With the race cars packed away in their transporters and sent down the road for a race the next weekend in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the CART paddock moved on from Texas as quickly as the speed limit allowed. The three-day saga, born from all manner of mistakes, would become an infamous chapter in a year that brought CART to its knees.
Inside CART’s 2001 Texas debacle: Silent running
Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
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Marshall Pruett | May 2, 2021 5:42 PM
With the race cars packed away in their transporters and sent down the road for a race the next weekend in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the CART paddock moved on from Texas as quickly as the speed limit allowed. The three-day saga, born from all manner of mistakes, would become
an infamous chapter in a year that brought CART to its knees.
Intensified by Zanardi’s sickening crash at the CART race in Germany just four days after 9/11 — when a similar sentiment of not wanting to race was expressed, this time, out of respect for the lives lost in the terrorist attacks —
the once-proud series was becoming unrecognizable.
Safely removed from the rightfully outraged TMS fans and the immediacy of Gossage’s scorn, CART took the safe and predictable route of announcing the Texas race would not be rescheduled. Signed as a three-year deal, the bad blood accrued throughout the ordeal ensured the experiment would not survive beyond 2001.
In a subsequent lawsuit filed by TMS for a breach of everything, CART was rumored to write a check for $3.5 million in a private settlement that served as a fitting end to a miserable marriage.
Mike Zizzo: It’s crazy it’s been 20 years. I look back and I still don’t see a reason to play the blame game. It was a lose-lose for everyone. This was going to be a great event for Texas Motor Speedway. It was going to be a great event for CART. We both lost on this one.
If there’s a sense of pride to be found amid the regret within this grand fiasco, it’s in the decision to protect CART’s most valuable assets.
Helio Castroneves: The promoters, some of the team owners…everybody’s upset. But I have to say that if Dr. Olvey and the drivers weren’t united that day that we shouldn’t race, probably someone would not be here to tell the story.
Oriol Servia: I was in a very small, rookie team. For us, we had a great qualifying, which was huge. The car felt great. This was going to be a big deal for us. And I cannot tell you how relieved I was that the event was canceled. I mean, it was absolutely the right thing to do. It was going to be a disaster. We couldn’t do more than 10, 15 laps without losing control of our bodies. It was that extreme, it really was.
Wally Dallenbach: And the fact of the matter was it was a very unfriendly move that had to be made and we took the responsibility with the support of the doctors and the support of some of the drivers that it was a good move. I was very disappointed and a lot of us were brokenhearted that we had to do that. I took the fall for it, and I’m OK with. But I would have never lived it down if we’d have killed a driver there knowing that we had a problem. And we did have a problem; we were going too damn fast for the configuration of a mile and a half racetrack.
Lessons were learned, but few have regrets over the decision taken to cancel. Motorsport Images
Mike Zizzo: Looking back, one, I wish we probably would have done more due diligence in terms of testing, but no one could have predicted the speeds would have gone as high as they did. The biggest thing is I wish we could have only needed to postpone it. I just felt terrible for the fans. I just wish we didn’t hurt the fans. But to this day, I still think it was the right decision.
I don’t think a lot of us could have lived with ourselves if we would’ve lost a driver that day just to put on a show. It was basically like putting jet fighters on a track. And it’s all about the drivers’ safety, whether or not due diligence was done. It’s always about the drivers’ safety.
You should never sacrifice a driver for an event. And I live by that today.