The Way It Is: The booming Atlantic formula.

Tuesday, 9th May 2006

Here we are in the merry month of May, hand-wringing time for ten unfortunate years about the state of the Indy 500 and American open-wheel racing.

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This year’s Long Beach Atlantic winner Andreas Wirth says he decided three years ago when he was just eighteen that he wanted to try racing in the USA. “The reason why I came to the United States was Champ Car,” Wirth explained. “It was actually a strange deal. Nothing was planned. I tried to do German Formula 3 after my German Formula BMW series. Then I met an Austrian team owner who told me he wanted to go to the United States and set up a Formula BMW team. And I said, that’s cool.

“Actually, I started thinking about Champ Car after my second season in open-wheel cars. When you see how much politics and stuff goes on in Europe, there is no way to get to Formula One. You could be the best German driver, but if the second-best German has better sponsors and connections then the second-best comes to the highest level. It’s not fair. It’s not good for drivers’ heads.

“So I started telling my dad I wanted to go to Champ Car. I thought it was so cool. And then BMW introduced their championship to the United States and I knew these guys who were going to come over here to race, and I won the championship.

“We had some races with Champ Car and I found some contacts and met some people, like the Forsythe guys. Then I won the championship and had my first Champ car test. If someone had told me that I would test a Champ car before the season started I would have never believed it. But I had my Champ car test and the next good step was the Atlantic series.”

Wirth raced in last year’s Toyota/Atlantic series and was battling for the championship when he was involved in a multi-car accident at Road America in August. The accident left him with two broken vertebra but Wirth vigorously attacked his rehab program and was driving again three months later. This year, he’s driving for Forsythe Racing’s new, four-car Atlantic superteam, and marked himself as the early championship favorite with a flag-to-flag win from pole at Long Beach.