Cleveland Town Meeting Tidbits

[The Snout]

Chris Pook flat said tonight in the Town Meeting tonight that there will not be Turbo's in the new engine formula that CART goes too. However, he did say that it will be a gasoline powered engine as we rumored a long time again, and also a V-10 engine. It's just a matter of time that the engine formula will be revealed.

Not unexpected.


Chris Pook indicated that there is a definite interest from the city of Las Vegas to hold a Champ Car event, but there are some issues that need to be resolved first

Chris Pook went on the record tonight, stating that CART should be a private company. However, when questions were raised about the details of possible buyouts, and partnerships with Formula 1, Chris was real quiet as expected.

..more to come

[Lee Janotta]

I would have gone, I had tickets, but I was just too damn busy today.

They would have had to drag me out of the place after the engine announcement, so it's probably for the best I didn't go.

[macdaddy]

Chris Pook says that Lola is building parts of the current Reynard chassis, and is helping in its development!

Pook is also considering using skid plates on the cars in Cleveland, to add to the spectacle for the fans.

[¡As-de-mim!]

quote:
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CHRIS POOK: Actually it's very interesting in Indianapolis. The people of Indianapolis are he very, very friendly to us. In fact, it's almost difficult to go out to dinner there because people walk up to you and just say: Thank you very much for what you're doing and thank you very much for moving your company to Indianapolis. We really love what you're doing and you need to succeed.

This is not all about playing with one man's toys. This is about doing something across the board for everybody. So they are very, very friendly. The town is very divided on this whole thing, I can tell you that. The restaurateurs are hurting badly. Actually this is a bit of a travesty and it is very sad.

The Indianapolis 500 was one huge race and it was the whole month of May there. It started when the racetrack opens, the first day you would have 25,000, 30,000 people would show up for the first day of practice and then on the first qualifying weekend, Saturday, there will be 225,000 people there. Now, maybe 15 people show up when the track opens on the first day and I think they said there were 20,000 people there for the qualifying. And Carburetion Day, it was like 40,000 people there. It's terrible. The hotels and the restaurants who really counted on that segment of business in the month of May, it's just completely gone in the traffic and dropped off horrifically. Even the 500 itself, the rating, 4.6, I think it was, and that's come down from 8 or 9, what it was a few years ago. There were seats available. I was there - I went back to California on the Friday night, but Thursday night I was there and some guy was trying to sell me four seats to the Indy 500 on Sunday.

It was just - it's terribly sad. It's terribly, terribly sad that such a huge, tremendous event, and for the whole community, could have slipped as badly as it slipped.

Hopefully one of these days, I suppose either side will be able to endure a bit more pain and try to get back together. I have been trying to find a solution since I came on board CART. Unfortunately, I don't get my phone calls returned, and I have seen zero interest from them in getting back together with us, particularly on the 500. That's not to say I want to subject Patrick and Joey to racing ovals every single weekend; I'm not going to do that. But there does seem to be common ground around the 500; the way Jimmy Vasser was treat in the telecast was appalling, you would not even know he was in the race for God's sake. Admittedly, he had a mechanical failure- the fact that Paul was there and won it but was not allowed to be announced was another issue.

Hopefully we can cure it and we will get back together because the race - The Indianapolis 500 - is bigger than all of us, and we need to respect it and both sides need to respect it and we need to put our differences aside and honor that race and let the best racing car drivers participate in that race as they did in the past.

[macdaddy]

Pook: "So from a marketing perspective, we are completely different. We offer a whole different set of dynamics. I don't consider the IRL any competition at all. I just want them to go do their thing and leave us alone." (Applause)

Carpentier: "There are many laws in Canada that they don't exist in the United States. One of them is that after this year, I think its October; most likely tobacco will be illegal to advertise anything that resembles a tobacco name or something close to that. Even if you build a lighter and put the same name as Player’s, you're never going to be allowed to advertise it. So I know they are battling to try to fight it so they can keep sponsoring. But at the moment, it's not looking very good. It's not final, but at the moment, it's difficult on that.
The beer companies, there are also some laws that keeps them from sponsoring individual drivers, I don't know exactly what they are, but I know that's one of the reasons why they cannot sponsor teams. They can sponsor events but not teams."

-I did not realize that about Canadian breweries. The law must be fairly recent, because not all that long ago there was the Molson car. (Who was that? Sullivan)? But then, while commenting on a Labatts sticker on the Fernandez car, Carpentier continued, "If they have a plan that's outside of Canada, then they can do the sponsorship." I wonder if the Labatt stickers are on the car when they race in Canada?

[macdaddy]

I was curious about the Canadian brewery thing, and so I emailed Fernandez Racing with this:

Curious, as it came up in coversation... Are "Labatt" stickers allowed on Adrian's car during the three Canadian races?

And they were kind enough to respond same-day:

Yes, because Adrian sponsor is Tecate, even tough both companies are partners.

Maybe it's just me, but I find this whole issue fascinating. Reading Carpentier's comments above was really educational for me. It's disheartening to think that our big breweries cannot sponsor a race team.