RaceFans has reported:

Cristiano da Matta won the final race of CART’s 2001 season at the Fontana superspeedway, as the series completed its longest-ever campaign. The race, held 25 years before the article’s publication on Nov. 4, 2026, also marked the last CART appearance by Roger Penske’s team, then a powerhouse in the series.

Penske later defected to the rival Indy Racing League (IRL), which had formed five years earlier after a split from CART. The season had been marked by disputes over technology, the controversial cancellation of a race in Texas on safety grounds, and a crash at Lausitzring that nearly killed Alex Zanardi.

The departure of Penske was followed in subsequent years by rival engine manufacturers moving to the IRL. CART later went bankrupt. The rival series reunited in 2008, and Roger Penske’s organization bought the merged IndyCar series in 2019.

The Fontana event was the 21st and final race of the 2001 campaign. Its conclusion marked a turning point in CART’s contest with the IRL, which had been established five years earlier through the split. The split shaped the series’ competition during the period, while the 2001 finale provided Penske’s final appearance in CART.

The source article was written by Keith Collantine and published with timestamps of Nov. 4, 2026, at 00:01, and Oct. 29, 2026, at 21:36. Collantine, a lifelong motor sport fan, founded RaceFans in 2005, when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. He had worked as a motoring journalist and began running the site full-time in 2010, fulfilling a long-held ambition to focus entirely on motor racing.