Snowed-out CART race tries again at Nazareth.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

PHILADELPHIA - The FedEx CART Indy car series paid for its ill-conceived April 9 date for the Bosch Grand Prix at Nazareth Speedway by suffering an embarrassing snowout.

With the Bosch race rescheduled for Saturday, it turns out an area race will serve as a lead-in to Sunday's traditional marquee doubleheader of the Indianapolis 500 and the NASCAR Winston Cup Coca-Cola 600. Talk about lucky second chances . . .

Crowd watchers will be closely checking the Nazareth attendance because the Bosch race hasn't drawn well in recent years. Nazareth has one more year on its contract with CART.

Should Nazareth lose the race, there will no Indy-car racing in the Northeast. Imagine going from the days of Mario Andretti, A.J Foyt and the Unser brothers racing at Pocono, Trenton and Langhorne to nothing.

Michael Andretti, for one, is hoping area racing fans find their way to Nazareth, in the Lehigh Valley.

Andretti is expecting a large turnout for CART's annual stop in his hometown.

"I feel confident that we're going to fill the stands," he said. "When we do, then CART will look at that race a little bit differently and maybe give it a better date, because I think the only thing Nazareth has been lacking is a good date. There are millions of fans around here, but to put them up in those stands in April here is just crazy."