Increasing the car count

[SevenGrain]

It looks as if CART's car count may be as low as 17 or 18 entries, it's lowest ever. Many of the promoter's contracts require a minimum of 18 cars and some require 20. Perhaps CART can take a page from the history books and try something.

In 1981, after the CART/USAC split Pocono was a USAC holdout, and CART chose not to participate in the 1981 Pocono 500. I believe that there were only 12 champ cars actually entered. In order to get a full field of cars, USAC added Silver Crown cars to the field. An over the hill A.J. Foyt won that race, the last win of his career.

Perhaps CART could take the top four or five finishers of the Toyota Atlantic race and add them to the CART field. In order to account for the difference in speed, year-old Champ Cars can be made available to the Atlantic teams. (I'd imagine Roger Penske, Gerald Forsythe, and Larry Blair have a few they don't need sitting around that they'd sell cheap) Toyota may be willing to supply a few engines as it would be a great publicity boost to the Toyota Atlantic series.

Even if they just put them out there in the Atlantic cars, they'd be no worse off than Hiro Matsu****a, Luis Garcia, Arndt Meier or Denis Vitolo, all of whom held up the lead lap cars rather well.

[Speedworx]

Luis Garcia Jr was a pretty good driver.

The rest of those were aweful.

[Hans.ca]

Just want to put the record straight.
The 1981 Pocono 500 had 33 entries, 29 starters including eight dirt-champ cars. Qualifications rained out; starting positions determined by draw. Defying CART boycott were drivers Tom Sneva, Geoff Brabham, Dick Simon, Jim McElreath, Roger Rager and Dean Vetrock. the race was halted after 305 miles because of rain.
60 day suspension of CART drivers participating at Pocono precipitated a law suit by Sneva and Simon. Neither was allowed to race at Atlanta June 28. Pocono international Raceway filed a $9.6 million suit against CART claiming the boycott was restraint of trade.
Have no information on outcome of the lawsuits.
Above information as per the 1982 edition of The Indianapolis News 500 mile Race record book.

[Raven]

I don't see things quite as bleakly for next year. I think there's still a good chance of having more than 20 cars.

Ganassi - 2 cars
Green - 3 cars
Newman Haas - 2 cars
Forsythe - 2 cars
PacWest - 2 cars
Fernandez - 2 cars
Sigma - 1 car (maybe 2)
Rahal - 1 car (maybe 2)
Patrick - 1 car
Mo Nunn - 1 car
Bettenhausen - 1 car
Coyne - 1 car
Walker - 1 car
(Arciero? - 1 car)

I make that 20-23 cars, but I'm not too up on all the CART news, are there any here that can be ruled out?

[Speedworx]

Ganassi - 2 cars
Green - 3 cars
Newman Haas - 2 cars
Forsythe - 2 cars
PacWest - 2 cars
Fernandez - 2 cars
Sigma - 1 car (?)
Rahal - 1 car
Patrick - 1 car
Mo Nunn - 1 car
Bettenhausen - 1 car
Walker - 1 car
Blair - 1 car (?)
Coyne - 1 car (?)

[gomick]

is rahal definitely running 1 car , i presume they have lost either miller or shell as a sponsor - that is disappointing.....

[craigmanning]

...I understand that Jimmy will be driving the Shell car for the season but will run Miller sponsorship for the Indy 500. I haven't heard if he will have number 7 or 8 in the CART races. Does anyone know?