“Tony [George]'s Leaders Circle Programme and the free equipment is very generous, but it was still going to take $3.5 to $4 million per car for a limited programme and you would need all that. We have two IRL cars in our shop and the boys just finished up one of them and had it painted in Team Australia colours, so we were looking pretty good for the tests next week at Sebring and Homestead.
"I dropped the bomb on my team Friday and it was the toughest thing I've ever had to do. Everybody was shocked, to say the least, because I had been optimistic we were going to get sponsorship. My goal would be to come back to IndyCars in 2009.”
Walker currently runs three cars in the Atlantic series, and says he may expand if it helps keep his workforce employed, but cast questions over the future involvement of
Nigel Mansell's sons Greg and Leo, despite both taking part in this week's group test at Laguna Seca.
“It remains to be seen whether Nigel's sons will continue with us because there's a lot of uncertainty about the Atlantic series," he admitted, “Nigel and I had talked about running one or both of his sons in Champ Car in a year or two, but I don't know if he's interested now that it's the IRL.
“We're hoping to get some answers and my goal would be to run four Atlantic cars to keep as many people going as possible. I'm also going to Mexico to check on the A1GP series and see if they need any personnel because this team's biggest asset is its people.”
