DARKNESS FALLS; Champ Car visits Long Beach for an emotional farewell.(Competition)

Byline: STEVEN COLE SMITH

We won't rat out the team, but this is what happened in the paddock just after the Long Beach Grand Prix, where the Champ Car World Series ran its final race.

A couple of crewmen leaned over one of the cars, and one reached for the throttle and squeezed. For maybe 20 seconds, the wail of a turbocharged Cosworth V8, at absolutely full song, sounded for the final time at a Champ Car event. When the noise stopped, the grinning crewman turned around and faced a small crowd. They were applauding.

In a reminder of finality, the Cosworth engine service truck had "FOR SALE'' spray-painted on the side of the trailer. The cars-Panoz DP01s that were brand-new at Long Beach just a year ago-are now destined to be collector cars or fern planters or to hang upside down in some sports bar.

The fact that the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach ran as a Champ Car race was just a quirk of the calendar. Two of the three original owners of this last incarnation of Champ Car, Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe, bought the race from Dover Motorsports in May 2005. Since the race makes money, it is very likely that the treaty Kalkhoven and Forsythe signed when they agreed to bankrupt Champ Car and surrender to the Indy Racing League stated that this race would happen. And since it has happened 34 times (including 25 Champ Car races) and involves shutting down much of the city of Long Beach, it would happen on April 20, 2008, as scheduled.

This required IRL boss Tony George and his lieutenants to fly to Japan and request postponement of the IRL race there, scheduled for the same weekend as Long Beach. But Honda, the sole IRL engine supplier and owner of the Motegi oval where the race is held, wouldn't budge.

So the IRL let Champ Car teams roll out the DP01s and the Cosworths one last time and agreed to count Long Beach as an official points race for the IndyCar Series championship. That meant that the Champ Car teams and drivers who migrated to the IRL at least had a chance to stay in the points race.