Open-wheel cars return to LV

Wednesday, July 7, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the Champ Car World Series was set to announce this morning that it would hold a race on the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval in September.

The Champ Car Las Vegas 400 will be run on Saturday night, Sept. 25, in conjunction with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at LVMS. It will mark the first appearance by the open-wheel series (formerly known as CART) in Las Vegas since 1984, when it staged a race on a temporary road course in a parking lot adjacent to Caesars Palace.

It will be the first open-wheel race at LVMS since the rival Indy Racing League concluded a five-year stint in 2000.

Officials from Open Wheel Racing Series, which purchased the assets of CART, Inc. out of bankruptcy in February, had brief negotiations with LVMS general manager Chris Powell earlier this year about staging a race at the facility, but a deal never materialized. OWRS co-owner Paul Gentilozzi had, until recently, been negotiating with a local hotel-casino, believed to be the Mandalay Bay, to stage a street race in Las Vegas.

The proposed acquisition of Mandalay Resorts Group, which owns the Mandalay Bay, by MGM MIRAGE is believed to have put the brakes on those talks and led Gentilozzi to reopen negotiations with LVMS.

Paul Tracy, the reigning Champ Car series champion, is one of four local drivers competing in the series; Jimmy Vasser, the 1996 champion, Patrick Carpentier and Alex Tagliani also call Las Vegas home. Tracy said he was thrilled to hear that the Champ Car series would race in his hometown.

"I can't tell you how excited I am about racing here," Tracy said. "All of the local guys have been out to the track and it's a first-class facility. It's the right type of venue for our cars.

"The fact that this is right in our backyard will open up a lot of opportunities for us to be able to test and really make this a big event."

The Sept. 24-25 race weekend at LVMS will be unique in that both the Craftsman Trucks and Champ Cars will race on the same night. The Las Vegas 350 NCTS race is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and the Champ Cars will take to the track shortly after the conclusion of the truck race.

The Champ Car Las Vegas 400 will be only the second oval race on the 2004 Champ Car World Series schedule and the only one held on a superspeedway. The series visited the 1-mile Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., last month -- a race won by pole-sitter Ryan Hunter-Reay -- and its other races are held on either temporary street courses or permanent road courses.

Like Tracy, Hunter-Reay said he was looking forward to racing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"I am really excited about the addition of Las Vegas Motor Speedway to our 2004 schedule," Hunter-Reay said. "Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a state-of-the-art racing facility and I am very happy to race on another oval this year as (my team) had a record-setting weekend when I won in Milwaukee.

"The diversity that Champ Car offers by racing on ovals, road and street courses makes it the most unique and challenging series anywhere. I can't think of a better place to display our product than Las Vegas."