CONCORD, N.C. — The countdown clock on the Champ Car Atlantic Series was still ticking down Monday with some 55 days until the Long Beach Grand Prix.
With last week’s announced agreement unifying the Champ Car World Series and rival Indy Racing League, the Atlantic Series finds itself without a sanctioning body and without a 2008 schedule etched in stone, but Vicki O’Connor, managing director of the series, says the relatively healthy Atlantic Series will race on and is preparing for its 35th-anniversary season this year.
O’Connor said the schedule and the sanctioning body are being worked out as the agreement between Champ Car and the IRL is scheduled to be announced Wednesday from Homestead-Miami Speedway, where IRL pre-season testing will get underway. 
“We’ll open at Long Beach obviously on April 20,” said O’Connor of this year’s schedule. “It’ll be a mix of (support races with) ALMS, Grand Am and the IRL — and maybe a couple of stand-alone events.”
O’Connor said 15 race teams with 28 cars have committed to running in this year’s Atlantic Series, which will again have Cooper Tires and Mazda as its primary sponsors, tire and engine suppliers.
Discussions are now centered around finding a sanctioning body for the Atlantic Series, and O’Connor said there has been a lot of interest from groups around the country.
“We have a lot of options,” she said. “It could be anybody that sanctions races in the U.S. at this point. Fortunately, we have a lot of people who are talking with us right now.”
Some of the likely possibilities include the International Motor Sports Ass’n (IMSA), which sanctions the American Le Mans Series, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), Grand Am or perhaps even the IRL, though a combining of the Atlantic Series with the Indy Pro Series would be impossible for this season. Like Toyota Atlantic, the IRL’s developmental division, the Indy Pro Series, has had car counts of more than 20 for the past couple of seasons, so finding enough Indy Pro race cars for the Atlantics to switch would be impossible.
The Atlantic Series cars are street- and road-course racers, while the IPS cars are built primarily for oval racing, so it would be impossible for the Atlantics to race a major portion of the IPS schedule.
“We haven’t really discussed combining the two,” O’Connor said.
She also said she expects “a few bumps” with schedule changes and the like over the next little while, but sees the unification of America’s two prominent open-wheel series as an overriding positive.
“I think the whole thing is very good for open-wheel racing in America,” she said. “We’ll be OK. The stability and popularity of open-wheel racing’s big series can only be a good thing for all of us.”