC) was founded to take over sanctioning from the AAA, which ceased sanctioning auto racing in the general outrage over motor racing safety that followed the 1955 Le Mans disaster. USAC controlled the championship until 1979. In that year, CART began operating its own competing series, which quickly became dominant.
The split away from USAC in 1979 was spurred by a group of activist car owners who had grown disenchanted with what they saw as an inept sanctioning body. Complaining of poor promotion and small purses, this group coalesced around Dan Gurney, who, in early 1978, wrote what came to be known as the "Gurney White Paper", the blueprint for an organization called Championship Auto Racing Teams. Gurney took his inspiration from the improvements Bernie Ecclestone had forced on Formula 1 with his creation of the Formula One Constructors Association. The white paper called for the owners to form CART as an advocacy group to promote USAC's national championship, doing the job where the sanctioning body wouldn't. The group would also work to negotiate television rights and race purses, and ideally hold seats on USAC's governing body.
Gurney, joined by other leading team owners including Roger Penske and Pat Patrick, took their demands to USAC's board and were turned down flat. This rejection turned disenchantment into defiance. In 1979, the rebel team owners laid plans to run CART, their own racing series, competing with the established USAC National Championship. The new series quickly gained the support of the vast majority of USAC Champ Car team and track owners, with the only notable holdout being A.J. Foyt.
As the morning of March 11, 1979 dawned, the open-wheel landscape had been transformed. The formerly all-powerful USAC was left with a slim, hodge-podge schedule of seven races, while CART could lay claim to the sport's notable drivers and tracks—except Foyt and Indianapolis. On that day, CART—sanctioned then by the Sports Car Club of America—dropped the green flag on its very first race, the Arizona Republic/Jimmy Bryan 150 at Phoenix International Raceway. Gordon Johncock would claim the checkered flag, but it was Rick Mears who would go on to capture the inaugural CART championship. USAC's competing championship was dominated by Foyt, but it would be the last National Championship for both the driver and the sanctioning body, as USAC relented at the end of the season and folded its National Championship Trail.
CART, like its predecessor USAC, was dominated by North American drivers until the 1990s. Many road-racing stars, including Mario Andretti, Bobby Rahal, and Danny Sullivan found success in the then-PPG IndyCar World Series. After former F1 champion Emerson Fittipaldi won the series title in 1989, the floodgates of talented South American and European drivers began to open. These pilots discovered that competing in Champ Car could often be more lucrative than an average career in F1 and consequently there was an increased presence of non-US drivers (from mainly F1 and the European Formula 3000).
After British driving star Nigel Mansell's successful battle with Emerson Fittipaldi for the 1993 World Championship, a lot of people interpreted his victory as evidence of the superiority of non-US drivers. This, combined with CART's move to include more road racing on the schedule, led to a split of the series after the 1995 season due to a dispute between egos at CART and Tony George, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. George went on to form a new racing series, the Indy Racing League (IRL), which initially included an all-oval schedule, all races on US soil, and mostly American drivers.
In the early years of the split, CART seemed to be dominant. It controlled most of the races and most of the "name" drivers, while George's primary asset was Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its 500. The first IRL schedule consisted of only four races, including the 500, and most of the drivers, even in the Indy 500, were virtual unknowns. In 1996 CART attempted to create a rival showcase event, the U.S. 500, at Michigan International Speedway on the same day as the Indy 500, which was discontinued after 1999.
In 2000, CART designated the Vanderbilt Cup as its series championship trophy.
Hurt by the defection of several top teams to the IRL, CART went bankrupt during the 2003 offseason, and shares of the stock were worth only 25 cents. The assets of CART were liquidated and put up for sale. Tony George made a bid for the company in an attempt to bury the series once and for all, while a trio of CART owners (Gerald Forsythe, Paul Gentilozzi, and Kevin Kalkhoven) also made a bid, calling their group the Open Wheel Racing Series (OWRS). In the end, a judge ruled that the OWRS group should be the purchaser of CART, which ensured a 25th anniversary season in 2004, running as Champ Car.
Champions1979 Rick Mears / Penske Racing Penske/Cosworth-Ford
1980 Johnny Rutherford / Chaparral Racing Chaparral/Cosworth-Ford
1981 Rick Mears / Penske Racing Penske/Cosworth-Ford
1982 Rick Mears / Penske Racing Penske/Cosworth-Ford
1983 Al Unser / Penske Racing Penske/Cosworth-Ford
1984 Mario Andretti / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
1985 Al Unser / Penske Racing March/Cosworth-Ford
1986 Bobby Rahal / Truesports March/Cosworth-Ford
1987 Bobby Rahal / Truesports Lola/Cosworth-Ford
1988 Danny Sullivan / Penske Racing Penske/Chevrolet
1989 Emerson Fittipaldi / Penske Racing Penske/Chevrolet
1990 Al Unser Jr / Galles-Kraco Racing Lola/Chevrolet
1991 Michael Andretti / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Chevrolet
1992 Bobby Rahal / Rahal/Hogan Racing Lola/Chevrolet
1993 Nigel Mansell / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
1994 Al Unser Jr / Penske Racing Penske/Chevrolet
1995 Jacques Villeneuve / Team Green Racing Reynard/Cosworth-Ford
1996 Jimmy Vasser / Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard/Honda
1997 Alex Zanardi / Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard/Honda
1998 Alex Zanardi / Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard/Honda
1999 Juan Pablo Montoya / Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard/Honda
2000 Gil de Ferran / Penske Racing Reynard/Honda
2001 Gil de Ferran / Penske Racing Reynard/Honda
2002 Cristiano da Matta / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Toyota
2003 Paul Tracy / Player's/Forsythe Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
2004 Sébastien Bourdais / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
2005 Sébastien Bourdais / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
2006 Sébastien Bourdais / Newman/Haas Racing Lola/Cosworth-Ford
2007 Champ Car World Series Schedule
Round 1 Las Vegas / Nevada ( Vegas Grand Prix fueled by Visa), April 6–8
Round 2 Long Beach / California (34th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach), April 13–15
Round 3 Houston / Texas (Grand Prix of Houston), April 20–22
Round 4 Zhuhai / China (Champ Car Chinese Grand Prix), May 18–20
Round 5 Portland / Oregon (G.I. Joe's Grand Prix of Portland), June 8–10
Round 6 Cleveland / Ohio (Grand Prix of Cleveland), June 22–24
Round 7 Mont-Tremblant / Quebec (Mont-Trembland Grand Prix) June 29–July 1
Round 8 Toronto / Canada (Molson Grand Prix Toronto), July 6–8
Round 9 Edmonton / Canada (West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix of Edmonton), July 20–22
Round 10 San José / California (Taylor Woodrow Grand Prix of San José) / July 27–29
Round 11 Road America / Wisconsin, (Generac Champ Car Grand Prix of Road America) August 10–12
Round 12 Denver / Colorado (Centrix Financial Grand Prix of Denver), August 24–26
Round 13 Assen / Netherlands (Assen Grand Prix) August 31 - September 2
Round 14 Zolder / Belgium (Belgium Champ Car Grand Prix) September 7-9
Round 15 Surfers Paradise / Queensland, Australia (Lexmark Indy 300), October 19–21
Round 16 Mexico City / Mexico (Gran Premio de México), November 9–11
Round 17 Phoenix / Arizona (First Data Grand Prix Arizona), November 30- December 2
2007 Champ Car World Series drivers ::
Newman/Haas Racing:
Sebastien Bourdais / Graham Rahal
Forsythe Championship Racing:
Paul Tracy / ?
RuSPORT:
Justin Wilson / Mario Dominguez?
Minardi Team USA:
Nelson Philippe / Dan Clarke / Robert Doornbos?
Team Australia / Walker Racing:
Simon Pagenaud / Will Power? ?
PKV Racing:
Neel Jani / Oriol Servia? or Clivio Piccione??
RocketSports Racing:
Alex Tagliani? ?
Dale Coyne Racing :
Katherine Legge / Bruno Junquiera ? ?
Mi-Jack Conquest Racing:
?
?
Pacific Coast Motorsports:
Ryan Dalziel / Alex Figge
Gelles Racing:
Polestar: