We're a month from another big race day in Las Vegas.

On Sept. 24, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the Champ Car World Series combine for a doubleheader night event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway's 1.5-mile tri-oval.

It will be the second straight year for the Champ Cars.

And it was good news last weekend to learn the Champ Cars will return to Las Vegas in 2006. Where in the city, we're not sure.

Last year's "Double Down in the Desert," the first with Champ Cars, drew an estimated crowd of 80,000. The year before, with only the trucks, the crowd was about 60,000.

Those attendance figures are not necessarily indicative of the overwhelming popularity of either series. Instead, it's the product of a night race and an abundance of nearly free tickets offered through sponsorship packages the speedway sold for $5,000 that included 5,000 general admission tickets. That's a lot of freebies.

Regardless of how people got their tickets, they've showed up in droves.

And thanks to the Champ Car series' willingness to underwrite the cost of its portion of the night, it gave fans a chance to see 200-mph laps, or about 25 mph faster than Nextel Cup cars.

It was obvious last year that most fans showed up to see the trucks, because a steady flow to the exits started midway through the Champ race.

Casual race fans like stock car and truck racing, in which banging sheet metal is common, but the more sophisticated aficionados of racing appreciate the more highly skilled Indy car drivers.

The truck race will be fun, especially watching Las Vegan Brendan Gaughan compete on his home track for the first time since March 2004.

But it will be the Champ Cars that have us sitting on the edge of our seats as they fly around the oval.

We're fortunate owners of the Champ Car series love Las Vegas and appreciate the marketing value of holding a race here.

There have been negotiations between Champ Car officials and representatives of the Fremont Street Experience and Las Vegas to have a street race somewhere around downtown.

Champ Car was close to having an off-the-Strip street race near Mandalay Bay, but that effort apparently has stalled.

A street race somewhere in Las Vegas would be nice, but downtown? That makes as much sense as stuffing a baseball stadium there.

The cost of upgrading streets to meet the high-tech demands of Champ Cars would be too expensive anyway.

A rumor still persists that Steve Wynn might build a road course around the golf course at Wynn Las Vegas. But such a course probably would be used only for a Formula One race.

It would be a grand ending to the Champ Car season to have a street race here, followed by a season-ending banquet on the Strip the next night.

Fortunately, our city is aligned with the best open-wheel circuit in the country. Though near death two years ago, it has overtaken the Indy Racing League in a race for survival.

The IRL has cast its future on the sexy shoulders of Danica Patrick. That's a lot of pressure to put on a rookie who never has won any type of open-wheel race, but that's how desperate the IRL is.

The IRL has a better television contract with ABC and ESPN, but viewership has been abysmal other than the Indy 500 and Danica-mania.

Tracks are more likely to pay to host an IRL event than a Champ Car event, largely because the IRL is the more established of the two and has the Indy 500 telecast to use as leverage. Champ Car has been willing to underwrite costs to get events rolling.

Not even support from NASCAR's track-operating cousin, International Speedway Corp., has given the IRL the boost it expected.

Eight of this year's 17 races are at ISC tracks.

And ISC's Phoenix International Raceway, which has continued to have IRL races since the second one in the inaugural 1996 season, might not want the series return next year after an estimated 10,000 showed up for the March race this year.

Champ Car has staged successful races recently in Vancouver and Denver, where street races are center stage for multi-day speed and entertainment festivals. That would be ideal for Las Vegas and the series.

But at least we have them racing at the speedway.

And that's not bad.

Jeff Wolf's motorsports column is published Friday. He can be reached at 383-0247 or jwolf@reviewjournal.com.