User:Knoper/sandbox

Champ Car was the trade name for Open Wheel Racing Series Inc., a sanctioning body for American open-wheel car racing that operated from 2004 to 2008. It was the successor to Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), which sanctioned the PPG Indy Car World Series from 1979 until dissolving after the 2003 season.

Champ Car was able to maintain a full field and most of CART's street circuit sanctioning agreements. The series would see a pitched multi-season battle between Newman/Haas Racing and Forsythe Racing, including a heated personal rivalry between three-time champion Sébastien Bourdais and veteran Canadian Paul Tracy. The series would experiment with dramatic rule changes, including special compound tires that were to be used for a fixed portion of the race, standing starts, and timed races.

The IRL began to race on road and street circuits in 2005, creating some competition for series traditional road racing tracks, but both series continued to suffer from reduced fields, sponsorship, and television ratings. Merger talks in 2006 were halted after disagreements regarding the upcoming Panoz chassis and leaked details of a shared new series upset IMS. The 2007 season saw the withdrawal of Bridgestone and Ford as presenting sponsors and some race cancellations.

By January 2008, both the IRL and Champ Car feared they did not have enough participating cars to maintain their TV and sanctioning contract minimums. After successful merger negotiations, in mid-February 2008, Champ Car authorized bankruptcy to facilitate a February 22 agreement in principle to merge with the IRL. The IRL purchased the CCWS's sanctioning contracts, the Champ Car Mobile Medical Unit, the series history, and goodwill for $6 million, with Forsythe and Kalkhoven signing a non-compete agreement in exchange for $2 million each.

While the first "merged" event of the rechristened "IndyCar Series" was the GAINSCO Auto Insurance Indy 300 from Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 29, 2008, due to a scheduling conflict with the 2008 Indy Japan 300, the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach was held on April 20, 2008 as a Champ Car sanctioned event using CCWS-spec Panoz-Cosworth cars and the winners getting IRL points, with the event described as a final celebration of CART/CCWS.

Television
Spike TV aired the competition in 2004. Also from 2002 to 2004, select races aired on high definition channel HDNet such as Road America race in 2003.

In 2005 and 2006, coverage was split among NBC, CBS, and Speed Channel. In 2007, coverage was split among NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.