Champ Cars, trucks team for LVMS thrills

Thursday, July 8, 2004 | 9:30 a.m.

Champ Car World Series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven said he is "delighted" to be adding the Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval to the 2004 schedule, but said the open-wheel series still is interested in staging a street race in Las Vegas.

Kalkhoven was in town Wednesday to formally announce that the Champ Cars would race at the 1.5-mile superspeedway on Sept. 25 as part of a doubleheader with the previously scheduled NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.

"It's no secret that we have been talking with people about holding a street (race) here but for all sorts of reasons, just didn't come together this year," Kalkhoven said. "But I think this is a wonderful compromise between our desire to run a superspeedway and be in Vegas.

"This is not, in any way, a substitute (for a street race) because it's a great venue and it's going to be a great race."

Kalkhoven said he expected talks to continue with local hotel-casinos, which he declined to name, about holding a race on a temporary street or road course. He also would not rule out the possibility of Champ Car and LVMS extending their one-race agreement.

"As we set up our 2005 schedule, we're going to look at all those things," he said. "The one thing we're committed to is being in Las Vegas.

"Depending on how things go (in September), we can happily extend this (agreement). It's very exciting for us and we love having a superspeedway event on the calendar."

Las Vegas Motor Speedway general manager Chris Powell also said he is taking a wait-and-see approach before committing to an extension of the contract with Open Wheel Racing Series, which owns and operates the Champ Car World Series.

"I'm interested to see how well things go -- and I think they'll go very well on the 25th of September -- and then I'm going to be interested to hear how it goes for them," Powell said. "If they're interested, we certainly would entertain the idea of going forward. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a one-off opportunity."

The Saturday, Sept. 25 race will mark the first in Las Vegas for the Champ Cars since 1984, when the series (then known as CART) ended a two-year run on a temporary road course in a parking lot adjacent to Caesars Palace. Kalkhoven said the race distance would be 300 miles (200 laps) -- not the 400 as originally planned -- and would start shortly after the conclusion of the truck race.

OWRS co-owner Paul Gentilozzi said the addition of the Las Vegas race on its schedule would further expose the city to an international audience. Champ Car races in Mexico and Canada are hugely popular and the series has large followings in both countries -- as well as Latin America -- because of its diverse pool of drivers.

Besides Champ Car's three American drivers, the series boasts drivers from Mexico (four), Brazil (three), Canada (three), France (two), Argentina, Catalonia and England (one each).

"People around the world know about Las Vegas, and they know it as a great tourist attraction," Gentilozzi said. "We think that they know it a great deal for its motor sports, and Las Vegas Motor Speedway has done a wonderful job about bringing that emphasis to the world. I think that Champ Car brings a new emphasis to Las Vegas from its fans and drivers ... from all over the world. I think we're going to bring an international focus to what can be a great motor sports event to fans all around the world.

"The idea of being able to run around the speedway at average speeds in excess of 210, 215 miles per hour (is) going to be very exciting for the fans. The privilege of racing on the same weekend as the Craftsman Truck Series is certainly ours. But my main emphasis is the fact that we're going to bring a whole new spectator to the race in Las Vegas and a worldwide audience that perhaps it hasn't seen before."

The Champ Car race will be televised live, in high-definition, on HDNet and Gentilozzi said that the series is holding discussions with its cable television partner, Spike TV, to broadcast the race live. Champ Car's races are shown on a delayed basis on Spike TV on Sunday afternoons (4 p.m. local time).

Paul Tracy, one of four Las Vegas residents who race in the Champ Car World Series, said it was about time the series came to an agreement to stage a race at LVMS. Before Open Wheel Racing Series purchased CART's assets out of bankruptcy earlier this year, Powell held talks with no fewer than three former CART presidents about the series racing here, but never could reach an agreement.

"I've talked to CART in the past about why don't we race in Vegas and I guess the opportunity really wasn't the right opportunity," Tracy, the reigning series champion, said. "But now, partnering up with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and our race on a Saturday night event -- a doubleheader -- I think is a first for any motor sports to pull off two races at night.

"This is a first-class facility and a world-class event that we're going to put on and I think we're going to help draw from the NASCAR fans and also show them a different type of a sport and hopefully bring in our own crowd and it's going to be a tremendous success."