Hello everyone.
Yes, I know it’s been a while - and I hoped to be updating more often in 2007, but I don’t even have my taxes done yet either!!! I am coming off the busiest winter season art-wise that I have had in a long time, and I’ve spent the last 45 days chasing deadlines that I could not turn down! I had intended to give you a full update right after the Laguna test, but I just couldn’t get to it, so now I have a little time right before we hit our new downtown venue in Las Vegas.
TESTINGFirst of all, thanks to the good people at USARM, who staff the posts very professionally day in and day out at Laguna Seca. Most of these folks work there just about every day and know the joint like the backs of their hands! It really shows in the quality of the communication and the easy way they work together on most incidents as standing around all day looking at monster 3.5 hour sessions while working absolutely alone is really difficult!!
We had two days of testing for the 25 or so Atlantics and two more for the 15 Champ cars that made it out there. After so many years going to that beautiful track, it was great to be back there, I really do miss the place and especially the surroundings! With Mazda making the announcement that they are now the official vehicle of CCWS and their plan to phase in their SUV vehicles as our Safety team trucks, it could be that “MAZDA Raceway Laguna Seca could show up on our schedule again someday should something befall our San Jose date. But I wouldn’t count on them ever happening together!
The new Panoz chassis looks and sounds great, and it was a real thrill to see more than just one at a time! The #3 Forsythe entry of Paul Tracy is the nicest looking paint scheme I have seen on a Champ Car in many a season. When I was a kid, race cars had racing stripes, and this one has a nice blue one running down the top of the chassis, very reminiscent of the old Roberto Guerrero Bignotti-Cotter March from the early Eighties. Yes, I date myself with that comment!
If you have keeping up with the news out of the CCWS website, you have heard that we delayed our debut of the standing start until around Portland for now. This was a decision based on the results of the standing start practice that was carried out during the last hours of practice on the Champ Car days. They just aren’t there yet in making the procedure easy enough as to not stall the engines during these starts. On Friday, We set up the start lights on the bridge and the cars came up either individually or in pairs and one of us in RC would activate the lights for the start sequence (Tony Cotman let me run ‘em on Saturday and it felt like owning a real life slot car track.) The success rate was about 60% on Friday and closer to 85% on Saturday after Cosworth made some adjustments, but that ain’t good enough yet, so they’ll keep working. But man, it’s a great spectacle and the aroma of burning rubber will make you swoon. Portland will be a great place to air it all out.
2007
We hit the track on Friday morning in Las Vegas. The marshal crew looks like a stellar cast with a lot of people coming in from England and Holland and we should have over 100 strong for the first two events. Unfortunately, three-in-a-row being difficult, Houston’s numbers are well down for this year, maybe under 50 marshals. So if you are sitting on the fence, get a hold of Jim Lowe at jtlowe@swbell.net My suggestion to Mexico City chief Fritz Herrmann to drive up about a dozen people in the trunk of his car to re-create the agonizing bus rides they had to endure up to Monterrey has fallen on deaf ears.
As far as car count, expect 17 or 18 Champ Cars, 24-28 Atlantics, and our biggest race group in LV will be the Historic GP cars. I honestly asked Tony Cotman while he sat alongside me for four days in Laguna if we should be very concerned about the low Champ Car turnout and he unequivocally said no. Again, despite some of the gloom coming out of public opinion these days about our health, many plans are in the works to grow sponsor, team and general interest in our series, especially internationally. Some of them I know about, some of them I don’t. Just be assured that we aren’t standing around and I’m counting on all of you to continue to do your best with the series that we fortunately have!
THE FIELD
There will be a second Forsythe car this year and a probable third for a Chinese driver at Zhuhai. According to the rumour mill, Team Australia may run a third car at LV which would bring us to 18. And all of the seats are set except for Conquest’s car and Dale Coyne’s second car, which we will know about in a few short days… We will keep up our Champ Car tradition by soon having an ass for every seat! Wait, did I say that out loud?
Expect the following:
Newman/Haas/Lanigan... Bourdais and Graham Rahal
Team Australia... Power and Pagenaud and TBD?
RSPORTS... Tagliani and Wilson
Forsythe... Tracy and Dominguez (1st three races)
PKV... Neel Jani and Tristan Gommendy
Coyne... Legge and TBD
Minardi (ex CTE)... Robert Doornbos and Clarke
Conquest ...TBD
Pacific Coast... Figge and Dalziel
TTFN. Looking forward to blow the rust off my game and the doors off Downtown Las Vegas. Catch the race on NBC Sunday!
See you at the track!!!!
JHS
