2007 Champ Cars in Vegas...ends season in Phoenix

The other shoe dropped...the downtown area--north of the Strip...gets to stage the 2007 Champ Car Opener on the weekend of April 4-6...the season ends in the streets of Phoenix...date still TBA...but early November is more likely. The question...will the schedule include back to back Vegas and Long Beach..or do they get separated by a couple of weeks? Methinks that question gets answered by Denver time.

Open Wheel Reunification isn't happening in 2007--2008 at the earliest

Interesting chat I had with Steve Johnson, Champ Car's President and CEO at Toronto. The 2007 schedule is taking shape...and so far...he's plugging in events for May 0f 2007. That would make it next to impossible for a team to qualify for the Indy 500.

There is a Champ Car event planned for Las Vegas's downtown in '07--not the strip--promoted by the same people trying to get Phoenix off the ground, despite the comments and roadblocks thrown by Phoenix International Raceway's President Bryan Sperber.

Johnson doesn't rule out reunification...but he has to keep the nuts and bolts tightened on the day to day operations.

F1 back "home" again in Indiana?

Another win for the "tifosi" (Ferrari fans...whose near fanaticism makes the average NASCAR fan's look like a passing interest) @ the Brickyard...Perhaps a win for American Formula One fans.

Anton H. "Tony" George must be a magnet for public negotiations...The major domo of 16th St & Georgetown road is chatting with Formula One's "el supremo" a/k/a Bernie Ecclestone...who has a penchant for negotiation by bomb-throwing in public (witness the statement that F1 didn't need America)...and cast iron flexibility in private.

I did not expect 120-thousand fans at Indy. You cannot estimate the F1 crowd by the numbers of fans in the stands lining the front straight. My suspicion: Neither Tony nor Bernie expected the crowd they saw, given the "sturm und drang" of the 2005 Michelin tire issue. IMS sources tell me yes, they are talking...and something is likely to come of those talks in a couple of weeks.

As for F1 in Vegas--an interesting concept...the town has more than enough to hold the interest of El Supremo, Flavio Briatore, et al. But we won't likely see any of the casinos pony up land and build garages.

Tony George has the infrastructure in place.

My comment: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Both Bernie and Tony ought to take a cue from that perspicacious labor analyst, "Larry the Cable Guy."