[TLK]

Looking good.....

Gentilozzi's latest hints
This is stolen from The Motor Sports Forum

To summarize:
- Ovals will continue, they're shooting for two, and may have to go outside the US to do it.
- CART HQ remains in Indy.
- St Pete back on, Portland is still in flux
- Reconciliation with the dark side is not even on the table
- New sponsors for all teams will be announced in March at the same event
- 18+ cars is very possible
- Rock concerts in June
- New classic car support series possible
- TV in final negotiations

Champ Car World Series Update

...Gentilozzi is upbeat about the future of North American open wheel racing and plans to continue the variety of racing venues that characterized the 25-year-old CART series.

"We would like to do ovals," Gentilozzi said. "We're going to do Milwaukee and would like to do one more in the U.S. But we don't own a lot of oval tracks and a lot of independents don't own them. So we may do ovals in other parts of the world."

There are no further legal concerns regarding the purchase of CART's assets. "It's a done deal," Gentilozzi said. "The headquarters will stay in Indianapolis."

According to Gentilozzi the only deal not finalized for the 2004 schedule is Portland and he predicted they would have a deal done by the end of the week.

St. Petersburg Florida will be back on the schedule May 16, which is a qualifying day at Indianapolis and the date assigned to Las Vegas on the original CART schedule.

For now there is no chance for reconciliation with the Indy Racing League. "That's not even a topic for discussion," Gentilozzi said.

He predicted at least 18 cars will participate and that everyone would have a sponsor, but they will run their 2003 paint schemes until all are revealed at the same time during a press conference the first week of March.

There is a possibility that more than 18 cars will race. "Yes, we've had a lot of guys come out of the woodwork now that they know we are alive," said Gentilozzi.

Multiple racing series will highlight events and a new production based touring-car-type series is being discussed. "Our support base will be, from the beginning, Champ Car, Trans-Am, Toyota Atlantics, and another open wheel foundation series," Gentilozzi said. "We are trying to do a production based tin-top production car deal."

The rock and roll/Champ Car connection will not get started until at least June. "The concept worked," Gentilozzi said. "But we know now we are not concert promoters. We know now how much you really have to pay up front. So we learned a lot."

It took a lot of money to keep CART running during 2003, but Gentilozzi said they were fine as far a 2004 budget.

When asked if they were going to be funding any of the teams Gentilozzi replied, "Just my own."

Gentilozzi left the Chicago Auto Show bound for New York to finalize details for the 2004 Champ Car World Series television schedule.