Johnson confident about '07 calendar

Speaking from Las Vegas, the series' fourth new confirmed venue, Johnson said: "I took to our board what I felt was the best schedule that I have seen Champ Car have in many years. The board is very supportive of it, and agrees that it's not only challenging for our drivers, but it's going to be great for our fans as well."

"As far as China goes, it's a beautiful facility at Zhuhai and the infrastructure is in place. They have a very secure and stable management team at the track which puts on major events - everything from GT races to motorcycles, and they are very excited to bring the Champ Car World Series to China.

"We also have the full support of the government of Zhuhai, and the mayor and they are, again, equally as excited and are willing to promote and support the event. So we feel very confident that China is going to be a very big success.

"I'd say our biggest challenge is going to be educating the Chinese fans on what Champ Car is. There are a couple of potential Champ Car drivers that are Chinese, that we're going to hopefully give some testing to because we would love to have a Chinese driver in our series."

One of those is undoubtedly Dutch Chinese driver Ho-Pin Tung, who recently clinched the German F3 Cup, and whose name has been linked to tests with several teams in the Champ Car paddock.

Johnson also explained that the reason for returning to Quebec, albeit on the Mont Tremblant circuit at St Jovite was to reward the fans that would have missed out following Montreal promoter Normand Legault's falling out with the Champ Car chiefs.

"Some of the greatest fans Champ Car has are in that area," said Johnson, "and we feel we owe it to them. It's not the fans' fault that we're not back in Montreal; it had nothing to do with the fans or the support we got or the welcome from the city. It was a place that we really considered home and we felt that Quebec was a great home for us as well.

"So it was important for us to tell our fans 'we appreciate everything that you have done for us, we're not going to abandon you even though we felt the Montreal promoter somewhat abandoned us. We're going to support you. We're going to be there bigger and better than ever."

"Our senior VP of Operations Tony Cotman was at Mont Tremblant yesterday, and called me and gave me his assessment and he said, 'This may be our drivers' favorite track when they get out here.' He was very excited about it.

"He said there are some things they are going to have to do to raise it to our standards which they are very willing to do, some more modifications that they are going to have to make, but Tony said it's going to be a great venue to hold a Champ Car event."

Champ Car has faced some criticism on selecting downtown Phoenix as a venue for the 2007 season finale, with many observers suggesting that the desultory turn-outs for the Formula 1 races there from 1989 to '91 indicated that it wouldn't work. Johnson dismissed such claims.

"It's a different day and we know the event is going to be successful. They were running in the middle of June whereas we are going to be there in late November [early December in 07, late November in '08]. Our business model is completely different.

"It is not just a race that we're going to be bringing to Phoenix. There are concerts, boxing matches, we're doing some things with car shows and Barrett-Jackson - it goes on and on. That's part of our three- day festival.

"We also have a great promoter with Dale Jensen who is the owner of the Diamondbacks [Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team], who has obviously taken great interest in revitalising the downtown area. He's as committed as anyone I have seen from a promoter standpoint."

To no-one's surprise, Montreal is one of three 2006 races not featured on the 2007 Champ Car calendar, the other two being Monterrey, Mexico and Milwaukee.

Explaining the absence of Monterrey, Johnson said: "The promoter being OCESA came to us and said they felt the Monterrey race was taking away from the Mexico City event, they were somewhat cannibalizing each other. So they wanted to put all their efforts into Mexico City.

"They gave us a business plan on how they were going to do that, and we support it; the sponsors are stepping up more. I think we're going to see a great Mexico City event.

Johnson was also eager to state that the first ever Champ Car season with no oval races was not signaling an anti-oval stance by the series organizers.

"We don't have any ovals on this schedule because they didn't make good business sense for us. It's not that we're anti ovals or won't run on an oval.

"We had Milwaukee, but we didn't have enough fans to show up to make it a good business case to be there. The same thing when we raced in Las Vegas on the oval we encountered the same thing.

"So if a promoter can come to us and we can develop a business model that is successful for all parties on an oval, we would be happy to look at it. We're not against ovals and just currently at this time does not make good business sense for us.

"Milwaukee just didn't work," Johnson continued. "Although the crowd was up this year compared to last year, it was still nowhere near where it needed to be and Andy Randall [the Milwaukee Mile's CEO] didn't have all the confidence in the world that he would be able to get the people out and we didn't have the confidence either. So that's why we had to take it off the schedule for the time being.

"We need those stands to be full to be able to support the cost of bringing the Champ Car World Series there, and the promoter has to have the stands full to cover his costs to bring us there."

Johnson would not be drawn on the state of play regarding the European races, tentatively scheduled for the last two weekends in September, at Assen in Holland and Oschersleben, Germany, but currently omitted from the calendar. Should they not happen, there would be a two-month lay-off period between the 12th and 13th rounds.

Should the Euro venture not happen, one or possibly two races in North America could help fill the void, bringing the championship up to 16 or 17 rounds. One such venue could be Miller Motorsports Park in Utah. However, Johnson quelled speculation that a street race in San Antonio, Texas could appear next year.

"San Antonio has come back to us and said they just were not able to do it for 2007. You can't rush into that type of an event.

"It's got to be planned, otherwise it is going to have a bad ending, so San Antonio has come back and they would like us to look at putting them possibly on for 2008. We said we would definitely look at that and work with them in their efforts."

Laguna Seca, which hosted 22 Champ Car races between 1983 and 2004 and which will host Champ Car's Spring Training days next March will definitely not be the venue for a calendar-filler.

Its proximity to the San Jose Grand Prix in terms of distance (70 miles) and potential dates (they would end up around two months apart) means any dilution of one of the series' most successful events would not be risked.