INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Blossoming talent

I’ve gotten some good birthday presents in my life, like the black Schwinn 10-speed my parents gave me for my 12th birthday, the dog my (future) husband adopted for me on my 23rd. But never have I received a present like the one Ian Baas’ grandfather gave him when he turned 18: a Formula Ford 2000 race car. “He’s been a great grandpa,” Baas says of his grandfather, Lowell Blossom of Blossom Chevrolet. “He’s totally supportive. He calls himself ‘Grandpa.com.’” A Formula car might seem like a strange present for a kid who hadn’t spent any significant time on a track. “Racing for me wasn’t even something that I, early in my life, thought about,” Baas says. “I really liked it, but I just never thought it’d be in my future, that it’d be something I would do.” That changed when Blossom, a longtime vintage car racer, began bringing Baas to his own races. Sensing his grandson’s burgeoning interest, Blossom sent Baas to the Harvard of motorsports: Skip Barber Racing School. Baas, then 17, returned enthused and unharmed, and thus a career was born. Twenty-year-old Baas, a graduate of Cathedral High School — who, when not driving, studies advertising at Ivy Tech in Muncie — went pro this summer. His long-term goal: to earn a living as a race car driver, ideally on the Formula One circuit (though, he admits, he wouldn’t turn down a CART, IRL or NASCAR team if one came knocking). “Formula cars are what I enjoy most,” Baas says. “Ultimately, F1 would be the dream. I’d love to be an American driver in there.” Driving his Formula Ford 2000 vehicle is great F1 practice for Baas. Although FF2000 cars are far less sophisticated than their F1 counterparts, there are marked similarities. Both are single-seat, rear-wing, rear-engine, open-wheel vehicles. The difference? In a word: motor. F1 engines have been known to exceed 800 horsepower, enabling drivers to coax their machines to speeds upwards of 220 miles per hour. In contrast, the 160-horsepower Formula Ford 2000 engine is about what you’d find in a Ford Focus. (Even so, thanks to the car’s power-to-weight ratio, a Formula Ford 2000 vehicle can reach speeds of 160 miles per hour.) Another major difference between F1 and FF2000 cars is the onboard electronics. “We have electronics on board that do data acquisition,” Baas notes, “but they’re nowhere near the sophistication of an F1 car.” Baas races his Grandpa Special in the Formula Ford 2000 Zetec Championship series, which enables teams to operate in much the same way as F1, CART and IRL teams do — that is, they select their own chassis and engines and perform testing to optimize setups, but at a fraction of the budget. The Zetec series, which challenges drivers on courses that range from ovals to street circuits to traditional road courses, is considered a major rung on the motorsports ladder. North American racing luminaries Sam Hornish Jr., Greg Ray, Memo Gidley and Alex Tagliani took turns as Zetec drivers on their climb to open-wheel fame. Baas notes, “I think the Zetec stuff is really good. It seems to have a good base of drivers; there’s tons of talent in there. If you look at a time sheet, they’re all right together.” And because Zetec races are frequently run in conjunction with higher-profile events, such as CART races, the series offers tremendous exposure for young drivers. As great as Zetec is, Baas won’t be content to stay there long. “Out of [the Zetec] series,” Baas says, “I’d like to go to something like Formula Atlantic, which is another step up.” The CART Formula Atlantic series is, roughly speaking, the North American equivalent of Formula 3000, which is a European incubator for F1 drivers. Although you’ll find more F3000 alumni on an F1 starting grid, Formula Atlantic has farmed its share of F1 legends, including the late Canadian great Gilles Villeneuve in the 1970s and, more recently, Villeneuve’s son Jacques, who, after winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1995, became F1 World Champion in 1997. (Incidentally, 18-year-old Carmel native Kyle Krisiloff, who is the nephew of Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George, just completed his second season as a Formula Atlantic driver.) Of course, the notoriously Euro-centric Formula One circuit may prove elusive not just to Baas, but to other American drivers as well. It’s been 10 years since any American driver appeared on the F1 circuit (Michael Andretti, in a stint that has been described as a miserable failure), and a quarter of a century has passed since an American (Michael’s father, Mario) captured the F1 crown. Roughly three-quarters of the drivers currently running F1 hail from Europe, and nearly two-thirds of the series’ races are run there. The problem? Minnesota-based writer Dan Knutson, the only American reporter who covers F1 full-time, has some insight. Knutson was recently quoted on CBSSports.com as saying that “Racing in Europe is a lot, lot tougher, a lot harder and a lot more ruthless [than racing in America].” As a result, Knutson explained, “The guys that make it through the ranks are generally better than most of the Americans.” The few Americans who might make the cut, such as NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon (who, incidentally, was approached by an F1 team in the late 1990s but turned the offer down) and Tony Stewart, both 32, are generally considered to be too old. Not surprisingly, F1’s dearth of American drivers makes the circuit considerably less appealing to the American market — a market that Formula One is committed to reaching. F1 team owner Frank Williams recently remarked on CBSSportsline.com that “Americans are always very parochial. Unless it is the Super Bowl or ‘Born in the USA,’ they don’t care for it.” He acknowledged, though, that if F1 “could get one or two U.S. drivers, and put them on top teams, we could build a following.” That, coupled with the fact that some American open-wheel series are floundering (stock in CART, a publicly traded company, plummeted in July after the company warned it would not turn a profit before 2006), may create opportunities for Baas and American drivers like him. In the meantime, Baas is working to catch up with the drivers who began their careers at more tender ages. “I’m really a late starter,” Baas says. “The guys on the team that I race with, Cape Motorsports, have been racing 12 years, where this is my third year.” He spent the summer working at the spanking clean garage where his grandfather houses myriad racing machines, absorbing the technical stuff from the garage’s two full-time employees — one a former Indy 500 driver. (“Mostly what I do is clean cars,” Baas concedes with a laugh.) To increase his stamina, Baas works out at least three times a week, often with a trainer. His primary task, though, is to troll for sponsors to help foot the bills. “Once you get into pro racing, it just gets so expensive,” Baas says. “I really don’t like putting this all on my grandfather.” Fortunately, he’s had a few bites, and he’s in talks to test with an American LeMans team. “That will open up a whole new world of things,” Baas notes. Even better: Baas has another birthday coming up — his 21st. Me? I got a trip to Vegas on my 21st (no complaints there). For Baas, though, anything could happen.