Champ Cars, Vegas track have a future

Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004 | 9:41 a.m.

Top speeds in Wednesday's testing at LVMS

Although the Champ Car World Series has not completely given up on trying to put together a street race in Las Vegas, it appears the open-wheel series' inaugural race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway next month won't be its last at the 1.5-mile oval.

John Lopes, Champ Car's executive vice president of operations, said Wednesday that he expects the series to return to the speedway next year.

"(LVMS general manager Chris Powell and I) kind of looked at each other and said we would like to race again together in the future and we're in discussions," Lopes said. "We've got a little more work to do, but we're close.

"We have wanted to come to Las Vegas for a long time. We have looked for a long time at doing a street race here and fate would have it that we're running an oval race this year and, quite frankly, the way that everything has gone ... we feel like this is going to be a big event and it would be good business for both sides to continue."

Champ Car, which bought the assets of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) out of bankruptcy earlier this year, had only one oval race on its schedule before adding the Sept. 25 race at LVMS.

Lopes said it was crucial for the series to align itself with a facility such as LVMS, which is owned by Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc.

"Working with the facility has been very, very easy and I think that's particularly important for us because Champ Car needs promoter-based relationships," Lopes said.

Junqueira topped the speed chart with a lap of 203.482 mph under the lights and Bourdais was second quickest at 203.114

Junqueira has four second-place finishes this year and is coming off his fifth podium finish of the season -- a third-place effort in Denver.

"We had like two or three races where I had an opportunity to win but for some reason we didn't," Junqueira said. "At this point, we're a little bit behind in the championship but we're doing a good job and I'm quite happy. Every race we've been fighting for the win and the top spots and that makes us feel good."

The attendance figure represented an increase of more than 25,000 from last year's event and marked the fifth time in nine races this season that the series has drawn more than 110,000 fans for an event.