Columnist Ron Kantowski: Sam Schmidt: Another IRL success story

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesdays. Reach him at ron@ lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

You can count the Indy-car drivers with whom I have had a beer on one finger. So it was neat to see Henderson's Sam Schmidt finish second in Sunday's Las Vegas 500K Indy Racing League season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

That a guy who is not above meeting a local scribe for the more traditional form of Happy Hour (Michael Schumacher must have misplaced my number) can be competitive in a major auto race speaks volumes about what's right with Tony George's controversial 3-year-old racing series.

And at the same time -- and this isn't to belittle Schmidt's fantastic Sunday afternoon drive -- it also adds another chapter to what many say is wrong with the IRL.

There now are three series to choose from for fans who subscribe to the notion that Real Race Cars Don't Have Doors.

There's the high-tech world of Formula One. Jacques Villeneuve and Mika Hakkinen. The Dom Perignon and caviar set.

There's Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), with its blend of oval, street, and road circuits providing the ultimate test of man and machine (sorry, Indy 500). Michael Andretti and Alex Zanardi. The wine and cheese crowd.

Then there's the IRL, the series Indianapolis Motor Speedway president George hatched as a lower-cost alternative to CART, while in theory returning the 500 to its "spridget" (the Midwest sprint car and midget ranks) roots. Johnny Rutherford and Gordy Johncock. Beans and franks.

Sam Schmidt, whose racing background is in off-road and sports cars and doesn't walk the pit lane with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve, probably wasn't the type of guy George had in mind when he changed the rules at Indy in 1996. That essentially forced out CART, whose teams had provided about two-thirds of the starting grid at the Brickyard since the late 1970s.

But Schmidt might have been the type of guy George had in mind back at Walt Disney World at the IRL's 1996 baptism, when he told skeptical reporters that, in essence, it didn't take A.J. Foyt or a rocket scientist (now there's two nouns seldom used in the same sentence) to drive an Indy car.

Having grown up in Indiana, a lot of my heroes always have been race drivers.

Certainly, it takes courage to drive a race car at speeds in excess of 200 mph. But I like to believe it takes a modicum of skill, too. If not, you could round up the first two dozen hacks idling in the taxi lanes on the Strip and put on an IROC race.

But when an ordinary Joe like Sam Schmidt, a guy who could be your neighbor (and very well may be, if you're reading in Green Valley), finishes second, it doesn't do much to silence the IRL's many critics. Fans who believe that if CART retreads as Buddy Lazier and Eddie Cheever can win the Indy 500 these days, how tough can it be?

Or it may be as Sunday's race winner Arie Luyendyk, whose mirrors were full of Schmidt during the closing laps, put it so diplomatically in the postrace news conference.

"There are a lot of drivers who can do well in any series, as long as they are given the right equipment -- that's always a key, the right equipment," said auto racing's Flying Dutchman.

Not since Indianapolis in May, where he qualified sixth, has Sam Schmidt had the right equipment. In fact, most times he probably has felt like a carpenter without a hammer.

But on Sunday, when his crew finally gave him a car capable of running up front, he nailed it.

On this particular day, Michael Schumacher or Alex Zanardi couldn't have done it much better.

archive