Detroit degenerates into farce.

A large shadow currently hangs over the Tenneco Grand Prix of Detroit after Honda filed an official injunction with the district supreme court to stop the sixth (or is that seventh) round of the 2001 CART Fed-Ex Championship over CART's latest ruling that mandates a 3/4 inch extension on the manifold pressure relief valve.

The last place that the CART series wanted another ugly legal row was in Detroit, America's Motor City and yet thanks to a late rule change concerning the amount of boost that teams are allowed to run, an ugly row is exactly what they have, one that threatens the cancellation of yet another event in the already tainted 2001 CART Fed-Ex Championship.

After several teams tested at the Michigan International Speedway last week with an additional 3/4 inch spacer aimed at reducing speeds on the Superspeedway's and negating any boost advantage that Honda and Ford may have gained by cleverly designing their engines to allow the influence of airflow around the pop-off valve to give a minimal increase over the mandated 37inches of boost allowed by CART, the series organisers suddenly decided to implement the rule changes for this weekend's Tenneco Grand Prix of Detroit.

Taken by surprise and furious at the fact that they hadn't been allowed to test the new spacer on a road course, Ford and Honda withdrew their teams from the morning practice session in Detroit while Toyota, who have tested the new manifold at Road America, freely allowed their teams to practice. Whereas Ford eventually allowed their cars to go out in the morning, all the Honda runners were left twiddling their thumbs until the afternoon session where Team KOOL Green Reynard-Honda driver Dario Franchitti set fastest time followed by the Player's/Forsythe Racing Reynard-Ford of Patrick Carpentier.

However Honda then decided to file an official injunction with the Detroit district supreme court to seemingly cancel the event as the suspicion remains that Toyota have designed their own spacer and are not strictly playing by the rules. A charge that everyone at Toyota vehemently denies.

However the real villain of the piece appears to be CART itself for implementing the change at VERY short notice and not allowing two of it's three engine manufacturers to test the system on a road course and Toyota for supporting CART's decision to mandate rulings as and when they please. Honda and Ford were under the impression that the system would be used at the Superspeedways in Michigan and Fontana with the possibility that it may appear at road course events later in the year. Nothing was mentioned about Detroit even though on the first day of practice Honda and Ford held the top two spots over the Target Chip Ganassi Lola-Toyota of Bruno Junqueira.

Should this argument continue into Saturday it is quite possible that CART's last visit to Detroit's Belle Isle may already be over and the continued participation of Honda and Ford in further events could also be in doubt.

It is no secret that Toyota desperately want to win the CART series before they begin to build Indy Racing League engines for 2003 and of the three participating engine manufacturers, their long term presence in the CART series is less certain than either Ford or Honda who have both committed for the long-term future. One team owner was reported as saying "Great, let's see what else we can do to piss-off the last two manufacturers loyal to CART."

After the cancellation of Rio and Texas already this year, the 2001 Championship runs the risk of degenerating into an utter farce and the series who promoted their 2001 calendar as one of the most demanding and spectacular in recent memory now needs a very large shoe-horn to take their feet out of their mouths.