Negotiations Ongoing For Possible IRL/Champ Car Merger

INDIANAPOLIS — Constituents with a stake in American open-wheel racing are still waiting to see if the most advanced discussions to date between the Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series  result in the two groups racing under one umbrella in 2008 and beyond.
High-level sources from both series confirmed to National Speed Sport News that negotiations continue. But with the IndyCar Series opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway less than six weeks away, time is becoming a critical factor.
“If something is going to happen, it will have to be soon,” noted an emissary with inside knowledge of the talks.
Progress has been hampered by the fact that two of the key figures involved in the process have been, or will be, out of the country. IRL  founder Tony George arrived back in the United States, Feb. 17  after spending several days in London, where he traveled to attend  2003 IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon’s wedding. Meanwhile, Champ  Car co-principal Kevin Kalkhoven left for his own three-day trip to  England on the same day to attend a family function.
“We continue to see advantages in a merger with the IRL,” Kalkhoven told NSSN prior to his departure. “Equally, we are quite happy to go it alone. At the moment, we’re going Champ Car racing.”
It is believed that the two competing race series have reached an agreement in principle to work together, and lawyers are toiling to hammer out the details for final approval. However, several key issues, including the date for the IndyCar Series race at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan and the level of support that will be given to teams, remain unresolved.
“Things are progressing, but (the process is) delicate and  complicated,” George stated to NSSN in e-mail correspondence.
The nine teams expected to compete in Champ Car this year are in limbo, awaiting information as to whether they will have to frantically gear up to race in the IndyCar Series. Champ Car’s Panoz chassis and turbocharged Cosworth engines are not compatible with the IRL’s single-seat formula, which utilizes a chassis made by Italian firm  Dallara and normally-aspirated Honda engines.
“It’s just an awkward time where everyone is on hold and the media is trying to get the story out there to the fans, but it’s too premature to be able to tell the story because the discussions really have to be finished before everyone in the IRL and Champ Car know what potentially could happen,” stated Champ Car team owner Derrick Walker in a letter to AutoRacing1.com.
“The encouraging sign is that all parties are talking and there is nothing that seems to be off of the table at the moment.”
Meanwhile, existing IndyCar Series teams expressed mixed reactions about the possibility of Champ Car being merged into the IRL.
At Daytona Int’l Speedway, leading team owner Roger Penske said he supported the proposed open-wheel unification and told the St. Petersburg Times he would go so far as to provide incoming Champ Car teams with “an extra car or pieces in order to get them going.” 
Penske switched the open-wheel portion of his racing operation from the then CART-sanctioned Champ Car series to the IRL full-time in 2002.
Chip Ganassi, another former CART team owner who now fields cars in NASCAR and the IRL, also offered to part with excess equipment to assist in the unification process.
“I got a call that said if we get this thing back together, they might need a (spare) car,” he related to ESPN.com. “I said, ‘no problem.’
“I just hope it happens,” he added. “There can’t be five people on the planet that don’t want it to happen, so let’s hope it happens.”
One of those five people is apparently A.J. Foyt, who has competed in the IRL since its 1996 start-up and has longstanding ties to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Hulman-George family, is vehemently opposed to Champ Car teams receiving assistance from the IRL in order to make the transition between series.
“I would throw a damned fit and would want to damned near pack up my bags if that was all true,” Foyt fumed last week during a panel discussion with former Daytona 500 winners. “And I think a lot of people that have been loyal to (the IRL) would do the same thing  because it just wouldn’t be right for people who had to buy and spend a lot of money.”
Ganassi believes that while integrating Champ Car into the IRL would not instantly reverse the decade-long decline open-wheel racing has endured, it will certainly turn the sport in the right direction.
“It would be nice to get all of the issues in one place,” he said. 
“Get all of the rules makers in one place. Get all of the promoters in one place. Get everybody at one table instead of two. It would  certainly end a lot of confusion in the marketplace.”
Kalkhoven, who in partnership with Gerald Forsythe kept the Champ Car series going by acquiring the assets of CART in a 2004 bankruptcy auction, said the negotiating parties all recognize the need for unity. But he cautioned that the effort to unify open-wheel racing in a short time frame could still fall through.
“Every year these discussions come up in January and February and they are gone by March,” he said. “The reality is both sides are losing and it took somebody to stand up and put egos aside to see if it, in fact, will work.”