The Future of Champ Car Racing met up with the past, present and possible future teams of the sport today at Sebring International Raceway as the new DP01 Champ Car showed its paces for current and future squads.

Representatives from current Champ Car teams, as well as from new teams and other interested parties, came to Sebring as the DP01 ran the penultimate day of its three-week testing campaign.

RuSPORT, Rocketsports, CTE Racing – HVM, PKV Racing, Forsythe Championship Racing, Dale Coyne Racing and Newman/Haas Racing had engineers, team owners and team managers on site while the newly-announced Pacific Coast Motorsports squad spent both yesterday and today poring over the American-built Champ Car. In addition, former Champ Car driver Scott Sharp and former Trans-Am Series champion Greg Pickett were in attendance to witness some testing first-hand.

“This car is really generating a lot of buzz throughout the paddock, both here and throughout the rest of the motorsports world,” said Forsythe Team Manager Phil LePan. “I’m glad we’ve been able to come out here and get a look at the car, take some photos and see what we have to work with.”

The DP01 ran nearly 200 trouble-free miles on a thick Thursday in Central Florida, lapping the 1.65-mile Sebring short course in the capable hands of former Champ Car star Roberto Moreno. The day’s efforts pushed the DP01 over the 2,200-mile mark in this final phase of testing, a mark that is nearly half the mileage that a team would put on a car in a full season of Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford competition.

“I think that everyone is really anticipating getting their first cars and it’s important to be able to come out here and see it, hear it and check it out,” said PKV Racing Team Manager Mark Johnson. “This test team is really doing a great job and we have to thank them for allowing us to come in and crawl all over the car. They’ve done a lot of work and it shows in the car.”

The final phase of testing for the DP01 Champ Car ends tomorrow afternoon when Moreno turns the final laps of this three-week run. The car will then go back to Indianapolis in preparation for its public debut at Road America September 22-24.

[Champ Car]

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