Champ Car/IRL merger – there’ll be none
We can tell you that what Mears means is that Champ Car won't settle for anything less than 50% ownership and Tony George does not want to give them 50%. He wants to be King and Emperor. We hear Tony continues to make offers to buy Champ Car but OWRS is not interested.
We hear zero merger talk in the Champ Car paddock these days, absolutely zero. No one is even interested in such a scenario anymore, indicating they are quite bullish on the future. All the talk is coming from the IRL side, we assume because now all their engine money is going away. Toyota gone. GM gone. Honda will stay to sell the teams engines to keep their HPD staff employed and their doors open. If they get the exclusive contract to supply engines for the entire IRL grid, we don't see them subsidizing teams. Why should they? And if they did, the factory teams would get all the best stuff. If there are no factory teams then there are no subsidies and some teams will fold.