The Champ Car World Series will not be back in Las Vegas in 2006.
The Indy-style, open-wheel racing series has scheduled a media teleconference for today in which it is expected to announce a revised schedule that will not include Las Vegas or Las Vegas Motor Speedway but will add another venue.
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The Champ Car series had joined the successful NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race for a doubleheader at the speedway in late September the past two years. The truck series will return Sept. 23.
"I'm not surprised," speedway general manager Chris Powell said of the decision by Champ Car, which had been basically paying the speedway to be part of the September event.
"I've known all along that they might not come back next year," he said. "We've had a good exchange (of ideas) with the people from Champ Car since the first race we had with them."
Champ Car officials could not be reached for comment.
The move by Champ Car, formerly CART, closes the second chapter of Indy-car racing at the speedway. The Indy Racing League raced at the speedway from 1996 and 2000.
The 2006 Champ Car schedule, released in late summer, listed a Sept. 24 race in Las Vegas but didn't name a specific site.
Series officials have said in previous years that they wanted a Las Vegas street race, and earlier this year sources said that the series was working with city officials to organize a race on public thoroughfares near downtown. But the cost of the event proved to be prohibitive.
Series leaders emphasized the importance of having a presence in Las Vegas the past two years and officials felt strongly enough about it that they paid a fee to the speedway the past two years -- thought to be as high as $500,000 in 2004 -- to be part of the September event that featured NASCAR's third-tier national series.
The estimated average attendance the past two years for the doubleheader was 70,000, but the grandstands began to thin considerably soon after the truck race was completed. This year about 15,000 fans at most remained at the conclusion of the Champ Car race to see Sebastien Bourdais win the event for the second straight time.
