California race cancelled, CART season ends early.

CART president and CEO Christopher R. Pook has today confirmed that the final round of the Champ Car World Series, at California Speedway, Fontana, has indeed been cancelled, due to wildfires in the area.

Thus the 19-round 'Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford' has been reduced to 18 rounds with last weekend's Lexmark Indy 300 on the Gold Coast rounding out the series.

"Our thoughts are with those families dealing with the disaster in Southern California and we hope for a speedy end to the situation," said Pook.

"Our diligence in pursuing the continuation of the race was only to ensure that we had exhausted every option available to us.

"CART Champ Car regrets that the event has been cancelled and we offered to explore every possible avenue, including running the event on Monday or Tuesday at Phoenix International Raceway - which is owned by California Speedway's parent company International Speedway Corporation - or running at the California Speedway track sometime next week, allowing us to run this race in a safe manner and have a proper end to the 2003 season."

With the round now cancelled, the CART Champ Car community has entered the race to help those affected by the fires and is mobilising its assets as well as those of its teams to aid the relief effort.

The series and its teams have already committed to the relief effort in a number of different ways, including making the offer to local government officials to set up hospitality units at evacuation centres to feed those displaced by the fires.

The food that teams had already ordered for the weekend has been donated in order to feed those affected by the situation. The state-of-the-art CART Medical Unit, which is a travelling trauma centre that is on hand at all Champ Car races, has also been made available as a way to help treat victims of the fires.

The CART community is also in the hills of Southern California fighting the blazes as well. Four members of the Simple Green CART Champ Car Safety Teams have been active in battling the fires, two of them since the outbreak of the fires with two others joining after the 13-hour flight from Australia on Monday.