With Long Beach approaching, the final race of Champ Car, I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at the rich history of racing and pay tribute to our loyal fans.

Some 29 years ago, our founding fathers, Roger Penske, Pat Patrick and others, in their infinite wisdom started CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams). If you look at it over the last 29 years, there really were some amazing and interesting things that happened.

For example, CART really pioneered the concept of multiple style race tracks, developing the street courses, racing on road courses, short ovals and high speed ovals. It truly was the heyday of CART, and we had it all. There were multiple manufacturers where there were great battles with the Mercedes, Toyotas, Hondas, Lolas, Reynards and, most recently, the Panoz. Not only were great battles fought on track, but on the drawing board as well.

There were tremendous advancements made in safety, from the design of the cars, to the drivers' safety cell, to the superior medical at-track facility that still, to this day, is one of the best in the world. The efficiency of the safety crew on track and their attention to details and skill saved lives. Those achievements have increased protection in the 29 years of CART/Champ Car's existence and, in some cases, have gone almost unnoticed.

Through of all of this we cannot forget the driver talent that made CART/ Champ Car one of the best formulas in the world, with the Andretti's, Mansell's, Mears, Unser's, Fittipaldi's, Bourdais, and the list goes on and on. Now it's gone, and the emphasis today appears to be WW Made for TV racing, putting on a show to a generation with a short attention span or interest in the details, but is it really? Isn't it really about the 'Stars and the Cars', as it has always been?

Now we are back to where all of this started 29 years ago with a tremendous opportunity as one series, IndyCar, to continue or, even better yet, take the achievement of CART/ Champ Car to even greater heights.

Throughout it all we have had an extremely loyal group that has followed the series all around the world. In spite of some of the mistakes we have made along the way, we owe them a great deal of thanks and gratitude for supporting CART/Champ Car. Many, many thanks to you all. I hope you enjoyed it as much we did and now we go back to the future with IndyCar.