Monday, Sept. 26, 2005 | 9:48 a.m.
In the wake of Saturday night's Champ Car World Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, several drivers openly speculated that if the open-wheel racing series returns to Las Vegas in 2006, it might be on a temporary street course near downtown.
Not so fast, say Champ Car officials. Although the sanctioning body has held discussions with officials from the city of Las Vegas to stage a street race, there is no deal in place according to Champ Car vice president Joe Chrnelich.
"Starting early last year, one of our owners had made some public comments about us looking at a street race (in Las Vegas) and we're continuing to research that," Chrnelich said. "We don't have anything definitive nailed down; we've got a lot of work to do on that yet.
"At the moment, it's probably lower odds for '06 as opposed to '07, but we haven't shut the door on (2006)."
Chrnelich is finding out what Steve Wynn learned in the mid-90s when Wynn tried to bring a Formula One race to Las Vegas and run a portion of the race on the Strip: Casino operators aren't warm to the idea of shutting down streets in front of their businesses for days at a time to accommodate an auto race.
"In Las Vegas, closing streets ... is a challenge," Chrnelich conceded.
That will come as sad news to Sebastien Bourdais, who won his second consecutive Champ Car race on the 1.5-mile LVMS oval Saturday night. Bourdais, a Frenchman who grew up racing on European road courses, is not a fan of the flat-out, pedal-to-the-metal style of racing the Champ Cars stage at LVMS -- despite his success here.
"I'm not a big fan of the way we're racing here because it's a stupid game where you put your foot down (on the accelerator pedal) ... and it's no fun," the 2004 series champion said.
"It has been really successful ... but, gosh, I'm not looking forward to this race if we come back with the same (aerodynamic) package. (We need) less downforce so you can drive it all the time -- you're not flat by yourself, you're not flat in traffic."
Despite Champ Car's desire to stage a street race is Las Vegas, series president Steve Johnson said Champ Car is not about to quit racing on ovals and said it is conceivable that the series could hold both a street race and an oval race in Las Vegas.
"We've got a great partner at the speedway and there's nothing wrong with the speedway but to run a street race in Las Vegas, that would have to be the ultimate dream," Johnson said.
"We're not abandoning ovals. The new car that we're coming out with is built for both street races and ovals so you're not going to see us abandon ovals. We think there is room for ovals in Champ Car."
Chrnelich agreed.
"We keep looking at it to see how might it work and, secondly, what time of year would it be?" Chrnelich said. "Do we run it in combination with the oval -- so we have two races here but of a different variety? All those options are still on the table but clearly we're nowhere near a point where we say, 'yeah, we have a serious opportunity to do it right now.' "
In trying to stage a street race in Las Vegas, Chrnelich said Champ Car, which stages six street races among its 14 events, is faced with a challenge here that it hasn't encountered in cities such as Long Beach, Calif., or Surfers Paradise, Australia.
"The single largest issue is (the) casinos," Chrnelich said. "How do you logistically make sure you don't somehow negatively impact the business of the casino because any minute any customer is not in there playing is money lost. We have to demonstrate that we can bring in even more people as opposed to somehow prohibiting people from getting in or making it tougher."
Chrnelich also said that getting civic leaders to commit to spending the money to improve the streets to Champ Car's standards is a challenge he faces in every city.
"It's going to be a significant dollar amount from what we can see," he said, "and we have to figure out a way to help the city -- we'd ask them to invest in it as they would any street improvements, but anything above and beyond that, we have to find a way where they can make their money back. So, we're working on different formulas along that line, which is a partnership approach."
Finding the right weekend when the city's hotel rooms aren't already at or near capacity is the third hurdle to staging a street race downtown, Chrnelich said.
One thing Champ Car has in its favor as it pursues a downtown street race, Chrnelich said, is a receptive mayor in Oscar Goodman.
"This mayor, unlike just about any mayor in the world, is a high-energy, big-vision guy and what we've proposed to him is if we could do this someday, it'll give him an opportunity to showcase Las Vegas and the improvements he's adding, and he likes that," Chrnelich said. "He loves the city and he loves to promote the city and that's a natural for us.
"At the end of the day, do we believe (a Las Vegas street race) could be great? Yes -- and everybody we talk to says the same thing. We know it's there, the opportunity is there, but we have to be patient and work our way through it."
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