Chris Pook Q&A

We had some good races last year but we are going to have even better races this year. We have got a chassis that was designed for a 750bhp engine and now we have a 750bhp engine to put in it. The cars will become raceable again. We will have one downforce package common to our short ovals, street courses and road courses. We might even look at running the same downforce package at one of our superspeedways.


Well I think that the first thing we realised when we came on board was that we are racing sanctioning body but that we have got to be public relations friendly, we have got to be marketing friendly, we have got to encourage people to come in to the series and we have got to open the paddock up even more so that the public can touch and feel our racing cars. We have put the hammer down on the autograph sessions. The public are able to communicate with the drivers and the cars much more.

When you see our 2005 rules published I think you will understand that we are bringing racing back to racing. It should be about racing drivers racing one another, the teams working on set-up, drivers working on set-up, and he who does it best including driving the race car is going to win. He may not be the fastest in qualifying, but if he is the fastest driver on the day he is going to win and he is going to have to pass people to do it.


We did lose our way and I'm old enough to remember the days of our last Formula 1 race at Long Beach in 1983 when John Watson and Niki Lauda started on the back row and came right through the field. It was quite amazing to watch the reaction of the public. They actually liked it!


We are going to race on what's known as the Indy track, which is the short track, it's fabulous for us and our cars. The public will be able to see every aspect of the race from virtually anywhere around the whole place. We have done some simulations and we have a little bit of work to do at a couple of the turns, particularly at Paddock Hill Bend. It is awe-inspiring in itself but we are told that our entry speeds at paddock will be about 175mph and about 150mph coming out. It will sort the men from the boys in a hurry.

The Indy circuit at Brands is not really an oval but it is as close to an oval as you are going to get. We are very excited about it. It delivers us the London market. We want to be in the major markets in North America, but Europe's a very important part of our make-up. And you can't have an American racing series come to Europe without having a race in England. It's as simple that. We believe in Brands. The place has got such an unbelieveably wonderful tradition to it and we just want to go back there and let our boys push the pedal and try and create a little bit of Americana.


I think you are going to see something a little bit quicker than a 105mph pole. The simulations are telling us that the pace is going to be somewhere in the 28-29 second bracket. It will be fairly quick. The one thing we are working on pretty hard right now is to get a Briton in the series. I would be remiss if I didn't say how proud Britain should be of Darren Manning. The job he did at Rockingham was outstanding. He is an outstanding young man in his own right.


The day before the Brands race is the Spanish Grand Prix. I know of at least two people that are coming back from Spain to see us, one will be Montoya and the other will be named Villeneuve. They will be there to see a lot of new blood and a lot of new team owners to our series. I think you are going to be very, very pleasantly surprised in the next 10 days by the names of some of the new team owners in our series


Yes we have a European ownership contingency coming to our series in 2003 and an even larger one coming in 2004. Obviously from our perspective we want to have a balance of all nationalities.


That will continue. We have not announced our live European coverage yet and I believe that that is going to happen next week or the week after. We will be live on television in Europe and it will be on a channel that you can easily get to.


We have got to go to the future. We are thinking for 2005. As far as we are concerned the days of methanol-powered race cars are over. We will be on gasoline power in 2005, in all probability with a normally-aspirated V10 engine and we'll control the electronic boxes to make sure that traction control doesn't creep back in. You will also probably see refuelling disappear. You will see tyre rules that provide hard and soft compounds and the 750bhp engines will have to run up to 800 miles between rebuilds. All those little bits and pieces will be brought in to bring racing back to racing.