Indy Lights

[Greg Murray]

Indy Lights will be no more next year as CART drop the feeder fo Toyota Atlantic.Want a shame for those drivers & teams who have been working so hard.And it's official because Bobby Rahal wrote a letter to Indy Lights boss saying they wre switching.

[Liz]

The Indy Lights cars are not like the Champ Cars and really don't provide much of a stepping stone to the upper formulae. Plus they are much more expensive to run than the Atlantics. It's time for them to go.

[domaza]

I don't know match about what is the differnence between thos two series but 2 feeder series is too much for CART. They need one and GOOD one... right decision. In which series are more drivers and how many races they currently have in one season? Sorry for Indy Lights team hope they will continue in Toyota Atlantic or whatever the name will be next year! My choice: Junior CART Btw I also like to call the official racing serie CART not Champ Cars and I think CART it is!

[SevenGrain]

Indy Lights may indeed go away next year, but it is far from official. The letter you refer to was actually from a high level Toyota executive to Bobby Rahal (who, by the way, is no longer the CART CEO) suggesting that Toyota Atlantic become the sole support series for CART.
There has been nothing in the way of an official announcement. If Indy Lights disappears, it will be CART's own fault. CART paid 11 million dollars to purchase the Lights series in 1997 and then promptly neglected it like a red-headed step child. The Lights series was, for CART, nothing more than a source of revenue to pay share holder dividends with. The lack of a desperatly needed new chassis has angered many team owners and the field has now shrunk to less than 12 entries.
Great way to p*ss away 11 million bucks.

[marcus]

Liz i think you may be wrong about a stepping stone ..Indy lites has provided plenty of fantastic drivers to champcars over the years..just about every lites champion has stepped up into champcars including current drivers like Scott Dixon , Paul Tracy , Bryan herta and many others who may not have won the series but have competes at a top level in the series.

I have just watched the Milwaukee race and there is definately a problem with the series at present and drastic measures need to be taken.

I think both series Atlantics and lites are very good classes but to drop indy lites and have Atlantics as the next step down would be a mistake..I personally think it is too big of a jump from them to champcars.

we will have to see what happens with the series for next year.

[Laagri]

I've never seen an Indy Lights or Toyota Atlantic race, so I can't really comment. I would just point out one thing though - I don't think you can say that anything is too big a jump these days. Just look at F1 (where the cars are by all accounts more difficult to drive than Champ Cars in that they are less forgiving) - Jenson Button arrived on the scene after just one season in F3 and now there's Kimi Räikkönen who'd previously only had one season in Formula Renault, and both of them have done very well. The talented drivers will make the jump relatively painlessly. And the less talented won't do very well, however long they've been in the feeder series. To draw an F1 parallel again, take Gaston Mazzacane. He had 4 years in F3000, the official feeder series, but what good did it do him?

[SevenGrain]

Atlantics to CART is not too big a jump, Carpentier did it, so did Michael Andretti and Jacques Villenuve, and so will Buddy Rice. And Gilles Villenuve went from Atlantics to F1.