CHAMP CAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 15, 2003

Sebastien Bourdais

John Lopes

Danica Patrick

Bobby Rahal

Derrick Walker

BOBBY RAHAL: I'm with you, Calvin. How are you?

BOBBY RAHAL: I'd like to thank everybody at CART for really working hard to make sure I could participate. I'm sorry I can't be there in person. I'm happy we could at least participate in this way.

BOBBY RAHAL: Not yet. We're working hard on it. I have to say there seems to be some real interest in the series. For a year or so, it seemed like all you heard was bad news. I think CBS is doing great things for us from a television standpoint, I think it's generating some interest. We're certainly hopeful it will be successful out here.

BOBBY RAHAL: It's not easy, as you can imagine. I'm never quite sure which time zone I'm in. But all kidding aside, it wouldn't be possible without having great people in our team. Scott Roembke, who is really my right-hand man and runs the team on a day-to-day basis, takes a lot of the load off of me, allows me to do the things like I'm doing currently. But also we're a fairly mature organization in terms of people who have been with the team for a long time. Ray Leto, who was one of our chassis engineers, race engineers, has now taken over as team manager of Michel's program and has done a very good job. He and Todd Bowland, who is a race engineer, have done a great job with Michel. And Don Halliday is back with us. Frankly, it's just having good people that allow us to pursue all these different activities.

JOHN LOPES: We are. We're very pleased. It can always be better. We're working on a few things we might talk about tonight. I think a couple good examples of this year would be the elimination of traction control and some of the wing packages that we actually have used. In fact, when I think of a wing package, I think about this young man's first win, Sebastien's first win at EuroSpeedway. I don't know if any of you saw, but it was the most nail-biting race that I've ever seen. You came out of the car shaking I think at the end of that race. But literally it was wheel-to-wheel, nose-to-tail the entire time. Those of you who saw the Cleveland event, there was an exciting podium pass with Paul Tracy there at the end that got the fans to their feet. So ultimately the goal is to provide better entertainment to the fans. This year with the Cosworth format we've put together, as well as the elimination of traction control, it's helped there. Do you feel things have improved on your side in terms of team owner?

DERRICK WALKER: Very much so. I think if you look at the financial output that you have to put to run one of these cars, I think we've cut the budgets by (mumbling). Wish you heard that, right (laughter). You can see it's quite a lot of money. I had to be careful what I said because Scott is over there. I don't want to give away any secrets. The budgets, seriously, they've been at least 30% cut out of the budget. I think that's all due to the CART leadership, and taking charge of the situation, getting us to see some sense.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Yeah, it's true. Hi, everybody. I'm pleased to be here. It's true that this race in Cleveland has been qualifying time for two hours. It's been very physically demanding. And it was a great show. I hope those who went there had a lot of fun because I think we gave a lot for this race. It's true that it's really spectacular due to the fact that we have no traction control, basically no assistance on the car. But from the inside, it's also really fun. It's a really good package for Champ Car racing.

DANICA PATRICK: Other than the two yellow cars, as I like to call them, which is AJ Allmendinger and Aaron Justus, everybody else has two or three -- (Hang up tone.) Bye, Bobby (laughter). They all have tons of experience. I found it to be up and down for that matter. We kicked it off with a really good result at Monterey, found our way back there sometimes after that. I think Milwaukee we were in a good position to get fourth there, which would have been good. But, you know, due to lap traffic and things like that... The competition is really tough, and there really are no other people in it that are bad. If they're not good, they don't find the money, other than one or two stragglers at the end.

DANICA PATRICK: It's the weather.

JOHN LOPES: Well, I'll break it into two questions. The first question has to do with natural terrain courses. We will continue to run on natural terrain courses as well as street circuits, speedways and short ovals. It's part of the diversity mix that really sets CART Champ Car apart. We will continue that. With respect specifically to Mid-Ohio, because there's been a lot of questions, and I think it's important we mention it tonight, Michelle Trueman brought it up earlier today that a lot of fans have approached her. There is no decision with respect to next season. Michelle has made it clear she'd like us to come back. And certainly Mid-Ohio has been a great course for us over the years. We've been racing here since 1980. The fan base here is as strong and as loyal as anywhere. It's an important circuit, very important circuit, on the championship. So after this year's event, we're going to sit down with Michelle and discuss the future. At this time, there really is no decision. But certainly it's a circuit that we feel is very, very important. And natural terrain courses, in general, will continue to be part of our format.

DERRICK WALKER: I think overall the quality of officiating is actually getting better, believe it or not. I think when you look at the chief steward and the job he has to do, with the tools he has to do it, he goes overboard to try to be fair and make sure the evidence he has is absolutely clear so that he makes a call, it can stand up and be judged correctly. Sometimes there is a delay as he goes through and tries to ascertain what the penalty was or if there should be a penalty. The other thing I will say, these guys up here will all testify to the fact that a lot of the push for change and more control and more regulations is actually coming from the drivers. The drivers are voicing their opinion in these drivers' meetings like you wouldn't believe. They're not shouting at the chief steward, although they are looking for leadership from the chief steward to make those calls as crisp and quick as they can, and fair. But they're actually talking to each other saying, "No longer is it acceptable to do blocking. No longer can you chop the guy up and win the race." I think every incident you see nowadays, certainly this year they go under the magnifier ten times more than they ever did.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Yeah, I don't know. I think for the show, and I hope that I deserve the race in Germany hopefully, but basically it's a point which happened with Mario. He started to fight very early in the race, was changing line very quickly, which basically when I got the lead, I was just dropping from outside to inside and looking straight towards the inside. So it's not blocking actually; it's just choosing your line. No, but I'm really serious, you know. It's something that basically you were allowed to do, and you're not anymore because now you cannot change your line even once. If the Germany race would have had to do it again, I couldn't do what I was able to in the rules. You know, I think we've seen really warm races in US. I was the first to enjoy it when I was a kid watching Champ Cars, as all of you I think. It's just to try to make in it a safe manner. Germany race has been pretty exciting. At some point during the race, it got pretty dangerous, especially when I had to cross the grass. Basically I was right there, and he didn't see me. That's why he got penalized. I didn't do the same, at least I hope so. You know, about the fact that it needs to have really quick decisions, you know, it's also to try to make it fair for everybody. That's why sometime it takes some time to make the decision and make the call, because if you do it too quickly, with just the reaction, it's better sometimes to watch the tape once, twice, three times before to make the decision.

JOHN LOPES: Maybe I could add to that, Sebastien. On Paul's call in Portland, it would be great if we could invite all of you to race control sometimes. Unfortunately, we're usually in a confined area with no air-conditioning. In that particular situation, we don't have instant replay on demand in race control. We work with the television producers on one of the screens to give us instant replay. But in Portland, in particular, we were trying to get a replay. The reason is last year, there was a couple of bad calls that we made. One was in Motegi on Dominquez' car when he was coming into the pits. The other was on Franchitti at Toronto when we had three course observers tell us he had four wheels over the curb. We flipped him back, it was very controversial. What happened in both those instances after the race, we went back and we could not recreate the violation by video from all the cameras. So now the standard is, if there is a violation, or we get a call from a course observer, because in the streets sometimes we don't have a proper TV camera angle or eyes on the actual violation, what we will do is we will call and actually get a replay where they can verify what happened. In Paul's instance, we had the call from the pit lane official, and John Anderson, former manager of Team Green, now heading pit lane officials, they're a top-notch bunch. We grade them on a weekly level just like the NFL grades their officials. Once that call comes up, we ask for the replay from a couple different angles. Once we get the replay, there's an analysis of what the penalty will be. In that situation, what happened, if you remember in Germany, when Lemarie was taken out by Michel, we gave Michel a 10-second penalty because he took somebody out of the race. In retrospect, in grading ourselves in the after action, we would have been more severe in that penalty. In Paul's situation, he didn't take somebody out. It was a lane violation. So half as severe, gave him half the amount of time. Actually that difference ended up allowing Michel to make the pass. So it gives you a little bit of an idea of what the steward's philosophy is.

BOBBY RAHAL: I'm here.

DANICA PATRICK: Did I make you mad with my comment, Bob?

BOBBY RAHAL: I didn't even hear it (laughter).

BOBBY RAHAL: Well, I think, first off, I couldn't agree more with the gentleman. You know, I remember the first day that Jim took me up there when he had bought it. It was a mud hole. He was really recreating the entire place. Every time I go up there, I just can't think of a better road racing circuit for the fans in particular, which was his whole motivation, with all the mounding that took place, to create a great place for the fans to watch road racing. You know, as Derrick well knows, Derrick and I fought long and hard for Mid-Ohio, Elkhart Lake, Laguna over the years in the board meetings. There were some people who weren't supportive of road racing, but there have been an awful lot that were. I'm not on the board anymore, but I'm hoping Derrick can still exert all his influence. Without question, I mean, Jim Trueman brought me to Columbus in 1981. I so often think how would racing be different today if he were still alive. I think there's no question his impact was great, even in the small amount of time he was here as an owner and as a track promotor and what have you. Certainly Michelle has carried I think the baton very well. You know, I look forward every year to going to Mid-Ohio. It's always nice to have the level of support we've had over the years there. Certainly it was kind of like, you know, that gave us an extra little horsepower, whatever, to do well. I look forward to coming back in a couple weeks. Of course, with Danica now there in Atlantic, hopefully we'll end up with two victories.

DANICA PATRICK: Good plan.

DANICA PATRICK: We are working through it, and we'll get there more consistently. I think that's been the problem. We've been up and down. That's frustrating as a driver because sometimes you go into a weekend, you know, like the first race, you have a great one, and then you show well again, and then all of a sudden you hit somewhere like Laguna Seca and you go, "Why am I here? What am I doing wrong?" It's so frustrating. I think that's just the things that you go through when you're a first-year team and when you don't have anyone else to base yourself off of. I was never a fan - Bob, you know - of teammates. I kind of have never been put in first place when it's been teammates, especially my time in England.

DANICA PATRICK: We all do change in the truck at the same time. It's weird. It's remarkable how all of a sudden they come out of the woodwork and at mechanics have to grab something (laughter). I'll, you know, fess up to it and say we probably would have been better with a teammate.

BOBBY RAHAL: I heard that, Danica.

DANICA PATRICK: You're always right, you know that, right? You're like a mother.

BOBBY RAHAL: Thanks.

DANICA PATRICK: But a father.

JOHN LOPES: Less than I'd like actually.

JOHN LOPES: There are a couple of things we're looking at for next year to improve the racing overall. We took it to one level this year certainly with the things we've discussed earlier. We are discussing standing starts for next year. Just out of curiosity? (Applause.) This weekend, we didn't have the prettiest start, for example. But in a place like Toronto, the only way you're going to prevent that with a running start, without having five restarts, is to have a standing start. The other thing that almost assuredly you'll see next year is the push to pass button be reintroduced. We're talking with Cosworth about that right now.

DERRICK WALKER: In some respects, the strategy is probably -- there's more involved now than there was before. When it was an economy run, it was very simple: you just had to save fuel and stay out as long as you possibly could and hope you found a yellow when you could come in and do a pit stop under the yellow. Right now you have a maximum number of laps and you have a mandated number of stops. So every time there's a pit stop, there's an opportunity to overtake. So we've got a little bit of strategy. Granted, we're only playing with 10ths of a second when it comes to the pit stop at the moment. We're trying to shave some time off to get round somebody. But it's very difficult to actually, you know, have a race where you can't have some sort of chance of having a segment where it's just totally boring and nobody is overtaking, everybody is just running around and around and around. When you actually introduced the mandated pit stops, we actually run flat out all the time. There's nobody saving fuel out there. They're just trying to see how the yellows fall, and when they come in, how can they do something as quick as possible to get round somebody. So if you didn't have that, we would all be doing fuel economy runs. The fuel control is no longer in the car, so that's helped some. But there's still a lot the driver can do. If we were left to our own devices, and we didn't have the mandated pit stops, we'd be out there training and practicing to see how far we could stretch a gallon of gas. It is a problem you're always going to have in some respects where you have cars that are fairly even, and you're dealing with a race the way we are, and fuel stops being a feature of it. You want more rather than less pit stops. That's where the mandated number I think helps a little bit. But it's not a magic bullet by any means. It's just another variation. Formula 1 have a different situation altogether. They have a totally different starting point, which is also something we should consider, too. That's not a bad idea either for our racing.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Actually, no. I think with all the respect, I have to remember this race because I won it, it was my very first race in Champ Car. I felt this race probably the worst of the season. You know, there was no mandatory pit stops and we were all saving fuel. Cool, I've been the best on that day. But, you know, it's not a lot of fun in the car, just driving, cruising around, trying to keep the gap consistent with the car in front of you, and expect that you're going to do one or two laps more on the stint than the guy in front of you. I think actually strategy with mandatory pit stops is really important. Because, as you've seen, maybe not all of you understood what happened in Cleveland, but if we've been in a position to pass Paul Tracy, just because the strategy was going on. Basically at the end of the second stint, I was not completely close to Paul Tracy, so the team decided to fill the car with fuel, so we were in a position to do a short fill for the next stint, and that worked. You know, I think it's better to do a full stint flat out and to show a great race for the fans than to cruise around and try to save fuel. The biggest difference with Formula 1 is actually that there is a lot of yellows in our races because of safety reasons, so everybody's trying to catch a yellow stop. If you do that, it's just really, really boring from inside. And I think it's less spectacular for you.

JOHN LOPES: We have gone into a bit of a quiet period on engines. We felt that perhaps early on we might have talked a little too much about it. In the past, when CART was getting ready to do an engine change, it was hotly debated in the press. The nature of our business, since we are in competition, we have to talk to manufacturers on a quiet basis. So we're really not at this point publicly talking about it. What we can say is we've had a lot of interest from manufacturers around the world who are taking a look at us, particularly since the formula is starting to grow again and develop some exciting racing. So there is interest out there. Other than that, at this point we're not going to make any public statements about the engine formula until we have something definitive to tell you. I couldn't venture to guess when that's going to happen, but certainly it's going to be in the not too distant future, we're going to let you know where we're at.

DERRICK WALKER: However, if you guys can keep a secret, I'll break a board rule and I will tell you all about it (laughter). No, seriously, there is need for change. There could be an advantage in change. It's a question of when the change comes. Obviously, to make change, it costs money. If you look at the cycle for the engine manufacturers, when they pull the trigger to go build an engine, there's an 18-month cycle before they can roll out engines ready to test. Any decision we make, you have 18 months to think about it before it happens. You have to look at the sport and the marketplace, where the money is going to come to pay for a new formula. Choosing the time that you decide what you're going to do is very important both from manufacturing and being able to pay for it. But I think you could see that there's a lot of interest in looking at some new alternatives. I think sooner or later we're going to get there, whether it's five, six, seven, whenever that is. As John says, it's kind of being looked at. That's about where it is at the moment. But don't tell anybody. It's not the official line.

DERRICK WALKER: Bobby owes me.

BOBBY RAHAL: I just look forward to seeing everybody in Mid-Ohio. I think these town hall meetings have been a great idea. Obviously, there's a lot of very knowledgeable and enthusiastic fans of Champ Car racing. You know, we're all working hard to try to make it better and to see it grow. Without question, without the fan support, it wouldn't exist. I personally just want to thank everybody. Look forward to seeing them up there. Thanks, Derrick, for standing in. I just wish everybody the best. We'll see you in a couple weeks.

DERRICK WALKER: Actually, he's gone over to the British Grand Prix. I told him to come back with them off. We'll see if I've got any clout. But I just hate guys with hair (laughter). Girls are okay, guys are horrible.

JOHN LOPES: That will be a hell of a poker game for sure. I think we should throw the tab on Chris for that one. But certainly, no comment (laughter).

DERRICK WALKER: Let me say, how shall I answer that one?

DERRICK WALKER: Let me think. You've got to do what you've got to do.

JOHN LOPES: The answer is yes and yes. When we're looking at our market distribution around North America, it's a glaring omission right now, particularly the eastern seaboard. So we are actively looking at prospective venues and attempting to mend relationships with promoters in that part of the world. Look for us at some point, probably in the next couple of years, to try and secure a race in that part of the world. I couldn't help but notice, the gentleman who asked the question before you. Sir, could you stand up, the gentleman with the goatee. He is a Paul Gentilozzi look alike there.

DANICA PATRICK: It was a fast car. It was almost as fast as the prototype. I see a Ferrari shirt out there. As far as my answer to that, you know, I just want to drive one of them. I just need to get there first, and then I'll have an opinion. So I'm going to pass it on.

DERRICK WALKER: I'm a V-10 man, I have to say. I would like the technical aspect of it, the multi-cylinder. The sound, although I like the V-8 turbocharge, it's done us well, I think V-10 would be it for me. I think it would really knock your doors off when you see that running around all these tracks we go to. I'd be for that.

JOHN LOPES: Interesting, it's been all over the map. It's really been all over the map with the manufacturers. The European manufacturers particularly are focused on the V-10 format, for sure. You know, there are V-10s out there ready to go[] for us. But the sentiment conveyed by the fan here tonight, there's a lot of that out there. I think it bears mentioning, not to differ with Derrick, I agree that a V-10 would be spectacular, in terms of dancing with the one that brung you, what Ford and Cosworth have done for Champ Car is absolutely phenomenal. They don't get thanked enough. I'll just leave it, when we were watching on the screens in race control during Cleveland, the flames started kicking out the back of the car, we all came unglued. It was great.

DANICA PATRICK: Do you want me to answer this? I don't think that it matters really. If you can drive, you can drive. Look at what's happened with Formula 1. Kimi Raikkonen, he did very little before he went into Formula 1. Jenson Button, the same way. You look at these drivers, if they're talented and they're put in a good car, they can prove to everyone the fact they have lack of experience really, you know, isn't the major part of it all. I mean, I guess I would like to see it be a bit of a smoother transition between Atlantic and Champ Car with the power. But, you know, I mean, I went from a Formula Ford and tested in Indy Lights and went quicker than most of the guys. I drove Ferrari the other weekend; never drove that before. There have been a lot of situations that I've been put into where I probably should have been, you know, a little out of my league for a while. But if you can drive, you can drive.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I would agree. It's been pretty much the same for me. Between Formula 1 and Formula 3000, it's twice more horsepower, and still after 50 laps, I was something like 5-10ths off. It's no big deal. If you know how to do it, you know how to do it in any car.

DERRICK WALKER: Yeah, giving them the experience so they can make that transition. I think John will agree with me, having listened, sat through many meetings and heard Chris bark away about his theories on racing, I think he is slightly misquoted or misunderstood in his remarks regarding Atlantic. I think Atlantic has been a great series for us. So was Lights. They were good workhorses for us. I think if you look at the future, as we look at all of our assets, you look Atlantic, "What would you do with Atlantic?" It's not saying that it's no good, get rid of it, it doesn't do the job. It's really, How can you enhance it? I think that was Chris' point was. Atlantics needs to be jazzed up, to be hyped up, put a bit more power in it, stretch the drivers a little bit more than they're currently being, put some pit stops or other variation. He's talking about enhancing the Atlantic Series or the feeder series as it would be. So it's not necessarily Atlantics is a waste of time. It's saying, "We need to do more for our feeder series." Wouldn't you agree, John?

JOHN LOPES: Yes. Chris' comments have prompted an awful lot of meetings, particularly with Toyota, another great partner in the Atlantic series, been supporting the series for years and years, we're in discussions with them right now on cost-cutting measures for the teams to try and get costs down, and to do some things with the current formula, be it with the tires, some of the competition-related rules to spice things up a bit and talking about the future formula with them which will probably feature almost a hundred more horsepower in the car. Right now, I think they certainly deserve a round of applause for what they've done for Atlantics for all these years. They've supported all the drivers who have come up along the way. You can start rattling off the names, Rahal, Villeneuve, people who have moved up and been very successful, Danica, and one who is coming up in the near future, AJ Allmendinger, who is the real deal. It's an important CART property and we're going to continue to stand behind it.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Oh, definitely, mostly I'm there because they wanted the second driver with technical abilities. So they choose me because of the test in Sebring for the first time in my career, in a Champ Car. Actually, the difference between Ricardo and I was they analyze, and the way I was speaking with the engineers, try to improve situations. We definitely working as a group. We all share the informations. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't work for one or another. But, you know, it's kind of situations when you jump out of the car, you're a bit frustrated, you say something you shouldn't. Actually, he went to me and said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have say that, but I was just frustrated." I think also sometimes, and I don't want to say anything bad about anything, but it's just, you know, we all try to make a show, as you and everybody, just try to make a hot mix.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Tom, he's pretty good for that. It's no problem. It's no-brainer. Everybody is doing his job and we have a lot of fun. This team, I can tell you, Newman/Haas Racing, is a big family. It's not a small word to say. I really enjoy to be there and expect to stay there for a long time.

DERRICK WALKER: Yeah, it is. Sometimes there's almost nothing you can transfer over from one to the other because their style demands a different setup. Last year we had Tora Takagi. He was very aggressive going into the corner. We could never get the car to be there when he wanted it. We fought long and hard to try to give him a stable car on entry, but he just went in so deep, it was just very hard. So this year we're sort of suffering. All of the setups we had from last year, these real aggressive, stiff setups, don't work with either of our two drivers. Fortunately, our two drivers actually have similar comments, although they drive a little bit differently. One is more aggressive than the other. But their actual interpretation of what the car is doing we find is actually very similar, and the feedback is good from both of them, so it helps us in the long run.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: The biggest difference between Bruno and I, he doesn't really care if the car is a bit unsure on the entry. I prefer a really stable rear. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to achieve with the Lola, which is a nervous entry. It's pretty much why they choose me, because still we can drive and start with the same baseline car, try to get a read on some changes and try to compare and go ahead.

DANICA PATRICK: You know, that is one of the issues, is having a teammate that doesn't drive like you. I think it can help in a sense that you can know if your baseline is somewhere close or somewhere miles away. You can test things like wing packages, different set of shocks or something. You can really go through stuff. I guess it goes a bit quicker, and you can also look at speed traces on a graph and just see, is it because I'm just braking entirely too late and the car cannot get into the corner? I think for me, it's a matter of being able to see on speed traces where you're better, where you're worse. Maybe it's just a matter of carrying three miles an hour more which produces more downforce, then all of a sudden you have a settled car. That I think is what for me would be the biggest gain as a teammate. As far as setup goes, I've never been the same as anyone else. I think that's pretty common within drivers. You can't really run the exact same setup as someone else.

JOHN LOPES: No. Chris was actually out of Indianapolis today, meeting with one of the series sponsors about extending the relationship. Then we have board meetings coming up over the next couple days. So he is stuck in spreadsheets tonight and dinner with board members. We've got some important annual meetings coming up over the next couple of days. That's where he's at. In terms of the schedule, we have a big board up in the conference room upstairs. It's got these little Velcro strips on it. We're really trying to fit TV dates with venue dates right now. We made the CBS announcement where they've made available 10 dates for us this year. So we're trying to fit that in as well as negotiate the other TV dates. Our intent is to do them both. While I have the mic. Someone asked a question about Newman/Haas. I have to tell you a great story about your owner.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Great stories about my owners. There's no truth to the rumor he was actually in the Ronald McDonald suit at Cleveland.

JOHN LOPES: Carl is one of the all-time classics. He always has a cigar in his mouth. Have you ever seen Carl bless his car before the race? Have any of you ever seen that. In Mid-Ohio, really check it out before the race. Scott Roembke from Rahal is here. He blesses your car before the race, right?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Yes. But this time he blessed the wrong car.

JOHN LOPES: Yes. He comes up to the car and he touches the nose and the tires and he puts his cigar down, the only time he takes it out, he touches the car and he blesses it. This one time he blesses the car, and he looks up and Bobby Rahal is in the car looking at him.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: The funny story is Bobby won the race this time and Carl was absolutely sure it was his fault.

DERRICK WALKER: The million dollar question. I think if you look at open-wheel racing in America, it would certainly be a lot better off if there was only one series and we all concentrated our efforts on one series. However, the chances of that happening are probably slim to none unless one of the series takes a dive and doesn't recover. I don't see that. We've had many, many meetings that have never been reported by Robin Miller with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to try and find a way to resolve the future of open-wheel racing to everybody's gain. It's not that the speedway is so anti-CART or anti-doing an amalgamation. It's just there's been so many complicated issues to pull together to satisfy everybody's needs to actually make it happen. It is that complicated that it never happened. I think we're resolved for the foreseeable future to just get on and make it work as best we can. Probably with some work on the part of both series to try and coexist as opposed to go against, head to head, each other, we could probably successfully do that. At the end of the day, maybe you the fans are the winner of the contest. When all is said and done, you get a lot more racing. And that's unfortunately how it's going to be for a while, but it would be better if we were all together. But I don't see the mechanism for that to happen at the moment.

JOHN LOPES: I think it would be Sebastien.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: We had a long discussion in the last racing briefing before the race in Toronto. Actually it came up that they were going to issue a rule to try to avoid blocking during qualifying session. Obviously, I do think that in the street course a single-car qualifying would be better because basically everybody's trying to make a lap, every single corner is blind. Even if you don't want to block someone, sometime it happens because you slow down, you try to make your gap, and suddenly somebody arrive in your back and it's too late. It's a very, very difficult point. I think it always happened, and it will always be like that. But for sure, some drivers doesn't help, that's sure.

JOHN LOPES: Actually, we have. It all surrounds giving the fans the best possible show we can. Ultimately, that's what we're out there to do. In the past, when we had two sessions, it didn't work out, it wasn't fair to the competitors, it wasn't as exciting a show. The all-skate qualifying as we call it was designed to give the fans an hour on track. It's created some unique problems, like Sebastien said. On the street courses it's tight. One of the things we have tackled is exactly what you're alluding to. And that is have the first half of the session be an all-skate, and then you take the top five or the Top 10 at that point for the second half and they have a shootout single car to see who is quickest for the top five or top ten positions. That's sort after DTM type way of qualifying. In certain tracks, Miami this year we're going to be single-car qualifying because the circuit is so tight. So there's always ways to skin the cat. Certainly if you have any ideas, we'll be around, and we certainly listen to them.

JOHN LOPES: The discussion is still in its infancy. There is some discussion of having two types of race format broadcasts: One being a very traditional type of broadcast, and the other being a little bit of a spiced up show to show the fans the other things that are going on. There's so much happening at a place like Toronto that the fans don't see. You know, the parties, the things that are going on in hospitality, literally people 10 deep in the crowd. Sometimes you don't have time to really capture everything that's going on. There's a discussion about the network broadcasts having a little more zip to it, if you will, a more traditional broadcast on a pay-per-view or cable type situation. That's something that Terry Linger and his group, a very talented group who I think you would all agree have really raised the bar in terms of race broadcasts. That's something they're looking at for the future.

JOHN LOPES: We kept replaying that in race control with the TIVO.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I'm not a technician. Actually I have a question for you. My parents missed two races this year, Cleveland and Milwaukee, because it was in Europe not live because of the changing time by night. Do you think there is a chance at some point on the website we will have the races live?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Actually, I think the team was pretty upset about me because I burned the differential.

JOHN LOPES: Well, title sponsorship is always, always a priority. The company's been working very, very hard on it. There's been some recent changes in marketing at the company. David Claire, our chief operating officer, is now overseeing the marketing. He came back from South Korea where he headed up the whole Asian sports marketing side of things. That part of our business is in good hands. We have some very talented young people in marketing. I can tell you, they're beating feet all over the country. I should point out, we're not void out of new sponsors. Sebastien decided to win Cleveland with McDonald's. McDonald's is a great new sponsor. We actually had to pull Ronald McDonald off the truck. He wanted to take a ride with Sebastien. It is a priority certainly. To go to the heart of your question, we're going to be here talking in the future. I mean, Champ Car's not going away. We're going through a tough couple years. We're going through a tough couple years, but there's a lot of very, very successful drivers, owners, sponsors who have all hunkered down for the fight. You know, we're going through a fight right now. But we've pushed off the bottom of the pool. Certainly we're on the way back. The crowds are coming back. New sponsors are starting to sign up. We're going to be around for a long, long time.

CALVIN FISH: Derrick, would you like to address the first one.

DERRICK WALKER: I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of work to be done to really get everything in place for next year. We're obviously working on all of those issues. Improving the racing is very high on the list. Certainly what Formula 1 is doing has not gone unnoticed in our group. Probably, without embarrassing some of the folks that are here today from CART, probably haven't been around through them all. In the history of CART, I think CART front office collectively as a group working together and looking at the issues and tackling the issues are probably the best group we've ever had in CART. So when you look at some of these issues, title sponsorship was one that was brought up there, there's a tremendous lot of work being done behind the scenes on all of these issues. The guy that seems to have got a fair amount of flak here tonight, Mr. Pook off and on, he's like a bulldog in a china shop. But he is a leader, and he is a visionary. I think probably CART wouldn't be as well off, not that we are well off right now, but we wouldn't be where we are today without Chris Pook actually jumping in the deep end when he didn't really need to. He could have moved on down the road and gone over to Montana with his camper or something. He stayed and fought the fought. There's a lot of issues being looked at. Improving the racing is definitely top of the list. Certainly Alex Zanardi, who wouldn't want him back in the series? He's everything that CART is. I think what he represents is the spirit of racing. And CART I think, when you look at what they did in putting that car together and the Eric Bachelot Team Conquest did a great job in getting him out there, for those of you who weren't there, I'm sure a lot of you weren't, it was a special moment in racing. That's more of the spirit that CART needs to showcase because it's there. It's just being trodden over the years from abuse from, you know, a lot of turmoil, a lot of money along the way. We've hit bottom and we're sort of rallying around and starting to focus on, "How do we turn this thing around?" The issues about Mid-Ohio is just one of the many, where we go, what we do, how do we get there. It's a tremendous amount of work. But I can promise you, there's nothing not on the table right now that's being looked at by the group. Just the enormity of the issues and the job at hand is huge. I know it's a bit off of your question, but I took the liberty to rabbit on a bit for a while.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: This guy is completely amazing. I met him the year before in Monaco for a go-kart race. I was driving actually. It was pretty amazing, too. I hope he's not going to drive because he's going to win this event.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: It was really intense. I think Jimmy and all the drivers who were there when he had the crash in 2001 were really, really touched. You know, everybody got caught in this moment. It was a lot of emotions. I just, yeah, think this guy is completely amazing.

JOHN LOPES: Alex was actually supposed to do his 13 laps and stay out and lead the pace lap for the race. And we were actually going to have Alex be the pace car. But in the meeting he said, "Guys, if I'm on the track when they throw the green, I'm going to go." And we said, "No, Alex, come on." He goes, "No, I'm going." But then after he came in, and the night before, Daniella, his wife, said to him, "Alex, do you know what the checkered flag means tomorrow?" And he said, "I think so." She said, "That means it's a checkered flag, that's it." She said this to him at dinner the night before the event. He's like, "Yes, dear." But he'll forget about that.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Actually, I mean, it was even more a surprise because he's been on the track the first with this new package and he had no idea how it was going to be. He was flat out with more power than us. I'm not kidding, he was flat out after five laps. He did 13 laps. So, you know, it's the kind of idea just to show you how talented is this guy.

JOHN LOPES: In that session, he went out, hadn't been in the car since the incident. He went out, did a couple laps, came in, said, "Give me one Turner front wing." He went out, he would have been position six in qualifying.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I think the US tracks are a bit more bumpy. Monaco and Peau are really smooth layout. But it's not easier to pass. Street courses will always be street courses. I do believe that it's very, very difficult to pass because the line is narrow and if you push a bit too deep on the brakes, you're going to crash. You cannot really afford that and lose the race. So it's always a big problem with street courses. But I expect the view and the cameras in the walls and the way that the car are behaving on the track is also at least as interesting as on a road course. For sure, you're never going to see as many passing as on a road course because it's just simply way harder to make a move.

DERRICK WALKER: I don't think sponsorship finding has ever been easy, to tell you the truth. Certainly it's gotten harder since the economy took a bit of a sag and since open-wheel has two series now. It's not that the money -- contrary to what you might believe, I'll explain in a minute, but it's not that the money has gone all over to the IRL and we're sitting here with nothing. The IRL, if you look below the surface, is still in the same situation as it was, which is it's struggling to find money, as well. And the competition has changed a little bit, so the price has gone up there. They're running roughly about the same price as it costs us to do an average program. You know, sponsorship is really driven by the fans. Whenever we get the fans and we get an event, then we have companies who want to advertise in front of them. When we have TV numbers and great TV slots, great shows, people watch it, that's where the sponsors want to be. So when you look at some of the lack of sponsorship we've had, it's been because of the money that's gone somewhere else because the fans have dwindled in certain places. It's directly proportional to that, I believe. But talking about the money, the IRL particularly, the Evil Empire as you call it, the story behind the story on what's happened over the last couple of years, if you look at sponsorship, one series versus the other, my personal theory is that when I used to be sponsored by Valvoline and Cummins, we used to go out and buy the best drivers, we had Gil de Ferran, Robby, guys like that, we could go out and do our business because we had the money to do it, and we had the typical sponsors. After a period, the price went up. The guys that really replaced them were the engine manufacturers. They came in, spent a lot of money on the series, and we all thought, "This is great." This is income, subsidies that came in and filled a lot of void in our sponsorship needs. Probably if you were adding it all up, between Toyota and Honda, I'm sure conservatively they were pumping in about $150 million a year into CART, one way or another, whether it's paying for drivers, paying for teams, putting signage up or paying for advertising. All of a sudden one of them and the second one decided the other side of town would probably be more an advantage for them so they moved to the other side of Indianapolis. Certainly there's a gaping big hole. So when you look at CART's problem or the difficulty to get back on track, we have to go back and fill in that hole there. We have to go back and put value back into it and entice the traditional sponsors to our series, and they're going to come if they see us putting on responsible events. If we put on good TV shows, we have great TV production, now we need to get it on in time slots where you guys want to be in front of the television. We need to be in front of fans where they want to see our racing and see good racing. So the job is not that complicated. It just takes time. It takes a lot of resources. You can't change over night what happened. Over a period of time when the manufacturers really did a lot for our series, put a lot of money into it, they moved overnight, we can't replace that overnight, so it's going to take us a while to get back. It's a long answer to your question, but that's the story behind the story. You'll probably pass it over to somebody else with the other question. Old-timers has kicked in and I can't remember what they were.

JOHN LOPES: Well, I think we're pretty much at critical mass in terms of number of races. In fact, in an environment where there's less sponsorship available, the quickest way to provide relief to the teams is fewer races. Europe has been a strong market for us. I mean, the German event was a huge event. Brands Hatch was packed. We'd like to be there. But those markets have to work financially long-term for both CART and for the teams and their sponsors. So our focus being the NAFTA market, I think Chris has been very clear in his vision, that being North America, Mexico, United States and Canada, are really the linchpin. Australia is a stand-alone, Super Bowl type event. We'll be in Europe if it makes sense and if the right venues complement both CART's and the teams' sponsors. It's a stay-tuned type of situation.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Yeah, I don't know much about the safety of the other series in the US. For sure, the safety we have in Champ Car is great. They are doing a tremendous job. It's always very difficult to compare this thing. We're pretty lucky that we don't have big crashes. I mean, if we are not in the (inaudible), it's for sure because we don't want to get hurt. I think that's one of the keys. That's also why we don't have so many races on ovals, right? You know, I enjoyed a lot the Germany race. I enjoyed to be in Milwaukee. But I think even the Andretti say even three or four laps on a oval, you're big enough risk to get hurt. When you start to have 18 races on an oval, you improve so much the possibility and probability to get hurt. I think the safety reasons just are playing in our favor. When you see how many crashes we've seen in IRL this year, I mean, I'm a racer for sure, and I don't want to get killed. I'm pretty well in Champ Car.

JOHN LOPES: For those of you who don't know, our safety team is comprised of firemen, EMTs, paramedics from all over the country. They do this every day. When we send a safety truck out to a car that's been hit, there's four guys jumping out of that car who are trained medical professionals, and typically the guy first to the car and straddles the tub, you see him reach in and talk, often is Dr. Terry Trammell, who is our chief orthopaedic surgeon. You might notice, it's never mentioned in the press releases, but you'll notice that Terry performs surgery on drivers from all series, not just Champ Car. Safety is an issue that cuts across all series. When someone's hurt, our team and our doctors are available for anybody, doesn't matter what they race.

DANICA PATRICK: If I win, I'd do it. Everybody has pretty much seen me in that amount of clothing. I have nothing more to show (laughter).

DANICA PATRICK: It was a spread, though.

JOHN LOPES: Absolutely we plan on doing that in the future. Just so you know, it was a time filler. We were trying to let the sun go down over the horizon so the drivers wouldn't have the sun in their eyes in turn one at the start of the race. We were thinking, "Somebody could do a hat dance. Let's introduce the crew." It actually worked out great. They were pumped up. So, yeah, it's going to be part of the future.

JOHN LOPES: Yeah. We are focused on the urban event, the urban event venues in terms of selecting new venues. However, I can tell that you both of those tracks that we've actually had discussions about, not necessarily that they're going to crop up on the schedule any time soon, but certainly in searching for a northeast venue, Watkins Glen always comes up. Great circuit. Not to rule it out. It's always possible.

DERRICK WALKER: Well, they certainly want to know it's going to happen. I think you would find that all of the teams actually title the car with the sponsor's name. That's the way they call, that's the way they enter the car. It's out there in the public domain. It's these bloody TV announcers who just don't get it. I mean, they go straight for the drivers, and the car and the sponsor is nowhere. Seriously, we do that. We do call it that. I think NASCAR has just made a big thing about it, worked on it a lot more than we have. It's certainly something that is part of the package, but it's not necessarily always adopted by the TV or the media right away as calling the car "blah blah blah." But we do enter it that way and always call it that way for our sponsors and give them as much exposure and recognition as possible.

DERRICK WALKER: This is another issue from the maddog, bulldog, Mr. Chris Pook, in his vision of how to make this sport grow. There's a lot of companies out there, gas companies, that now have a lot of concession shops, stands in their gas station. They have a lot of companies doing business, not just pumping gas. He's looking at it from a commercial standpoint saying, "Why not? Why shouldn't we go with gasoline?" Then there's another angle to that story. If you're looking for engine manufacturers, that's a heck of a lot more of them out there with gasoline engines than methanol engine. Certainly from a safety standpoint, number one, methanol any day of the week. I think there has to be a damn good reason to go away from methanol as a usable fuel. Some of the mentions that have just gone over are really the argument to say, "Come back and consider it." Other than that, there's really no other earthly reason why gasoline versus methanol. Methanol is a lot easier to handle when it comes to safety.