SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Preview: Champ Car Challenge

Championship Auto Racing Teams or CART, was formed in the late seventies, and since it's inception in 1979 it had gone from strength to strength, including more and more race-venues over the years.

In the early and mid-nineties, IndyCar was all the rage. Nigel Mansell had gone to conquer the American equivalent of Formula 1 and he drew the European audience with him. Races were being broadcast live on Eurosport and when Mansell secured the PPG Championship in ´93, for a short while he was reigning Formula 1 Champion and IndyCar Champion.

The racing was intense, competitive and drivers like Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, Mario Andretti Jr. and Al Unser Jr. continued the winning traditions established by stars such as Johnny Rutherford, Rick Mears, Al Unser and indeed Mario Andretti himself.

In ´97 and ´98 Alex Zanardi drove himself into the hearts of racing fans all over the world with his "never give up" attitude and spectacular driving.

Papyrus released revolutionary racing titles like IndyCar and IndyCar 2 in the latter half of the nineties, and in 1998 Microsoft released it's Cart Precision Racing.

These sims still have their fans. However, to get the most of IndyCar2, or Cart Racing, as the simulation was later renamed, you really need to have a Rendition Video Card, and that type of video card, as well as a copy of ICR2, are very hard to find these days.

Personally I lost a bit of interest in CPR, when I found out that the best way to set a new lap record on the superspeedways was to knock off the front wing including the nosecone section, and then just go around the oval putting the pedal to the metal! It did have a great garage and setup area with a personal crew chief who explained all the settings of the car, as well as a driving school featuring video's from real races to illustrate the theories of race car driving.

In the real racing world tensions rose between factions in the open wheel racing community in the U.S. — and ultimately these tensions led to a competing series being created. The owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway decided they wanted to run their own series, and IndyCar became CART, then Champ Car, and the Indianapolis-based competing series was first known as The Indy Racing League, then as IndyCar.

The fight between the two series led to hard times falling on both series. Decreasing spectator numbers were reported by some, refuted by others, and broadcasters must have been in some confusion as to which series they should broadcast from, and if they should broadcast any races at all.

The only sim, or racing game for PC depicting American open wheel racing we have seen since CPR, was Codemaster's IndyCar Series.

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