Last summer, at the height of the daily doom and gloom reports that had enveloped the once-mighty series known as Championship Auto Racing Teams, one of its prominent car owners looked around the paddock at Elkhart Lake, Wisc., shook his head and said with a smirk: "CART is dead. It's over and the sooner people realize it the quicker we can get open wheel racing back under one roof."

The speaker, whose team dominated CART in the glory days of the late '90s, had already decided he was taking his racers and resources to the Indy Racing League in 2003.

But, considering the defections of the previous 12 months and the bare numbers, it was tough to dispute Chip Ganassi's declaration.

CART was losing Honda, Toyota and the $200 million they annually poured into the circuit. Those two manufacturers were joining Ganassi and Barry Green's team in throwing in with Roger Penske, one of CART's co-founders who went IRL racing full-time in 2002. ABC and ESPN had already dropped CART for Tony George's all-oval series.

FedEx pulled the plug on its title sponsorship.

Not long after the 2002 CART finale, staunch CART supporters like Morris Nunn, Bobby Rahal and Adrian Fernandez would confess to having IRL programs in place.

The CART drivers were constantly counting cars and nothing added up. "I really love the mix of tracks and challenge in CART but how can it survive?" wondered Kenny Brack coming back from England last September. "Honestly, I can't count more than eight cars."

Brack's addition was accurate and his concerns justified. Just like Michael Andretti, Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan. Their hearts may have said CART, but their eyes told them IRL.

"Jesus," groused Paul Tracy prior to the California 500 at Fontana last October. "Am I going to be the only guy left in this series next year?"

Amid all this uncertainty was the reassuring voice of CART's evangelist, CEO Chris Pook. The ol' Pookster told everybody there would be at least 18 cars on the grid in 2003 and that there were things cooking behind the scenes.

Yeah, whatever, is what many people thought.

	Pook has managed to restock the field for the 2003 season.

Putting Pook on a polygraph would have been the only way to learn how truly dismal things were as summer turned to fall. He's the master of sounding confident, regardless of the truth. In an interview we did on RPM2Night late last August he assured the audience that Ganassi, Nunn and at least one car from Green's garage would stay in CART in 2003.

He was 0-for-3 on that call.

But, as CART's burial plot was being measured, Pook was defying death much like he had in the mid-'70s when he revived Long Beach, Calif., with a street race.

He sold the owners on keeping identical, turbocharged Cosworth engines for the next two years. He also convinced them that if money wasn't spent to entice new teams and help current ones, it was all over. He got Bridgestone and Ford to become CART's marketing partners. And, at some point, he turned Formula One czar Bernie Ecclestone from CART's enemy to its ally.

Racing veterans like Stefan Johansson, Eric Bachelart, Paul Gentilozzi and Craig Pollock have stepped in to replace the teams of Ganassi, Nunn, Green and Penske.

A month away from the season opener at St. Petersburg, Fla., and, incredibly, CART's Champ Car series may have almost as many starters as the IRL.

"Without Pook, I think we'd be dead now," said Derrick Walker, a longtime CART owner who is trying to keep the Reynard chassis viable as well as a two-car effort for 2003. "He had so many obstacles to overcome and so much bad news.

"The guy has done wonders. It's just a shame we didn't hire him a few years ago."

Now, before anybody gets giddy, it should be pointed out this will not be the CART of the past decade. The new teams aren't nearly as deep as the departed ones and the new drivers are hardly household words. F3000 champ Sebastian Bourdais and Mario Hauberfeld have talent, just no following in this country, while Joel Camathias and Robert Gonzalez may not have either.

And CART still appears to be anti-American. Only '96 champ Jimmy Vasser and rookie Ryan Hunter-Reay have confirmed seats for '03. Pook and the owners have failed to elevate Toyota Atlantic stars like Jon Fogarty, Rocky Moran Jr., Joey Hand or Alex Gurney. Proven Yanks like Alex Barron and Memo Gidley are also without wheels.

Until CART actually shows faith in its feeder system and gives some of these hungry American kids a chance, it will never cultivate some new heroes because guys like Bourdais are looking to F1 ASAP like Juan Montoya, Alex Zanardi and Jacques Villeneuve before him.

Open wheel racing still suffers an identity crisis with U.S. television audiences but CART did draw two million fans across the globe last year and is trying to restore its fan base in Milwaukee and Cleveland with its first-ever night shows.

Neither IRL or CART has enough individual sponsorship, but CART's cost-cutting measures and $2.7 million incentive package has made it an affordable option to F1 and, ironically, maybe even less expensive than the IRL.

"I went to Miami last fall to meet Chris Pook and get in his mind to see where champ car racing was going," said Pollock, the former co-owner of the BAR F1 team who still manages '97 F1 champ Villeneuve's career. "I liked what I heard."

Not many people could say that last summer in the CART paddock. There were more questions than answers, more negatives than positives and not nearly enough cars.

But give Pook his due. He took over a ship full of holes in the bow with rats running rampant and no rudder. Not only is it still afloat, there's even a little wind in its sails.