CART and IRL To Kiss, Possibly Make Up

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AutoWeek is reporting that the Indy Racing League and CART (aka Champ Cars, the old Indy Cars, and Who Are All These Forgein Drivers?) might finally merge to form a single open-wheel racing series. IRL honcho Tony George and CART captain Kevin Kalkhoven agreed that the two of them will share ownership of one series. At this point it doesn't go beyond that, other than both men being committed to working out the differences and calling in a third-party mediator if necessary. Both series have yet to announce their 2007 schedules, so there's an outside chance that a few of next year's races will feature cars from both series. But it looks like this isn't being paraded as "merger of equals" since IRL has the Indy 500, more sponsorship, and, in general, more attendance. We're going to go ahead and break it to you right now — if and when this happens, the resulting cars will look a lot more like today's Indy cars than today's CART cars.

The Screw Turns [AutoWeek]

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