coolhand
05-23-05, 02:06 PM
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/champcar/17093/
OPEN-WHEEL REUNIFICATION? DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH
Honda may well be set to join a distinguished list of those who have tried -- and failed - to mend the rift in American open-wheel racing (click here for story). That list would now appear to include Mario Andretti, who took the initiative some weeks back, focusing on an interim step of getting both the Indy Racing League and Champ Car to adopt a common rules package for 2007. If common rules package was still a long way from a unified series, at least Andretti (and many others) believed the opportunity for back and forth interplay between the two series would be a positive first step toward an eventual unification of the two.
Although reports surfaced earlier this month that suggesting the idea was D.O.A -- IRL founder Tony George said he saw little to be gained from a common rules package -- at least one meeting subsequently took place involving most of the leading principles in both camps. Now Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven has added his voice to the chorus saying any hopes for a reunification are dead; at least until next May’s annual revival of the topic.
“There’s no way, in my opinion that these two sides are going to come together,” said Kalkhoven today in Monterrey. “And it’s not because there wouldn’t be advantages and that . . . it wouldn’t create quite a lot of good things. I believe that Tony has talked about his vision which differs from our rather more practical philosophy….
“This is not a time where name-calling or finger-pointing does any good at all. I think everyone recognizes that there would be certain advantages; everybody recognizes that it’s not going to happen.”
What was that about “next May’s annual revival of the topic?”
“Every May, inevitably, those who have a great passion for the sport gather ’round and say, ‘Do you remember when Pole Day meant something?’ And, ‘Do you remember when Bump Day meant something?’ And, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be great to get the two series back together again?’” said Kalkhoven “There’s this wave of nostalgia and this wave of longing to have the two series back together. There are always a set of discussions that end up taking place and that have, historically, gone nowhere. That’s roughly why it takes place every May and it is during that period that people like Mario Andretti, who have such a deep love and passion, who understands the history of the Indianapolis 500 and would love to see the recreation of the glory days.
“There are people who have a great love for open-wheel motorsport, approach both sides and say, ‘What can we do?’ And these are people whose love for the sport is greater than their political aims. And that’s why we go through this once a year.”
That said, Kalkhoven confirmed that he will, in fact -- meet with Honda’s Robert Clarke tomorrow as part of Honda’s new initiative to reunify American open-wheel racing. But it’s hard to see how the outcome will be any different than past initiatives….
GOOD COMPANY
According to Newman/Haas, Bruno Junqueira’s win in Monterrey brings the team into a tie with Penske Racing for Indy/Champ Car wins since 1983, the year the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based team first entered open-wheel competition. During that period, Marlboro Team Penske has earned 84 Indy/Champ Car wins in Champ Car and IRL competition, while Newman/Haas has now taken 84 wins in Champ Car competition. Penske still enjoys a comfortable overall lead, however, with 122 wins in 38 seasons of Champ and Indy car competition.
LONG BEACH, MONTERREY FUTURES?
Two races into the 2005 Champ Car World Series, two races whose future is uncertain. Six weeks after running the final Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach under its existing contract with the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, Champ Car ran the final Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix under its existing contract with promoter OCESA. Will there be a Champ Car race in Monterrey in 2006?
“We like this race,” says Champ Car president Dick Eidswick. “It’s a great track, it’s a great setting, the crowd (count) is up this year and the promoters have done a great job. So we feel pretty positive about this event. That said, it’s a new contract, we’re a new organization (as opposed to Championship Auto Racing Teams, that had the original contract for Monterrey), so there’s a lot of details to work out. But I don’t see any insurmountable obstacles.”
Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven was a little more circumspect.
“Attendance is up, we’ll wait and see what the final counts are like,” he said. “And we’ll wait and see; we’ll have a schedule out in the July time frame this year. There’s increasing competition for our races, both nationally and internationally, so we’re very happy at the number of countries that want our races. We think this is a great event but….”
As for Long Beach, Kalkhoven was guardedly optimistic about the Champ Car World Series returning to the streets of the Southern California city in ’06. The Indy Racing League has made no secret of the fact it would like to sanction the race next year and published reports have Champ Car in negotiations with the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach’s parent company -- Dover Downs Entertainment, Inc. -- to purchase the event. So, what is the status of Long Beach from Kalkhoven’s standpoint?
“I think it is moving along in a very positive manner,” he said. “There’s a process we’re going through . . . (Dover Downs) is a public company, and there are rules and regulations thy have to follow. I think you’ll see in the next month that things should become relatively clear.”
As far as reports of Champ Car’s interest in buying the event outright, Kalkhoven said “We’ve made no secret about (being interested in buying it. If it were to (be sold), we would certainly like to purchase it.”
Although Indy Racing League officials have stated they are only interested in sanctioning the event, it is believed that a group headed by former Champ Car team owner Barry Green -- who promoted the recent IRL St. Petersburg race -- is also taking a look at Long Beach on the IRL’s behalf. Kalkhoven says, however, that Champ Car has a price it is willing to pay for Long Beach and will not engage in a bidding war.
“There is a value that we’ve assigned to it,” he says. “That’s the value we’ve told them and we will not engage in a bidding war.”
Not unlike a few years ago when he, Gerald Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi were negotiating to buy Championship Auto Racing Teams, Kalkhoven politely declined to offer much in the way of specifics regarding the Long Beach situation in deference to federal law pertaining to the sale of assets of a publicly held company such as Dover Downs Entertainment.
“I can’t say anything more, because it’s stil under a confidentiality agreement,” he said. “We can’t say anything. You have to remember it’s a public company and under rule 404 of Sarbanes/Oxley people like Martha Stewart end up going to jail! So . . . the rules and regulations when you’re dealing with a public company are substantially tighter than with a private company.”
MONTERREY NUMBERS
For the record, official attendance figures released by the Monterrey promoter set this weekend’s gate at 190,319, with 111,518 on race day. Good numbers, and an increase from last year’s total of 183,311. But considerably less than the numbers from the first three years of the race when 315,000 (’01), 221,000 (’02) and 215,771 (’03) were credited with attending.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
Prior to today’s Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix, few would have bet on Bjorn Wirdheim leading 18 laps and, at one stage, having the fastest lap of the race. After all, the Swede qualified a rather disappointing 15th and had shown no particular pace on the weekend. But the topsy-turvy nature of the race, with no less than nine full-course yellows, gave Wirdheim and the HVM, Inc. team a chance at a gambling strategy that nearly paid off.
Stretching their fuel mileage to the max, Wirdheim almooooost made it to the checkered flag on one pit stop. Indeed, he was leading the race with just nine laps to go when he got out of shape in the Turn 3/4 chicane, enabling Bruno Junqueira and Andrew Ranger to get past. Of course, at that point, Wirdheim was not only saving fuel like mad, he was nursing a set of Bridgestone tires with 30 laps on them.
Alas, his bid for a top-four finish came undone on the last lap when he ran out of fuel exiting the final turn and sputtered past the finish line in eighth place. The hardest part of his race? The restarts.
“That’s something I have very litttle experience with,” allowed Wirdheim. “I had problems with the first couple of restarts, before I got a handle on them. I think I was overheating my tires in my efforts to get heat in them for the restarts. It’s one of the things we need to practice on when we go testing.”
Then again, after today’s race with its nine restarts, Wirdheim got plenty of practice already. And didn’t do too badly at that. One of the most most impressive parts of Wirdheim’s performance was the fact that he made three restarts at the head of the field with the likes of Paul Tracy, Oriol Servia and Junqueira breathing down his neck and never put a wheel wrong.
KALKHOVEN STILL HURTING
Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven figures to have a busy week ahead of him. After his planned meeting with Honda’s Robert Clarke tomorrow, he is slated to head to Minnesota for a visit to the Mayo Clinic to check out the progress -- or lack thereof -- on the broken right shoulder he suffered in a skiing accident in late March.
“After eight weeks the pain is as bad as ever,” he says. “Which means I either have to take drugs, which I hate doing and which causes you to lose your focus, or I cope with lack of sleep . . . which I don’t much like either and which also makes it difficult to focus very long. So we’re going to have the experts take a look at it.”
OPEN-WHEEL REUNIFICATION? DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH
Honda may well be set to join a distinguished list of those who have tried -- and failed - to mend the rift in American open-wheel racing (click here for story). That list would now appear to include Mario Andretti, who took the initiative some weeks back, focusing on an interim step of getting both the Indy Racing League and Champ Car to adopt a common rules package for 2007. If common rules package was still a long way from a unified series, at least Andretti (and many others) believed the opportunity for back and forth interplay between the two series would be a positive first step toward an eventual unification of the two.
Although reports surfaced earlier this month that suggesting the idea was D.O.A -- IRL founder Tony George said he saw little to be gained from a common rules package -- at least one meeting subsequently took place involving most of the leading principles in both camps. Now Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven has added his voice to the chorus saying any hopes for a reunification are dead; at least until next May’s annual revival of the topic.
“There’s no way, in my opinion that these two sides are going to come together,” said Kalkhoven today in Monterrey. “And it’s not because there wouldn’t be advantages and that . . . it wouldn’t create quite a lot of good things. I believe that Tony has talked about his vision which differs from our rather more practical philosophy….
“This is not a time where name-calling or finger-pointing does any good at all. I think everyone recognizes that there would be certain advantages; everybody recognizes that it’s not going to happen.”
What was that about “next May’s annual revival of the topic?”
“Every May, inevitably, those who have a great passion for the sport gather ’round and say, ‘Do you remember when Pole Day meant something?’ And, ‘Do you remember when Bump Day meant something?’ And, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be great to get the two series back together again?’” said Kalkhoven “There’s this wave of nostalgia and this wave of longing to have the two series back together. There are always a set of discussions that end up taking place and that have, historically, gone nowhere. That’s roughly why it takes place every May and it is during that period that people like Mario Andretti, who have such a deep love and passion, who understands the history of the Indianapolis 500 and would love to see the recreation of the glory days.
“There are people who have a great love for open-wheel motorsport, approach both sides and say, ‘What can we do?’ And these are people whose love for the sport is greater than their political aims. And that’s why we go through this once a year.”
That said, Kalkhoven confirmed that he will, in fact -- meet with Honda’s Robert Clarke tomorrow as part of Honda’s new initiative to reunify American open-wheel racing. But it’s hard to see how the outcome will be any different than past initiatives….
GOOD COMPANY
According to Newman/Haas, Bruno Junqueira’s win in Monterrey brings the team into a tie with Penske Racing for Indy/Champ Car wins since 1983, the year the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based team first entered open-wheel competition. During that period, Marlboro Team Penske has earned 84 Indy/Champ Car wins in Champ Car and IRL competition, while Newman/Haas has now taken 84 wins in Champ Car competition. Penske still enjoys a comfortable overall lead, however, with 122 wins in 38 seasons of Champ and Indy car competition.
LONG BEACH, MONTERREY FUTURES?
Two races into the 2005 Champ Car World Series, two races whose future is uncertain. Six weeks after running the final Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach under its existing contract with the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, Champ Car ran the final Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix under its existing contract with promoter OCESA. Will there be a Champ Car race in Monterrey in 2006?
“We like this race,” says Champ Car president Dick Eidswick. “It’s a great track, it’s a great setting, the crowd (count) is up this year and the promoters have done a great job. So we feel pretty positive about this event. That said, it’s a new contract, we’re a new organization (as opposed to Championship Auto Racing Teams, that had the original contract for Monterrey), so there’s a lot of details to work out. But I don’t see any insurmountable obstacles.”
Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven was a little more circumspect.
“Attendance is up, we’ll wait and see what the final counts are like,” he said. “And we’ll wait and see; we’ll have a schedule out in the July time frame this year. There’s increasing competition for our races, both nationally and internationally, so we’re very happy at the number of countries that want our races. We think this is a great event but….”
As for Long Beach, Kalkhoven was guardedly optimistic about the Champ Car World Series returning to the streets of the Southern California city in ’06. The Indy Racing League has made no secret of the fact it would like to sanction the race next year and published reports have Champ Car in negotiations with the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach’s parent company -- Dover Downs Entertainment, Inc. -- to purchase the event. So, what is the status of Long Beach from Kalkhoven’s standpoint?
“I think it is moving along in a very positive manner,” he said. “There’s a process we’re going through . . . (Dover Downs) is a public company, and there are rules and regulations thy have to follow. I think you’ll see in the next month that things should become relatively clear.”
As far as reports of Champ Car’s interest in buying the event outright, Kalkhoven said “We’ve made no secret about (being interested in buying it. If it were to (be sold), we would certainly like to purchase it.”
Although Indy Racing League officials have stated they are only interested in sanctioning the event, it is believed that a group headed by former Champ Car team owner Barry Green -- who promoted the recent IRL St. Petersburg race -- is also taking a look at Long Beach on the IRL’s behalf. Kalkhoven says, however, that Champ Car has a price it is willing to pay for Long Beach and will not engage in a bidding war.
“There is a value that we’ve assigned to it,” he says. “That’s the value we’ve told them and we will not engage in a bidding war.”
Not unlike a few years ago when he, Gerald Forsythe and Paul Gentilozzi were negotiating to buy Championship Auto Racing Teams, Kalkhoven politely declined to offer much in the way of specifics regarding the Long Beach situation in deference to federal law pertaining to the sale of assets of a publicly held company such as Dover Downs Entertainment.
“I can’t say anything more, because it’s stil under a confidentiality agreement,” he said. “We can’t say anything. You have to remember it’s a public company and under rule 404 of Sarbanes/Oxley people like Martha Stewart end up going to jail! So . . . the rules and regulations when you’re dealing with a public company are substantially tighter than with a private company.”
MONTERREY NUMBERS
For the record, official attendance figures released by the Monterrey promoter set this weekend’s gate at 190,319, with 111,518 on race day. Good numbers, and an increase from last year’s total of 183,311. But considerably less than the numbers from the first three years of the race when 315,000 (’01), 221,000 (’02) and 215,771 (’03) were credited with attending.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
Prior to today’s Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix, few would have bet on Bjorn Wirdheim leading 18 laps and, at one stage, having the fastest lap of the race. After all, the Swede qualified a rather disappointing 15th and had shown no particular pace on the weekend. But the topsy-turvy nature of the race, with no less than nine full-course yellows, gave Wirdheim and the HVM, Inc. team a chance at a gambling strategy that nearly paid off.
Stretching their fuel mileage to the max, Wirdheim almooooost made it to the checkered flag on one pit stop. Indeed, he was leading the race with just nine laps to go when he got out of shape in the Turn 3/4 chicane, enabling Bruno Junqueira and Andrew Ranger to get past. Of course, at that point, Wirdheim was not only saving fuel like mad, he was nursing a set of Bridgestone tires with 30 laps on them.
Alas, his bid for a top-four finish came undone on the last lap when he ran out of fuel exiting the final turn and sputtered past the finish line in eighth place. The hardest part of his race? The restarts.
“That’s something I have very litttle experience with,” allowed Wirdheim. “I had problems with the first couple of restarts, before I got a handle on them. I think I was overheating my tires in my efforts to get heat in them for the restarts. It’s one of the things we need to practice on when we go testing.”
Then again, after today’s race with its nine restarts, Wirdheim got plenty of practice already. And didn’t do too badly at that. One of the most most impressive parts of Wirdheim’s performance was the fact that he made three restarts at the head of the field with the likes of Paul Tracy, Oriol Servia and Junqueira breathing down his neck and never put a wheel wrong.
KALKHOVEN STILL HURTING
Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven figures to have a busy week ahead of him. After his planned meeting with Honda’s Robert Clarke tomorrow, he is slated to head to Minnesota for a visit to the Mayo Clinic to check out the progress -- or lack thereof -- on the broken right shoulder he suffered in a skiing accident in late March.
“After eight weeks the pain is as bad as ever,” he says. “Which means I either have to take drugs, which I hate doing and which causes you to lose your focus, or I cope with lack of sleep . . . which I don’t much like either and which also makes it difficult to focus very long. So we’re going to have the experts take a look at it.”