No Ovals in CC's future?

[Chitownfan]

Read between the lines-looks like Milwaukee and Vegas are gone after next year.

Winding Future

Oval track racing is on the way out in the Champ Car series, meaning the circuit could eventually pull out of Milwaukee and Las Vegas, says series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven.

"If people are going to watch oval racing, they're going to watch NASCAR," Kalkhoven said.

Kalkhoven said of the oval tracks in Milwaukee and Las Vegas: "We have them on the schedule next year. We're going to wait and see how they do."

Canada.com

[Chris Paff]

this is the reason why KK and company should never have any say in Indycar racing.

[morden]

So CC is going to wait and see how well the events do next year before deciding what to do. Sounds sensible to me. If the events do poorly, it would be a sound business decision to consider dropping them.

Exactly what happened in Phoenix and California.

You can hardly bash CC on this one.

[irloyal]

As I previously have noted in another post today:

1 - IMHO CC should get out of the oval business. The new car is designed with downforce and not for ultru high speeds. Street courses and medium length road course action should be it's strength.

2 - IMHO CC should get out of the USA with the exception of 3 races. Longbeach, Cleveland, and Road america. The first two fit the cars very well, and R/A would give them a primo US venue, an actual high speed section, and a west/middle/east presence to maintain US interest. Couple that with venues in Monteal, Toronto, Edmonton, and Monterrey and you have 7 venues that people in the US could attend.

3 - Build the international Flavor, take the above, add Mexico City, Mosport, a Brazilian race, Surfers, China, Ansan (they might be able to pull it together for 2008 ) and a quick trip to oh, say Estoril and Spa, and you would have a great 14 race schedule.

4 - Call it F/NA (Formula North America)

5 - It gets away from the primarily oval/US based IRL, differentiating the two series, and allowing each to grow without having to kill each other. It allows areas hungry for open wheel racing (ie Australia, Brazil, and a couple of hot European markets) to be fed, without stepping on F1 toes.

6 - It allows for it to be a feeder or destination series.

Just my $0.05's worth.

[Jim Wilke]

So much for the Vegas street race:

Kalkhoven said of the oval tracks in Milwaukee and Las Vegas: "We have them on the schedule next year.

[Cygni]

And so much for all the handwringing about it saying "Innagural event" on the online schedule.

[morden]

So much for the Vegas street race:

When was that announced? I didn't see it.

[Jim Wilke]

Gentilozzi and the rest have been talking about a Vegas street race since they took over:

The venue for the Las Vegas race has still not been determined and the previously announced date - May 16th - is now likely to change. Gentilozzi expressed hope to end the 2004 season there or in Mexico City. The race could be a race on the oval at Las Vegas Motor Speedway or, as Gentilozzi said: "an event in conjunction with a major casino in a facility adjacent to the Strip." An updated 2004 calendar will be released "in the next few days."

link

As Cygni points out, the official '06 schedule references next year's Vegas race as 'the inaugural event.' Since CC has run on the oval twice, it no longer qualfied as inaugural so the natural assumption is that they are - or were - still trying to put together a street race.