Driving home from Elkhart Lake, Wis., on Sunday night one has about six hours to replay what transpired over the past couple weeks in Championship Auto Racing Teams and the time to form some rational conclusions before you jump on your computer.

Upon arriving in Indianapolis, I decided that the last two Champ Car races are pretty good indicators of why the drivers don't respect chief steward Chris Kneifel or his staff, the American fan base has dwindled and some promoters consider CART a four-letter word.

Let's begin with Sunday's soggy fiasco at Elkhart Lake, which managed to undo all of Mario Andretti's goodwill work the past three months, and came on the heels of a classic amateur show at Vancouver the week before.

An otherwise beautiful weekend at Road America turned ugly because it rained about an hour before the scheduled start and then it dissolved in chaos with a race that was delayed, debated, started, stopped, shortened and finally flagged at 6:45 p.m.

It all started when the skies opened up and soaked the four-mile road course. Officials wisely informed the 19 starters it would be a "wet weather" race and to plan accordingly. Some setups were changed with that information to accommodate the conditions and rain tires.

But, during the first few laps behind the pace car (which counted as race laps, thus robbing the paying customers of real racing), several drivers complained they couldn't see anything because of the spray from other cars.

CART finally red-flagged the race and sent out a couple of track dryers. Two more laps of caution were followed by more moaning from drivers so a second red flag followed.

Unlike previous years at The Lake where rivers ran through corners, the track wasn't deluged anywhere and the rain was steady but not a monsoon. Certainly not like Surfers Paradise, Australia, in 2002, when CART started a race inside what was almost a holding tank.

	Tagliani and Co. drove through the rain at Elkhart Lake.

"On a street course, you're surrounded by walls and you don't have any lateral visibility," said Alex Tagliani, who had to start way back in 13th and charge to third. "On a road course, that is wide open like this one, yes, you have spray in front of you and it's difficult to see, but you can still see laterally because there's a lot of open spaces. The wet in Surfers Paradise, I mean, there was not even one place that there were not puddles. I mean, there was about two inches of water everywhere.

"But when they red flagged the race here, there were no puddles. I heard comments on the radio from the truck going around. They said, 'There's no standing water.' Okay, it rained, but it rained like a rain race. There's one section on the race track, the kink going to Canada Corner that there's walls, and it's a tunnel, so it's pretty difficult to see.

"I think the track did a great job in not having this little river in the back straightaway. So, without standing water, I didn't really understand why we had to red flag the race."

To which runner-up Sebastien Bourdais intejected: "It was damp. It was not wet. And there is always spray in these conditions."

Now, admittedly Tags is one of the braver performers in CART and excels in wet conditions and Bourdais is 24, full of fire and talent. And CART deserves high marks for its constant diligence in safety and thinking about its drivers.

But these guys are supposed to be some of the best road racers around and most of them have dealt with wet race tracks. All of them have a throttle, a brake and a choice when it comes to charging into a corner. Is it safe to race one of the fastest road courses in the world when the surface is glazed with water? Of course not, but these guys get paid to take chances and deal with situations.

"I think it's just a matter of knowing if we want to do rain races or not, if you want to compete or not," said Bourdais, who started second. "Then maybe it's not worth buying rain tires."

It's also true that Bridgestone builds a pretty hard rain tire, certainly nothing like a Formula One compound, and it doesn't provide maximum grip in the wet. But maybe CART and Bridgestone need to put their heads together and come up with a better rain tire since this isn't the first time it's ever rained or had a delay at Road America.

After the second stoppage, teams covered up their cars and for the next three hours the brave, loyal souls in attendance were left wondering what in the name of Joe Heitzler is going on? This is CART's fan base and they skipped the Oshkosh Air Show, Brat Day in Sheybogan and the State Fair at Milwaukee to support a race that had been yanked from the schedule earlier this year and rescued by Andretti.

What they received was a dirt sandwich. CART finally announced the race would start around 5:30 but it would be shortened from 60 laps to 34 because of a pending storm headed that way (which, by the way, never showed up). And, oh yeah, those 10 laps under the yellow all counted in the 34.

"The race was disappointing at best and I don't understand why it wasn't started on time," George Bruggenthies, general manager at Road America, told the Sheyboygan Press on Monday morning. "I'm not trying to second guess driver safety, I just want people to understand the call was made by the CART stewards. It wasn't a track condition.

"My fans paid for entertainment and they're not going to understand the decision. But only the diehards stayed to the end. God Bless 'em all."

Of course the week before, in Vancouver, there were 70,000 fans and they all went home happy after watching Paul Tracy scored his fifth win of 2003.

But he got an assist from CART's officiating, which may have set a new record for swallowing its whistle and bungling the rule book. Bruno Junqueira got the jump on pole-sitter Tracy coming down for the start but the green flag was thrown and Junqueira dove into the first turn with the lead.

	"	My fans paid for entertainment and they're not going to understand the decision. But only the diehards stayed to the end. God Bless 'em all. "
		— Road America's George Bruggenthies

Tracy, who had backed off anticipating a no-start, complained on his radio and CART officials decided -- on lap 24 -- that Junqueira had, indeed, violated Rule 6.20.1. Yep, CART incredibly let Junqueira lead the first 24 laps and then ordered him to pull over and allow Tracy to pass.

Amazingly, Junquiera did not stop his car, turn it around and drive back to the start/finish line the wrong way and accost Kneifel and Co. He took the punishment he didn't deserve. CART's new flagman, who has yet to grasp what a good start is, threw the green and Junqueira simply did what any driver worth his salt does -- he gassed it. It's not his fault the flagman threw the green. If CART didn't like the start, all the officials had to do was display the yellow on the backstretch.

Waiting 24 laps made them look like buffoons.

Tracy had the fastest car and probably would have won anyway, but in a long list of bad calls over the past 24 years, this one had to rank in the top three. It made CART look like the shaky operation it's become and was insulting to anybody with a passion and knowledge who paid good money to watch a professional auto race.

Kind of like Sunday at Road America.

Robin Miller covers open wheel racing for ESPN and ESPN.com.