There are still more questions than answers about the unified IndyCar/Champ Car series, but RACER's David Phillips finds much of the pondering to be a refreshing change.
No more Panoz-Cosworths, perhaps, but the Gold Coast 300 will live on, officials vow. (LAT photo)
SPECIAL PROGRAMMING NOTE: SPEED will interrupt regularly scheduled programming Wednesday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. ET to broadcast coverage of the scheduled IndyCar Series press conference from Homestead-Miami Speedway formally announcing the merger with the Champ Car World Series for 2008. SPEED’s Robin Miller will be on-site providing commentary and perspective.
For the moment there are more questions than answers in the newly unified cosmos of American open-wheel racing. By now you’ve read and heard the same rumors I have, from Long Beach and Twin Ring Motegi being run for points on the same weekend and Champ Car Atlantic being farmed-out to the American Le Mans Series to technical partnerships between IndyCar Series and Champ Car teams to help the latter get up to speed quickly.
Until official word comes down on high, who really knows the answers to those questions? Or these: Which Champ Car World Series events will be incorporated into the 2008 IndyCar Series schedule? Which Champ Car teams are, ultimately, going to join the IndyCar Series? With which drivers? Conquest Racing has confirmed it intends to run two IndyCars, including one for former F1 tester/Atlantic grad Franck Perera, but do other road racers like Enrique Bernoldi, Mario Moraes, Franck Montagny, and Ernesto Viso who looked so promising at Champ Car’s Sebring test have quite the same appeal to team owners now that at least half the ’08 schedule figures to be contested on ovals? And vice versa: Just how attractive is a series with 11 oval events to Bernoldi, Montagny & Co?
What does the future hold for Cosworth? Will the Panoz DP01s (at least those that survive the mooted Long Beach race) become some of the world’s most expensive show cars, or will they somehow live to race another day? Will some of the Champ Car World Series events that don’t “fit” in the 2008 IndyCar Series schedule be resurrected in ’09? If so, which ones and how will they fare after they’ve been mothballed for a year? What will become of the Champ Car staff now that the organization has ceased operations? Will the predicted avalanche of lawsuits associated with canceling the 2008 Champ Car World Series materialize?
Some or many of these questions will be answered this week at Homestead-Miami Speedway during IRL Spring Training. However, one thing is certain: the challenge facing Champ Car’s “transition” teams is positively breathtaking. Conquest Racing owner Eric Bachelart told me over the weekend he expects to have two Dallaras in his shop by week’s end (by which time of course, the IndyCar regulars will have finished up a couple of days running at Spring Training). Conquest will then spend the next two weeks prepping its new Dallara-Hondas, then head to Florida for what amounts to an IndyCar Series crash course (no pun intended) with three days of road course testing at Sebring March 19-21, followed by three days of oval track testing at Homestead (March 23-25) . . . followed in short order by the 2008 IndyCar Series season opener at Homestead on March 29 and Round Two in the streets of St. Petersburg on April 6.
Then, in all probability, it’s back to Indianapolis to prepare a Panoz-Cosworth or two for Long Beach on April 18-20, followed by a test of the Dallara-Honda at Kansas Speedway en route home from California before everybody assembles for a relaxing month of R&R at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway then puts their collective noses to the IndyCar Series grindstone of 11 races in 15 weeks.
Then what? By all accounts, Australia’s Gold Coast Indy 300 – surely among anyone’s list of the world’s top 10 motorsports events – will be among the Champ Car races included in the 2008 IndyCar Series schedule. Trouble is, the race is slated for October 24-26, the best part of two months after the IndyCar Series is schedule to conclude at Chicagoland Speedway. A non-points race? The opening round of the 2009 season? Naw, who would ever split a racing season over two calendar years?
These questions and many, many more will be answered, if not at Spring Training then in the weeks ahead. No doubt others, unforeseen and unforeseeable, will arise. There is one question, however, that was answered over the weekend for the first time in a dozen years. At a family gathering my niece introduced me to her new boyfriend, saying “Uncle David writes about . . . which is it? I can never tell the difference between Indy Cars and Champ Cars.” I started to go into my well-practiced spiel about the split between Champ Car vs. IRL, then checked myself, broke into a grin and said, “Hold on. There is no difference. Not anymore.”
David Phillips is a Senior Writer for RACER magazine. For details about the current issue, visit www.racer.com.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, SPEED, or Haymarket Worldwide.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator
and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
