The Unofficial Team St George Site gets the black flag !

If you're reading this then either you're here by mistake or you're a truly dedicated race fan.If you fall into the latter category then I doff my cap to you as it would please me no end to find out somebody still has an interest in the extremely short-lived CART team, Team St George.  Team St George was set-up almost exclusively to race at the 2002 round of the CART championship, held at the fantastic Rockingham circuit in England (described by Dario Franchitti as one of the most intimidating tracks he had ever raced at, so it must be doing something right)!  It turned out to be the "team's" first and last race. 

In the weeks after that excellent race the specialist press were full of stories about how Team St George may take part in further races during the 2002 season, Fontana in particular was mentioned quite a lot.  Whether there was any real intention to take part in further races may forever remain pure speculation, but no matter......the point had been made.  England had been given something to really cheer about at that race, in the form of Darren Manning.  Darren drove a fantastic race, even with a part from his rear wing missing, and finished a highly credible ninth place on his CART debut - and even led the race at one stage !!!!  This gave the small crowd a much needed boost on what was yet another cold day at Rockingham, with attendance well down on 2001 and seemingly only the "hardcore" bothered to turn up.  Team St George was really set up to gain press mileage for the Rockingham race and draw the crowds in, and it's open to debate how effective this was.  I was there and can assure you that Rockingham looked a sorry place that day compared to the crowd that was drawn for the 2001 CART race.  Frighteningly the crowd may have been even smaller if there had been no team St George to create a bit of interest in the newspapers in the weeks beforehand....  So anyway, the rest of the 2002 season quickly passed by with no further appearances from Team St George.  Again there was a few mentions in the press that there may have been a comeback in 2003.  For the "team" this never came, for Darren it did.  In truth, Team St George had only ever been the Dale Coyne team with a new paintjob and a couple of different sponsors.  In 2003 Darren Manning teamed up with Walker Racing for the full season and with it's RAC sponsorship the car didn't look a million miles from Darren's 2002 paintjob, St George Cross excluded naturally!!  Darren was the primary point of interest for UK CART fans in 2003, given that Dario Franchitti had already left for the Indycar Series.  Darren scored many points over the season, the highlight being his 2nd place at Surfers Paradise.  There was however only ever one appearance by Team St George, that was Rockingham 2002, and it gave many fans cause for great excitement in the weeks preceding the event and a lot of fun on raceday.  So, whether you came here on purpose or by accident, that in essence is the extremely short history of Team St George !!  It's doubftul how much more information you could find on the team as besides this site and the pretty poor official site there wasn't ever much in-depth coverage on the internet. I set this site up mostly to cover news on the team leading up to the race and therefore over the course of time much more than 100% of the site has been erased and replaced.  Ah, to think back to the days when I was running stories about how Mark Blundell was clear favourite for the drive !!! 

The official site is long since gone, which is kind of sad as "officially" it's now in a way like the team never existed.  I'm obviously completely finished with this site.  Before this update I actually hadn't even looked at the site since January 2003, so I thought I'd better come back and tie up all of the loose ends!  Anyway, enjoy my review of raceday (written the day after the race) and the accompanying photos and feel free to drop me an email about any of this if you like (email address is down the page).Thanks for visiting !

Best wishes to Darren for the future.The Unofficial Team St George Site can still be reached at: crazeetaxi@yahoo.com

Visitors since 26/08/02:


The Unofficial Team St George Site - Since 26th August 2002