Sunday Notebook from Indy

Talked to a mechanic of one of the transition teams and asked him how these IndyCars compared to working on the Panoz Champ Cars. "No comparison he said, these have to be one of the worst cars I ever worked on." Let's hope the next generation IndyCar is a lot more Champ Car-like, turbocharged engine and all……We ran into Bart Rietbergen who promoted the Assen Champ Car race last year and he told us he had a couple of meetings with IRL officials this weekend in the hope of convincing the series to come to Europe in 2009. We doubt the IRL officials realize just how successful the Assen race was last year, simply dwarfing some of the existing IndyCar races on all levels. Unfortunately Roger Penske has been quoted as saying he doesn't think IndyCar should race in Europe, which leads us to believe if The Captain doesn't endorse it Rietbergen has a tough sell ahead of him. This of course would be a travesty and a major missed opportunity by the IRL. Rietbergen tells us a Superleague is an option but in his heart he would like to have an IndyCar race………In other news, however, we do hear talks about a race in Mexico are still progressing well. Mark Cipolloni reporting from Indy