IRL ponders CART buyout

Fred Nation, executive vice-president of communications of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IRL, said no offers had been made yet but the organisation had sent a team to CART headquarters in Indianapolis to review the assets.

The CART series, which broke away from Indianapolis in 1978 and went public in 1998, filed for bankruptcy last year and is scheduled to have a hearing leading to the sale of its assets in the last week of this month.

The IRL started its own series in 1995, which includes the prestigious Indianapolis 500, and since then CART has suffered from the defection of major teams and manufacturers to their rivals.

Last year the Open Wheel Racing Series (OWRS) made an offer to buy CART's assets and a U.S. Federal Judge imposed a deadline of January 23 for alternative offers.

CART operates a successful street course races in the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal as well as at Long Beach, California.

The IRL, until now an all oval series, have stated interest in selected street races and Nation said that starting in 2005 the IRL would have a limited number of them on the calendar.

"There are a lot of interesting assets for sale at reasonable prices," Nation added.

In addition to races, technical equipment and a state of the art mobile hospital will be up fror grabs at the sale of assets, which is scheduled for January 28.

OWRS officials were not available for comment on Monday.