Ed, its' the best news the sport has had, period.........it may sound odd, but I cried when I read the news that the sport had finally unified, I was that happy about it. Like most NA open-wheel fans, I've ******* and moaned about the state of AOWR, so to finally have them under one roof is.....a great feeling, to say the least.
Now to get to the questions at hand...............................
Ed wrote:How will this affect the ChampCar teams?
Short-term, they'll have to get to grips with the Dallara/Honda Indycars; with the exception of Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing, I suspect most all of them have no experience with those cars, so the learning curve is going to be steep. In addition, most of the ChampCar drivers that come over(with the exception of Paul Tracy, Justin Wilson, Will Power and Bruno Junquiera) have
little experience on high-speed ovals, which are a good part of the IRL schedule, so they'll have that to deal with also. Most of the former ChampCar teams are going to start learning about their new rides over the next month, so it'll be interesting to see who gets up to speed the quickest; however, this late in the off-season, they're behind the 8-ball, big time.
Ed wrote:Will the Indy field suddenly double?
Assuming the Indy reference is about the 500..........no, it will remain at 33 cars,
but................rather than wondering whether their will be enough entries to make a 33-car field, now people can start wondering whether they'll be 40 entries, or 45, or 50, etc......
Ed wrote:Will the extra number of teams and drivers be accomodated for?
There shouldn't be any problems with accomodating the extra teams/drivers; Dallara and Honda, by all accounts, have said they'll have enough for the teams. In addition, a couple of the teams(most notably Vision Racing and Andretti-Green Racing) have spare Dallara chassis' to send to the new teams, so that area should be okay.
Ed wrote:What about the venues?
Shouldn't be any problems there as well; most NA racing venues are built to accomodate large numbers of entries, especially oval tracks. Case in point are the two shortest ovals on the IRL calendar, Richmond(.75-mile) and Iowa(.875-mile); if they can run 43 stock-cars there, they can run 25-30 open-wheel cars easily.
Ed wrote:Will the schedule be altered? Have events added to it?
The current schedule is as follows.................
--29 March, Homestead(oval)
--6 April, St. Petersburg, Fla.(street circuit)
--19 April, Motegi, Japan(oval)
--27 April, Kansas(oval)
--25 May, Indianapolis(oval)
--1 June, Milwaukee(oval)
--7 June, Texas(oval)
--22 June, Iowa(oval)
--28 June, Richmond(oval)
--6 July, Watkins Glen(road course)
--12 July, Nashville(oval)
--20 July, Mid-Ohio(road course)
--9 August, Kentucky(oval)
--24 August, Infineon(road course)
--31 August, Belle Isle(street circuit)
--7 September, Chicagoland(oval)
Of the ChampCar venues, three will be added this year:
~~20 April, Long Beach(street circuit)........the plan will be for the IndyCar teams to run at Motegi while the ChampCar teams will race here, with both events counted as points-races
~~Edmonton(airport/street circuit).....currently it's set for 20 July(which puts it in conflict w/Mid-Ohio); reports are that they're looking to move the race to avoid any conflict......
~~Surfers Paradise(street circuit).......this one's the sticky problem. Currently, its' set for late October, but.....the IRL has Chicagoland set as the '08 season finale and there's uncertainity as to whether the series would want to run Surfers as an exhibition race rather than a points race, but if they're smart, they'll race there irrespective of whether its' counts for points or not.
Ed wrote:What will the mix of street vs. oval be now?
11 ovals, 5 street circuits and 3 road courses. The hope is that, for 2009 and beyond, that venues such as Road America, Toronto, Portland and Michigan will be added as well.
Ed wrote:Finally, in your opinion, will this merger affect NASCAR in anyway?
Not in the short-term; NASCAR's the 800-lb gorilla of NA motorsports and its' going to take years to rebuild the sport, but people forget that, pre-split, CART and the Indy 500
were bigger than NASCAR ever was; while CART and the 500 were nationally-known sports in the U.S., NASCAR was still primarily a regionally-based American series. But with the merger, the sport now can focus on rebuilding its' fanbase, bringing in new sponsors and working on reclaiming its' past glories and building new ones.........I won't kid you, Ed; the split damaged NA open-wheel racing far more than anyone thought and it will take years to repair it, but at least now it can begin to repair and rebuild. As the song goes, only time will tell.