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Analysis: a long road to success

The long-awaited unification of open-wheel racing in North America may have been completed, but it will take a long time to restore the single series to prominence, according to several senior figures

Former IRL champion and Indy 500 winner Sam Hornish Jr defected to NASCAR at the end of last season, and thinks it will take the merged series several seasons to return to the prominence it enjoyed before Champ Car and the Indy Racing League split in 1996.

"Having one series where you can see the same drivers and teams will boost them forward," he told American newspaper the Indianapolis Star. "But all that went wrong over the last 12 years is going to take time to fix.

"It's not going to happen in a year or two. For how long it's been apart, it could take at least that long to get back to where it was."

Legendary driver Mario Andretti agrees that there is a lot of damage to repair, and is looking for the actions of the reformed series to outweigh the hype.

"That was 12 years we lost, and we lost big time," he told the Indy Star. "I hope the fans that were split up will now come back together, but PR spin is not going to do it, the product has to speak the loudest."

Former Champ Car champion Paul Tracy added his voice to those wondering whether the merger will allow the IRL to challenge NASCAR as the dominant category in the North American market place.

"Getting back together is something everybody has wanted since the end of the first year of the split," he said. "Are we ever going to be able to overtake NASCAR? It will take a long time."

In the midst of the uncertainty caused by the deal be agreed so close to the start of the season, IRL boss Tony George was forced to admit that even he doesn't yet know how quickly the unified series will come together.

"Everything may not come together until the Indy 500," he told American paper USA Today. "We'll be able to answer some questions once the season starts but things might not start to feel right until May."

The Champ Car teams that want to enter the IRL this season will meet at Indianapolis today to look at the new rules and equipment they will have this year.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan, PKV, Forsythe Pettit, Conquest, Walker, and Minardi plan to field 10 cars between them, and are expected to attend the meeting, although none of the converts are likely to be ready to enter the first IRL test of the season at Homestead on Wednesday.

A pair of test days for the new IRL teams have been pencilled in for March 19-20 at Sebring and March 24-25 on the oval at Homestead, which will host the opening round of the season on March 29.

All future events will be sanctioned solely by the IRL, under the IndyCar Series banner, and Champ Car owners Kevin Kalkhoven, Gerry Forsythe, Dan Pettit and Paul Gentilozzi will have no ownership stake in the IRL.

Champ Car is also believed to have closed much of its operation and laid off around 50 staff from its Indianapolis headquarters, but Kalkhoven insists the deal was necessary.

"Neither side was succeeding on its own and nobody was winning," he told the Indy Star. "It was a tough, emotional, gut-wrenching decision, but somebody had to put their ego aside and do it.

"This merger is in the best interests of the fans and the motorsport community. But it's not going to be the magic bullet and we still have a lot of work to do."

Both series had been suffering a decline, particularly over the last five years, and although it's Champ Car that has fallen by the wayside, the IRL needed the unification almost as badly.

Champ Car started the 1997 season - the first after they split - with 28 drivers, four chassis constructors and four engine manufacturers, while the IRL had 27 drivers, two chassis and two engines.

In the decade since, both series have become one-make and each fielded just 18 drivers in 2007. If the merger brings 10 Champ Car entries to IRL as expected, there will be at least 26 cars on the grid this season.

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