Zentropy

Speedtv.com is reporting that the co-owners of Champ Car have reached an agreement with Tony George to race together with this season. Both sides are currently working out details of the merger, which include scheduling conflicts and equipment, but it seems everyone is committed to reaching some sort of compromise before the 2008 open wheel season starts. The Champ Car itself would be, thankfully, stashed away forever in the garage of forgotten cars, as all the CC teams would have to use IndyCar’s chassis and ethanol-fueled Honda engine. Personally, I would like to see teams have a choice of chassis, engine, and tires, but that may be asking for too much at this point.

It seems the ultimate winners of this merger would be the fans, IndyCar, and Honda, who rolled the dice in sticking with IndyCar after Toyota left for the greener pastures of Nascab. I recall an acquaintance of mine, who works for Andretti-Green racing, was very nervous about his future job prospects just a few short months ago. You see, Honda and Toyota are the Colts and Patriots of the Japanese racing engine manufacturers. Toyota clearly saw the value in creating a Nascab engine, so they pulled their resources out of open wheel in the pursuit of demolishing the American-made engines in the hugely popular stock car series. My informant tells me that while it would appear on the surface that Toyota’s jump to Nascar was a failure, they had a newer, better engine on the shelf that will be used in 2008. (Now the jump to Toyota by Tony Stewart and Gibbs Racing makes a little more sense.) It’s not much of a stretch to believe that Honda would’ve left IndyCar eventually to challenge Toyota in Nascar, particularly if Toyota started dominating the series early in their relationship.

So now Honda is going to be the sole engine manufacturer for a series that’s going to see a huge influx of big driver names, sponsors, and money. Toyota gambled that they could attain relevance in Nascar quickly, while Honda gambled that an open-wheel merger would help grow the audience. We’ll see how Toyota performs in Nascar this year, but for now, it appears the score is Honda 7, Toyota 0.

What does this mean for the fans? It means we can look forward to seeing some big-time talent on the track again this year, despite recent exodus of top IndyCar drivers to Nascar (I’m looking at you, Franchitti and Hornish). Get used to seeing some classic races between Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal, Helio Castroneves and Bruno Junqueira, Sebastian Bourdais and Scott Dixon. This is going to be a fun year…

UPDATE: Curt Cavin from the Indy Star weighs in, it seems the initial SpeedTV report may have been premature. Nothing is set in stone, but both sides are still talking. C’mon, guys, let’s get this thing done!