IRL/Champ car reach deal?

[Kitdy]

The IRL calender will also have Long Beach and Edmonton added to the championship and Surfers Paradise as a non-championship race. The Champ Car teams get free engines and cars, as well as $1.2m per car from Tony George. Most of the finer details dont appear to be settled yet.

I hear the Toronto Gran Prix is in trouble.

Do you have any news about that?

I enjoy going downtown and watching them scream down Lakeshore.

[RacingManiac]

No Toronto race this year....and I guess given the state of things it may or maynot be back...

it'll be dumb for them not to comeback though, Toronto's race is usually packed....

[fpv_gtho]

2009 will be when they set out a proper schedule. Those 3 races are the only ones being included as theyre considered the marquee events for Champ Car. For 2010 IRL were already looking at going with a new car, so they'll probably also then look and see if they want competition for engines between Honda and Cosworth i'd say. They need a year or so just of stability with higher grid numbers before they do anything though.

[ringle]

2009 will be when they set out a proper schedule. Those 3 races are the only ones being included as theyre considered the marquee events for Champ Car. For 2010 IRL were already looking at going with a new car, so they'll probably also then look and see if they want competition for engines between Honda and Cosworth i'd say. They need a year or so just of stability with higher grid numbers before they do anything though.

They had better get their shit together pronto, or else it may do irrepairable damage to open-wheel racing in NA. The public is very fickle and the competition for entertainment dollars is fierce these days.

[fpv_gtho]

You dont think the worst of the damage has already been done this past 12 years?

[RacingManiac]

They are looking to change car in 2009 again? I guess it'll be even for every team as Champ Car teams don't have to buy the current IRL car(and they already paid for the DP-01 ), whereas IRL teams will just replace theirs.....

I hope they bring back most of the CCWS road courses though. Road America, Mid-Ohio, Laguna Seca, plus most of the street tracks are pretty decent for attendence....

[ScionDriver]

It looks like they will try to add two races from Champ Car to this years schedule, including running two races on the same weekend!
ESPN - IndyCar Series hopes to add two Champ Car races to '08 schedule - Open-Wheel

[Kitdy]

What are they gonna call the new series? The IRL? I hope they change the name to reflect the merger.

[RacingManiac]

I think the news I've read reflects more on a "phasing out" of champ car rather than a true combination of sort between the 2. The series will remain to be oval centric and have hopefully 20 races when all is said and done, Tony George is hoping to have more than 1/2 of those being oval variety....

I don't see why they want to go that way though, other than the Indy 500, most openwheel oval races these days are rarely packed with spectators, and the racing even if it is faster than stock car tend to be rather boring as well. Most street course venue for Champ Car are usually packed events with good local interest, you'd think they want to keep it that way....

[bruxell]

I was trying to find out what you meant timewise by relateively recent.
SOme of those with longer lives have different intepretation

I was going with recent as meaning the modern N/A era. After the turbo cars, and specifically after Mosely took over. The sport has expanded hugely in that time.

Not the detials.
But it was Dan Gurney who persuaded Chapman to come to the US Indy.
It wasnt' the money that attracted Colin to look, but certainly the dearth of decent compeition and the size of the purse closed the deal

It was Gurney who clued Chapman in to the amount of money on offer, but it wasn’t just Lotus trying to compete, Cooper had gone racing at Indy too. It wasn’t a championship event at the time, and held little glory in Europe, so I do think it was the mney that attracted European teams of the day.

Back then it wasnt' very expensive at all -- especially with the wide availability of the Cosworth engine at moderate cost Just look at how many teams started up. See how many teams were mainly "gentlemen" racing. BIG money sponsorship came later - with Lotus mind with the now famous Godl Leaf Team Lotus.

Let’s say that the Cosworth-DFV era was one of the cheaper times to go GP racing. The formula immediately preceding it was VERY expensive when compared to Indy racing of the same years. It was in fact during the 1.5liter formula that Lotus won Indy.

Motor racing circuit attendance was MUCH higher then than it is now.

Circuit attendance was higher, but the TV audience, which brings far more in the way of both total audience and sponsor money, was almost non-existent by comparison.

Worldwide audience of Indy cars ?
No way, pretty much NOBODY outside of the US was taking any feeds on the races - radio, TV or film.
I tihnk we may have a smilar "issue" as the Baseball "WOrld Series"

At the time we’re speaking of virtually none of the current non-European GPs were taking place either, and the US audience for Indycars was HUGE. That’s my point. As the popularity of Indycars in the US was starting to wane, so to the audience outside Europe for GP racing was booming. The same can be said for Baseball which once commanded a far larger audience in the US