Paul, welcome to the series. Look forward very much to working with you, you're renowned for a man who is somewhat of 'a character', someone who has never afraid to speak his mind and say exactly what he thinks. I would imagine that legacy would continue with Champ Car; would I be accurate?
PS:
I'm hoping that it won't have to in the way that it did in F1. I hope that I won't need to ever get as political and as boisterous as I needed to do there. No, I have a great relationship with Kevin Kalkhoven as well, and that dates back a few years now. So I really do think that working with all of the guys is going to be a refreshing period as against some of the stress that was there in F1, particularly the last few years, and sure as hell continued without me.
Q:
Can you give us a time line on when you take delivery of the new Panoz DP01 and when you will start testing with it and when you hope to have it wound up and ready for 2007?
KW:
We'll try to keep it on the ground rather than it fly, but you never know. We receive the cars the same as everybody else, which is basically in about a day's time, Wednesday, I believe it is. They are all dressed up with bows for us.
And we have a plan which, again, is exactly the same plan we've always had. Nothing has changed. We just obviously can breathe a sigh of relief that we can achieve all of those goals, which is the cars will come here and they will be prepared. Obviously, we need to get to know them. There are certain tests and various things we want to do with the cars, and then they will be prepared and put in the liveries and we will go with everybody else in Champ Car with the new regulations. Tests starts in January for three days, and that's all organised - the only times that you can test after those three is January, February and March. So we will go through those tests and various other forms of testing and be ready with everybody else.
MC:
Quick follow-up on what Keith said. All ten teams will be taking delivery of their first Panoz at 10am Wednesday morning from the Indianapolis headquarters and, as he alluded to, the first Champ Car open test will take place at Sebring International Raceway through 23-25 January.
Q:
Do you feel that, with a brand new car, you guys are on more of an equal footing with the other teams, especially when you're talking about the first race in Las Vegas?
PS:
Yes. I mean that, obviously, is one of the attractions that got me involved. It was a good time to come in with the new car, and it was a levelling of the playing field but, also, I equally do not underestimate the talent and ability that's already out there. So, you know, we are going to go in with high expectations, but with a dash of reality thrown in.
KW:
And I think that the good teams will always come to the top. I don't think the orders will change so much, obviously it's more relying on engineering and the drivers with a lot more restrictions, but a lot of teams have time to develop, to catch up with the other car, so I think it's a question of who comes out of the box [best]. Of course, it's much more achievable with the restrictions on what you can do to the cars. But, as Paul said, we're realistic, but I'm also pretty optimistic that we had a lot of people and we had some of the best cars out there over the years, which I think was proven over periods of people who watched the detail. I'm very motivated that our guys will come out with as good of cars as anybody out there.
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