Yahoo Autos A Walk Through the 'House That Newman/Haas Built' Before It's Dismantled for Auction
Cristiano da Matto, Sébastian Bourdais and Nigel Mansell’s Championship winning cars grace the front entrance lobby of the Newman/Haas racing facility in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
What qualifications are needed to declare something as legendary? Is it the amount of wins a driver or team brings to the table? The names that graced a team’s roster, or the names behind a team? In the case of Newman/Haas Racing, it was all of those. The team, running for almost 30 years, 1983-2011 through the CART and Champ Car series had names like Carl Haas and Paul Newman feeding the fire. The roster? Consisting of names like Mario and Michael Andretti, Nigel Mansell, and Sébastian Bourdais, to name a few. In its 28 years, the team would record 108 wins and eight championships. Since the races ended, pieces of history have been hidden away in the Newman/Haas building in Lincolnshire, Illinois. I was granted a tour of the entire collection, to walk among the cars that made or continued the careers of greats, before near all of it goes to auction with RM Sotheby’s this coming Saturday night.
The only way you’d know this building, tucked away in an oddly beautiful business park north of Chicago, is the small sign out front that indicates, indeed, you are at the Newman/Haas facility. Of course you walk in, and are immediately greeted by American open-wheeled history. In the lobby sits the championship-winning cars of Bourdais, Mansell (1993) and Cristiano da Matta’s (2002) powered by Toyota-winning car.
Read more
Beyond the cars, it’s a little cluttered, as any raised surface is covered in some form of memorabilia — in this case, a lot of trophies. Ever wonder what over 100 wins worth of prizes look like in one room? You certainly get the idea here. Oh, and a couple of those Texas trophies are just a gold-dipped cowboy boot.
If that’s not overwhelming enough, step through the back door into the garage area, where if you’ve followed the sport, you’ll immediately recognize cars. I certainly did. Specifically, Mario Andretti’s white and black number 5 Kmart car from his racing in the ‘90s. His was one of the first cars I remember acknowledging and could spot on TV and at the track when I went to my first IndyCar (then, CART) races. It would be the car that would launch my desire to work in the racing/automotive world, in some way, shape or form. Were my eyes glistening standing next to that car? Absolutely.
Across the room sat all of Sèbastian Bourdais’ yellow and red-clad McDonald’s Champ Car series’ winning cars, to cover his 2004-2007 Championship wins. As our personal docent of this exquisite tour explains, at that point, winning four championships in a row in the series; it had never been done before. Bourdais’ cars still had seats in the buckets, so I was able to wriggle my way into his 2006 machine. Inside, on the left of the bucket, remained stickers I could only assume are inside jokes with Seb and his team. On his steering wheel, the button for water reads “eau.”
