Long Beach, Toronto join IRL schedule

This year's calendar featured Champ Car's Edmonton round, which will continue next year, but the addition of two more street races brings the series to a 10-8 split between ovals and circuits.

Although, there is no place on the schedule for Surfer's Paradise, which will run a non-championship round at the end of the season and had been tipped to hold a round of the series next year.

The Nashville Superspeedway is the only race on the 2008 calendar to lose its place next year.

The season will open on the streets of St Petersburg, with the Long Beach Grand Prix retaining its traditional April date and hosting the second round. Toronto slots in between Watkins Glen and Edmonton in July, creating back-to-back races in Canada.

The race at Motegi will move from its regular April slot to September to hold the penultimate race, with the season concluding at Homestead-Miami in October. And the Mid-Ohio round has moved a month later, from July to August, to avoid a run of six consecutive racing weekends.

Justin Wilson is one of many former Champ Car racers that have had to work hard to adjust to oval racing this year and he's pleased to see a a better balanced calendar for 2009.

"Having entered this season with a limited amount of prepartion, it's great to have next year's schedule out so early. It will enable us to be much more prepared," he said. "The flow looks a lot better as far as changing from ovals to road racing and back again, as well as the number of consecutive weekends.

"It's great to have a unified series and have Long Beach on the schedule as well as Edmonton and Toronto. I'm also happy to see that we're going back to Surfer's Paradise this year and I'd like to see it make the schedule for future years as well."

Rahal Letterman Racing co-owner and IndyCar veteran Bobby Rahal is also impressed with the strength of the calendar.

"This is one of the strongest schedules that the IndyCar Series has ever assembled," he said. "It provides one of the most diverse challenges in all of motorsport with its mix of road courses, street circuits, short ovals, and big speedways."