Long Beach promoter Jim Michaelian appears to have inherited Chris Pook’s pact with the weather gods. Despite forecasts for some light rain on Saturday, perfect weather prevailed through the entire weekend in Long Beach and big crowds rolled through the gates over the three days. It was Long Beach at its best with plenty of people and racing, including the ALMS, which was added this year as the Saturday feature following an experiment last year with the Grand-Am. The atmosphere was as festive as ever, graphic proof that the urban festival concept, pioneered by Pook and Michaelian at Long Beach more than thirty years ago, is American open-wheel racing’s greatest strength.
But the fact remains that television ratings, national media interest and major sponsorship have vanished from both Champ Car and IRL. Despite protestations otherwise by some of Champ Car’s ownership, everyone knows that rent-a-rides make up much of the field in Champ Car. Many people believe American open-wheel racing is doomed to mediocrity and marginalisation and the largely vacant pressroom at Long Beach in recent years is a testament to the grand conundrum facing Champ Car’s leadership.
Nor does this year’s Champ Car World Series enjoy a schedule which will help attack these problems. The schedule includes a seven-week break after Houston next weekend until Portland in June. Then after Elkhart Lake in the middle of August the series runs five races outside of the country over three and a half months until the season-closer on a new downtown Phoenix street track in December. So Champ Car will be entirely off the American media map for the last third of its season. This is no way to build brand awareness or national media interest in the series.
Champ Car will run two new European races in Belgium and Holland in August and September and hopes to make its debut in China in October, but I worry that
Bernie Ecclestone won’t let another major open-wheel race take place anywhere in Asia anytime near the Chinese GP
F1 race scheduled a few weeks earlier.
