So it looks like they have finally seen sense and decided to merge. I think this is great news for American single seater racing, it should be taken more seriously across the world now.
Yeah this can pretty much only be a good thing. 19 races in a season is a lot though, considering that it's already February and they haven't even confirmed the dates yet. A lot of the smaller teams in both series may have problems raising the money to show up at each race.
NASCAR venues are generally much closer together. Most of the races are in the southeast, and the others are in the contiguous US, except for Mexico. (Someone who follows NASCAR verify this, because I'm not sure).
It's a lot easier to move race cars, a team and all its equipment 300 miles from, say, North Carolina to Georgia than it is from Japan to Australia.
19 is a quite a few compared to other open-wheel series. I wouldn't say it's too many, but like I said some of the smaller teams might struggle to make it to the flyaway races especially.
I agree with the distance =) There are far more ovals than temporary street courses or road courses in the states so more wouldn't be possible I don't think.
It costs alot to move everything too. I know F1 will pay to move equipment for a team if they score a point I don't know how IRL does it. Hopefully IRL can bring in more than one car make too will see.
I know nothing about American Motor Racing, but is this correct?
Ages ago, there was a series where these two were together, racing on ovals and non-ovals.
They fell out, and now we have (or had) IRL, which races on ovals (Dario Franchitti and Dan Wheldon?) and Champ Car, which doesn't (Seb Bordais [last season], that dutch bloke who raced for Minardi and the woman driver who had a massive crash?)
And now they're getting back together again? So this season'll be on ovals and non-ovals?
It used to be called CART... it is America's Formula 1 so to speak. I grew up with CART, and ever since the IRL & Champ Car split, I haven't been really happy ever since. CART had great moments with Zanardi, Montoya, and many other great names. Back then in CART the champ car chassis was made for both oval and road courses and only they had to make aero changes when they came to the oval (thin little wings). But now the current Champ Car chassis is more of a road course one, and I wonder what they will do to make it drive on the oval. AND, I wonder what they will do with some of the IRL drivers, because I am sure more than half of the IRL teams will be out of a chance to drive in the new merged series.
Oh well, we'll see what happens, I am glad to hear this
Before 1996, there was just one premier open-wheel series called CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams). It raced on superspeedways (Indy 500), short ovals, permanent road courses and street circuits.
Tony George's family has owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for decades. He was on the board of directors of CART, but his opinions were basically ignored. CART continued to do what it wanted in spite of objections on the part of the owner of the track which held CART's biggest race of the year.
Because of this, Tony George decided to leave CART and found his own series which only raced on ovals. Regs were much more restrictive in order to reduce costs which were spiralling out of control in CART. CART lost the Indy 500, but most of the big drivers stayed in CART. In the first couple seasons of IRL there were very few races and even fewer seriously talented drivers.
IRL struggled to gain much prestige especially in the first few years. CART was strong for a few years after the split, but it gradually waned into obscurity. Somewhere in here the named to CCWS (Champ Car World Series).
A few years ago IRL branched out into road courses. It also gained a few big-name teams which defected from CART. This is when the rumors of a merger started to fly.
Sounds like a sensible decision seeing the mess US racing is in.
Well no it's not really. A single seater has to have a through bolt check of all its suspension and driveshafts before everytime it goes out on track. It's amazing how often things do go wrong and how easily a simple fix can prevent a certain high speed failure. A stock car on the other hand is much simpler everything is tougher and heavier, much more is road based technology that's designed to last thousands of miles without falling apart. As a result much less actual car prep has to be done at events, the difference between GT cars and single seaters in terms of running at an event is huge, a single seater, even a small little one doing short races, takes constant attention and things are always going wrong and being quickly sorted out.
In contrast a well prepared GT car, and we're talking seriously fast cars here, simply turn up drive out of the transporter and are ready to go. Over the course of 3 hours (or even 24 hours) a good team can realistically expect the only things they'll have to do is shove fuel and tires on it maybe change brakes and check the oil level, obviously that's assuming the drivers manage to keep it on the black stuff. Between qualifying and a 100 minute race (they considered that a sprint race ) the only things checked on the car were tire pressures, wheel nuts and levels. If you can literally run a car like that out of the box and drive it in at the end of the day you do not need an army of people to run it, they've run 3 cars with 3 competent mechanics at the Nurburgring 24 hours. In a series where there isn't even such a need to fix problems and damage when they happen because the race isn't long enough like Nascar the costs are obviously going to be much lower. Those IRL cars will be stripped be stripped between race weekends and huge amounts of work will have to be done on them, the stock cars on the other hand can go back in the trailer and assuming they've got no problems will need minimal work.
Please allow this merger to go through, and allow CART to die once and for all. Tony George is a terrible person for destroying American Open-Wheel Racing. Hopefully he can see it go somewhat full circle, though I fear it will never reach its previous heights.
IMO that name is crap. It shouldn't have IRL in it, or CCWS in it.
Thinking about it though it's a tough call on what to actually name this thing...
It should imply an equal merger, not a lame buy-out situation. Are the 2008 rules more like IRL or more like CCWS? In other words, will the races be more like last year's IRL races or more like last year's CCWS races? Have they even decided on rules for this year?
This whole thing seems really rushed for what should be a world-class open wheel series. Perhaps they'll continue to run as two series for a while while they work on the details.
I really hope this works out though. Hopefully this merger will bring back American open wheel racing to the world stage like it was in the 90s. To have F1 teams look closely at top drivers like they did with Villeneuve in 95 would really bring prestige and credibility back to a sport that has been in the doldrums since the split.
Nice Nice i like the old racing, when champ car turned his name to champ car it was boooring... like UF1's in Aston Grand Prix, and you knew who always won. Now more drivers and more tracks, this is gonna be a hell of action
Well that sucks. Hopefully they'll pick up some better circuits in the coming years. Here's where they went last year:
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Streets of St. Petersburg
Twin Ring Motegi
Kansas Speedway Indianapolis Motor Speedway The Milwaukee Mile
Texas Motor Speedway
Iowa Speedway
Richmond International Raceway Watkins Glen International
Nashville Superspeedway
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course Michigan International Speedway Kentucky Speedway
Infineon Raceway The Raceway on Belle Isle
Chicagoland Speedway
+3 races, because the Edmonton GP will be counted to the regular season.
I think its a bit bad... I was keen on watchin' the Replay of the races in Assen, Zolder and Jerez on Eurosport the day after it happenes (I don't have Eurosport 2)
Some great other tracks would be missing where Champcar would have taken place:
Road America
Laguna Seca
Mexico City
(Montreal) *I hate Nascar for stealing the rights for racing on it from the Good Old Champcar and the only possibility to compare them with F1s*
Only there's less people involved and less people watching. NASCAR has all the famous american drivers. They also have most of the sponsors Indycar had in 1995...Valvoline, Budweiser, Texaco, etc...
Basically single-seaters have been decimated and are rebuilding from the ground up.
I always loved Cart/Champcar. Loved it more then F1. Montoya, Zinardi, Fittapoldi, Andretti, Rahal. Remembered those names as a kid (only grew up with Montoya to formula one). Never liked the IRL and maybe wont ever, just gotta see what the merge is like i guess.
Pole Position with Montoya at detriot il never forget. Watch 1min-1.05min, and 1.35min .
