MVN - Most Valuable Network

Press conference tomorrow on OW merger?

Respected motorsports magazine Autosport has come out with a story on American open-wheel unification perhaps being imminent. While it appears that this borrows liberally from Robin Miller’s latest piece on SPEEDTV.com, they also mention this:

“[Miller] claimed Champ Car teams have been told to stop work on their cars and to expect delivery of new IRL cars later this week. Autosport.com understands that the announcement of the merger will be made by IRL officials tomorrow.”

But while the fate of Champ Car is definitely hanging in the balance, it appears that one co-owner of the beleaguered series won’t join the unified series.

Saying he “can’t make the numbers work” with his Rocketsports team, Paul Gentilozzi also told the Indianapolis Star’s Curt Cavin that he doesn’t see a fair number of Champ Car squads going over to the IndyCar Series.

Thanks to blogger Furious Wedge for the heads-up on the Autosport report.

UPDATE: 2-19-08 (1:08 p.m. ET) — Add the Indianapolis Business Journal to the list of press groups trumpeting a Wednesday conference to announce the unification of open-wheel racing. According to them, their sources have confirmed a press event for tomorrow. Tip of the cap to MyNameIsIRL for the find.

UPDATE: 2-19-08 (1:43 p.m. ET) – Found this on the message boards…Indianapolis TV station WRTV is now saying that tomorrow will be the day as well.

UPDATE: 2-19-08 (5:30 p.m. ET) — ESPN.com reported about an hour ago that a press conference is coming, but for Thursday instead. However, an interview with ESPN pit reporter Vince Welch has the merger going down tomorrow like the rest of the sources. The segment can be seen here; just click the first video in the queue to the right.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.