MAY 18, 2002

CART moves to Indianapolis

THE CART organization in the United States is to move from Troy, Michigan to Indianapolis this weekend. It will mark the first time in the history of the organization that all CART operations will be housed in the same building with the administration being joined by the company's transportation division, the pace car fleet and the safety team.

The move is significant in that it means that the CART headquarters is now housed in the same city as the headquarters of the rival Indy Racing League and 10 of the 14 CART teams.

"Relocating to Indianapolis will increase the efficiency of how we do business in the sport of open-wheel racing and enable CART to be closer to its teams," says Chris Pook, the CART chief executive. "It's absolutely the best location for CART and we are very much looking forward to making Indianapolis our new home."

Many see the eventual merger of CART and IRL as inevitable, a situation which will be interesting for Formula 1 as it could have a strong international rival - although much will of course depend on the form of any compromise in the US.

The lessons of the CART-IRL split have not been missed by F1 and there are attempts going on to make sure that there are not two rival F1-style series in the years ahead.