Open Wheel Racing Series' first Champ Car World Series calendar is likely
to be trimmed from the 19-event list issued earlier this year to one comprising
just 16 races
source:
crash.net
According to OWRS figurehead Paul Gentilozzi, the schedule will be trimmed
back from its original form, with some as yet unnamed events falling by the
wayside. Interestingly, however, the already postponed St Petersburg event -
cancelled to give both the new series organisers and competing teams time to
recover from the handover from CART - is likely to be re-instated on the
calendar.
"The schedule that we released had some compelling entries because of
contractual obligations that were in place," Gentilozzi told a press conference
convened to explain the acquisition of CART assets, "This new process, of
course, exempts us from some of those obligations and allows us to really put
forth a clean document and we'll put out a new one here in the next couple days,
but the content will be very similar to what you saw. The overall count will be
reduced from 19 to 16, and the major variance here could be one event. I don't
see us adding any more than one event, for 17.
"The question relative to St Petersburg is an important one. South Florida is a
great market and has had a tradition of really welcoming Champ Car. When we knew
the scheduling with Dover was so early in the year, our intention in making the
deal we did was to take those assets. Dover had some conflict and couldn't
operate the race later in the year when we though the window fit us better, so
we made a business deal there to take the assets and we are now working hard
with the City of St Petersburg to schedule an event. At this point, we are
investigating May, but if it has to go to the Fall, we'll do it in the Fall.
"So there will be a rescheduling likely of St Petersburg and we are going to end
up with 16 events."
The complete article at crash.net