Column: Championship Auto Racing Teams may lose another star

Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) may be losing another star next season, as 1999 champion and 2000 Indy 500 winner Juan Montoya is reported to have finalized a deal to race in Formula One in 2001.

Montoya will replace Jenson Button on the BMW Williams team, according to reliable sources, although team owner Sir Frank Williams still declines to comment. Will Montoya's probable departure open the door for the return of two-time CART Champion Alex Zanardi to the Target/Ganassi team? I wouldn't bet against it.

If CART wants to capitalize on its new management team, headed by Bobby Rahal, and try to catch up to NASCAR in popularity, it had better fix some of the technical problems that affect the TV broadcasts of their races. CART's timing and scoring is so bad that ABC-TV's Paul Page had to cover for it on the air during the Cleveland race last weekend.

It was the second time that Page has had to refer to the technical incompatibilities between CARTs system and ABC's. This puzzles me, because there has been no problem up until the last couple of races.

The other annoying aspect of the Cleveland broadcast was the truncated interview with first-time winner Roberto Moreno. "Stick the mike in the winner's face and cut to golf" isn't going to cut it these days.

We had some local participation at Cleveland last weekend, even though it wasn't televised. After a couple of disappointing results at Milwaukee and Montreal, T.J. Bell of Sparks scored a top-ten finish (7th) at Cleveland in his Michael Shank Racing Toyota Atlantic. As we've mentioned before, T.J. is a veteran of local karting programs, both at Fuji Park in the Outlaw Karts and Desert Park Raceway in Stead in road-racing karts.

- As you read this, I'll be announcing a race at Road America in Wisconsin. It is one of the country's most famous road courses, as well as the longest at 4.2 miles.

I've never been to Road America before, and I've really been looking forward to the trip. I have a friend who works on the emergency response team there, and I've been promised a tour of the track in one of the emergency vehicles. I'd rather do it in a Viper, but beggars can't be choosers. I'll tell you all about it next week.

- Speaking of touring race tracks, I got a good look at some of the planned additions to Reno-Fernley Raceway that I talked about last week. I visited the facility on Monday, and Rich Cable took me out to show me the layout for both the 1/2-mile paved oval and the road course.

The road course will incorporate both straightaways and two turns of the oval, which will save some of the paving costs. It looks like it will be a very challenging course, with nearly all of it visible from the spectator areas on the surrounding hills. Rich is putting together the facility one piece at a time, building on the success of the dirt oval and the off-road courses currently in existence.

If you get a chance, check it out some Saturday night for either the Stock Car and Modified show or the Legends/Dwarf/Sprint 100 races on alternating weekends.

- Carson City driver Jovon Halen has won the feature race in every Legends event so far this season (unless he didn't take the checkered flag Satuday night). Other local drivers racing at Reno-Fernley include Matt Ramthun and Dean Cichovicz (Street Stock), Joe Aigner (Bomber), Robert Smotherman and Lonnie Richey (IMCA Modified).

- The French Grand Prix last Sunday was probably the most exciting Formula One race in recent memory, with David Coulthard actually passing Michael Schumacher for the lead on the track. (Passes for position in Formula One these days are rarer than NASCAR drivers who like restrictor plates).

Coulthard, who was elbowed out of the way by Schumacher at the start, was caught on camera giving the German the famous one-finger racing salute. Formula One officials were appalled at the gesture, but according to reports it received a resounding cheer in the media center.

(Roger Diez is the Nevada Appeal motorsports columnist.)