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Schedule
will be approved by Franchise Board next weekend in Chicago, at
least that is his goal.
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Germany
on same weekend as the Italian GP should not be a problem from
an attendance standpoint because Monza is over 90% Italian fans,
not German fans.
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Watkins
Glen and Road Atlanta are very appealing and he thinks either
race would be big. Interestingly he said some of CART's
highest TV ratings are in the Atlanta market. He also said
Watkins Glen needs a lot of safety upgrades so don't look for a
CART race there until that investment is made by ISC. He
was at Road Atlanta recently and could not believe how different
it was. He was impressed with all the improvements Don
Panoz has made. We think you will see Road Atlanta added
to the schedule before Watkins Glen.
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HP
will be reduced next year and the solution will be what the
engine manufacturers recommend. We assume that means lower
boost pressure, but maybe not. Aerodynamics will also be
changed.
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CART
will have a new engine formula starting in 2003 and it sounds,
based on what he said today, that the 1.8 liter turbo engine is
the front running solution today. The decision on it has
been put off for a number of years because they thought that was
standing in the way of them getting back together with the
Speedway. Now that it's clear both series are so different
and have such different philosophies, different engines don't
seem to be an issue any more. Plus he said he like the
muffling effect the turbos have for the street races
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He
believes tracks must have events to succeed and the rumors of
ISC aligning with the IRL and against CART are nonsense.
They want successful events, be it NASCAR, IRL or CART.
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He
thinks CART would be a big hit in Montreal, but he still thinks
Canada should only have two races, so Molstar would have t
choose to drop Vancouver or Toronto first. We don't fully
understand his reasoning, but will ask him why later. If
all three races would be big hits, CART should be there.
Geographically Canada is very big, plenty big enough to host
three CART races.
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CART
will never be like the IRL. CART will continue to grow its
series and the IRL will grow theirs. He hopes the Indy 500
becomes the Super Bowl of Indy Car racing, much like the AFL vs.
the NFL made the Super Bowl of football.
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ISC
would like to see CART at Phoenix.
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He
is VERY excited about having SFX negotiate their new TV
deal. He feels CART's best interest will be served.
He would not speculate whether the contract would go to a single
bidder, or two like NASCAR did.
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He
was impressed how great Toronto was this year and wants all CART
races to be like that. He said we come to place like
Michigan the next week and it's a whole different world.
He feels the Superspeedways are an important part of the series,
but they have to make sense to both CART and to the promoter.
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CART
may race in the middle of May in 2001. He would not say,
but we think that means Nazareth will run on the 2nd weekend of
Indy qualifying next year. They are trying to make the
schedule so they don't kill their teams and suppliers with too
many consecutive races.
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CART
has a 150 day window to fix some key issues confronting the
series
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