Indy Racing League owner Tony George has not decided on a specific plan, but he is currently entertaining the idea of taking the IndyCar Series international. Presently, the series only leaves America for the oval event at Honda's Twin Ring Motegi facility in Japan but an off season non-points tour has made it to the drawing board phase.

“There are opportunities to maybe do something outside of the United States, say in the later fall months six or eight weeks after our season ends in the United States and North America,” said George.

“In my mind I think we are pretty maxed out given the fact that we are running the end of March to the first part of September. Seventeen is pretty tight this year,” said George, thus giving rise to running extra events in a second ‘season.'

“We could expand and start a week earlier, a week or two earlier, run a week later. We've got to discuss those things with our television partner who has really been driving this. But, we don't disagree with the premise. I think it would be pretty tough to shoe horn to many races in (to the current schedule).”

IRL President for competition, Brian Barnhart, clarified that is where the fall international idea comes into play. This would also allow the IRL to avoid direction competition with American Football – a ratings behemoth in the fall.

“The international events Tony is referring to would take place after our domestic championship would wrap up and in the future would be taking place in the October's, November's and December's. And we wouldn't be head to head because we would be in different time zones against the NFL.”

According to George and other sources, this idea is born out of interest the IRL is receiving from international venues, with Portugal and several other European and Asia/Pacific venues quietly making inquiries.

George said the overseas races would be “more like an international outreach and brand extension type of thing. Because we are now doing the road racing discipline, we've got a lot of opportunities and a lot interest from the same regions of the globe that others have had in the past. And those are opportunities we are evaluating.

“But, this is just me talking; I haven't really gotten buy off on any of this internally. But, there is a case to be made if the right opportunities come, if it's good for the sponsors, if it's good for the teams, if it's good for IndyCar racing in general to do a couple of off shore races.”

George also noted that Motegi could even move into this off-season international schedule under some scenarios.

Other IRL officials later clarified that there is no desire to take events from the Champ Car World Series and they are not talking to any of their current overseas events. They specifically excluded the CCWS popular event at Surfers Paradise, Australia.

George said the events would likely be non-point events because “some teams may not want to participate. And what we have here is a North American series and a North American championship.”

As to merging with the CCWS, which already has a number of international races on their schedule, George indicated that was not likely at this time.

“Right now, as of last fall, we've (Kevin Kalkhoven – leader of the CCWS and George) have kind of agreed that we don't have a lot to talk about in terms of unification. And we didn't likely have anything imminent that was going to change that in the next couple years, but we would stay in touch. And to an extent we've done that.”

ORS / CAPSIS International