Champ Car and IRL to unify

Champ Car and Indy Racing League have agreed to unify the two series in principle from the 2008 season onwards.

The new series will be called Indy Racing League and will be known as the IndyCar series. The Indy Racing League broke away from Champ Car in 1996 taking the Indianapolis 500 with it, but in recent years both series have been fighting against falling sponsor investment and falling spectator numbers.

Full details haven't yet been announced, but provisionally there is a 2008 test scheduled for Wednesday. About six teams from Champ Car are expected to join IRL and will receive financial compensation for doing so, while the rest are expected to fold.

The 3 most important scheduled Champ Car races will be on the IRL calendar. The European races of Zolder, Assen and Jerez won't take place.

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so they are going to use the crap indycar chassis for this merger? seems like this is a bad merger for the public.
have to watch inferior cars (indycars as oposed to champcars) at crappier tracks (and too many ovals). a lot of the champcar tracks are fantastic and are more interesting then f1 tracks
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[www.grandprixgames.org]

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X (@ed24f1)

Agreed, this makes very little sense. Any official sources ?

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Official sources? We've been talking about it for 4 pages in another thread, with plenty of official sources, quotes and links.

Agreed, this makes very little sense. Any official sources ?

What makes little sense? Using the IRL chassis? Well lets take a look at things

IRL Chassis -
Dallara - good safety record (yes, look it up), good reliability, no know technical issues
Panoz (G-Force) - poor safety record, slow, issues with electronics

CCWS Chassis -
Panoz DP01 - Poor safety record, poor reliability, major technical issues*

*Including, but not limited to, the fuel tank not venting, the gearbox shedding cogs, the electronics randomly catching fire, the software confusing Push 2 Pass and the Pit limiter, the chassis cracking under load after just 50 laps, and the starter motor not working.

Whilst the Dallara may not be the prettiest car in the world, unlike the Panoz DP01 (and in fact most of the racing cars Panoz has ever produced), it actually works and is easily the most realistic choice for a unified series. Not to mention that Panoz couldn't keep up with the supply of parts and chassis which CCWS required for the 2007 season, so asking them to keep up with a 25-30 car grid set of parts would be an impossibility. The idea of a Panoz DP01 take a rearward impact on an oval isn't worth thinking about anyway. The consequences would be horrific.

seems like this is a bad merger for the public.

Seems like the public will actually be able to SEE this series. Had they merged the other way then we wouldn't be able to watch it since the TV deal which CCWS got for 2008 was so poor that only a handful of races would be shown in there entirety...and only a couple of them would be live. IRL on the other hand has full live coverage in the US and most European countries.

at crappier tracks (and too many ovals).

Think you'll find most of the circuits such as Long Beach, Cleveland, Road America have already stated they want to break into the IRL calender (and obviously if you'd have read up on it you'd know a handful already have, such as Long Beach and possibly Surfers Paradise). IRL cannot simply change all its contracts and schedules at the last minute like people want, so cannot adopt the CCWS series that quickly.

a lot of the champcar tracks are fantastic and are more interesting then f1 tracks

A lot of them are complete junk too. The Las Vegas Street Circuit sucks, Jerez sucks, Zolder sucks, Assen sucks, Edmonton sucks, Mexico City sucks. And if you want to get picky, IRL goes to the old Detroit Belle Isle circuit (which is fantastic), St Petersberg, Watkins Glen and Mid Ohio which are outstanding circuits. The CCWS circuits are not lost. And if you think we won't see circuits such as Road America appear on the IRL calender in coming years then you might be a little mad.

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Only thing wrong with this is that the Dallara looks like a toy :p

other than that, a merge was best now than later. now its done, sort the cars/tracks at a later more conveniant time. Most important thing is there is now going to be solid foundation to build on again :D

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

All in all the merger is a good thing to happen and the only thing right. And I think it needs at least a year for all things to settle right. BUT in the end we might get a really strong, versatile and interesting Series back as we had it in the mid and late nineties.

PS: But the Dallara is one hell of an ugly car...the airbox is too bulky, the nose is far too low and much too long. Though as IRL plans to introduce a new car in 2010 (or was it 2009?) there is hope for this as well. As long as they dont stick with the old car as a template.

IRL is not a template series.

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The car by the looks of it was made for ovals, which are the main tracks the series runs on. Im sure when it comes to the redesign, there will be a nice compramise of tracsk then so the car will not really be specific to ovals as much as it appears now.

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

Forsythe wont join the other champcar teams in the IRL, it will stop existing, pitty, one of my favorite teams with one of the best livery's.

oh man.. just read it.. bad news... anyways i hope Paul Tracy gets a good ride, i'm sure he can beat a lot of IRL regulars...

Iceman-Kimi Wrote:
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> Forsythe wont join the other champcar teams in the
> IRL, it will stop existing, pitty, one of my
> favorite teams with one of the best livery's.

It's quite funny really. They said it was because they were unable to secure a sponsor. But they were sponsored by Indeck, which GERRY owns. Basicly he is unwilling to sponsor his own team anymore. Can't swallow his pride and admit that hes played a big part in the failure of the CCWS.

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Slash Wrote:
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> oh man.. just read it.. bad news... anyways i hope
> Paul Tracy gets a good ride, i'm sure he can beat
> a lot of IRL regulars...

@#$%& :\

Has the official schedule been released for the unified series yet? I know I read somewhere that Long Beach and Surfers Paradise have been retained, but was wondering if any others off the CCWS schedule will make it this season?



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle

Long Beach will be a demonstration event for 2008 using the Panoz DP01. It will be the last race the chassis runs, and the Long Beach GP will return as a full event in 2009. It was not possible to include it for an official event in 2009 because of the Motegi event.

Surfers Paradise will be on the calender in 2009, but its currently an unknown for 2008 because of Chicagolands contract to be the final race of the season.

Portland, Cleveland and Road America should return in 2009 as well. For 2008 the Road America event will be an ALMS event only.

It has to be remembered that the Indy Car calender was already set months ago, so introducing new races is almost impossible for 2008.

The Champ Car Atlantic Series will be run by SCCA IIRC.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2008 06:36AM by DaveEllis.

Personally I will be glad to see the Champ Car dates on next years slate. I can think of a couple of ovals they should have dropped this season as a matter of fact. Richmond for Indy? C'mon....



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle

Edmonton might be on the 2008 calendar as well.

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Grid for Homestead:

No Driver Team
2 AJ Foyt IV Vision Racing
3 Helio Castroneves Team Penske
4 Vitor Meira Panther Racing
5 Oriol Servia KV Racing Technology
6 Ryan Briscoe Team Penske
7 Danica Patrick Andretti Green Racing
8 Will Power KV Racing Technology
9 Scott Dixon Chip Ganassi Racing
10 Dan Wheldon Chip Ganassi Racing
11 Tony Kanaan Andretti Green Racing
14 Darren Manning AJ Foyt Racing
15 Buddy Rice Dreyer & Reinbold Racing
17 Ryan Hunter-Reay Rahal Letterman Racing
18 Bruno Junqueira Dale Coyne Racing
19 Mario Moraes Dale Coyne Racing
20 Ed Carpenter Vision Racing
23 Milka Duno Dreyer & Reinbold Racing
24 Jay Howard Roth Racing
25 Marty Roth Roth Racing
26 Marco Andretti Andretti Green Racing
27 Hideki Mutoh Andretti Green Racing
33 Ernesto Viso HVM Racing
34 Franck Perera Conquest Racing
36 Enrique Bernoldi Conquest Racing
02 Justin Wilson Newman Haas Lanigan Racing
06 Graham Rahal Newman Haas Lanigan Racing

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