Friday, February 8, 2008

Could Open Wheel Racing finally merge?

I’ve just been alerted to the SPEED TV article penned by Robin Miller claiming that the War of Northern Aggression may finally be over, as Miller has written that Champ Car World Series co-owners Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven have come to an agreement with Indy Racing League’s Tony George…

Thus, it appears that CCWS will indeed take up George on his offer of “FREE” Dallara chassis and Honda engines plus the $1.2 million per team entry prize sharing caveat for running an entire Indycar season.

Obviously, there are still many details to be ironed out, especially what the reconstituted 2008 Open Wheel calendar will look like, as the newly proposed season sees the addition of only three CCWS events; Long Beach, Edmonton and Surfers Paradise, yet the problem with the Long Beach date is that it clashes with Indy car’s traditional Japanese race weekend at the Honda owned Twin Ring Motegi track, which means that this event will need to be re-scheduled as both the Long Beach and Kansas race dates are locked-in for ’08.

And I’m unsure of what happens to the remainder of the CCWS scheduled events, as I assume they have already inked contracts? Also, it’s rumoured that there are up to 50 Panoz chassis floating about that will effectively become show cars.

And what will happen with the Champ Car Atlantics series which has a contingent of 24+ team entries for 2008. Stay tuned, as they’re will undoubtedly be more to follow on this most encouraging development! Looks like we’ll actually have bumping on “BOOMP” Day this year, eh? So, hopefully ‘ol Gomer’s vocal chords will be good ‘N rested…