IRL: Time to pay for former Champ Car teams

It had to come one day and that time is right now as former Champ Car teams have received the bills for their Dallara chassis at about $100,000 each which they are expected to pay in full by next January 14th.

In the agreement signed when both open wheel series unified, former teams from Champ Car were given free engines and chassis for the 2008 season but they would have to foot the bill for the 2009 season.

As it stands now, all those teams have paid the bill for the Honda engine leases, but they were still waiting for Dallara's. It came in the mail this week…

Éric Bachelart, Dale Coyne, Carl Haas, Kevin Kalkhoven, Mike Lanigan and Keith Wiggins all received an email from the IRL president of competition Brian Barnhart requesting payment of $100,000 per rolling chassis.

Teams can now make payment arrangements with the IRL, either by asking the series to take the money out of their next TEAM check (each squad is set to receive $1.2 millions per car if they run the full schedule) or work out a payment plan.