NO PLACE LIKE HOME; RYAN BRISCOE'S WIN MIGHT BE THE LAST FOR AN INDYCAR DRIVER IN AUSTRALIA.(News)

Byline: CURT CAVIN

RYAN BRISCOE became the first Australian driver to win an Indy-car race in Surfers Paradise, Australia, but will anyone else ever get the opportunity?

The IndyCar Series' par-ticipation in future Surfers events hung in the balance as the Indy Racing League and its teams boarded planes from the United States. League and event officials met several times during the race weekend but failed to find a solution to their date conflict.

The promoters and supporters of the wildly successful Gold Coast event want "Indy, as it is known, to continue in the same late-October time slot. They announced that the 2009 event will be held Oct. 22-25, with its national series, the V8 Supercars, again involved. But it is not known whether the IRL will join them.

CART, the Champ Car World Series and now IndyCar have raced on the beachside circuit annually since 1991, but the IRL made this a nonpoints race because it refuses to conclude its championship on foreign soil, particularly when the race is held in the middle of the night for much of the U.S. television audience.

The IRL has not confirmed publicly when it is willing to slot future Australia races, but it seems clear that a compromise could come in the form of a one-year return as an exhibition. But will the Aussies budge on the date after that? Stay tuned. The two sides had agreed to resolve the saga by Nov. 9.

IndyCar's trip to Surfers this year was one of the contingencies for the IRL's unification with Champ Car, whose leadership in-cluded Kevin Kalkhoven, an Australian whose Team Australia sponsorship keys the Nikon Indy 300. But that was a one-year situation.