IndyCar is an open-wheel racing championship which is very popular in North America. Its origins can be dated back to 1994 when the CEO and president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation, Tony George, established the Indy Racing League (IRL). The racing started in 1996 when team owners and drivers who broke away from CART formed a group of their own. Since CART championship was considered as too expensive and has too many foreign drivers, George decided to have his own racing series. This move was believed to have been supported by Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 king.
However, a lawsuit regarding the “IndyCar” trademark surfaced but was fortunately amicably settled in December 1996 in an off-court arrangement. No one knew about the full terms of the agreements between CART and George’s group but it was notable that the former did not use the “IndyCar”.
IDL’s first race schedules were made up of three races that included the Indy 500 but many of the race car drivers, at the time, were on the verge of retirement or the so-called “unknowns”. A new race season which was composed of 10 rounds began on August 18, 1996 and ended on October 11, 1997. Tony Stewart was the champion of this race and had stirred up a little controversy because he just won a single round all throughout the competition.
IRL acquired its own cars in 1997, and these were run by production-based, methanol burning, 4.0 liter V8 normal aspirated engines manufactured by Oldsmobile and Nissan. On the other hand, the chassis were distributed by Dallara, Panoz and Riley & Scott.
In 1997, Davy Jones was injured and Kenny Brack from Sweden replaced him. Brack was able to snatch the IRL championship the following year. It can be remembered that Tony George had criticized CART for allowing plenty of foreign drivers to race in CART but around these times, IRL was already recruiting a lot of non-US drivers for top teams. The list of foreign drivers included France’s Stephan Gregoire, Brazil’s Raul Boesel and Marco Greco, and Denmark’s Arie Luyendyk.
From 2000 to 2003, the engine formula was changed to a 3.5 L format. This required a drop in the production-based feature. For the 2003 season, IRL adopted the name Indy Car Series. There were several significant changes in the race season too—former CART teams competed in the race, Toyota and Honda replaced Infiniti in distributing engines and most of IRL’s veteran racers experienced some difficulty in competing with the manufacturer-driven race.