Could CART and the IRL Have Coexisted With No Issues?

I'm on a roll, aren't I? The last few weeks have provided some serious food for thought, so here comes yet more of it.

Discussions about the 2012 IndyCar often leads to debates and arguments about the sport's past. It's understandably painful, but we do it anyway. Why? Because it was so great back then and one bad decision resulted in several others that ultimately put things on the path to destruction.

We can't be certain that IndyCars would still be on top in this country if the IRL had never been formed. I daresay I believe NASCAR would still have outgrown it. But we can be VERY certain it wouldn't be in such a sad state. IndyCars would certainly be giving NASCAR a run for their money, and both series would likely be overall better because of it.

But here's the thing: Was the formation of the IRL, in and of itself, the thing that set American open-wheel racing down the path to destruction? Or could IRL and CART have coexisted?

Most people, regardless of which side they supported during the war, will simply shout "NO!" without even thinking about it. But I disagree, I think we could have. Let's look at the sequence of events leading up to the first season of the split...

Tony George first announced the IRL idea in 1994, but the series didn't start until 1996. At the initial time of announcement, it was probably little more than an attempt to push the CART leadership in the direction he wanted. When they didn't, and on the back of some bad advice from people who had a vested interest in seeing IndyCars fade(specifically, Bill France, Jr and Bernie Ecclestone), TG went forward with the plan.

In 1992, IMS had trademarked the term "IndyCar" and licensed it to CART for official use. When the IRL was officially started, IMS sued to cancel it, and CART countersued. The result was that CART could use the word for the 1996 series, but then nobody could touch it until 2003.

Then TG announced the 25/8 rule at indy—reserving 25 entry spots for IRL teams. This, ultimately, was the straw that broke the camel's back and what drove CART to run the US 500—the biggest single mistake of the early days of the conflict.

The rest, as they say, is history. But how could it have gone differently? Simple: If both sides had used their brains a bit more than their lawyers, both series could have peacefully co-existed and shared their fan bases.

The thing often forgotten is that there WAS a faction of the IndyCar fan base that was echoing Tony George's sentiments: Too many foreign drivers, too many road courses, and costs of running going out of control (that last one did ultimately end up being a big Achilles' heel for CART later on).

There was almost certainly room for both series if the two sides had met peacefully and worked out some ideas. Some that would have been relatively easy to make happen include:

1) Non-conflicting race dates

2) No 25/8 rule

3) Equivalency formula for Indy

That third one is particularly important, as Indy is ultimately the only real edge the IRL had over CART (that the IRL was the cheaper series to run didn't help them much until later on). Indy should NOT be a points-paying race in any championship, and this could have been an excellent opportunity to give it such a status.

It really wouldn't have been difficult to make an Indy where both IRL and CART cars could run together. After all, the turbocharged CART engine would have been very easy to power down—jsut turn down the turbo boost level. And if that's not enough, I'm sure Reynard, Lola, and Penske would be glad to fit IRL-spec oval wings to even it up more.

Of course avoiding conflicting race dates might be a little more difficult to achieve 100 percent, but you could always have one race on Saturday and one on Sunday when a conflict was unavoidable. Doubleheader races at the same track wouldn't be impossible, either, and would have been an excellent way to keep the fan base unified.

One of the reasons the IRL failed at it's goals was that it wasn't implemented properly. Tony George's vision only could have worked as a series that ran in peaceful cooperation with CART.

I know some people out there are thinking "what about the name?" The battle over the name was one of the first big signs of conflict between the two. One thing one must remember is that while they'd licensed it to CART, IMS still had the rights to the IndyCar name.

Unless the licensing contract had been written by a moron, they SHOULD have had the right to alter terms or cancel it early. But what really would have been best would be to drop the term "IndyCar" entirely, and name the series something like this:

The CART Indy World Championship

The IRL USA Indy Championship.

Differentiating the two would have been simple as noting that you were either talking about the World championship or the US championship.

Oh, what could have been...