Once upon a time, open-wheel racing dominated the American motorsports scene. The CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) IndyCar series was enormously successful, even poaching reigning Formula 1 world champion Nigel Mansell in 1993.
“What we know today as IndyCar was probably at the height of its popularity then,” recalls Bob Varsha, longtime ESPN motorsports journalist and announcer who frequently covered the series.
But a great schism happened in the mid-’90s, with Tony George—the then-president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500—creating a rival series known as Indy Racing League (IRL) to compete against CART. The reasons for the split centered on a variety of issues, with George hoping to re-emphasize American oval racing, whereas CART had begun competing across multiple continents on a growing number of road and city courses.
“All the head-knocking among the car owners and the speedway under Tony George—it was a complex, deep, and fraught argument,” says Varsha. “There were a lot of reasons why people felt the way they did, and egos got involved.”
The result was something of a mess: In 1996, CART teams—including racing luminaries such as Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi—boycotted the Indy 500, opting instead to run a CART-specific race known as the U.S. 500 at Michigan International Speedway on the same day and nearly same time.
Meanwhile, back at the Indy 500, the race ran as scheduled, but with a field of mostly unknown drivers and teams.
“There was a lot of disappointment that it had to be this way,” says Varsha, who wound up covering the U.S. 500 for ESPN that bizarre day. And the energy in Michigan, he notes, was strange from the outset.
“A lot of pure disappointment,” Varsha adds. “Why are we doing this? It’s Indy weekend—why aren’t we there?”
That disappointment was buoyed by a good deal of optimism that the U.S. 500 could deliver a solid product, with a field consisting of some of open-wheel racing’s biggest names, including Emerson Fittipaldi, Michael Andretti, Alex Zanardi, and Al Unser, Jr.
“People thought: We’ll prove we have the best cars and drivers, put on a better show [than the Indy 500], and let the public vote with their wallets,” Varsha says.
The show didn't go as hoped. Officials at the U.S. 500 decided to start their race three wide—just like Indy—even though the track was not built for it.
“Indy is basically flat, whereas Michigan is a high-banked speedway,” Varsha notes. “As the field came around in Michigan—before they even took the green flag—there was a collision across the front row, causing a massive red flag.”
The ensuing delay lasted over an hour, and the entire race looked amateurish before it had even begun. Hours later, Jimmy Vasser wound up in the records books as winning the U.S. 500 in what turned out to be a fairly tense and exciting race. And the only U.S. 500 ever run. Buddy Lazier, meanwhile, won an Indy 500 that saw a record 17 rookies in its field.
The split between CART and IRL would continue for years, causing considerable damage to open-wheel racing in the U.S.
“People got tired of this schism,” Varsha says. “They weren’t seeing all their favorite drivers in one place, and you don’t tune in to an event like this to hear about politics, lawsuits, and all that nonsense. You want excitement, fun, and aspiration.”
Things got even dicier when Formula 1 came to Indianapolis a few years later, hosting its U.S. Grand Prix there in 2000. Varsha recalls that suddenly, the (at the time) Euro-centric global racing series had begun drawing more interest than the fractured Indy 500, causing the powers-that-be at IRL and CART to soften their stances.
“As a group, they suddenly realized that they were playing with fire,” he says. “When those die-hard, longtime fans of the Brickyard...even they don’t know who’s in the race, Indy loses its luster. It led to a whole raft of problems.”
By 2008, the two rival leagues finally reunited to form the IndyCar series we have today. By then, NASCAR had ascended as the most-watched motorsport in the States.
“Just think of all the great drivers from around the world who had come here,” Varsha says, recalling the glory days of CART. “We’re beginning to see that now, again, as IndyCar continues its inch-by-inch, race-by-race attempt at a return to prominence.”
As much as the 1996 U.S. 500 represented a fractured, bizarre day in motorsports history, Varsha remembers at least one silver lining: A lot of broadcasters earned a check that day, with ABC running Indy while ESPN covered the U.S. 500 in Michigan.
“On the TV side, we were all kind of tickled pink,” he laughs. “A whole lot of people were working that weekend—we were all going to be making some money!”
