Champ Car, I Don't Think This Is Going to Work

The CART Champ Car series was, for the longest time, one of my favorite types of racing. Fast cars powered by many kinds of engines, an international cast of drivers, and a diversity of tracks made the series unique among the world's top racing circuits. I even tried to hang on here over the past couple of years as CART withered and died, to be replaced by OWRS and its spec-motor, thin-fielded, tape-delayed Spike TV coverage. But I've had enough. According to Robin Miller over on Speed.com, Champ Car will dump two of the prime road courses in the US, Road America and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and replace them with street races, apparently in Argentina and Korea. I've got nothing against going to other countries to race, but the 2005 schedule now has a grand total of ONE permanent US road course, Portland, which is back only because the IRL asked for too much money. And I know the crowds have been small at Road America and Laguna this year, but that probably has more to do with poor OWRS promotion than anything else (ALMS didn't have any problems going back to both tracks next year, with Laguna adding the GrandAm series).

So that's it - I'm done. Street races a hideous parades, made even worse by OWRS's mandatory pit windows, "push to pass" button, and rotating qualifying schemes. I hope the folks involved return Champ Car to profitability, but I'm off to the (comparatively) greener pastures of sports car racing, where at least they know a classic road course when they see one.