The $10 million purse, the largest in motorsports history, raises eyebrows and left many in the public to openly wonder where the money would come from. Race co-founder and former CEO Dick Rutherford insists the Super Prix will retain its title as the richest race in the world in years to come, even if Indianapolis or anyone else ups their purse beyond this lofty benchmark. While a performance bond guarantees the purse for this year even with the demise of PPV, what about next year and beyond?

Barron's ('96) Eagle showcar
in downtown Honolulu July

The owners, for one, do not seem terribly concerned and see the big bucks as one of several strong selling points. "I’d like to look at the positive. It would be a fantastic place to have a race. The promoter seems pretty keen on making it one big event by putting up the prize money they’re putting up," Green says. "I think it is a special event in that it’s not gonna be of the series...it’s at the end of the season, there’s a lot of good things going for it. There’s a lot of money on the line - there’s gonna be a lot of desperate drivers out there!"

Horne sees the purse as secondary to the event’s allure. "I think it’s exciting. I particularly like the format of the race. Forget the money - the money’s real nice, but I strongly believe drivers will race for one dollar or five million dollars. But the format that they’ve come up with, where you get points in the first race for the grid of the second race, etc., I think that’s quite unique. So I’m excited about hopefully going to Hawaii. It’s a new venue for us. Give credit to the promoters for coming up with an exciting concept which I think will expand the reach of the sport."

Fernandez says, "for anybody who wins that kind of money in one race, I think it’s exciting, you know. We have never had that kind of money in one race. So basically it will be an amazing achievement to win that much...I think it will be a great event for everybody, and hopefully it’s an event that will be every year getting better and better."

A common complaint early on concerned the belief of some that the Super Prix, with its huge purse and strong focus on the final drivers’ points standings, overshadows the season finale at Fontana, which in past seasons has been erratically marketed as CART’s marquee event; its critical emphasis on points, large payoffs and fan-based sweepstakes make it similar to the Super Prix. Worse, they claim it seemingly diminishes the importance of the actual CART FedEx Championship by making the latter a precursor to what happens after the season is over.

Team owners unanimously rebuke this notion. "Oh, I would disagree with that," insists Green. "You know, the Hawaiian event is a great event and a great idea. If it went away, my company would still be OK. If the CART championship series went away, I’m in big trouble! The CART championship is my business and my future, not the Hawaiian event."

"In my mind." says McCaw, "dollars aside, and clearly there are some dollar differences, but there’s no comparison. The championship is infinitely more important. I mean, as a team owner, I’m a lot more interested in winning the championship than I am that race. I’d like to win both, but at the end of the day, the championship’s still what we’re here for. It’s what we do all year long, and I think fundamentally, it’s by far the most important part of the series, and that’s why we’re here."

"No, I don’t think so," Walker concurs. "They’re two separate entities. The championship’s a long road to haul. I mean, you’re doing 20 races that culminate in a champion, and sometimes leading up to 20 races you have a champion, and that’s a team effort. The recognition of a whole year’s work goes into where you stand up and where you rank at the end of the season.

"The Hawaiian ‘Super Bowl’ race, if you like, that is a stand-alone event. It’s the best of the best - the best teams are gonna get chosen, and the promoter’s gonna choose some invited guests, so you’re gonna get the best of the crop there. It’s gonna be a completely different atmosphere. The pressure of building points, points, points to go towards the championship, finishing races - that’s gonna be gone. It’s a blast. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. So there’s gonna be teams that approach it completely different.

"I don’t see it taking one away from the other," Walker continues. "I think teams will approach the championship with one strategy and build, build, build, and approach the Hawaiian race as being a dash - you’ve gotta get this thing done, and there’s a lot at stake, so you;ll find the preperation and the intensity level for one event will be a unique experience as opposed to the championship. It’s the difference between running a sprint race and a 24-hour race. There’s a different strategy to get the championship than it is to do a quick dash for one event that’s got such huge prize money."

"No, I don’t think it will affect the championship," Forsythe says. "I’d have to agree with the other car owners. This is completely separate; it’s a one-off event. The championship’s about 20 races, and it’s not about the race in Hawaii."

Drivers like Jones say for the most part, they are not even worrying about the race yet. "To be honest, right now a lot of these teams are just concentrating on the championship. It’s gonna be a great race at the end of the season, but we’re just through with the first part...I think it will be a good race for everybody...for CART and for the drivers."

Memo Gidley agrees he would not do anything differently with the race in mind. "As a driver, I wouldn’t change the approach that I was doing. I’d try to do as well as I can, but I know some guys out there that might go, ‘ah, maybe I should step it up a little bit so that I can try to make it into the race.’"

The move of establishing the Super Prix as CART’s bona fide marquee event comes four years after the formation of IRL and the loss of Indianapolis from the CART schedule; CART has struggled mightily with marketing its identity ever since. With talk of reunification between CART and IRL ebbing and flowing (and appropriately at a fever pitch Memorial Day weekend), one wonders that should the 500 ever return to the CART schedule, would there be room for two genuinely big races?

Among the owners, Walker has been particularly keen on maintaining a presence at Indy, having raced there in 1996 and intent on returning next year. "I think they’re two separate events, and they’re both worth doing. I mean, this Hawaiian race is gonna be the end of the season bash; the money that’s put up for the winner is so huge that it’s a stand-alone event anywhere in the world anyway, just by putting up that purse.

"The Indianapolis 500 obviously has the historical importance and will always be a very prime event. I think we need to do both, and I don’t see any reason why we can’t, so it’s nothing either or. I think they’re two separate issues, and they’re gonna earn their position in our series if we can do a deal with the Speedway. And if this event turns out to be as good as we think it’s gonna be, it will stay on the calendar as long as the promoter wants to invite us, so it’s positive to have both."

Richie Hearn, who ran IRL’s first 500 in 1996 before coming to CART full-time, feels "the Indianapolis 500 and the Hawaiian Super Prix are totally different events, and one shouldn't impact the success of the other. The Indianapolis 500 is the greatest race in the world. The Hawaiian Super Prix is more of an all-star event, a money race. Anyone can try to field a car in the 500, but you have to be invited to the Super Prix based on your overall performance throughout the year. There's no reason why they both can't co-exist."

Jones, who despite his strong family heritage at Indy has never raced there, says yes. "Absolutely. We need to be at both. The Hawaiian Super Prix is gonna be an awesome deal, and I think that we just need to get back at the Indy 500 also. I mean, it’s really two different subjects. If we can get back to the Indy 500 and get the two series back together, it’s a plus for everybody."

Fernandez agrees. "I think we definitely need to get back together. I mean, we need to work together because both series are struggling inside the United States. Outside, CART is growing phenomenally. So I think it’s good for us to go back to Indy and also have an extra special race like that, because you see NASCAR, they don’t have (just) one race; they have a few that are very important. So in addition to the Indy 500 if we go back there, it would be great to have another event like Hawaii."

"Gosh, I don't know," says Unser. "There’s no way you can replace or substitute the Indy 500. (The Super Prix is) a great marquee race and something worth doing and worth going for...$5 million to win, that’s big time. I hope CART and IRL do pull it back together, but we’re just a driver; there has to be some help to figure that out."

"To be honest, that’s a much powerful thing than me, so I cannot answer it," replies Kanaan. "For me, I’m paid to drive, and I want to stay out of (political) trouble. What they want to do, they will do. Go back to Indy - I’ve never been, so I can’t say I really want to go back there or I want them to go back together. I’m happy for the series that we have; it’s pretty strong. Yeah, it’s good to go back to Indy; I can’t tell you (how) until I run there, but right now I’d say it doesn’t matter to me."

With the 500 still off limits for the time being, is this move something CART should have done a long time ago, not only to compete against IRL but also NASCAR, with its spate of high-profile, high-income bonus races? "Well yeah, there are a lot of things that we should do as a sport," Walker says. "But the question is finding the money, and it’s great the promoter has found a way to come up with this opportunity for us.

"In our series, there’s so many things that we need to do to compete with anybody, never mind NASCAR. I mean, there’s a lot of competition out there for sponsorship dollars in sports marketing or entertainment in general. We’ve got to go after everything and try to make it the best it can be, and we need more money and more promotion to make the fans aware of our show; we need to make better shows. So those are always pressures we’ve got on us. So CART, yeah, should’ve done that sooner, but CART’s probably got so many other things, they don’t think the resources were there to be able to go do it.

"The promoter comes along with this opportunity - CART gives us a way to accelerate our fan base. We hopefully create a lot of new interest in a unique event. Yeah, we want to do this more and more, but then there’s always hundreds of things we need to do and so many dollars to do it, so we can’t grow quick enough, really."

Says John Della Penna, "The Hawaiian Super Prix is great event. It's definitely going to be one of the more high-profile events that we participate in. This race has the potential to be a marquee event on the CART schedule when promoted properly, and I look for it to increase our position within motorsports. The only suggestion that I have to offer to improve upon the event would be to invite more drivers to compete. Sixteen cars is going to look like a pretty lean field and as hard as these guys are going to race for this purse, who knows how many cars will actually finish."

Alex Barron likewise sees HSP as a potential shot in the arm for CART. "I think it would be great to have this race, as it would bring such huge exposure and publicity, more than what both sides are currently receiving."

Candice Ward is the wife of Jeff Ward - motocross champion, Indy Lights graduate, and currently running full time in IRL. She grew up in Honolulu and graduated from Chaminade University before moving to the mainland, but her family still returns to the Islands regularly. "I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring open wheel racing to the state of Hawaii, because it’s a distance to travel (to west coast races)...you might be able to get another influx from the Orient, because I know racing is huge in Japan per se...I think there are a lot of people (in Hawaii) who do like racing, and the opportunity has never been there."