Ed Donath Champ Car Blog

Champ Car Rant

Driven to Invest

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Ed Donath

Champ Car Blog

Cairo, NY -- You may recall that prior to CART's downfall there were two people known to serious fans of our beloved speed sport who, if their shares had been combined with a lesser-known investor's, would easily have held the majority of CART stock. Perhaps things would be different today had that been the case.

One of them, of course, was team owner and former CART franchise holder Gerald Forsythe. Forsythe went on to burn through even more of his fortune by partnering with Kevin Kalkhoven and Paul Gentilozzi in the creation of OWRS a/k/a the Champ Car World Series with the acquisition of CART's remaining assets in Judge Frank Otte's bankruptcy court.

The other person was a younger man who, at the time, was an active, if not full-time, driver in the Barber Dodge Pro Series, the first rung of the CART ladder.

Jonathan Vannini attempted to protect his ever-dwindling investment in MPH (NYSE) shares by alleging in a written report to the SEC that collusion -- insider trading, if you will -- was largely to blame for the publicly owned corporation's management and financial difficulties. Among those accused were Gerald Forsythe and the then recently-ousted CART president Joe Heitzler.

Nonetheless, along with the rest of CART's shareholders, Jon Vannini reluctantly settled for half-a-buck each on shares originally acquired at an average price in excess of $15.

Those who, like Forsythe and Vannini, invested at the time of the IPO were left holding a substantial number of $20 shares. It is likely that Forsythe continued acquiring shares even after the writing was on the wall to keep lowering the average per-share cost of his overall investment.

Other former-racer investors (including Roger Penske, Bobby Rahal, Chip Ganassi and even Dale Coyne) made out quite well when CART went public. They cashed out and stayed out after their franchises were acquired to form the corporate version of CART.

Jon Vannini, however, has all but dropped off the radar screen since the bankruptcy. But another driver/investor has, of late, piqued the curiosity of disenfranchised Champ Car fans.

There is optimism that Champ Car chassis are being repurposed for use in an alternative engine/fuel series being formed by a motorsports guy who, like Vannini, has raced in a Champ Car World Series ladder program -- Atlantics. Ben Johnston, recently written about right here at these cyber-spatial coordinates, is the latest driver to invest in open-wheel racing.

Johnston has kept the details of the forthcoming series very close to his vest. Even the purported working title of the series -- GreenPrix -- which was noted in a business bio-piece about Johnston in his hometown newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, is unconfirmed by the organizer. The Internet domain GreenPrix.com is currently registered to an entity in Madeira, Portugal, leading me to believe that the GreenPrix tag might be a decoy.

This renegade scribe has recently established e-mail contact with Ben Johnston and is anxiously awaiting promised information as well as an answer to a request for an interview. Meanwhile, lots of questions about the touted 2010 launch of Ben Johnston's series have hit my IN box lately but, other than learning that Ben is still short of acquiring the total number of 30 chassis that he desires, I remain just as curious as my readers and fellow fans about his intentions.

Only time will tell whether this latest racer driven to invest in open-wheel racing will be another Roger Penske or another Jon Vannini.