Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Tracy in dark about Champ Car race in Vegas

Wednesday, April 21, 2004 | 9:55 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

As a six-year resident of Las Vegas, Paul Tracy admits he is biased when talking about the possibility of the Champ Car World Series racing coming to town.

Tracy said he has heard the rumors of a potential season-ending race in Las Vegas in November but admitted he has no first-hand knowledge of any talks Open Wheel Racing Series LLC, which owns and operates Champ Car, has had with one or more local hotel-casinos.

"I'm hearing a lot of things, but nothing concrete or nailed down," Tracy said. "I know (Champ Car has) kept the date open for the last race of the year and it's something they're trying to work toward.

"I hope it does happen because I think it would be great for the city of Las Vegas and I think it would be a pretty great tourist attraction if they could have some type of a street race somewhere."

The talk in the Champ Car paddock during last weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach -- which Tracy won -- has series officials trying to run a race on the grounds of the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino and possibly on some of the adjoining streets, although it is unlikely Las Vegas Boulevard would be used for the temporary circuit.

"I've heard rumors about ... maybe doing something in behind Mandalay Bay, by the convention center, on all those roads back there," Tracy said. "'It would be great if they could pull that off; I think it would bring a lot of people into town."

Champ Car officials reportedly are trying to schedule a race in Las Vegas around the SEMA automotive aftermarket products trade show, which will be Nov. 2-5 this year at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"That's a huge weekend for Las Vegas," Tracy noted. "You've got all the international media, you've got all the car manufacturers represented and if you were to have (a race) at that time, for sure it would inject a lot of sponsorship into the series."

Paul Gentilozzi, one of the principals in OWRS and a Champ Car team owner, said Sunday that he hoped to make an announcement on the Las Vegas race within two weeks.

OWRS' inaugural event weekend went off largely without a hitch and a respectable crowd estimated at 78,000 took in Sunday's Champ Car, Toyota Atlantic and Trans-Am Series races.

"I don't know how many people were here (Sunday), but they're the ones that made the event happen; they all bought tickets and they all believed," Gentilozzi said. "I can't tell you how many hands I shook, of people that come to Long Beach to see Champ Cars -- that's the tradition.

"A guy said to me the other day ... 'it's not how many breaths in life you get to take, it's how many times life takes your breath away' and today was one of those (days)."

OWRS officially took over for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) in late January when a bankruptcy judge awarded CART's assets to the group, which is owned by Gentilozzi, Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe.

In addition to helping run Champ Car, Gentilozzi owns the two-car Rocketsports Racing team in Champ Car, with drivers Alex Tagliani and rookie Nelson Philippe, and a three-car Trans-Am team for which he drives.