Motorsports

Panther is back and purring along

John Barnes jokes about the night he got so drunk he decided to keep his race team. He is kidding, of course, but it's hard to imagine a sober man making the same choice.

By JOANNE KORTH
Published March 31, 2007

John Barnes jokes about the night he got so drunk he decided to keep his race team. He is kidding, of course, but it's hard to imagine a sober man making the same choice.

Panther Racing was all but dead.

No sponsor.

No driver.

A once-bustling team reduced to a handful of employees.

Desperate for fund-raising ideas before the 2006 season, Barnes opted for a garage sale. Literally. An auctioneer came to the team's Indianapolis shop and, piece by piece, Panther Racing was sold to the highest bidder. Among them was Barnes.

Bidding on faith.

"I believe everything happens for the good," Barnes said. "Ev-erything negative that happens is going to prepare you for some-thing good to happen in the future." Panther Racing, which Barnes founded in 1997, won consecutive championships in 2001-02 with hot young driver Sam Hornish. The team went to Victory Lane 15 times in its first eight seasons.

Its ninth season almost wasn't.

The team's primary sources of income, support from manufacturer General Motors and sponsor Pennzoil, were gone. In a sagging economy, companies willing to invest $3-million to $5-million in a race team were scant. A team with championship credentials was a hairpin turn from bankruptcy.

Barnes refused to quit.

Equipped with barely enough parts to build a race car, Panther Racing not only endured a lean 2006 season, but gave the deep-pocketed power teams of the Indy Racing League a run for their money. The underdog nipped at the heels of the neighborhood bullies.

Sometimes, the essentials for success are not visible.

Apparently, race cars run on more than just fuel.

"Everything in life is about attitude," said Barnes, 55, an Indianapolis native who started running and washing car parts at a local race shop at 16. "You come to work for me and I'll provide you the tools to work with, you provide the attitude. (The team) did that unbelievably last year and continue to do it this year."

There was little reason to believe.

While competitors spent the 2005-06 offseason in the wind tunnel searching for ways to make their cars a fraction of a second faster, Panther Racing spent the offseason in liquidation.

A team once numbering 55 employees was reduced to having eight. Inventory once large enough to field three complete race teams was reduced to the bare necessities for one: a couple of cars, some pit road equipment, a few shop tools and a transporter.

Still without a sponsor, Barnes hired driver Vitor Meira, a Brazilian whose upbeat personality infused life into the now-cavernous shop and remaining workers.

Still woefully underfunded, the team raced on whatever it could scrape together. It paid the bills it could and relied on the kindness of longtime suppliers to get through the season.

Used parts that previously would have been thrown in the trash were fixed and used again.

Every tire, lug, bolt and screw was counted.

It's possible Barnes neglected to cash his paychecks.

"That's confidential," he said.

Knowing the team needed good results to survive, Meira kept the car in one piece. Somehow, the car turned out to be pretty darned fast. Week after week, Meira qualified and raced among the top 10. Week after week, team members grinned at one another in wonderment.

"It wasn't going to be an easy season. We all knew that coming in," said Meira, 30, who came over from the Rahal Letterman team. "But Panther had so much good information from the previous years when they had big budgets and the help from Chevy and Pennzoil, I knew it was going to be a good car. And that was all we needed."

Meira posted 10 top-six finishes in the series' 14 events to finish fifth in the standings. The top four was comprised of two cars each from powerhouses Team Penske, which won its first IRL title with Hornish, and Chip Ganassi Racing.

In 2007, Panther is at it again.

The unlikely success of 2006 brought new sponsorships and enough income to field three teams, two in IndyCar and one in the developmental Pro Series.

The employee roster is expanded to 42. In the paddock, the team's transporters - there are two, now - again buzz with mechanics and engineers clad in brightly colored shirts searching for a hundredth of a second of speed. Back in Indianapolis, according to Meira, the shop no longer echoes.

Panther Racing is growing. Again.

Barnes hopes the worst is over and he can brace for the good things he believes are coming his way.

Perhaps the big boys at Penske, Ganassi and Andretti Green better brace themselves, too.

[Last modified March 30, 2007, 23:06:05]