News and notes: Thursday July 31

The biggest piece of news of the week is the release of the 2009 IndyCar season schedule. After a sort of disjointed and last minute created 2008 schedule, the 2009 season will be the first truly unified season schedule. The current version has 18 races to be run between April 5 and October 11, 2008. The most notable omission is Surfers Paradise, a staple of CART/Champ Car and a race that always draws huge crowds, it's only drawback being that it is in Australia. The IRL organizers had hoped to twin it with the race at the Twin Ring Motegi in Japan to reduce costs but some sort of complications with a major Rugby tournament in September has resulted in no deal being reached. The IRL are insisting that there is still a space available for a race in Australia if the two sides can come to an agreement, but seeing as the willingness to budge of the IRL side is limited there is very little chance that a race will happen in Australia next year, 2010 maybe but dear Aussie friends, don't get your hopes up. Toronto returns to the schedule which is good news as the Toronto race was always one of the best attended races in CART/Champ Car but one suspects that a high attendance will depend on the presence of Paul Tracy in an IndyCar next year. The one surprise that has had a lot of fans fuming is the choice of season finale venues, Homestead-Miami speedway. The Homestead race has been poorly attended the last few years and people were expecting that track to get the axe and be replaced by Las Vegas, which would be a more glamorous location for a finale, but alas it was not to be and so the IRL is going back to the empty grandstands at Homestead. There are also a lot of fans mystified at the lack of former CART/Champ Car venues that traditionally drew great crowds like Cleveland airport or Road America. There were also rumours that New Hampshire motor speedway and Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama were being considered for races next year but that did not materialize. In all the schedule has 10 ovals and 8 road/street circuits and here is the final(ish) schedule
April 5: Streets of St. Petersburg
April 19: Streets of Long Beach
April 26: Kansas Motor Speedway
May 24: Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indy 500)
May 31: Milwaukee Mile
June 6: Texas Motor Speedway
June 21: Iowa Speedway
June 27: Richmond International Raceway
July 5: Watkins Glen International
July 12: Streets of Toronto
July 26: Edmonton city centre Airport
August 1: Kentucky Speedway
August 9: Mid Ohio Sports Car course
August 23: Infineon raceway
August 29: Chicagoland Speedway
September 6: The raceway at Belle Isle Park
September 19: Twin Ring Motegi
October 11: Homestead-Miami Speedway

Next up is a bit of Formula One news and it has to do with McLaren's 2009 Driver Lineup and the fact that it will not change. Heikki Kovalainen has been confirmed foe next year despite him having a ratehr poor season compared to teammate Lewis Hamilton. Heikki has only been marginally slower than Lewis but has had absolutely rotten luck and finds himself well down in the standings compared to Lewis. This is good news for Kovalainen as there were many rumours surrounding his future at McLaren and hopefully the personable Finn can win some races soon as he deserves it.

There are rumours abound that Paul Tracy will race in the three final races of the IRL season at Infineon raceway, Belle Isle Park, and Chicagoland speedway. Hopefully this is true but one has to take such rumours with a grain of salt as his presence seems to rely solely on money at the moment, sad for such a great champion.

This week the F1 circus are at the dull Hungaroring in beautiful Budapest and the NASCAR nationwide series is racing at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, I will preview these two races tomorrow.