Cheever’s Win Ends Long Skid Irl Circuit Receives A Big Boost From New-Style Cars At Indy 200

Eddie Cheever had come tantalizingly close to winning open-wheel races in the past.

During his years in Formula One, Cheever had two second-place finishes.

“I came very close to winning eight or nine Formula One races and there was always some little thing that kept me from winning,” he explained.

Then he left European-based circuit to try his luck on the domestic side. It was more of the same frustration.

“I should have won the (CART) race at Nazareth two years ago when I was driving for A.J. (Foyt),” Cheever said. “We were ahead with two laps to go and ran out of fuel. That really hurt because I knew A.J. wanted to win it as much as I did.”

Now both Cheever and Foyt are in the IRL, and both have won in the new league. Foyt got a victory from Scott Sharp last summer in New Hampshire. Cheever broke through Saturday in the rain-shortened Indy 200 at Walt Disney World Speedway.

The win, the 39-year-old Cheever’s first since a sports car endurance event at Spa, Belgium in 1986, came in the his first race as owner of the new Team Cheever.

Actually, there were quite a few winners Saturday at the one-mile trioval where the much-anticipated G Force and Dallara chassis and Oldsmobile Aurora and Nissan Infiniti engines made their debut.

It was another step forward for the IRL, which ran its inaugural race a year ago on this track with year-old cars and old turbocharged engines.

The new cars were designed from a clean sheet of paper and the new engines are non-turbocharged and produce about 200 less horsepower.

Tony George, president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the founder of the IRL, has spent millions of dollars and put his own credibility on the line in the effort to get this new series to this point.

Along the way, he alienated the established CART PPG Cup series, which once included George’s treasured Indianapolis 500 in its series.

The final split came when George announced his plans for the new cars and engines - each much different than those allowed by CART.

“My opinion is people just don’t like change,” Cheever said. “We’ve really rocked the boat with the IRL and the monopolies that were created beforehand in open-wheel racing. But we’re just getting started.”