What were they thinking? How could an organization involved in a business that collects and spends dollars by the millions not know what they were getting into at Texas Motor Speedway last weekend?

In a story which overshadowed the on track shows of the IRL and NASCAR, CART canceled the Firestone Firehawk 600 which was scheduled to take place … TWO HOURS before the race!

Their reason for canceling was good. Their cars were too fast for the track. You see, the turns at TMS are banked 24 degrees. That’s pretty steep. It’s real steep on just a one and a half mile track.

Consider the rollercoaster. Turns later in the ride are tighter than turns earlier in the ride. That increases the G-force and gives the riders a sense of greater speed, even though the cars are losing energy.

CART’s Champ cars were able to clock laps of 230 mph, but at those speeds on that steep banking in those tight turns, one of Newton’s laws puts a lot of G-forces on the drivers’ bodies. After a few laps of that, it caused the blood to collect in the feet and legs and not get to the brain.

The result is dizziness and general discumbuberation. Not what you need at 230 mph in a crowd.

It’s exactly what they discovered with the dawn of the jet age, as pilots pulling out of a steep dive would lose consciousness. It’s what led to development of the G-suit, which tightens around the extremities to keep the blood from pooling and not getting to the brain.

The question is why CART was not aware of the problem at TMS before last weekend.

Last Tuesday CART president Joe Heitzler and several drivers explained some of the reasons.  The race was added to the schedule when Bobby Rahal was interim president and no open testing was scheduled. That was in spite of the fact that there were some misgivings about the track.

There just wasn’t enough time, what with the 2000 season ending in November and a January race in Rio de Janeiro for which to prepare. (They didn’t know the Rio race would later be cancelled.)

They noted that a few teams did test at TMS … but it was in December, and they didn’t go that fast.  The cars were new, a lot of the development which results in speed had not occurred, and they didn’t have the benefit of running in packs, as they would in a race.

TMS general manager Eddie Gossage claimed that he had been after CART for months to run some full-blown open testing.

The IRL cars hit speeds of 225 in their race in 1998 but apparently, the G-force threshold was not reached at that speed. The Champ cars turned as much as 236.9 in practice last weekend. Kenny Brack won the pole with a 233.447.

CART is looking at several options for rescheduling the race…none of them will make everybody happy. Gossage said the track will be closed for renovations most of the summer. Otherwise, it’s pretty well booked up with Busch, Winston Cup, NASCAR trucks, IRL and American Le Mans, as well as racing schools and other events.

He said he would not agree to a road course race on the infield track used by the American Le Mans Series.

Tacking the race onto the end of the season, after the November 4th race in Fontana, California, will make the Fontana people mad. They’re already selling tickets promoting their race as CART’s season ender.

About 57 thousand tickets had been sold for the race last weekend. TMS officials still are trying to figure out how to distribute refunds.

To reschedule it anyway, they will have to find a way to slow down the cars without increasing the down force.

Anybody know where we can find 28 G-suits?