John Hopkinson's CART Racing Page

It has been a difficult time for CART which declared itself bankrupt at the end of the 2003 season and it appeared that CART's assets (principally the rights to race at various venues together with stocks of Cosworth engines) would be bought out by Tony George's rival IRL organisation but the assets have been acquired by a group - Open Wheel Racing - which intends to keep Champ Car racing distict and independent from the IRL series.

The great problem is that this uncertainty has caused great problems for race teams who were planning to take part in the CART series. CART had already lost most of its premier teams to the rival IRL series. The opening race for the 2004 series was to have been at St Petersburg in Florida but this had to be cancelled because of lack of car numbers. The opening race is now planned to be at Long Beach and the series organisers claim they confident that they can field at least 18 cars.

The European races have been dropped from the schedule, and the series is looking to concentrate on the Americas and Pacific Rim for its race programme. It is great shame that this once thriving, exciting and entertaining race series is facing such difficulties. The attraction of the series was that it combined city street, race track, and oval racing in one series. Calling upon a range of skills from its star drivers.

It will be interesting to see if the series can rebuild itself. The 2004 racing calandar is expected to be Long Beach, St Petersburg, Monterrey (Mexico), Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto, Vancouver, Road America, Denver, Montreal, Laguna Seca, Surfers Paradise (Australia)and Mexico City. Plans are being developed for more international races in 2005, as well as talk of a race at Las Vegas. It is difficult to see how two rival open wheel race series - Champ Car and IRL - can survive even in such a large market as North America. NASCAR for most American race goers IS motor racing and everything else is just a side show.

On the face of it the IRL has got alot going for it. Most of the leading CART teams had switched their allegiance to the IRL, and the IRL's crown jewel continues to be the Indianapolis 500. The IRL series is based on oval track raceways but there has been talk of racing on road tracks as well. The down side is that with the exception of the Indy 500, the other IRL races do not attract mass interest or even television coverage by the main US TV companies. As stated earlier for most American race goers, motor racing is NASCAR and each week it attracts hugh crowds and receives mass coverage in the media.

So maybe things are not quite so rosy for the IRL, it needs to attract much greater interest from the public for the race series as a whole.

It is clear however that there is no immediate prospect of the two rival series - IRL and Champ cars - sinking their differences.