When most people think of auto racing in the United States, one word comes to mind: NASCAR. There are several reasons for this, one of which will attempt to be rectified Saturday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida. I am talking about the state of Indy Car-style open-wheel racing, which after 13 years of squabbling, infighting, lost fans, lost drivers, and lost money, will hope to salvage some of its dignity and maintain a viable place in racing history starting in the near future. The story starts in 1979, when CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) was founded by a consortium of drivers, team owners, and track proprietors who were fed up with USAC’s (United States Auto Club’s) handling of American open-wheel racing. What they created was an extremely successful series of racing that attracted fans from around the world, and most importantly, had a credible stronghold on the American motorsports fanbase. Many famous drivers, such as Danny Sullivan, Michael Andretti, Rick Mears, and Emerson Fittipaldi made a name for themselves driving open-wheel cars under this series’ nameplate. That all changed in April 1994, when Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, whose venerable Indianapolis 500 was the only holdout that continued to operate under USAC sanctioning following the aforementioned 1979 creation of CART, decided to create a rival open-wheel series that would compete head-to-head with CART for fans, drivers, sponsors, television ratings, and most importantly, would also have the Indianapolis 500 as a part of its season schedule rather than CART’s. In 1996, Tony George’s vision became a reality at the new Walt Disney World Speedway (yep, really) in Orlando. Somewhat fittingly, most fans and journalists scoffed at the “Mickey Mouse” series and its crop of mostly rookie drivers and outdated cars. Tony George created the Indy Racing League, as it was called, because he was fed up with the way CART was running things. He didn’t like how the series had become overtaken by foreign drivers and by greedy car owners who ran the show via a franchise agreement with bizarre rule changes and cumbersome politics. He claimed that he believed in trying to get grassroots American talent to be successful at American open-wheel racing. However, his idea ended up simply dividing the fanbase and eventually corrupting the landscape of American open-wheel racing. After the split, ratings and attendance declined for CART races and sponsors became harder to find. Finding promoters for the events by the turn of the century was an absolute nightmare. It also didn’t help that NASCAR had become such a great marketing machine and was able to increase its number of fans through good promotion and a hardcore product on the race track. Meanwhile, CART and the IRL would continue to flounder amidst car and engine debacles, drivers switching series, and now with drivers defecting to NASCAR due to the lack of money available in open-wheel. However, in February, CART (now known as Champ Car) was declared bankrupt and Tony George agreed to buy its assets (from the current owners who actually won ownership of the series in bankruptcy court in 2004) and offer cars, engines and money to the remaining teams if they would come race in the IRL. Those who had sponsors and decided to stick around will join the current 17 IRL teams to form a 26-car starting grid for the newly reunited IndyCar Series. The race will be held Saturday March 29th at 7pm, under the lights, on ESPN2.