CART reunion honors Gurney, Penske and ‘Pat’ Patrick

Jim McGee and UE 'Pat' Patrick with their 1982 Indy 500 Wildcat driven by Gordon Johncock

The CART reunion committee put together a great program to honor the men who founded the CART organization. The ballroom was full of years of stories about the wonderful things that CART created and how great the open wheel series became.

Robin Miller addressed the group and explained that Penske, Gurney and Patrick put their money where their mouth was and started CART in 1979. "Gradually because of PPG and Pat (Patrick) and Roger Penske and of some of the associations they made, this thing started to get a little momentum. It was interesting to watch CART grow. And by 1993, Bill France was afraid of CART and Bernie Ecclestone was afraid of CART. When Nigel Mansell came to CART, that was the greatest coup of all times."

"The whole world of Motorsports was stunned and wondered how they were going to keep up with this. I think what we saw in the nineties was the best time open wheel racing will ever have because we had 28 fully funded cars, we had four engine manufacturers, five chassis manufacturers , we had Firestone and Goodyear and we had fabulous competition. The thing that CART captured was the fact that it was most difficult series to win because it had short ovals, super speedways, road courses and street courses. The way the whole series started and the way it reached it's crescendo, before the IRL was formed, was wonderful."

Paul Leyton

Paul Page followed Miller with his memories and stories of the early days of the series. Page recalled working with Patrick Racing and George Bignotti putting their radios together and claims that is how he got started in radio broadcasting. He remembers the CART idea when it was presented on paper and how Gurney, Patrick and Penske put the idea into action.

"I know a lot of you think about the many great things that CART has done over the years, but you all seem to miss the most critical thing they ever did," said Page.

"The very first race in 1979, they came out with this idea of a hard card. Prior to that we had to stand in line for registration for every race and suddenly we are at a track were we had a device that said I am here and I am in. The hard card may be the very best invention that came out of CART," Page argued but that might be debated by others.

Patrick and McGee

Dan Gurney and Roger Penske were not present to accept their awards, but both were represented by video recordings that were shared with the crowd. Pat Patrick was present, with his family and Jim McGee. McGee ran Patrick's team from 1981-'91 and again from 1995-2003, a total of twenty years. McGee's and Patrick's cars won two Indy 500s during that time. Patrick was humbled by the recognition and though it was a challenge due to his age and health, he stood up in front of the standing crowd and spoke a few words.

Always a man of few words Patrick said, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. This is really a pleasure to be here with my family and Jim McGee and other friends. I want to thank everybody for this award. I don't know what else I could say."

I spoke with Paul Leyton at the end of the evening and he reflected on the event.

"This is about the people. We are doing this obviously for them. The amount of stories being shared in that room is incredible. But we have a lot of years worth of stories to tell. I think we have a few more reunions in us yet because we are not going to run out of stories anytime soon. I think overall it was a great success and we are looking forward to have a lot more."

I asked what to expect for next year. Leyton replied, "I don't want to comment about that just yet. We shaped so much of this year's event off of the unbelievable response from the surveys from last year. We want to supply an event that our participates want. And I don't have that information back yet. There is a possibility of a date change or a month change. We will do a good shake down next week and do an eval. Then we will try to outline something for next year as soon as we can. I can assure you, this will not be the last reunion."

In closing, Leyton added, "We appreciate that we have people coming in from all over the country and the support of all our sponsors. We are appreciative of the fact that the speedway allowed our participants to go and visit today. That was very nice of them to do. And we were very thankful that Mr. Patrick was able to attend. We are sorry that Mr. Penske and Mr. Gurney had previous engagements and could not attend."

Leyton also wanted to thank the IMS Speedway who graciously made arrangements to have Mr. Patrick's 1982 winning Wildcat car at the reunion tonight.

Lucille Dust/AutoRacing1.com

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