Cart Announces Postponement Of 2004 St. Petersburg Race

[RaceTime]

CART ANNOUNCES POSTPONEMENT OF 2004 ST. PETERSBURG RACE, SEASON TO OPEN WITH RUNNING OF GRAND PRIX OF LONG BEACH



INDIANAPOLIS (December 1, 2003) – The Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford season will open with the 21st running of the Champ Cars at the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2004 after CART and race promoter Dover Motorsports Inc. announced the postponement Monday of the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.



The second running of the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was to open the season on February 22nd, but the race was postponed, as the impending stockholder vote and possible change in ownership of the series limited the time that the teams would have to prepare for the 2004 Champ Car World Series season.



“There are many issues involved in the pending sale and privatization of the company, but chief among those is the fact that our teams need a certain amount of time to properly prepare themselves for a racing season,” said CART President and CEO Christopher R. Pook. “We looked at many options, including changing the St. Petersburg race date, but the onset of Major League Baseball Spring Training in Florida limits the available Spring dates. We will continue to work with the city of St. Petersburg to find an appropriate race date for the community in hopes of returning to St. Petersburg in 2004 and beyond.”



CART took steps to ensure the future of the event by acquiring the rights as well as all supporting safety equipment associated with the successful operation of the event from Dover Motorsports Inc, allowing CART to hold a race in St. Petersburg pending final approval by the city. CART Champ Car ran its first event on the streets of the South Florida city last year in an historic event that saw Sebastien Bourdais (#2 Lilly Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) become the first Champ Car driver ever to lead the opening lap of his Champ Car career. Series champion Paul Tracy (#3 Player’s/Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) would go on to win the race, the first of three consecutive victories to start the year.



The postponement means that the series’ marquee domestic event will kick off the Champ Car season, as the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will start the year on April 16-18. Over 200,000 fans attended last year’s event at the 1.968-mile street course and this year’s edition will mark the fourth time that Long Beach has served as the season opener (1984, 85, 87). Dover Motorsports Inc., who will also serve as the race promoter for the Long Beach event, announced that it will issue refunds to all fans that purchased tickets to the St. Petersburg race.



“While we regret that the Champ Car fans won’t get the opportunity to see the 2004 season begin in St. Petersburg, we are delighted to kick off a great year of racing with one of the most popular events on our schedule,” said Pook. “This will ensure that our teams have sufficient time to ready themselves for the 2004 campaign.”

[Jay]

As expected I'd say.... There will be an open-wheel road racing series in 2004, but there was almost no way it would have been ready by Feb. 22nd.

[GP Racer]

Well, there goes my long weekend in sunny, beautiful St. Pete... I was depending on that race to get me out of the cold Northeast. This was a street-course that really had promise, as the debut race showed last year.

I think the Trans Am series was going to race that weekend also, any chance of that happening?

[Tailwind]

Oh man! That means the first race is like 139 days away. That's a long time to wait...

[racefanatic]

Awww, that's too bad! I hope postponed doesn't really mean 'cancelled.' I guess it's kinda cool that they'll be starting in Long Beach though.

[GP Racer]

Right now, no cancellation is cool. This series needs all the races, teams, cars, fans, and sponsors it can get.

[sgw2]

St. Petersburg is probably dead now. Mid-Ohio has left the building, Fontana is dead, Miami staggering and Portland unlikely.

The US schedule is vanishing before our eyes.

[rush1]

not good news for potential sponsors

[enemy-ace]

The eternal optimist! It's a solid venue with good potential, it'll be back.

[CART_4ever]

This isn't looking good... I'm holding on to some hope, but it seems the bad news just keeps on coming. I was planning on going to St. Pete, and they cancelled Mid-Ohio here. I hope OWRS knows what they are doing. I can't believe the season isn't going to start until April. I'm just hoping it starts at all.

[gttouring]

what can they do? this is utter madness- the SEC moved MPH of the NYSE to some tiny exchange- it is nearly worthless stock and the buyout would only make people money now, what is the hold up?
St.Pete was a great street course, the mix of airport (with the Chevrons on the run way that looked like C/\RT's 'A' )
and street stuff, so cool.
I hope st. Petes gets back on the circuit, as well as midOhio just to save the series- IRL at LongBeach is not a fave idea of mine....how hard would it be to convert Lola-s to IndyCar spec anyway?

[Fogelhund]

A sound a proper business decision. Shame about the race, but it was becoming apparent it needed to be done. Let's move on now.

[indycool]

There's a key element in that release that makes me wonder. It says that CART gets all the safety equipment and "rights," meaning Dover got out of its contract with CART by giving CART the "assets." Dover, in turn, announced it's history with the race in a separate release.

That means CART holds contracts now with the cities of Cleveland, Miami and St. Petersburg with no promoters in place and OWRS has said it won't promote races.

I don't know quite what to make of this.

[gttouring]

but isn't MotoRock the promotion company?
OWRS won't do it but the other entity wil promote, this may work into Champcar hands..

[indycool]

GTTouring, Motorock is a concert promoter and might possibly be used as a "shell company" to promote the races. But it was a loser in Miami, Jamie Rose was fired and it's only mentioned one time in the latest few hundred pages of SEC documents. You have a point....OWRS could resurrect it to do the promotions at those cities. But it better have cash.

[gttouring]

Rose was fired- but i understood that MotoRock was still in operation, I wish we had details about what exactly failed with the Miami event. Elton John Showed up fro crying out loud, how many people did he bring to the show?
so was the distribution of funds the problem , or not enough profit or none at all? and with enough exposure, they can bill the shows in advance and make a killer program, how many days advance do you know about a concert and a race? a few months, so motorock better get cracking,

[indycool]

The problem as Kalkhoven was quoted as saying, was that Rose was a good creative guy but not a businessman and the concerts lost a lot of money. How that translated to CART's books, if at all, is anyone's guess. The Elton John concert apparently wasn't badly attended but the other one was. No one knows what Motorock paid these guys. Kalkhoven fired Rose and installed one of "his guys" to run the thing. I expect he had to "make good" on a lot of bills in Miami if he canned the guy and publicly dissed him. So all is not well there yet.

[sgjb]

Cart really can't get things right at all. They announce the schedule just over two weeks ago and now have to do this. Was it to hard for them to forsee this then. Their idiotic blunders are quickly turning a Diehard Cart fan out the door. For supposed smart men, they really are making alot of stupid errors already. I am not holding too much hope that these guys will lead us to the promised land. Would be a shame!

[jjspierx]

Ummm...we already know from the schedule that Miami is out, so why are people making it sound like now we probably won't have a Miami race? The bigger question is who really cares if we don't have a Miami race. The street circuit is **** for champcars.

[DNQ]

This COULD be a blessing in disguise, with an extra two-months for the teams and sponsors to get up to full speed. That said, it's a shame to start so late in the season.

[macdaddy]

Because DoverMS has already stated that they need something like two months between events, the calendar does not provide sufficient room to reschedule St.Pete and also squeeze in Miami. So one of them has got to go.

At least this one won't end up in a lawsuit.
But I shouldn't speak too soon, the way things have been going.

[macdaddy]

"CART took steps to ensure the future of the event by acquiring the rights as well as all supporting safety equipment associated with the successful operation of the event from Dover Motorsports Inc."

Where did they get the money? Have they got a secret VISA card? (Afterall, it is accepted in a million locations!)

Perhaps the OWRS is quite confident, and the monies came from an "outside" source?

[mac]

This is the only sensible thing to do. The series won't be confirmed and finalised until Dec. 19 at the earliest. This means teams simply won't have time to get things together for that date. It was silly to schedule it then anyway.

I just hope it will be back. That's a pretty cool venue.

[BootsOntheSide]

I should think it will be held, probably in place of Miami. The ideal date would be during may though, maybe even to clash with the 500.

It'd certainly be a disaster to lose this race, and it's probably among the 10-12 races OWRS would aim to stage even if the buyout didn't go through and the current CART folded.

[indycool]

Macdaddy, that question might be an easy answer. Dover wanted out of the money loser. CART wanted to reschedule. Dover could say "no" to rescheduling and make the contract void. CART wanted something out of it. Dover handed CART the keys. No money changed hands.