Alex Morales Motorsports

As a result of the 1979 USAC/CART split, Morales decided to race in the CART series with Carter running their now aging Lightning Chassis; however, he was only able to manage 13th in the standings as the Offenhauser engines were becoming increasingly obsolete. In 1980 Morales continued with Carter but were able to upgrade to a Penske-Cosworth combination, which saw a significant improvement as Carter finished 5th in the points, with a best finish of third at Michigan. The success with the Penske continued into 1981 as Carter won the team's first race at the Michigan 500 and finished third in the CART standings. Carter followed that up with an impressive third-place finish at the 1982 Indy 500 as the Morales team became one of early adopters of the March chassis program but the next two seasons as a whole were not as successful, not recording a single top 5 finish in both the 1982 and 1983 CART seasons (the Indy 500 was not a CART points race in 1982). For 1984 Carter was replaced by Al Holbert who, despite an impressive 4th at Indy, only finished 18th in CART points. In 1985 Morales hired 3 time Indy champion Johnny Rutherford and obtained sponsorship from Vermont American. Rutherford had a successful first two seasons for the team, winning at Sanair in 1985 (albeit under controversial circumstances after Pancho Carter passed him at the line under yellow)^[5] and finished 11th in the points. In 1986 Rutherford again was 11th in the points and won Morales’ third Indycar race, the 1986 Michigan 500. The team retained Rutherford for 1987 but the March Chassis was not as competitive as in previous seasons and Rutherford slipped to 18th in the standings with a best finish of 7th at Portland. Rutherford and Morales went their separate ways and the team brought in Howdy Holmes for 1988 to drive their March 88C-Cosworth package but both suppliers were falling behind rival manufacturers such as Lola, Penske and Chevrolet. As a result, Holmes wasn't able to better Rutherford’s 18th-place finish from the year before.^[6]

Despite the death of Alex Morales in November 1988, the team forged on as the factory Alfa Romeo team for 1989, now managed by Johnny Capels.^[7] The team would now enter a specially designed March chassis, the 89CE.^[8] The engine development was behind schedule and they only made their debut at the fifth round of the championship in Detroit where driver Roberto Guerrero finished 8th in what would end up being the best result of the season for the Morales Alfa Romeo as unreliability and a horsepower deficit saw Guerrero only score points in one more race, a 12th-place finish at Mid-Ohio. At the end of the season the Alfa Romeo program and Morales CART franchise was transferred to Pat Patrick whose re-founded Patrick Racing team moved into the former Morales shop in Indianapolis.