Part 6 of 6

In the short and long term, the demise of the Super Prix leaves behind turmoil for all concerned. Kirby believes "It's bad for CART, it's bad for the state of Hawaii, it's bad for racing in general, and it's bad for the people who tried to put this together...everyone should have done their due diligence six to twelve months ago."

Locally, businesses counting on the race for a much-needed economic boost must now go without; some twenty companies of various size await further details to see what if anything they can collect on for work pending or already completed. The nearby Ihi Lani Resort and Spa, solidly booked all race week, now anticipates untold numbers of cancellations out of the 60% reservations directly related to the race. Four charities, including Special Olympics and DARE, get no revenue from the various charity events planned surrounding the event, including a fishing tournament, golf tournament, and Governor's ball featuring drivers and other celebrities. The race follows the historic pattern of local businesses being burned by mainland investors and mainland money.

Bradley of Simple Green envisioned a promotional blitz via product labels hyping the race and a national sweepstakes for a trip to Hawaii, with the winner announced at a Las Vegas auto show in two weeks. "They were just about to hit the shelves this week, naturally. We were days away from launching that stuff out. If there's a silver lining to this, it was good we never got them out there."

But Simple Green also runs commercials regularly on Paul Harvey's nationally syndicated radio talk show, and they had already aired spots promoting the Super Prix. "That's a little bit of egg on our face when you send out that information to 40 million people about the race, and then it doesn't happen."

Rossell's company, Promotions Hawaii, had a contract for organizing the exposition component of the Super Prix midway and for erecting one of the two midway tents. "Basically, I've had to eat something in the neighborhood of $6-7,000 in raw costs. The investment in tents, I can't use in the immediate future - I can't really say the money put into the tent is down the drain, but it's just very inconvenient.

"On the expo side...we are refunding our exhibitors 100% of their deposit money back, but we're absorbing about $15,000 in staff time, communications expenses, etc. So bottom line, (losses are) something in excess of $20,000. If the expo had gone forward, I guess we would've seen a profit of $15-20,000, so our total (debt) is about $40,000, if you look at it that way."

Bradley echoes a growing sentiment among Hawaii's business community that while CART gets its cool $5 million with very little energy expended on its part, "we as the guys who put up the money to support it get nada." With Frontier officials in town this week and looking at a formal bankruptcy filing for HSP, numerous lawsuits may ensue shortly from those seeking some degree of financial compensation. On the other hand, "is it more trouble than it's worth? For us, we've come to the point where we can put it behind us...all the labels are wasted."

Two vendors have, in fact, already filed lawsuits as of October 26, including the company which produced the tickets and other printing jobs. Heard and Frontier officials held a 20-minute closed-door meeting with some vendors, who learned that while Frontier would try and help those who have taken financial hits, the terms of the insurance policy does not necessarily guarantee it. Vendors subsequently told several local TV stations they considered the state partially responsible for this debacle, saying it exercised no due diligence before leasing Kalaeloa to HSP and that the cheerful goodwill expressed by officials back in February convinced them the event was sound and encouraged the companies to extend lines of credit to HSP. State officials denied the charges, insisting they did do their homework on what amounted to a private sector operation, although they would get $25,000 from the lease and a percentage of gate receipts."

People involved with HSP at any level, in particular Heard and the 13 local employees running the show, appear in a bad light regardless of the enormous amount of work they did over the past eight months. Some of them had even quit their previous jobs for the sake of signing on with HSP, and now they have neither jobs nor unemployment benefits.

In the courtroom of public opinion, Heard stands guilty no matter what the racing pundits say in his defense. His career in motorsports, pristine until now, may possibly never recover from this firestorm. As for Rutherford, he has maintained a low profile domestically as the Super Prix gasped its last, while proceeding with his next venture - wooing investors from China with the idea of a new racing series there.

"Obviously, the Super Prix people came away pretty scalded," Koenig says. "But obviously CART looks bad - they felt they had no choice (but to cancel the race) - maybe it was making the best of a bad situation, but it's still a black eye."

While CART's slumping stock price jumped substantially the day following the Super Prix's cancellation, with investors relieved the debacle had finally ended and that CART would use the $5 million guaranteed by HSP towards its bottom line, consensus remains that overall, this remains a massive failure for CART. Says Kirby, "you know, the fact that CART is now a publically held company, with 20 races a year, the Super Prix's failure would increase the overall value of CART and push up the stock price. There's a belief that that was a primary factor, rather than to serve the best interest of the sport."

The state of Hawaii also has suffered a huge blow to its worldwide reputation. On top of the dockworkers' snafu, the race's collapse did nothing to dispell the scornful notion by locals and mainlanders alike of Hawaii as a terrible place for enterpeneurs to do business; they view it as just another example of how Hawaii once again cannot "get it done" when it comes to world-class ventures. Even more specifically, motorsports fans in Hawaii feel hurt, having seen the rug yanked out from under them at the very last minute and in the most unpleasant and destructive way possible. Back in February, John DeSoto - a renowned champion motocross rider before he became a Honolulu City Councilman - told the Advertiser, "I wish it happens, but being in the business for a long time, I've seen others come and others go." His words, and those of many others, proved eerily prophetic.

Sweeney concludes, "we just had some carpetbaggers show up, and that's too bad. The community was victimized, and there's a lot of people who feel victimized...the state and city cooperated with this venture, hoping things would work out better this time, and they got burned again. The stinging is more than ever before."

"Maybe the state shouldn't have let it go as far as it did. We were too generous with our help. We saw something good and thought it should happen, and we joined in...we allowed these guys to go farther than we normally do, and we got it in our shorts."

A Star-Bulletin editorial on October 21 suggests "the potential for future auto races remains," possibly even at Kalaeloa using the existing bleachers and other facilities now in place. But those who more intimately know about racing feel otherwise, believing the psychological damage to the state has exceeded even the monetary damage. Kirby feels the Super Prix "was never viewed in a very serious light. I think it's a sad thing for Hawaii - whenever Hawaii is linked to auto racing, it's a joke rather than a positive. The bottom line, therefore, is both CART and the people of Hawaii - the government - if they ever do things like this again, they need to do things right. It's damaged Hawaii's reputation as a whole."

"It was probably a good idea worth exploring," Koenig summarizes. "Some kind of all-star race would be a good idea, like what NASCAR does in Charlotte every May. But the way it was carried out - it's like the whole PPV thing and the big push put such a big onus on it - I suspect no one's gonna embrace the idea of a CART all-star race for a while - in Hawaii or anywhere."

"I still think the Hawaiian Super Prix is a great and completely doable race," says John Della Penna, whose team had hoped for a wild card ticket this year. "However, planning, implementing and promoting an event like this takes time. Unfortunately, this year's didn't work out. It's a great promotional idea though and a wonderful opportunity to promote the world's best in open-wheel racing. I still support making it a completely invitational race that includes Formula One and CART - the ‘All Stars' race. Personally, I would love to see the likes of Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard battle against Dario Franchitti, Paul Tracy, Richie Hearn, Jimmy Vasser and Juan Montoya and all the other great drivers in our series. Other sports have successful all star events and it's a great idea for racing as well. I'm sure it will happen in the near future."

Still, Heard believes the Super Prix idea could still possibly work, and work here, someday. Wally Dallenbach, who inspected the track just the day before cancellation and gave it his seal of approval, agrees and even thinks that with a different promoter, the facility could possibly be used for a full-season points-paying event. So the race that wouldn't die until the bitter end may yet rise from the dead a third time somewhere down the road, once enough people have recovered from the pain of what transpired this time around.