CART entices new teams

CART has renewed its efforts to entice new teams into the series to prevent a shortfall of entries next season, according to a story in this week's AUTOSPORT

Aug 22, 2002, 10:37 AM

Funding for the championship's new Entrant Support Programme for 2003 has been nearly doubled to $850,000 (£557,000) per car.

The scheme, which only applies to the first 20 Champ Cars logged for next year, has been made to try and ensure that grid numbers do not dip below the 18 cars running this season - the minimum requirement to fulfil CART's contract with race promoters.

To help attract new teams in the face of the likely defection of some teams to the IRL, CART has enlarged its subsidising fund in exchange for teams giving up a regulated area of bodywork on each car for the use of series sponsors - similar to a successful scheme pioneered by NASCAR.

Existing CART teams reacted positively to the news.

"On paper it's great," said Team Rahal's Scott Roembke. "A sum of $850,000 is good for any team. It's not an insignificant amount of money."

The full story appears in this week's fantastic new look AUTOSPORT, which is on sale now priced £2.80